There's some really weird shit in my old bedroom closet

I was having dinner at my parent's house, and my mom asked me to clean out my closet once and for all.  I took a look in there and to my horror, found a bunch of totally freaky/embarrassing shit that I absolutely do not want in my home, but that for some reason, I cannot bring myself to get rid of.  For example:

• George Michael pin (acid-wash jean jacket nowhere to be found)

• Great America photo key chain from 1990 with picture of me and my brother and two of our friends striking "white-kids-trying-to-appear-urban" pose that makes me sort of uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as the fact that I am wearing cut off jean shorts and a strapless bikini top (why am I at Great America in this get up?  shouldn't I be driving a Jeep?)

• three grocery bags of "irregular" bras and nylons that my mom bought me while shopping at outlet malls over the years, all wrong size (but maybe I'll be a size 32A someday, or some tragedy will befall me and my left leg will be four inches shorter than my right leg?)

• blue, construction-paper Saturn that says "Julie and Jason" written in silver puffy paint from the "Redwings in Space" dance that I went to with a closeted gay guy (this commemorates only the first of multiple high school dances and college date parties that I attended with closeted gay guys)

• My first pair of Birks, which my mom begged me to stop wearing, worn down so much that there is no shoe left behind the arches

• folder filled with pictures from Elle and Glamour exclusively of Claudia Schiffer, my eating disorder role model

• posters of Madonna and Depeche Mode (is it more embarrassing that I had these posters in the first place, or that I still like them and don't want to throw them away?)

• folder of secretive material that was never supposed to leave the Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter room that I lifted from the Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter room while high and in possession of chapter room key when I was president (all material in Latin, thus, secretive nature of materials continues to remain safe in my possession)

• my Berkeley (plaid uniform skirt, which is indestructible and looks exactly the way it did the first time I wore it even though I wore it every day for four years in high school, and which, even if I were to double in size, would still somehow miraculously fit)

• little gold ring with diamond chip in it, which was a birthday gift from my first [non-gay] boyfriend (sitting on top of a shoebox full of love letters from this guy, who should wish (1) that Al Gore never invented the internet, and (2) that he didn't cheat on me, because now that I have a blog, the next stop for these love letters seems inevitable)

• 8 prom/homecoming-type dresses, some very puffy/some very pretty, but also very unlikely I will attend any more proms

• shoebox full of mix tapes from ex-boyfriends (I don't feel right tossing out what may be the only existing hard copy of "More Than Words")

• white pumps, scuffed

• a caboodle containing my fake IDs underneath a one-hitter and a baggie of assorted brands and colors of free condoms, exp. 1993 (NOTE: one of the fake IDs, and I'm not joking about this, is an Asian girl named Ann, age 28) (ALSO NOTE: interesting moral dilemma must have preceded decision to hide fake IDs under excessive amount of condoms)

• David Gotmer English Award

• one million pairs of slippers

Here's Your Fucking Christmas Card

I love getting Christmas cards. LOVE them. I especially love the newsy letters, and of course I love getting pictures of all the little kids. I like it even better when my friends include themselves in the pictures, because, let's face it, little kids are cute as hell, but nothing beats seeing how fat your friends got this year.

Everyone knows that women only include themselves in the Christmas card photo if they are looking fabulous, so if you send me a card and you're not in the picture, I know what's going on. I know you probably sit on the sofa eating Cheetos and weeping while you watch The Biggest Loser. That's OK. But don't think you're pulling one over on me, girlfriend. I can read the code. Instead of sending a picture of your beautiful children, why don't you make a copy of your Weight Watchers progress card that shows you haven't weighed in or been to a meeting since last February? Send that around.

Also, mailing a picture of just your children to a husband-less, child-less, boyfriend-less woman is kind of uppity. Why not send me a picture of just your big house, or better yet, cut the crap and email me a PDF of your most recent joint checking account statement? "Merry Christmas, loser. Look at the shit we have that you don't. Suck it!"

Maybe I'll send out pictures of myself doing all the things you can't do. It must be such a drag, the being married, having a built-in friend, stability. YOU didn't get to spend half of 2013 living in a Prius. I don't MEAN to rub it in, but it's so hard, when you have a life like mine. And I already do that on Facebook, so let's get back to the Christmas cards...

I look fabulous again this year, but I don't have a husband or children, and single women don't typically send pictures of themselves as Christmas card photos, which is why, every year in September or October, I start to think how funny it would be if I sent a Christmas card photo of myself with my pets. It would be a really close-up picture of me and my dog. In past years, I had a dog and TWO cats, and if I got dressed up, like, make up and a blow out, a tasteful blouse, the whole thing, and sent you a picture of myself with these animals crawling all over me, and you opened that shit up, would it not cause you to say to your spouse: "Is Jules really sending us a picture of herself and her pets?  Is this a joke or isn't it?" And that would be funny, the not knowing.

Also, it would not make any sense, as I do not even have a dog.

But then it's two days before Christmas, and I realize that I never did go to Sears or Olan Mills to get this serious/hilarious picture taken, so then I have to decide whether to send regular boring Christmas cards. When so many people send pictures with their cards and now most people just send pictures and do not even write anything on the cards, you realize that you're kind of a fool if you hand-write all your Christmas cards. People only want to see the pictures anyway, so if you send a card with no pictures, it's not going to win any awards. And, as you know, I like to win awards.

I have considered writing a holiday newsletter, but every year when I start to put that together, I realize that most of the "news" I'd have to share would not be very Christmas-y: "I got laid off. I have no health insurance. My mental health is tenuous. I'm hanging on by a shoestring. The 12-step program really helps. Merry Christmas?" I don't want to send a letter that would upset people.

Or do I?

I've recently been informed by my sister-in-law, and via Facebook nonetheless, that I can't even wear my favorite Christmas hat this year, because it freaks my nephew out. Screw you, Parker. Your poopy diapers freak me out, but I don't get all whiny about it. Just let me wear my damn dancing/singing hat. It isn't even my hat. I just wear it better than anyone else, and you know that, Parker. Just because you're the baby doesn't mean you have to hog ALL the attention. Don't be a hater. Christmastime is crummy enough when no one gives you any toys, and everyone is constantly haranguing you about how you're too gorgeous to have ANY fathomable reason to STILL be single. So I don't feel like writing Christmas cards this year, and I'm not going to try to do something shocking with photos or a newsletter.

But here is a Christmas card that I really DID send in 2001. I printed it and put it in the actual mail, and some of you received it. There are, of course, some updates to this Christmas card from many years ago: (1) My brother has been married for 7 years and has two beautiful sons, so my parents' dream of becoming grandparents has been realized through no effort on my part at all; (2) I no longer practice law, which is part of the reason I really did live in a Prius for longer than anyone should live in a Prius; (3) Dad retired in December, but we still don't know where he lives or what he was doing during the 40 years prior; (4) the Easter Egg thing is still very real; (5) Grandpa died.

***

[While we were on vacation in Mexico, my mother announced that she was torn as to whether she ought to send out her usual holiday newsletter, or hand-write the Christmas cards this year. Since she typically sends out the newsletter without first consulting us, inevitably misstating and embellishing the facts, Michael and I attempted to thwart the newsletter idea by pointing out that neither of us accomplished anything or had anything good happen to us this year. Mom got pissed, threw up her hands, and said, "Fine! Why don't you just write the letter." Bad call, Ma, for we took up the challenge. Ergo, was born, on a cocktail napkin and over a great deal of alcohol]:

The Incredibly Morose 2001 D- Holiday Letter

Hiya! Another year, another 365 days of the same old crap, and once again, the kids have proven themselves to be un-marriageable, giving us zero grandchildren and zero hope of a wedding (unless Mike knocks up some hooker, which is unlikely, since he doesn't even have the wherewithal to sleep around like a normal, good-lookin' guy in his mid-twenties).

Julie managed to bamboozle a guy into paying for exactly one meal during the year 2001. We’ll see if he calls. (Don’t hold your breath.)

Julie set Michael up on a date, which was a miserable failure. If we've said it before, we'll say it again: Michael is unlucky in love.

Tom, for the 17th year in a row, did not live within a 300-mile radius of his wife and children. He worked in Seattle for the first half of the year (incidentally, Tom wishes us to note that he is a Seattle Earthquake 2001! survivor), and currently works in Indianapolis. As usual, who cares? Keep sending the checks home, Dad.

Paula, having over-committed to numerous book groups over the course of the year, finally had to prioritize her book-reading obligations.  She pared down from three book groups to just one, and stunned the Naperville book-reading community by standing up at Mary Jane Doody’s house and announcing, “Enough is enough! I can only read ONE book a month. Not three, not even two. I will NOT read Bee Season AND A Prayer for Owen Meany at the same time. I CANNOT! I WILL NOT!”

Michael got a hair cut!!

We have NO grandchildren.

Julie, who is still clinging lifelessly to her job as an “attorney”, performed approximately no legal services for anyone this year. We don't expect her to be employed come February. (Should we have saved that for next year's letter?)

Incidentally, about Paula, we all acknowledge that she is a wonderful mother and that she did nothing but scrimp and sacrifice in the raising of the children and taking care of Tom all those years, but none of us feels too bad for Paula now, as her lifestyle consists of shopping for over-sized jars of shrimp cocktail and bags of frozen dinner rolls at Sam's, planning her and Tom’s quarterly two-week vacation, going on vacation, and letting the cleaning lady in.

Tom swept the 2001 D- Easter Egg Decorating Contest, dominating such categories as "most stupidest", "most dumbest", and "most jerky". (While this tidbit may seem like a joke, rest assured, it is not.)

Julie ran the Chicago Marathon in October.  She has only 8 of 10 toenails still attached to her feet and wakes up screaming in the night complaining of phantom limb pain.

Grandma died.

Our 26- and 27-year old children are on vacation with us as we write this, so is it any wonder that we have no grandchildren?

Merry Christmas.

The Museum-Quality Gazelle Head, or, as it turns out, I am a Famous Pole

I forgot to mention how I met Dave in the first place, and how it came to be that he slept on my couch once.

I was having a cook out one afternoon.  My friends were over and I was no good at cooking, so one of my friends was manning the grill, and the rest of us were sitting outside at a picnic table in the common area courtyard of my six-flat apartment building at Wellington, Lincoln, and Southport.  James had on the most ridiculous shirt.

[the cook out -- even the fact that it was

the year 2000 is not an excuse for James' shirt]

As we were having our lunch, a neighbor in the apartment building next door was going back and forth from his back door to a U-Haul out front.  He appeared to be moving.  We were making a lot of noise.  At some point, this neighbor came over to the picnic table.  He was carrying the stuffed head of a deer.

"We have enough to eat here," I said.

He said, "Hi.  I'm moving into my girlfriend's place and she doesn't want me to bring this.”

“Peculiar,” I said.

He went on: “I was going to throw it out, but I thought maybe one of you would want it."

There was a slightly awkward silence.  All of my friends clammed up.  I said, "I'm all stocked up on deer heads here, but thanks for the offer!"

He was playful.  "This isn't a deer. It's a gazelle!"

"You don't say!"

"I'm serious.  I could sell this.  It's museum-quality."

"I believe you."

"But I need to get rid of it fast."

"How much would a stuffed museum-quality gazelle head go for?"

"I don't know.  It was given to me.  But you could probably get like $500 for it."

The correct thing to do for the sake of making the cook out more memorable, was to accept this gift of a dead animal head.  So I stood up and said, "I'm just kidding.  I'm not gonna sell it, but I'll take it off your hands."

"Cool!"  He handed over the gazelle head and went back to packing his U-Haul.  I set the stuffed gazelle head on the ground next to me and we continued talking loudly and eating hamburgers and potato salad.  Every once in a while, out of the blue, someone would say, "I can't believe that guy just came over and handed you a gazelle head."

"It's museum quality!" I would say.

After we were done eating, we cleaned up and went into the apartment to primp for a night out.  We had only recently stopped dressing like lumber jacks, all flannel and Pearl Jam.  We all had our Jennifer Anniston hair cuts. We all wore silver necklaces and Birkenstocks.  We weren't quite there yet with our style.  Kind of in between college and business casual.  Do you remember those flat-front skinny black pants from the Gap?  With the side zipper?  We all had those.  We were probably wearing them with clogs.

We went to a bar where a mutual friend had rented out a back room.  It was dark and there were benches all around the walls. We were sitting down, maybe 15 or 20 people, as if around a campfire.  I was sitting next to Joel, a kid I had gone to high school with, and his girlfriend named Sasha, who he had met at Middlebury College.  The rest of us had gone to Iowa.  I was asking Joel and Sasha about going to school in Vermont.  It seemed so exotic.  Sasha told me that her mother named her after a character in a novel by a Russian author.  I had read a lot of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn, and it seemed to me that every character in every book by all of them was called Sasha.  I never got around to asking which one she was named after, because people started to get up from the bench-style seating and were leaving the room to go to the street outside the bar.  A girlfriend of ours was getting on the back of a motorcycle with a guy she had just met . Some of my girlfriends were trying to dissuade her.  They thought it was a bad idea.  They were concerned that the guy might be drunk . Our friend clearly was.  We were in our mid-20s and we didn't know yet about the phenomenon of men in their 30s with their motorcycles.  Against the objections of some of my friends, my girlfriend rode off with this guy.  We hailed a bunch of cabs.  We yelled, "Follow that motorcycle!"

The girlfriend, her new motorcycle friend, and we ended up in a Polish part of town at a dance club called Jedynka.  All of the people in the club were speaking Polish.

At this time in my life, I liked going to clubs, and I enjoyed doing some dancing.  Now, I am not a trained dancer, but let's just say that I'm "noticeable".  In many instances, I think it would be fair to say that I have "caused a scene" on the dancefloor.  The cruel irony is that while I have this inborn natural talent for freestyle dancing, I have next to no hair on my body, including on my head, and when I dance, I get really sweaty.  It's not just that I perspire.  I hit a point of no return when I sweat right through all of my head hair, and sweat is just gushing out of my head and my face.  I am always sad when this happens, because that is when I know that it is time to stop dancing.

I had nearly reached this point when I saw that a tall, blond guy, with just the most gorgeous, chiseled face, was dancing next to me.  We made eye contact and he started kind of groping at me.  He was very good looking and he had some pretty keen dance skills, so I let him, but I wasn't really interested.  It was a dance club, and I don't typically find men who dance in dance clubs very interesting.  Also, he seemed very young.

"What's your name?"  He had a Polish accent.

"Jules."

"Jules."  He repeated.  "Jules! I'm gonna buy you a drink!"

I walked to the bar with the tall, blond Pole.  This is a woefully generic and useless description, as all Poles in Chicago except for me are impossibly tall, blond, and svelte as kittens.

We were trying to get the bartender's attention to order drinks.  It was crawling with beautiful, blue-eyed Poles wearing trendy clothes.  I was in a forest green (remember that color?) top and feeling decidedly not tall and not slim and definitely not trendy.  I was blond at the time, but not in the right way.  I was slippery as a seal from the dancing, and so I was looking around the bar for some napkins.  I finally grabbed some and was trying to surreptitiously wipe the sweat running down my temples while he got the beers.

He asked me, "Are you Polish?"

"I am," I said. "But only a little bit.  My last name is Polish.  Or Russian?"  I told him my last name.

He lit up with excitement.  "Do you know what your name means?"  I could barely hear him over the baseline of the blaring dance music.

"No!"  I yelled, so he could hear me.

He leaned right into the side of my head and yelled into my ear, "Your name is in the Polish National Anthem!"  I was certain he had felt my sweaty hair.  I yelled into his ear, "I don't believe you!"  He had his hand on my waist now.

"It is!  I swear it is!", he yelled into my ear.  "You're a famous Pole!"  He kissed me on the neck.

I felt ridiculous.  And stupidly proud.  Could it be?  Was it true?  Was my last name really in the Polish National Anthem!?  I realized that I hadn't asked him his name.  So I did that.  I don't remember what he said, but I do recall that he said he was an EMT.  We talked for awhile and I found him articulate and funny.  The banter was very fast-paced and intelligent (for dance club conversation) and we were laughing like mad.  I had been surrounded by law students and lawyers for years, and these types of people are all English and history and poli-sci majors, but this kid knew how to do something.  He knew about science.  I was asking him about CPR compressions and riding in ambulances.  While he was talking, his eyes were boring into me, and even though he seemed to like me, all I could think about was how sweaty I was.  I started squirming away from his grasp.  I liked him, but the closer he got, the younger he looked, and the sweatier I felt.

Then my friend (the one with the asshole boyfriend) appeared next to me.  She jabbed me on the arm with a cold beer and said, "You're making friends!"

I yelled, "He's really young!"

The young Polish EMT, who was standing on the other side of me, whisper-yelled in my ear, "I'm not that young!"

My friend yelled, "We're leaving."  She was referring to herself and her asshole boyfriend.  She shouted, "Are you going to stay?"

The young Pole grabbed me closer and whispered, "Stay."

The asshole yelled, "Have you seen Dave?"

"Who's Dave?" I yelled back.

"He's right there," my friend pointed.  Dave was standing at the bar on the other side of the Polish EMT.  He lifted his bottle of Bud Light in acknowledgement.

"Where's Amy?" I shouted at my friend.

"She left with the motorcycle guy."

"You're kidding?"

"No."  She stared at me seriously.

But then we laughed.  Because of our age, this was funny, our friend going off who knows where on a motorcycle with a complete stranger who was probably drunk.

"Is there anyone else here?"

"Dave," my friend said.

I looked over at Dave.  He waved at me in one motion and took a swig of his beer.

The Polish kid clutched me closer.  "Let's go dance."

I kept looking at Dave.  I was curious about him.  He was decidedly not a Polish dancer, but he seemed comfortable.  And he wasn't leaving.

"I'm going to stay for a bit," I said to my friend.  The Pole and I went out to the dance floor and I got more sweaty.  He was pulling me really close and I was perspiring uncomfortably.  I excused myself to go to the ladies room.  "I'll come back," I yelled to him as I backed off the dance floor.

I made my way through the towering blonds to the rest room.  I wiped myself down.  My hair was mostly sweated through.  I wondered why Dave hadn't left with my friend and her asshole boyfriend.  I wondered if the Polish fellow liked me for me, or if he was just into sweaty, one-quarter Poles distantly related to famous war heroes.

When I walked out of the rest room and made my way back, Dave was standing on the edge of the dance floor.  I said, "Hi, Dave."

"Hi.  Are you going home with that guy?"  He looked over at the Polish kid.

"I don't plan to," I said.

"Do you need another beer?"

"Sure."  I followed him to the bar.  I was wondering what kind of commitment, if any, I had to the Pole, and whether it would be in bad taste not to return to the dance floor.

Dave handed me a Bud Light, and the Polish guy came up next to me and said, "Do you want to leave?"

I looked at Dave.  He took a drink of his new beer.  I wanted to keep talking to him.

I said to the Polish guy, "I just got a beer."

The three of us stood by the bar, drinking our beers, watching the attractive Poles living it up in the flashing lights.  The Pole and I started talking about the people on the dance floor.  I performed a 5-minute critique of the dancers.  He was laughing.  Dave was standing on the other side of me not saying anything at all.

And then, very abruptly, the music stopped.  The lights went out.  The dancing Poles came to attention.  A single spotlight shone brightly on the Polish flag.  Some proud chords struck out.  A mazurka?

The Poles began to sing.

The EMT grabbed me and yelled, “It’s the Polish National Anthem!”

And then, I swear to God, I heard all of those beautiful Poles sing out my last name.

The anthem ended, the strobe lights and music resumed, and the Poles went back to their dancing.  Dave casually said, "Do you want to get out of here?"

"Yeah."

I leaned over to my Pole.  "I think I'm going to leave."

"OK," he said. He put his hand on my waist again.  I turned to leave and we snaked our way out of the bar, me in front of the Pole, and Dave behind us.  We got out on the street and all three got into the cab.  It didn't make any sense, but no one was backing down.

"Are you hungry?" The Pole said?

"I don't have any money," said Dave.

"We could go to my place," I said, and did not know why.  There was no food there.  They were both strangers, but I reasoned that the odds had to be low that they would both, independently of one another, try to kill me.

The cab dropped us in front of my place and as I was putting the key in the door, I was wondering what the hell was going on.  The Pole wanted to make out with me.  I wanted to make out with Dave.  All I knew about Dave was nothing.

Dave sat on the sofa and the Polish guy followed me into the kitchen to get some beers from the fridge.

"Is he staying?" he asked me.

"I'm not sure what's going on," I laughed.  He kissed me.  I pulled away from him.  We went back out into the living room and I gave Dave a beer.

"I'm locked out," he said.  "I lost my wallet and my keys and my roommate left with your friend."

"The motorcycle guy?" I asked.

"The motorcycle guy."

I knew my friend, and I knew that she had probably had the motorcycle guy drop her off, and she was probably sound sleep, alone, in her bed.  I knew that Dave's roommate was probably at Dave’s apartment.  But I didn't say that out loud.

Again, this was before cell phones.  We were always wondering where people were back then.  I could have called my friend to find out, but he didn't suggest it.  He was so certain that he had no place to go.

So I said, "Do you want to sleep on my couch?"

"Do you mind?"

"No, it's cool."

(Since we already know how it turned out with Dave, I'll just add for the record that at this point in the evening, Dave might have taken the time to pipe up about his having a girlfriend.  If I'd known he had a girlfriend, my interest in him would have evaporated entirely and I might this very day be the mother of a gaggle of beautiful, blond, three-quarter-Poles who are very good at science!)

The Pole looked at me.  I could tell he was hurt.  I'd made up my mind.  I wanted him to leave.

"Well, I think I'm going to get to bed," I said to the two men I didn’t know in my living room.  "Can I show you out?"  I got up and headed to the hallway.  The Pole followed me to the front door.  I maneuvered him into the entryway of my building.  He was standing next to the mail boxes and I was trying to keep it short and also starting to imagine myself telling my girlfriends about the most awkward evening of the year, which for me, is really saying something.

He grabbed my face with both his hands and pulled me into him and kissed me.  It was a good kiss.  I started to reconsider.

He said, "You don't want him to stay.  You'll have a better time with me."  He was smiling.  He was sincere.  Or maybe he wasn't.  Mostly he just looked very beautiful and very young.  It was impossible that someone that attractive and bright, and knowing how to save people's lives in high-pressure situations and all, would like someone like me.  He could have had his pick of the hundreds of pretty Polish girls at the bar who dressed themselves so nicely and really knew how to dance.  There had to be something seriously, pathologically wrong with him.  I regained my resolve.

"I had fun tonight," I said, wriggling away from him like the black cat from Pepe Le Pew.  "I really did."

"I want to stay."  He looked sad.

"No you don't.  Believe me, you don't."

"Yes. I do."

I ignored him and kept ushering him to the door.  "Good luck with your EMT training!" I said cheerily.

Defeated, he turned away from me and went out into the street and I went back into my apartment, where Dave was still sitting on the couch.

"Did you want that guy to stay?" Dave asked.

"No.  That was kind of weird, wasn't it?"

"I guess."

"Do you want a blanket?  Do you want to brush your teeth?  I have an extra toothbrush."

"I'm fine."

He put his empty beer bottle on my coffee table and lay down on the couch.  I went over and sat on the edge of the sofa.  He didn't touch me.  I wished right then that I hadn't sent the sweet Polish kid packing.  I considered being more aggressive, but instead I got up and turned off the living room lights.  There was a little light coming in from the kitchen.

"What's that?" he asked.

The gazelle head was propped up in the corner of the living room.  Its dead, black eyes were eerily gleaming, reflecting the light from the kitchen.

I perked up.  "That's a museum-quality gazelle head," I said proudly.  “Recently acquired.”

He didn't seem to need to know anything more about it or why it was there, so I went to the back of the apartment to my room and went to bed.  Didn’t he have any other friends he could stay with?  Why did he come home with me?  Why did he so overtly cock-block that nice, intelligent, completely normal, unbelievably attractive Polish kid?  Why did I let him?

When I got up the next morning and went into the living room, the TV was on, and Dave was lying on the sofa on his side with the gazelle head wrapped in his arms like a teddy bear.

I laughed.  "I could sell that," I said.

"Don't," said Dave.  "I've never met a girl who had her own museum-quality gazelle head."

 

[My friend, not featured anywhere in this story, with the museum-quality gazelle head]

“Poland”

Poland has not yet succumbed.

As long as we remain,
What the foe by force has seized,
Sword in hand we'll gain.

CHORUS
March! March, Dabrowski!
March from Italy to Poland!
Under your command
We shall reach our land.

Cross the Vistula and Warta
And Poles we shall be;
We've been shown by Bonaparte
Ways to victory.

The Misunderstanding and the Apple Fritter

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A Blog? Why a Blog?

This was supposed to be a joint endeavor.  I was not supposed to have my own blog. James and I talked about doing this together, and that, we felt, would lessen the narcissistic feel of the thing.  Writing a blog with James would have been sort of like a social event, and not the sitting in my house writing in my underpants kind of thing that it must now necessarily become.  It would have had something for everyone.  If you like Tori Amos and/or tennis, James would have you covered there.  If you're unlucky in love and like to read about a person having humiliating things happen to her every time she pokes her head out of the house, I'm all over that.  We both have notebooks filled with ideas. Well, James, has a notebook.  I have a clothing-less closet containing eight 50-gallon tubs of diaries and notebooks stacked floor to ceiling.  So, content-wise, between the two of us, we had the material to pour into a blog.

And also, if I may say, the talent.  James has an MFA from Pitt and he taught rhetoric at the college level.  I took a high school creative writing course and I have an English degree, so I know where to put commas, kind of.  Unfortunately for all of us, James decided that blog-writing is not for him at this time in his life, so he gracefully bowed out.  Even so, I am determined to give it a shot on my own, which I think will be OK because I have writing talent to spare.

Not to toot my own horn, but I have won many awards for my writing, so let's talk about that for a bit.  I can't remember all of them, but here is a brief list, not in chronological order, to give you the general idea:

My Many Writing Achievements

I won the "David Gotmer English Award" as a senior in high school. I don't know why.  I don't know who David Gotmer is.  No one told me and I didn't ask, but they gave me a plaque.  I think that Diablo Cody, when she went to my high school (many years after I graduated, I suppose I should add), also won this award.  Or I may be making that up. I'm not sure.  I should IMDb that before I go spreading rumors about Oscar-winning screenplay writer Diablo Cody.  I'm kind of afraid of that one.  She might sue me.  Or show up at my house and injure me with her black fingernails, sharp wit, and startling stripper moves.  Incidentally, they say that some or all of the members of the hit rock band Survivor also went to my high school, as well as D.B. Sweeney, of "The Cutting Edge" fame ("Toe pick!"), but I have always been skeptical of these claims.  Every time I hear Survivor's double platinum-certified 1982 mega-hit "Eye of the Tiger" in my car, which, let's face it, isn't nearly often enough, and I give a little

Celine Dion-style fist pump (e.g.: 1:02, 1:06, 1:30, 2:01, 2:21, 2:57, 3:11, 3:29), and I think to myself, "Some or all of these guys may or may not have gone to my high school.  Rising UP [fist pump] to the challenge of our rival!"

(By the way, take a look at the commas in that last sentence.  Not everyone can do that.  That's totally Strunk & White-approved comma-usage right there, so you should be getting the sense now that you're in good hands.)

Going a little further back, when I was in 7th grade, my paper comparing the effectiveness of various mnemonic devices was selected as one of the top five research papers at the Illinois State Science Fair.  My mom took me down to Champaign where I presented my paper and received a ribbon, all while wearing floral-print, cotton, M.C. Hammer pants, and a teal, off-the-shoulder sweater.  A black-and-white picture of me and the other four "winners" was included in the science fair program.  After forfeiting the entire 12th year of your life to science, sharing your science fair award with four other people is very satisfying.

Speaking of the science fair, I note a trend.  My writing achievements in the early years were scientific-y.  I was once invited to brunch at Fermilab to read a piece of fiction that I had written about aliens coming to Earth for a visit.  My story was about how strange earthlings must seem to space creatures, especially how we walk around after our dogs picking up their poop.  I have since heard this joke many times. I think Seinfeld or maybe Dane Cook does this bit now, but I came up with it first, in the mid-80s.  I know it was the mid-80s, because the sleeves of my dress were really puffy, and there is a picture of me reading my story and my head is kind of being closed in on by these massive sleeves.  So anyway, I read my story to a bunch of nuclear physicists.  They laughed. I mean, I really had these scientists laughing. I don't know if they were laughing with me or at me, but my mom and dad said I did a good job.  So that's kind of like a writing award.  I'm not sure if they will note it in my Wiki profile, but it should be included. I mean, seriously -- I'm practically Vonnegut over here with the sci-fi component and the speech-giving to raucous laughter.  Let's agree that even if it isn't an award, giving a reading at Fermilab is really fucking cool, for a 12-year-old.

Even though I was into sci-fi writing as a child, when I was a senior in high school, my mother let me drop physics so that I could take a second writing class instead.  Brother Charles was against this, so my mom went to the school and fought for my right to not learn physics!  As a result, I am proud to say that I am a full-grown adult with 19 years of formal education, and I have taken 1.25 science classes in my life.  I still believe that a piano falls faster than a feather in a vacuum, and I have it on information and belief that I can only get pregnant if I have sex when I'm married.

Getting back to my writing achievements: The Daughters of the American Revolution seemed to like what I had to say about "What the American Flag Means to Me."  I got a $25 prize for my essay one year, so I submitted roughly the same essay the next year and won a prize again.  So we'll just count that one once.

I booked Legal Writing in my first year of law school.  Or rather, my law school roommate tells people that I booked Legal Writing, but this is unverified, because it is not true.  Since he keeps telling people that it happened, and I now kind of like to believe that it did, let's just put it in the mix of things for flavor, and worry about the fact-checking later.

Also, my undergraduate writing professor repeatedly asked me to come over to his house for dinner.  And sometimes I went.  He told me I was beautiful and that my writing was beautiful (I should have suspected that a better writing professor would have known more than one adjective), and that I made him want to write poetry.  This wasn't a writing "award," per se, but it was writing-related, if not wholly creepy, so I thought I would mention it in this portion of the introduction rather than spring it on you some time later on when it might seem out of context.

Finally, Nichols Library chose my report on Harriet Tubman as the best essay about a black person, and they put my picture in the "Naperville Sun."  In case that last sentence sounded not very PC, the caption actually says: "Julie D-, St. Raphael's, 5th Grade, wins the library's contest for Best Essay About a Black Person."

Yes, I know.  All of my writing achievements appear to have occurred during or very near to the first decade of my life, and maybe you don't want to read a blog about black people from outer space that is littered with scientific untruths because of my limited exposure to that area of study, but my point is, even without James or the fancy degree, I have the one qualification you need in order to have a blog:

I know how to type.

What is your blog about?

I'm not sure.

Really? What can we expect?

First of all, please keep your expectations low.  I may write some essays or tell some stories or post some pictures, or maybe I'll take suggestions.  I wrote a lot of essays in high school about Barbie dolls and meatloaf and the hermaphrodites that can be found in magazine ads for Calvin Klein fragrances, and most of these early works will be reprinted here out of sheer laziness, and also so that you may judge for yourself how little progress I have made as a writer since I was 15.  Also, I wrote a lot of "poetry" when I was a teenager, like, thousands of poems of the really lovesick, "I'll stick my head in this fucking oven! I will do it!  I WILL DO IT!!!" variety, that can only be conjured in the mind of a white, privileged, private school girl growing up in an affluent suburb of a large American city.  But let me tell you, I was heartbroken and despondent and a recreational bulimic, and you would not believe the sorts of things a kid like that will write.  We'll give you a taste of it here so you'll know what to expect from your daughters.

I have kept a diary since I was in 5th grade.  I will post excerpts as needed to fill space.  Most of the entries will be about hot dogs.

Did you see that one day when I posted a picture on Facebook of a body heaped up on the floor in my hallway?  I had stuff to say about that!  But there wasn't enough room on Facebook, and since I didn't have this blog at the time, you'll never know what happened to the carcass.  Sadly, there won't always be dead bodies in the hallway for me to write about, but I'll look for them!  For you, I will look for the dead bodies!

My Promise to You:

The idea to have a blog did not begin with me.  It began in other people's heads and has been suggested to me now and again.  Each time it has been suggested, my gut reaction has been that I am not nearly interesting or important enough to have a blog that anyone would bother reading.  However, reading other people's blogs has confirmed for me that leading an adventurous and exciting life is not a prerequisite for having an interesting blog.  Things happen every day that I think to myself, I could write about that!  And then I do.  And it goes in the notebook and the notebook goes into the tub and the tub goes into the closet, and so on ad infinitum, until one can no longer own clothes because the closets are full.

The other part of my reluctance about blogging is that you cannot claim that you are not a narcissist if you write a blog about yourself.  And the thing is, when I talk about myself, which I often do, I am always saying how I am not a narcissist.

When I decided to go ahead with it, I thought, if I am really going to do this, then it will have to be for real.  It will have to be "THE BLOG TO END ALL BLOGS!"

RAWR!!!!!!!!!!

My blog has claws and fangs and is blood-thirsty and it uses less significant blogs as dental floss.  I put on "Eye of the Tiger" and I got really pumped up.  I probably tore my shirt a little bit, or dislodged some of the buttons on my pants or something.  But the point is, I disheveled my attire in a brutally sexy way and I felt very hungry and energized, like an actual tiger.  However, I wouldn't want to be a male tiger, because I'm a lady, and lady tigers are not as fancy as male tigers.  Or is that just lions that are like that, the males having the big manes and the ladies just looking like house cats?  In that case, maybe I would be some other kind of mammal that is more accessible than a tiger?  A lemur, perhaps?  Or a marmet?  What's a marmet?  Is that a monkey?

Well, you get the idea, I hope, that I am very excited, for there to now be a place where I can do my writing exercises.  But even so, I have come to understand that having a blog that intimidates and destroys other blogs is an unreasonable goal.  It's OK to shoot for the stars, but you have to keep your feet on the ground.  So here is my promise to you:

I invite you to read this blog while you are eating your 6-inch Subway meal at your desk during your lunch break.  My blog will be good enough for that.  If you will accept it, I will settle for a blog that pairs adequately with the 15-20 minutes it takes you to eat a value meal consisting of three components from any fast food restaurant chain (except Chick-Fil-A, because I've never been to a Chick-Fil-A and I don't understand it.  Do they sell chicken or cheeseburgers?  Why aren't they open on Sundays?).  This blog takes into consideration that you just want the work day to be over and you are looking for something to kill time because you got stuck on that Sudoku you're working on.

... P.S. I offer one final disclosure: I will write a lot about my ex-boyfriends.  Like, really, a LOT.  Sorry in advance, ex-boyfriends.  But seriously now, you had to have seen this coming.  You saw the closet with the notebooks piled up.  What did you think that was all about?

And, come on now.  What man in his right mind gives up on a girl who has been asked to speak at Fermilab?

Yeah.  I have some things to say about you.

Stupidass.