mercuryfern

We drove past a Panera Bread the other day, and I was reminded once again of my abiding love for the high falutin big box chain.

Stay with me here.

I'll tell it to you like I told it to Abby.  When I lived in Chicago, the weather was very cold, I was working very long hours, and I was very homeless.   At first I was just a little bit homeless, staying in a dirty nasty hostel.  Then I was a little more homeless, spending nights on a coworker's living room floor.  Eventually I was all the way homeless, sleeping in my car.

Did I mention I was working all the goddamn time? As a union organizer I was paid (significantly) less than minimum wage once you divided my stipend by the number of hours I put in.  Though I made enough to pay rent in one of the working class South or West Chicago neighborhoods, I certainly was in no position to scrape together a security deposit.  Apparently full time employees are the fastest growing group of homeless people.  Makes sense if you think about it, what with the bottom dropping out of entry level wages while housing stock of all grades continues to soar in price.  Recently, an article in my local newspaper business section recommended buying row homes in working class neighborhoods and renting them out because the profit margins are higher on such rental properties than for more expensive ones.  Ah, yes, just as I suspected, the prices for poor people are more jacked up than for anyone else.  Who shall I tell to go fuck themselves in this instance?

And why aren't I doing the internet research and linking to the sources for the outrageous claims contained herein?   Because this is not a serious political blog. This is me telling you a story about why Panera Bread makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

There are many things to love about my itinerant life.   I will not whine here, as I was wont to do a few years ago, about how I feel adrift in the world without a geographic identity.  No, if I wanted that badly enough, I could have made it happen.  If I move a few hundred miles in one direction or another every few years, I must like it.  To compensate for the resulting sense of disconnection, though, routines are serious business for me.

Thus it was that I found myself at Panera Bread most nights in the spring of 2002, curled up in a firm easy chair next to the gas fireplace, reading a newspaper somebody had left behind.  Even at the time, I was aware that the faux living room was a Disney World fake approximation of a coffee house, meant to be looked at, but certainly not actually sat in.  I should have been offended by it's co-opting of the urban experience, should have been insulted by a franchise that attempts to reproduce but only ends up mocking what independent dives have been doing so much better for so long.  Instead, the too perfectly coordinated fabrics and the carefully subdued atmosphere became a homey way station between my long evenings making cold calls and my early mornings doing paperwork or recruiting members door to door.  It was like listening to the radio with a teenage broken heart and finding comfort in the most insipid pop songs.  Your mind knows such trash is degrading the cultural landscape, but there you are, embracing the clichés, singing along. 

I stayed until they closed and then found somewhere to sleep.   Nobody spends their evenings in public spaces anymore, certainly not reading for hours, so I expected the employees to kick me out eventually.  I dreaded it, really, because I didn't want to look for another place to go.  Clever homeless people have four or five locations where they distribute their time, so as not to make a spectacle of themselves, so as not to wear out their welcome.  On leaving the office, I couldn't stand to strategize one bit more.  I ached to sit the same way in the same place, to find solace in any ritual.

You might suspect that in such a situation a twenty one year old girl would get to feeling a bit despondent.  The opposite happened for me, though.  Panera Bread those cold rainy nights was like my first long car trips; pride at my independence and resourcefulness overrode anything else I might have felt.  I carry what I need where ever I go.  I am my own home.

Memes as a cure for writer's block.

The last, what, week or so, my brain has been swimming with the sorts of Big Questions I thought I’d figured out before I was an official adult.  (Not a youth, not even a young adult anymore, no, just look at the insurance charts.  The line is quite clear.)   When I feel this way, there is nothing for it but to sit with the fountain pen and the journal, no, that was ten years ago, the keyboard and the modem, whatever, I need to write my thoughts clear.  For mostly logistical reasons I’ve been away from the computer, wishing throughout the days I were typing instead of occupied with whatever meaningless drivel has been wasting my time.  (seeking gainful employment?  pffft.)  Tonight I sit down and, predictably, the profundities are playing coy with me.  Fine.  I’ll do this meme instead.  Courtesy of Kimberly.

Seven things I plan to do before I die:
*get knocked up
*own a house
*ascend to the highest ranks of the Dance Dance Revolutionary Guard
*be an excellent mom
*learn HTML
*tend a garden over the course of more than two seasons
*have health insurance

Seven things I can do:
*make sushi
*read music (in three clefs, no less)
*get found when lost
*beat the bus from North Austin to Sixth Street on my bike
*endear myself to a room full of strangers
*get the cute girl discount in most retail and automotive establishments
*operate a bulldozer

Seven things I cannot do:
*ski
*type quickly
*spell legibly without the aid of a checker
*back down from a fight
*cry in front of another human being
*finish more than one alcoholic beverage in a night
*be concise

Seven things I find attractive in others:
*defying gender stereotypes (women who are handy with power tools, guys who knit)
*sharp wit
*being so vivacious as to reveal conventionally defined defined standards of beauty for the hollow lies they are
*spontaneity
*passion for a craft
*being shy/ nervous around me because I am, after all, worth impressing
*the good taste to find me attractive

Seven things I say most often:
*fuck
*mother of god
*(assorted other obscenities)
*Pebbles are not for putting in your nose.
*(activity I would like a three year old to avoid) is not a choice.
*Use your words.
*Thank you.

Seven celebrity (If the meme regulatory bodies will allow an occasionally unconventional definition of fame) crushes:
*Angelina Jollie
*Op Ivy era Tim Armstrong
*Emma Goldman
*Edna St. Vincent de Millay
*Cezar Chavez
*Virginia Woolfe
*A certain viola teacher

Madness Running

I don’t do moderation.  Knowing this, I generally err on the side of under- rather than overindulgence.  Many people who share my brand of insanity struggle with substance abuse problems.  This has not been the case for me.  My experiments with recreational stupor were early and short lived.  Until recently I didn’t drink alcohol at all, ever.  I’ve been a vegetarian of varying levels of strictness for ten years. You could argue that I take abstinence to unhealthy extremes; perhaps in my long ago past this has been true.  I eat eggs and cheese now.  I no longer let myself skip meals.  In the last year I have begun to enjoy sipping a beer or two over the course of a night.

My affinity for obsession has advantages.  I excel at much of what I attempt.  Not that my achievements come consistently; no, it’s a torrent of writing, a fever of ideas and execution, and then nothing, nothing at all for days, weeks or months while I wonder if it all was ever real in the first place, while the people who depend on my initially demonstrated competence lose faith and expel me permanently from their esteem.

Recently, my intensity has been channeled into exercise.  Probably narcissism is not entirely absent from the equation, but mostly I do it because keeping a decent amount of adrenaline coursing through my veins is a good way to maintain my emotional ballast.  This summer I spent 150 weekly miles on the designated bike path at a pace that left me limping and queazy when I dismounted.  Unlike many other sports, running, for instance, on a bike you’ve got a piece of equipment between you and the task at hand, and as such, you really can buy speed.  I don’t ride anything fancy, but it thrills me to unsubtly pass the many people who do, to defy the money equation with my straight bars and cheap derailuer, my own private class warfare victory. 

This autumn, I go to the gym instead; everyday, for at least an hour.

Yesterday, I quit a job after only one day, a record even for my demanding self.  One thirty in the afternoon found me doubting my worth for all the old reasons and a few new ones, too.  I got on a machine and went for an hour.  Then I sped up and gave it everything I had for another ten, twenty, thirty minutes.  No matter how I tried to exhaust myself, there was still more to pull up from under my many failures, like a scarf of near infinite length from a cheap magician’s hat.  I kept expecting to find myself spent, holding an unattached corner, but instead the yellow just gave way to red then green and blue.  However low I fall, I hit bottom with the rock of my willpower as companion, and there it was again, giving birth in my unmoving motion to a small euphoria that grew until it was about to dwarf guilt and shame.  Before it could, though, before I reached that moment where everything is so clear, at three o'clock I stopped to cook dinner, to try and make amends.  I will be better to the people who care about me.

I guess the other thing about channeling my energy into tasks which are perhaps not particularly prestigious is that I want desperately to excel at something.  I squander talent and opportunity with stunning efficiency.  When I can exicute a simple task with dignity, I remember what it was like to feel that golden touch emanating in more useful directions.  How can it be wrong to want to be reminded of what it feels like to accomplish?

She came home while I was mixing up the batter for the frittata, veggies in the pan, parsnips sliced and roasting in the oven.  I was so exited about my ninety minutes.  I am not a runner, after all. 

“An hour and a half?  That is not okay.  That is not reasonable.”

“I think it’s fine.  People who run marathons or whatever go way longer than that.”

“Fern, it’s a kind of eating disorder to exsersize all the time.  90 minutes, I’m sorry, no, that is not reasonable at all.”

Later last night, I was doing something on the computer, and I had occasion to exclaim under my breath, “argh, I said submit, motherfucker.”

“Fern, you are manic, settle down.”

“No, I’m not.  I’m annoyed.  Not everything I do is a pathology.”

“Yes it is.”

I would rather shovel all manner of feces than write a resume.

This afternoon I had the pleasure of chatting briefly with the lovely and talented Bakerina.  My cell rang at the library where I am attempting to make a list of every job I have ever had (twelve in the past nine years), and every "extracurricular" activity I have participated in during that same time period.  (Way more than a dozen; it runs the gamut from being the secretary of a group called The Lavender Menace to teaching an after school gardening class to fourth graders in Texas.) 

When asked how that process was going, I replied with the title to this post.  She giggled and made me promise to put the phrase on a screen posthaste. 

The near and dear among my readers already know that I am in the process of applying to finish my bachelors degree after five years out of school.  When I went to college the first time, I was seventeen, and had already been out of high school for two years, a quasi runaway paying my own tuition at an unschooling cooperative. 

Unschooling cooperative, what's that, you ask?  Well, specifically, it is this, but generally, it is an institution based on the idea that learning occurs best when a student is not coerced.  In such a place, there are no requirements, no grades.  Everyone puts together a portfolio of their self initiated projects.  Teachers offer some classes, and facilitate a lot of independent studies.  I spent my time reading about the agricultural revolution and ancient goddess worship, studying ecological systems, volunteering at a rural produce farm and an urban gardening program, trying to learn to read ancient Greek, taking pictures and sequestering myself in the darkroom for eight hours at a time, running meetings, planning conferences, sitting on committees, learning to cook.  All this in three days a week, the other four I worked at a greenhouse, making minimum wage to pay above mentioned tuition.  I did pay it myself, the whole thing. 

When I broke my foot I went back to work and school after two weeks rather than the doctor recommended six because I would have missed a payment otherwise.  Such a rush meant the bone never quite healed.  It stress fractures even now.  A young couple ran the bagel stand at the Amtrak station where I had long layovers in both directions.  They took pity on me and gave me their bags of day olds most mornings.  The days I did eat lunch, it consisted mostly of those bagels.

I was pretty impressed with myself those two years.  When my parents failed to support me, I supported my goddamn self.  I got what I wanted from life through pure willpower and charisma, spinning my abandonment into steely self-reliance.  I dared the world to try and stop me.

No one else in my life was quite so impressed with me, though.  My father never tired of mocking my beloved new school, belittling my life.  About the only thing that garnered any respect was the fact that I was holding down a job, eventually even getting five and ten cent raises.  He'd been telling me for years by then that I would never be employable unsedated. 

Acquaintance’s eyes glazed over when I tried to tell them how exited I was about this utopia.  They sometimes laughed in my face that I took this hippy school so seriously.  "So, basically, you do nothing all day?"   My friends stopped speaking to me, I guess partly because I wasn't around, but also because we all changed.  They started doing cocaine; I had to worry about getting to work on time.  Not that I regret not cultivating a raging addiction, but I never did get to be a teenager.  The other kids at the new school, too, wanted nothing to do with me.  I was a neurotic overachiever. And then there was this kid.

My beloved unschooling cooperative broke my heart by being imperfect.  In rebellion, I applied to an academically rigorous liberal arts college my second year, a school where gifted younger scholars might begin their collegiate life at sixteen, seventeen, sometimes fifteen.  Soon after the application was mailed, I forgot about it, immersed as I was by that time in my West Philadelphia anarchist collective life.  The little kids I taught to garden those two summers soaked up my knowledge, but my love, too, like greedy little sponges.  I made real friends; I even slept with a woman who called me her girlfriend.  It was the happiest I'd ever been, I wanted to stay.  When the acceptance letter came, though, it brought the opportunity to be taken seriously.  If I was going to work myself to the limit of my physical and intellectual capabilities, I wanted not to be laughed at.  I could not resist the siren song of academic prestige.

My arrival in the Berkshires was marred by fear I was behind after not just two years of hippy school, but three preceding years of frequent expulsions.  I started classes riddled with guilt that I was making the less revolutionary choice, that I was abandoning the independent radical self I was so proud of having constructed.  I was back at the financial mercy of my parents.  My father never missed an opportunity to mention how expensive tuition was.  He mentions it even now, brought it up during the most recent of my increasingly rare trips to his house.

First semester promised a glorious academic career. In many ways, college was everything I wanted school to be since I was small.  Students took classes on whatever weird thing was interesting to them, and there was so much to be interested in.  I studied The History of Number.  I read Plato and Hamlet.  I stayed up late talking about the meaning of it all, what it would take to save the humanity from itself.  I organized committees, I planned protests, I wrote papers and turned out to still be that smart girl who taught herself to read at four years old.

Second semester, who knows what happened, I got cocky, signed up for classes that were too hard.  My friends loved me and believed in me, I finally felt safe after not being able to afford to cry for so many years.  I don't know, maybe it was the birth control.  They say orthotricyclin exacerbates depression in women prone to it.  In any case, there was a slow implosion, months of time now lost to my memory.  I'm told I didn’t get out of bed for most of the spring.  Spent an ineffectual and expensive (just ask my father) month in a moderately famous mental institution.

There is more, it continues to be weird.  I limped through a second year at school before dropping out to do a cross country documentary project.  The next five years saw me in Texas, Chicago and Ohio, supporting myself doing interesting jobs and taking the occasional college class on architecture or literature or what have you.

On good days, I look at my life and I’m pleased, even proud.  I managed to avoid every single cliché right of passage, but I’ve had more adventures than most anyone I know, and nobody lands on their feet with such panache. I feel different from people my age, even the ones I adore and admire.  They seem afraid of failure, of loosing their dignity. Circumstances have exhausted their power to degrade me.

All of my carefully constructed self acceptance crumbles in the face of needing to take an inventory of my achievements.  Turn the charm up to eleven and I can land me any old job, no problem, but these admissions councilors want a more thorough soul bearing.  The questions they ask are designed for kids with six fewer years of age, and at least ten fewer years of living.  The impressive parts of my story don’t fit into their boxes, the places I must leave blank stare back at me.  My unconventional choices look like failures on their forms. So, I make my own list and format it the way I want to, but I can’t shake the fear that it looks like a series of disasters authored by an unrepentant nutjob. 

I left my purse and the accompanying cell phone in my car last night.  This morning my voice mail held a message from my husband, the first I have heard from him in four days.  Yesterday a long letter arrived, full of observations made during his first three days in San Francisco, each and every one of them days we did speak on the phone.  The stories he wrote, the itineraries he outlined, I’d heard pieces of it all through a staticy connection already.  He’s never been much of a phone talker, not much of an emailer, either, but my goodness, that boy can put pen to paper.

At six this morning I curled up again with the pages and a hot cup of tea.  When I realized it had all been written before the last time we talked, I began to wonder if he hadn’t just fallen off the face of the earth.  It’s not like him to stay silent four whole days.  That’s more my style.  He’s without a cell, has been calling me frequently, but from pay phones, mostly at inconvenient times.  Last he called, I was at a party and kept it short.  He seemed fine, let’s talk tomorrow.   

It’s one thing to suspect your husband might kill himself if you really do leave him, but worrying that declining to chat on the phone could send him off the Golden Gate Bridge, that’s just plain old arrogance, if not a delusion of grandeur.

Why I Love Abigail, or, Nothing is More Hilarious Than Mental Illness

My camera has been broken now for a couple of weeks.  There is nothing I can do about it, the warranty is in a storage unit in Ohio.  I can’t afford to replace the stupid thing for a few months at least.  Meanwhile, the most luscious light I have seen in ages comes pouring through the leaves, setting all this green aglow.  The trees take a deep breath and prepare to change into their formalwear.  Back from window shopping with Abby, I fell into a deep funk, precipitated mostly by realizing the camera I want to buy doesn’t exist, but then my sadness bled into other ideas.  If I can make a record of the beauty that has been, I can take it with me, I can get my bearing.  When I can’t take pictures, everything good seems to be slipping through my fingers.  The sun sets off the wood grain on that log just so for only a half an hour today, I watch it dance across and then slip off.  Tomorrow the sun will have sunk a bit lower, everything will be different, it is gone.  Explaining this to Abby, I began to cry.

“My god, honey, I never really noticed your bipolarity so much before.  I would like to point out, for instance, that you are freaking out right now about The Idea Of Time.”

It’s all in the delivery, friends.  I nearly wet myself laughing.  My psyche is bizarre, it needs to be mocked.

“Fern, can I cook you something?  Fajitas?  Forbidden Chocolate Explosion topped with fennel seeds and Chocolate Lucky Charms without the marshmallows?  Anything, seriously, I’m all yours.”

“No, I can’t eat, food is gross.”  Wait wait wait, I’ve heard that before.  Nice try.  You haven't eaten all day, damnit, let her make you something.   “Ah, some hot chocolate would be nice.”

“I’m on it.

“Oh, check this out, we even have cream.  Oh, baby, get ready for some homemade whipped cream.  It’s weird that you are so sad now, when you were so happy this morning, I mean, you skipped into the shoe store, remember?”

“Uh huh.”

“And you were, like, trying on all those silly shoes, dancing around in stripper boots, getting me to try those red things on, you were exuberant, you glowed, I mean, this happened so fast.”

“I know, I am who I want to be when I'm manic.  It’s worth it, on balance, to cry about The Idea Of Time every now and again, if that's the cost of being on top of the world occasionally. I feel like I’ve made that choice, I’m okay with it.  Frankly, I feel sorry for people who aren’t me.”

“Huh.  I can see that.  Although, I’ve got to say, I, for one, am grateful for the passage of time.  Seriously, if the sun never moved, I would cry.”

“True.”

“And you know, you can think about it as an infinite stream of moments passing by, but it's also an infinite stream of moments coming towards you.”

“Yeah, I know, but look at what the light is doing right now.  I should be taking pictures of that.  Early fall is the best time of year for photography. The sun is so low, making wonderful contrasty shadows everywhere, but everything is still verdant and it all just shines, just screams out to be immortalized.  By the time I have a camera again-  Wow, this is so rich.”

“I whipped the hell out of the cream.”

driving

I’ve been feeling bored and restless of late, but unprepared to take on any real responsibilities.  These are my last few days to spend hours on end contemplating at the keyboard, and while I mourn the impending transformation if not loss of this outlet, I find I have nothing to say.

You wouldn’t know it by reading this blog, but my thinking has been especially productive the last few days.  The relevant insights are being gleaned in subjects on which I am unable to write about here, mostly for modesty’s sake.  I went and gave this url to people I know and adore irl, so that makes the stakes higher.

Our many facets shine best in different light, every stranger’s glow illuminates us anew.  I relocate geographically at an impressive rate, something like ten towns in six states in ten years, the last time I checked, so I fancy that I become new to myself with somewhat more precision than most people.  I don’t know that I want to introduce everyone who reads this to all the people I have been.  Every slight disapproval reminds me of my propensity to fail those who might otherwise love me.  I am pulling back a bit.

Tonight all I can think about is running away.  I want to come back to myself, to start clean.  I remember driving north from Philly in the sweltering heat to search for a girl I would die for any day.   She was having legal troubles and had disappeared.  I was coming to get her on an instinct.  The storm broke while I sat in North Jersey gridlock; by the time I got to Barrington it was coming down in sheets.  I looked up all of our mutual friends, searched high and low for her, to no avail.  Even in July, a New England thunderstorm is cold at midnight, especially when you’ve been out in it for six hours.  I must have been shivering when I showed up at his house, crying and worried, fearing the worst for her.

That's where I become disappointing again, and I won’t follow the memory any more.  He was ashamed.  I have a gift for inspiring regret sprinkled lightly with disgust.

Before that, though, there was the muggy highway, the purple sky on the verge of losing it’s fight to hold everything in, and me, noticing the ribbons of sweat forging down my arms as an outside observer might; they seemed not a part of me.  It all happened at once; the clouds opened up violently, water came fast on my windshield, and traffic began to move again.  I did not close my windows. 

Contest Fest, Bunni Style

So, this lusty lady is running a contest wherein we are supposed to come up with faux inspirational sayings to go on a Starbucks coffee cup.  (ehem.  I am on ‘mouse’s team.  We shall have no snide comments.  Did you read the cat post?  Okay then.)  Since I actually never drink any coffee whatsoever, I am not at all familiar with the format we are supposed to be parodying.  Further, I suck at being funny online.  Those of you who have not had the (unmitigated! profound!) pleasure of meeting me irl might not believe this, but I am actually hilarious.  People laugh at me all the time.

But I digress.  Point being, I’m going to give you a short sweet slogan of my very own making full of righteous indignation, because that's what I know how to do.  Ready?

Live more. Drive less.

That’s right, people, a pretentious bikie slogan.  Can you see the T Shirts?  Now, think of it on coffee cups.  It looks good, doesn't it?  Oh, but it gets better, I am going to follow up with an explanation of why I think riding your bike and not driving is such a good idea.  Because we all love to be lectured in the blogosphere, don’t we?

Thing is, I really love to drive, I do.  I love, especially, to take long car trips somewhere I’ve never been before, preferably with only a vague idea for a destination, passing through a whole lot of nothing of the way, getting lost then found again, pondering, singing, drowning my troubles in the landscape.  It makes my heart swell.  Sometimes, my eyes get all misty with patriotism.  Despite all the ways we have failed our own ideals, we live in a beautiful nation, my fellow Americans.

However, listen closely here people, I ride my bike for nearly all of my daily transportation: to work, to the grocery store, etc.  I have panniers (little baskets in the back) for my crap and a light for when it gets dark.  That’s all anyone needs.   

Here are everybody else’s two good reasons to ride your bike for transport: 
*Reduce pollution/ our dependance on foreign oil/ general petroleum badness.
*Make your ass cuter/ increase cardio health/ various other health goals.
Self explanatory, yes?

Now, here are my two good reasons:
*It is very satisfying to feel morally superior.  (see first of everybody else’s reasons above) 
*Riding a bike is so damn fun.

This last is the secret best reason.  Cars are bubbles, they kill community.  Unlike when you ride a bike, while driving, you can’t stop and talk to your neighbor or any other conversation worthy person you pass on the street.  But when you ride a bike, you are out where the action is.  Cars are lonely and boring.

Further, you are oblivious to the weather in a car, at best a spectator, but on a bike, you participate, you gets the essence of the seasons deep with in your marrow.  Drivers just have no idea the spectrum of meteorological beauty that is out there.  On that note: the rain will not kill you unless it freezes when it hit the ground, in which case you shouldn’t be driving, either.  Bring a change of clothes for when you get there.  It will fit in your panniers.

In conclusion:
Live more, drive less.
Because when you ride your bike to get places, it makes your life more lively.  (And your ass nicer, it’s true.)

Perfect

Some days, too much joy wells up in you, and it seems so impossible but inevitable that everything you’ve ever seen, everything you see or don’t see now, is quivering with secrets to give you.  All the places you’ve been makes sense.  There is nothing for it but to skip and run, singing tunelessly under your breath all the while.  You could not stop bouncing if you wanted to.  Who would?  You don’t. 

It is the best afternoon to drive long miles over mountains lush with trees about to turn, a dancing fool even with your ass in the seat.  You are paying less attention to the road than is generally suggested, but you are invincible, after all.  It is contagious, you will do something insane tonight.  Why not make a spectacle of yourself, show them how exquisite it can all be if they will just let it.

She is too wise for you, keeps you tethered in.  The pace she sets is subtle, so you refrain from embarrassing her.

Driving back is good.  The thin winding ribbons of road become anonymous in the dark, you could be anywhere.  You are everywhere.  The bike path was like this at night, your light so weak.  If you hit a deer it will kill you, no question.  Slow down.  You don’t slow down.  When the bugs come thick you pedal faster through their gritty fog, striving, baptized in phosphorescent blood.  You want the whole world, you want it now.

Arrive, talk, they say you are glowing, then everyone else goes to bed.  A few steps out the door and you are away among trees.  The moon is so white it burns through the canopy and cuts sharp leafy shapes on the floor.

It is not enough.  Your soul itches, unsatiated.

Elithea's Inaugural Meme

Rules:
1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five some other people to do the same.

(drum roll) And now, for your reading pleasure, sentence number five:
This puzzles me.

But check out sentence number six, don’t you wish she’d asked me for this one instead?
How can one go through one's entire adolescence without once saying:  Hey hey hey, don't get didactic with *me*, motherfucker!

Hmmmm... who to tag, who to tag...  Let’s start with Pearl and Yllojkt, since most bloggers I know don’t read them yet. SheSneezes must be selected, because I love her dearly irl and she is a helluva writer, dealing with some way important stuff.  Drunken Orangetree is another talented wordsmith and generally witty guy, besides once being my professor, but I’m not sure how long he’s been blogging.  You’ve got 23 posts, right?  I would tag his wife, Mrs Fanny Assingham, also an inspired molder of my young mind, but I’m entirely certain that she does not yet have posts in the double digits.  Next time.  Last but certainly not least, the lovely and talented Blindsay at Life During Wartime, a pearl of a girl and a Hootenanny Virtuoso to boot.

Now, read that post down there.  It's better.