Last month we had to work on a grant. I don’t really mind writing grants, but this one was painful. It was awful. It was the worst grant I had ever written. It was like getting a thousand paper cuts, bathing in lime juice, and then drying off with a towel dusted with salt.
It was excruciating, like taking some tin foil, covering it with barbecue sauce, and then chewing the whole thing for five or six minutes and only taking a break once to punch yourself in the face.
Seriously, this grant was horrifying, like someone taking a garden statue of a skunk, breaking off its tail, dipping the tail in chunky peanut butter and fire ants, and then beating you with it while forcing you to watch Superman IV.
This grant was insane, like taking a Funshine Bear Care Bear doll, removing all the stuffing, filling it with sauerkraut, then duct-taping the kraut-stuffed bear to your chest before you run screaming into a garage wall while passers-by spit tapioca pearls at you with those giant bubble tea straws.
The grant was horrendously agonizing, like someone going to the farmer’s market, buying three organic purple carrots, freezing them with liquid nitrogen, smashing them into pieces, loading those pieces into a T-shirt cannon and firing them at you while you have one foot in a duffel bag filled with live scorpions and a puree of habanero peppers.
It was stressful and unpleasant, like taking a codpiece and some leeches and a blowtorch and some rope and a handful of pistachio shells and a week-old baguette and some mouthwash and …
Anyway, you get the point. It was an awful, awful grant, mind-numbingly tedious, frustrating, annoying, infuriating, and very, very irritating.
This week we just got notice that we made it to the interview round. Sweet!
Nonprofit with Balls 
Congrats! I hope it goes well from here on out.
By the way, I love your blog and have passed it on to many other NP friends around the country!
Thanks, Heidi! Thanks for commenting, and for telling your friends about the blog.
Heidi, I saw you liked this on Facebook, and it’s blowing my mind how awesomely stress-relieving it is to read this stuff. Thank you, Vu for being hilarious!
Thanks for reading the blog, Ben. There’s a lot of hilarity in this line of work. Although, “hilarity” and “insanity” sound very similar…
I read this and laughed so hard that I couldn’t breathe, and my staff came rushing in to do some sort of emergency resuscitation techniques. Luckily, some tweaker stole the AED from the church, so I wasn’t electrocuted.
Thanks, Claire. I’m glad you recovered.
Really appreciated the metaphors….just hope you don’t have to write a blog if the second round of interviews results in a rejection. We had a bit of a dry spell over the last couple of months, but recently had some good news! Best of luck on the first round of interviews.
Thanks, Sally. We actually got the grant. Like childbirth, I forgot how painful it was, so now I can apply for the same one next year.