I was going to write this nifty post where I highlighted all my best blog entries for the last year. But after spending a couple of hours reading through my 400+ entries, I find this to be a ridiculous proposition. For one thing, I write a lot of crap, and that’s depressing me and making me rethink this whole blog thing (not that I’ll stop, but that I should start focusing on quality.) For another thing, that’s what the archives are for. If you people want to revisit everything I’ve written for the last year, have at it. For yet another thing, I discovered anew that all of the posts I transferred from my old blogspot blog got some div tags added to them during the transfer process (WTF is up with that?) and it has caused a big gap to appear between the title of the post and the post itself, and I got trapped into this weird perfectionism as a means of procrastination hole of going through and removing the div tags until I got tired of it. Which is now.

What I really wanted was to read about the some of the great things that happened to me this year, but it appears that all I’ve done this year was drink vodka and be bitchy. That’s not good.

I’m going to attempt to make a list of what I can remember from 2005. Considering the amount of vodka consumed, this may possibly be a very short list.

I removed myself from an unhealthy friendship and I haven’t looked back (well, not too often), and I’m very proud of myself for that. I usually let myself sit in the suckhole of a bad friendship for far too long.

I had a great opportunity to meet with a writer during Columbia’s Fiction Writing Department Story Week after she’d read a portion of my thesis and she was very encouraging and gave me her e-mail address so that when I finish it (ha!) she can give me some agent names. That was actually pretty fantastic.

I got great grades in all of my classes, and I’m trying to learn to be proud of that, instead of thinking that in my own mind, I deserved Bs, because I didn’t put forth my own A effort, but rather the A effort of some other, less fantastic person than me. Why is it that I always question my own greatness, yet proclaim it at the same time? I’ve got some problems.

I actually submitted something this year. I haven’t heard yet if it’ll get taken, and it’s only a little thing through school, but I did submit something. Now THAT’S a first.

I got two new pairs of fantastic boots and now they fight each other over who gets to get worn every day.

I weaned myself off of an unhealthy obsession with pink clothes and accessories.

I dyed my hair red and I learned to love it.

I got a new car, after driving a Saturn for eight years.

I’m sure there’s more, but I can’t think right now.

I went to my parents’ house for dinner and ate too much Lou Malnati’s pizza and now I can’t get drunk. How’s that for a humdinger, on New Year’s Eve of all nights? It is 8 p.m. and I’m actually considering going to bed. I am certainly going to go upstairs and put on a pair of sweatpants.

And maybe, just maybe, after my pizza settles in my gut, I’ll be able to break out the vodka for a couple before the year ends. But I might be asleep by 10.

I wish you all the usual: the Happy, the Healthy New Year.

As for resolutions, I have just a few. I’ll share them with you just because I have nothing better to do right now:

1. Exercise more. Well, okay, fine. Exercise.

2. Drink less

3. Write more

4. Play with my kids more

5. Love more

That’s it! That should be easy. Except for #2.

Love to all. See, I’m starting already!

I got this from my friend Allison:

Anonymous Posting Meme
Post anything that you want (in comments), and post it anonymously. Anything. A story, a secret, a confession, a fear, a love — anything. Be sure to post anonymously and honestly. Post twice if you’d like. Then, put this in your blog or journal to see what your friends (and perhaps others who you don’t even realize read your blog) have to say.

Come on. You know you want to tell me.

UPDATE/EDIT: Okay, so you can’t really comment anonymously because apparently I don’t allow it. I did go and edit the first comment so it appears to be anonymous. But that kind of defeats the purpose. You don’t want me knowing who you are anymore than you want the rest of my readers to know who you are. And besides, I’ll get some lame secrets anyway. I’ll try to figure out how to let you people comment anonymously, and I’ll let you know when you can go ahead and do that.

Okay, you can post anonymously now. Your comments will probably appear with my name at the end of them. All comments must be approved by me anyway, so if your secret appears in my inbox and has your name attached, I’ll edit it so that your name doesn’t appear, and I will keep your secret until the day I die, I swear I will.

God, this is a pain in the ass. Just leave me some juicy shit in the comments, alright? Wait. That sounded wrong. I meant juicy secrets. Juicy secrets. I don’t want any juicy shit in my comments. It will smell bad and get all over my laptop.

Female or Shemale. A photo quiz from B3ta.

Can you tell?

Some of us, We’re hardly ever here
The rest of us, we’re born to disappear
How do I stop myself from
Being just a number
How do I hold my head
To keep from going under

Down to the wire
I wanted water but
I’ll walk through the fire
If this is what it takes
To take me even higher
Then I’ll come through
Like I do
When the world keeps
Testing me, testing me, testing me

How did they find me here
What do they want from me
All of these vultures hiding
Right outside my door
I hear them whisperin
They’re tryin to ride it out
Cuz they’ve never gone this long
Without a kill before

Down to the wire
I wanted water but
I’ll walk through the fire
If this is what it takes
To take me even higher
Then I’ll come through
Like I do
When the world keeps
Testing me, testing me, testing me

(solo)
Wheels up
I got to leave this evening
Can’t seem to shake these vultures
Off of my trail
Powers is made, by power being taken
I keep on running
To protect my situation

Down to the wire
I wanted water but
I’ll walk through the fire
If this is what it takes
To take me even higher
Then I’ll come through
Like I do
When the world keeps
Testing me, testing me, testing

Oooooooooooo
Oooooooooooo
Oooooooooooo
Oooooooooooo
Whatcha gonna do about it
Whatcha gonna do about it

The above are the lyrics from Vultures from the John Mayer Trio.

Sometimes these songs come into your life, okay, MY life, and the lyrics fit what’s going on so perfectly it might as well be part of your fucking soundtrack. This song is part of my current life’s soundtrack. All I want is water but yet I keep walking through the fire, thinking that eventually that will take me higher than where I am. And I always do come through when the world keeps testing me. But it’s not the world that is testing me. I am testing myself. Constantly. And fuck it all, I keep fucking failing. I come through, yes, but only in the sense that I’m still here to keep taking it. I’m still alive. I get through it, the sun comes up the next day and I’m still here, but I still keep stepping that foot into the fire praying that this step will be the one that teaches me what I need to learn.

And yes, I’m drunk.

Today I went to a funeral. A funeral for my husband’s great uncle Tom. Thomas S. Moore, M.D. A man who by almost all accounts was the greatest man to walk the earth. One of those men whose funeral mass you sit through and promise that you will live the rest of your life attempting to live up to his ideal. A GREAT MAN. A healer. A lover of all mankind.

One of those people who, once they’re gone, you think, that’s okay, because now he’s up there in wherever-heaven-somewhere, keeping half an eye on me and pushing me through. And I barely knew him.

And my husband is upstairs in bed, passed out drunk, and I’m only forgiving the fool he made of himself tonight because I know he’s wishing he could make the effort to be half the man that Uncle Tom was. I’m wishing the same myself. That I could be half the human being that Uncle Tom was.

And I’m rambling. And that’s because I played driver tonight and didn’t do all that good of a job but remained much more sober than my husband.

Here’s some more:

Megan asked how the chinese auction went. NOT WELL. I ended up buying a fine-ass set of poker chips and a stove-top popcorn popper with some cute popcorn bowls as our gifts. We ended up coming home with, shit, I don’t remember what my husband ended up with, but I ended up with a set of golf balls from Ditka’s restaurant and I gave them to my dad. My husband’s uncle got the poker chips, and then my husband, because he’s an idiot, stole them from him. The guy (Uncle Bob) was fairly HUGGING the chips, and John stole them from him. We succeeded in making him feel so guilty that he snuck out of the house with the chips and put them in Uncle Bob’s car.

I’m in a weird/bad/transitional/fucked-up place tonight. It might be the end of the semester blues. It might be the place I’m in right now. I don’t rightly know. But here, for your reading pleasure, is one of the poems that my teacher Randy Albers read to us on the last day of class a couple of weeks ago. Randy Albers is one of my most favorite human beings on the planet, for many reasons. I’ve known him for a long time, and when my children were freshly born, he gave me a copy of an essay about parenting that he had written and I treasured that gift. He is a generous teacher, and generous man, and like the recently departed Uncle Tom, he is one of those people who, if I lost him from my life I’d be crushed. Towards the end of this semester, Randy informed us that he’d been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and that he’d be having surgery and we’d be treated to a substitute (and I say treated because our substitute is a wonderful woman and teacher-thank you Patty). So anyway, excuse me because it’s been a long weekend of booziness, Randy was well enough to come to our last class, and he read us a couple of poems. I was reduced to tears, wiping them from my eyes almost as quickly as they fell, so close to sobbing yet controlling myself, and trying desperately not to look at Megan across the semi-circle because I knew if I did, I’d end up curling into a little sobbing ball on the floor.

I don’t think Randy knew then, well, hell, he’s a smart man, he knew exactly what this poem would mean to every single one of us. It might take me a while to type this out, because I’ll probably start crying and have to go outside, sniffling and teary-eyed, to smoke a cigarette but you won’t know the difference anyway so what the hell.

Just Looking For Trouble

I once had a student
Who would sit alone in his house at night
Shivering with worries
And fears,

And, come morning,
He would often look as though
He had been raped
By a ghost

Then one day my pity

Crafted for him a knife
From my own divine sword.

Since then,
I have become very proud
Of this student.

For now, come night,
Not only has he lost all his fear,

Now he goes out

Just looking for
Trouble.

Oh, hell. Now I’m all cryie eyed. Time to go to bed, my people.

New Year’s Resolution time is around the corner.

Mine is to free a little bit of this love I have locked up in my heart, locked up because I’ve been saving it, nurturing it but not giving it to the someone it was meant for. (Sorry, had to edit some stuff out here-I say too much when I’m drunk).

I resolve to let it loose and spread it around.

Let the holidays begin!

Yes, that’s right. The semester officially ended for me when, at about 3:00 p.m., I handed in the last of my work. I turned heel out of that office and drove directly to the grocery store (okay, not directly. It WAS after 3 p.m. in Chicago. I steered clear of the expressway and took Ogden Avenue all the way home, not that I got home any faster but at least I was moving, and that’s important) and purchased some food (I have to think of the others once in a while) and yes, my friends, KETEL ONE WAS ON SALE. So I bought me a gigantic bottle of the lovely stuff, brought it home and cracked it open before even unloading all the frozen pizzas I plan to feed my family until Christmas Eve.

Not only that, but as long as Amazon.com comes through and ships all that crap I ordered in a daze on Sunday afternoon, I have most of my Christmas shopping done. I have four gifts left to buy-one gift each for two of my sisters in laws, who are pretty easy to buy for because they like the pretty things. And two gifts for this Chinese auction (don’t ask me, I don’t know what the fuck is going on with that) we are going to attempt to pull off at my in-law’s.

Here’s the problem: I don’t know what the fuck to buy for this grab-baggy Chinese auction thing. We have a limit of $25-30. What the hell can you buy for $25-30? You can’t even buy a decent bottle of booze for $25-30. Well, you can, but it’ll be small. The gift needs to be relatively non-gender-specific and needs to inspire envy, so that, apparently, people will want to steal it. This is supposed to be fun, but I have a feeling that I’m going to end up with CRAP. Unless I get rip-roaring drunk (always a possibility. Okay, fine, it’s pretty likely) and steal the shit I want.

Any ideas? I have to be honest. I can’t remember the last time I spent less than $30 on anything but a box of fucking tampons. What can be purchased for such a lowly sum and still manage to bedazzle the hell out of the receiver? I’m fucking stumped. I’m worried that I’m going to have to go somewhere like OAK BROOK MALL three days before Christmas accompanied by my children, wandering around in search of the perfect $30 gift. In fact, that’s preferable to where I’m really worried I’m going to have to go, and that’s the crazy strip mall over yonder, the one with the Target and the Kohl’s and the WalMart and the Sam’s Club. Cuz you know I don’t want to go anywhere near that hell on earth. No fucking way. I do have a $50 gift card to Best Buy that they sent me to appease me one of the times I called to raise hell about my computer being in the shop so long, and I could just go over to Best Buy and search around for stuff. Maybe some CD’s of kick-ass music? A new computer mouse? A couple of DVDs of classic movies? Those are possibilities, but who the hell wants to stand in line FOR THE REST OF THEIR FUCKING LIVES at Best Buy three days before Christmas? Not me, my friend. Not me.

Oh hell, the UPS man just drove by like a fucking bat out of hell. Hey, buddy! There’s no earthly reason why you wouldn’t have something on that truck for me! Take a look around! Okay, sorry, off the subject.

Okay, so here’s my challenge to you. Give me some suggestions for these gifts. And no, don’t be like my husband and tell me I should buy things that we’ll like so that we can just steal those gifts and be done with it, and then call me back a couple of hours later with “the perfect gift idea,” and get me all psyched and thinking you’re going to go out and pick the gifts up to save me some time, and then tell me that this “perfect gift idea” is a couple of cartons of Winston Lights. Because I’ve heard that one already.

I need good, solid ideas. You can do it, people. My peeps. My friends. My smart, intelligent, gifted and wonderful blog readers. You can give me ideas. You can. And you will. I know you will because you’re all that. You’re the shit. You are the supremo weird Chinese-auction fucked-up Christmas gift exchange $25-30 limit gift-thinking up people. I have faith in you.

And by tomorrow morning, please. Because I plan on standing at the door of whichever crazy store I need to buy these great gift ideas at the moment they open, dashing in, grabbing the fantastic gifts for which YOU gave me the idea, and dashing out before the cheer wears off the employees’ smiles.

And you know what? I’ll give you a little incentive. I don’t know what that incentive is, exactly, but just know its (goddamn it, I am having this brain lapse where I cannot for the life of me remember whether to use its or it’s-what the hell is wrong with me?) gonna be good. You do something for me, I do something for you. Win-win. And no, it’s (did I get it right that time? I don’t know! This is a problem!) way too hard to give blow jobs via blog comments, so that’s not gonna be it. Sorry. I’ll think of something. Just wait until I’ve had a couple of cocktails, and I’ll be back with that incentive. And, okay, here’s this-you can leave a suggested incentive along with your gift suggestion as well. How does that sound? Good? Good.

Gotta go. Drink is empty. But I have a feeling I’ll be back this evening.

Well, I ordered those boots in the previous post on Sunday night, and they arrived this afternoon. Yeah Zappos.com!!!! I asked for standard shipping, because it’s free, and they upgraded me to 2 day shipping for free because Zappos.com rules.

However, they don’t fit. The whole lace-up thing is a big lie, a hoax, a fakery. There’s a damn zipper up the inside calf. And believe you me, I mentioned in my somewhat angry e-mail this afternoon to Zappos that their description of the lace-up feature allowing for a “personalized fit” was dead wrong.

So, I’m sending them back (return shipping is free, too), and I’ve ordered these to replace them:

I think these are even way better. Plus, they’re Birkenstocks. Of course, the first pair were Borns, and since I live in either Birks or Borns or my Frye boots, or freaking flip flops, it’s a win-win-woopy new boots!

I hope I get them by Christmas, because if I don’t, I’ll be sad.

I think, however, that this worked out well, because I think I’ll like these better.

I’m going to stop writing now, because I just realized that I’ve written two posts in a row about the boots I’m getting for Christmas. I need to get a life.

Sometimes, when the season gets a little hectic and it’s just a week ’til Christmas, and I’m pretty sure my husband has no time to shop for me, and all I really want is a new pair of boots (yes, another new pair of boots-I have my issues, it’s true), I find the perfect pair and order them for myself.

I will try very hard not to open the box until Christmas.

These are what I’m getting:

Try not to writhe around on the floor in utter jealousy. You’ll hurt yourself. I have huge calves-I always have, even at my skinniest. It’s hard for me to find boots that go up to my knees that will fit around my calves. These tie all the way up, which may be a pain in the butt at times, but will allow me to adjust for my big (read: muscular) calves. I’m giddy. I may have to get some really cute long stockings to wear with them. Because the thing is, these boots will probably not be all that easy to remove, and if I’m wearing tights with them, I will have to remove them in order to remove the tights, and you know what? I’m just going to stop right there.

Maybe I’ll knit me some cute stockings! Sure! That’s it! I’ll knit some.

Okay, sorry. My brain is fried from trying to finish all of my last-minute stuff for school, and trying to do most of my Christmas shopping online today, and besides, it’s really really cold outside. I’m just going to stop talking now.

Yes. I’m procrastinating. I have a pile of work yet to finish in order to end this semester, but rather than dive right into it, I am allowing it to fester in a pile on my desk. I don’t feel like doing any of it. I just want it to end. It’s much harder now that classes have ended, but I have until the middle of next week to finish all the work. When do you think all that work will get done? Yes, that’s right. Next tuesday night.

As for Christmas shopping, I haven’t done a bit. I’m actually considering preparing some kind of speech to deliver to people who normally receive presents from me, chastising them for their greed and informing them on the true meaning of Christmas and crap like that. However, if I do that, I will probably get no presents next year, so I guess I’ll have to go shopping.

I find I don’t really have anything to say to you all. Isn’t that sad? I have lately been completely devoid of drive, of energy, of feeling. It’s pathetic. Maybe it’s because winter seemed to start so early this year. Maybe I need to go buy myself some $300 full spectrum lightbulb or something. Or maybe I just need to get my shit together.

Or maybe, just maybe, I need to have a couple of cocktails and go the fuck to bed, and worry about the homework and the Christmas shopping tomorrow. Yeah, that’s it. Tomorrow. I’ll worry about it tomorrow.