Justine and I pushed through the glass doors and waited for the elevator, tapping umbrellas on the charcoal marbled floors.

“I didn’t do anything today. Not a thing.”
“I tried not to,” I said, stabbing at the down button, silently chanting home, home home. I stabbed until I heard the ding.

“Oooh, is that vintage?”

Justine was eyeing my umbrella, a designer number I’d inherited somewhere. Burnt sienna – that would have to be the color, if I remember my crayons right – with a caramel colored leaf pattern. I’ve never been particularly fond of it, preferring my raingear to have more of a Mary Poppins theme, but there it sits in my office ready for days like today.

“God no,” I said.
“Looks like it. So pretty!”

I looked at Justine in her grass-green tweed, then at the umbrella in my hands. “Wanna trade?” Frankly, I’m surprised she believed me, with all the bullshitting that goes on between us, but she did.

“Yeah! Clashes with your scarf anyway.”

She handed over her sturdy black one. Very Mary.

At the corner, before she headed one block uptown to catch her State Island-bound bus, we exchanged the usual see-you-tomorrows.

“I’m surprised you did that.”
“Me, too. I’m usually way too uptight for that shit.”
”No kidding. But black matches you better anyway.”
“True. I prefer non-descript. And that felt so very… playground.”

I swapped trinkets with a pale haired girl in the third grade, and immediately regretted it. The trade was undone the next morning by the teeter-totter. As it turned out, I’d liked my own jewel-bellied whatchamacallit better all along.

Justine headed north and I plunged into the MetLife building, rolling my wrist to get a better look at my new accessory. We will not be undoing this trade. Justine is such a sucker. This Mary Poppins has one of those buttons that makes it open automatically. My froo-froo designer number did not.

For the record, I delcare no takebacks.

A year ago today, I took a cab from Penn Station and climbed four flights to Ben’s apartment. The sign on the door, held in place by a Statue of Liberty postage stamp, said, Welcome Home.

The next day, I walked from Times Square station and took an elevator eleven flights to my new office. There was no welcome sign there, only a strange new feeling of being out of place and in way, way over my head.

In the smallest, most inconsequential ways, I am a completely different person than I was a year ago. I don’t dress the same. I drink coffee and eat sushi. I have cultivated a whole new set of relationships. Neighbors, friends, coworkers and (ex)lovers.

Fundamentally, though, nothing’s changed. A year later, the same things still delight me. The same things still make me insecure. I want and need and give exactly as I have before. Of course, nothing ever really does change, you realize. Even in a different city, or a different pair of shoes, the only thing that ever changes is perspective.

In a box under my bed, where I keep the things that matter, are a copy of my renewed lease and a slightly torn Welcome Home sign. Documentation of another year and change.

We used to go on our Target Dates on Saturday afternoons. But when we started feeling an irrational and overpowering hatred for our fellow man and his offspring, Sarah and I decided it’d be best to do our discount department store bonding on weeknights.

While the lines were still long enough to catch up on pages and pages of glossy tabloid bile (I was, quite honestly, pretty damn curious as to why Charlie and Denise Richards split up), it seemed that the number of screeching children was down. Mostly.

There was still the kid throwing a tantrum because his mother wouldn’t let him ride under the shopping cart. (The mean-spirited part of me says she shoulda let him; experience is a good teaching tool.) And the little imp whose piercing cries sounded something like a Velociraptor’s right before it ripped someone’s flesh off. (One of our Executive Vice Presidents makes that noise. I shouldn’t have to hear it outside of work. Ever.)

Thankfully, though, for every obnoxious rug rat that made government subsidized birth control seem like a really good idea, Sarah and I encountered as least as many squishy-cheeked, giggly, pink-moccasin-wearing absolutely delicious babies. Oh my god, the cheeks. And the cuteness.

At one point Sarah stopped in the middle of the aisle, scrunched up her face and said,

“I just want to eat them!”

I had to laugh. It was so true. Not that either of us actually wanted to consume babies, but there really is no better way to describe that impulsive, genetic baby-love feeling. You do just want to eat them. It’s pretty overwhelming. But then so is the urge to give them right back to their mothers when all that Johnson’s Baby smell wears off and there’s diapers to be dealt with.

I’m just not ready for that kind of commitment.

Back then, it wasn’t ‘sittin’ bitch.’

Years before we ever called “shotgun” we were vying for a spot on the hump. The middle seat in our old silver Buick was coveted not only because you got to plant your tush on the folding armrest (best view for those normally unable to see over the dashboard), but if so positioned, you got to play with the radio.

Three little kids in the front seat (people weren’t so vigilant then), the littlest on the hump, itching to turn the volume knob. The older two shared a seatbelt in the passenger seat. Dad drummed the steering wheel, one arm crooked in the open window, thick fingers tapping on the peeling door frame. In those years, he wasn’t bearded, sporting only a mustache and a perm that matched my own in frizziness. He drove fast, sang loud and pelted other drivers with a blizzard of customized cuss words. Jesus’ middle initial was H. And we were not to tell our mother he said that.

My mother was a mellow Carol King album with a worn-out, split-seamed cover that opened more like sandwich bread than a record sleeve. My father was gravelly, anything-but-mellow grassroots rock. He was a cassette tape plunged into the dashboard player, anti-war, pro-experimentation and meant for singing along.

“One, two, three…”

“What are we fighting for!” That was our part. Dad growled out the next line and we readied with, “Next stop is Viet-nam!”

It wasn’t always so black armband. Sometimes, the kid on the hump got to pick and the elephants-in-the-yard song was a most-requested.

“Doo doo doo, lookin’ out my back door!”

This morning, on a cramped downtown 6 train, my iPod shuffled over to that song. All elbows and attitudes, the people around me pushed in, but I was already somewhere else. Silver Buicks, bad (bad!) perms and cheeks hurting from smiling into truck wind. Look at all the happy creatures dancin’ on the lawn. I bit my lip. I tried. But when my train lumbered into Grand Central and the headphone cranked, Wontcha take a ride on a flying spoon? My heels snapped out onto the concrete and I sang along.

“Doo do doo!”

No heads turned. It Crazy Central Station, why would they? When the song finished, I clicked over to Tapestry and hit play. It seemed like the thing to do; give my mom some air time. I sang along to that, too, but quiet and under my breath. It’s a different kind of album and a different kind of memory.

Salmon is magic food.

At least that’s what Ben had said a few minutes before our magic food set off the fire alarm in his apartment. He raced up the stairs, I jerked open a window – it was comic relief.

Earlier in the day, I’d come home from Procedure the Second (the results of the first biopsy having been inconclusive, or at least, unconvincing to my doctor and her colleague), tired and woozy. I called in sick and did an obligatory fly-by of my work email. And there, in my inbox, adding insult to cervical injury was a one-line ‘dear john’ email from the guy I’d been seeing. What timing. What irony. What… cajones to do such a thing over email.

But I digress.

Ben offered dinner, and I gladly accepted. As much as I needed rest, I did not need to be alone with my own head for too long. So I trekked across the park, and he made magic food and we watched the 80’s movie genius, She’s Having a Baby. I’d never seen it, oddly enough, and I had to be told (probably because of the look of panic on my face), that it was going to end just fine. Of course it was; it was a John Hughes film.

Who doesn’t love a happy ending?

Though no fitness magazine has declared it so, I am also pretty convinced that S’mores are magic food. Rachel, Goldner, Mike and I met at DTUT on Saturday where they gave us our very own fire (such a risk with that gang), pointy sticks (again, questionable judgment on their part) and we sat, marshmallows flaming, perfecting our technique.

I’ve done a lot of sleeping, a lot of comfort food eating (frosted miniwheats) and a lot of communing with Netflix this weekend. Listen, I know I worry (lab results on Wednesday), but I’m not going to say I still don’t bank on things turning out okay, that I’m not hoping for a happy ending. I know it’s never going to be like the movies, but if I can laugh through the hard parts, a belly full of magic food, I don’t necessarily need it to be.

An overanxious waiter hovered nearby – was everything alright? How was the salmon? He’d winked at me earlier. My mother had been shocked and then seemingly, slightly offended. Then she grew animated. Backlit in hazy blue by the restaurant’s aquarium, hands flitting in exaggerated gestures, she told Jen stories about my childhood. The time we stole next door when the neighbors weren’t home and made toast. The time they found us, covered head to toe in a dusting of Hershey’s chocolate milk mix, mouths ringed in a sweet grainy mud. Jen laughed.

You’d do it again, wouldn’t you?
Yes. Yes, I would.

Neither mischief nor the love of chocolate has faded in twenty-five years. I suppose there’s something genetic to it, like a hitchhiker’s thumb or the ability to roll your tongue. I don’t have either of those. But I am wily and I do love chocolate. Just like my father.

We ordered the pineapple macadamia nut tart. We reminisced some more, perhaps exposing Jen to more unedited family stories than she’d have liked. Embarrassing moments. Dingy, if not dirty laundry aired. Somehow, even my piano lessons came up. I’d hated them.

Of course you did. Because you hated being told what to do.
That’s so true.

Perhaps it’s also genetic — passed from mother to daughter, through the umbilical cord along with the coding for our eyes and our hands — I hate being corrected and I hate being told what to do. It is not difficult to tell which other qualities are my mother’s. The long nail beds. The brow furrow. The overwhelming compulsion to sing along to Richie Valenz. We were in a bar by then, waiting for the band to stop puttering around.

It grew late. The Irish were just getting rowdy as we spilled out of Doc Watson’s, lusting for bed. We yelped at the cold, pulling scarves tighter. Mom and Jen were headed downtown. We hugged and kissed and I tottered off on sore feet in the other direction. It had been a night of none-too-subtle lessons. It had been agreed to over dinner that qualities which are most compelling in people can also be their greatest drawback. Equal and opposite.

Passion. Hubris. Even tenderness.

I know what these qualities are in those I love – the way she entertains and overpowers me with her feist; his insecurities, simultaneously endearing and frustrating; how she can be defensive and so loyally quick to defend.

There are times when I feel I am doing more repelling than compelling. Times that I do not know why anyone loves me, being fairly certain I haven’t earned it. Dinner with a newer friend and my oldest fan is something of a buoy – because I suspect that someone sees — and accepts — my equal and my opposite. My charms and my faults.

Learning to let yourself just be loved is no meager task. But that the potential even exists can be enough to keep you warm on your ten-block walk home on a cold March night.

Today I am worried and sad. I was feeling it yesterday, but overnight, it seems to have seeped into every part of me. My hands are heavy, my chest hurts and I couldn’t unwrinkle that space between my brows, even if I decided to try.

I had porn hair.

Glancing at my reflection in his mirrored closet doors, I remember thinking, “I have porn hair.” There was really no other way to describe it. I also remember wincing; knowing just what kind of pain and effort was going to be involved in undoing that mess. Friction had not been my friend. I rolled over.

Joe, I have porn hair.
You have porn lots of things.
Flattering.

We lay there, naked as newborn rabbits, staring at the ceiling, my cold foot against his warm calf, his hand resting on my ribcage. Candles flickered against the walls. The recessed lighting he’d installed glowed dimly against chrome hardware. In the ceiling. I looked closer.

That’s some pretty serious hardware for hanging plants.
Mmmmm… not for plants.
You don’t! You have a sex swing?

His hand slid off my stomach. He crawled to the edge of the bed and hung over, dragging a box from its hiding place. He did indeed have a sex swing.

You’re a bad Sex and the City episode!
C’mon! I haven’t even used the thing yet. I just thought it would be fun.
Jesus.

Suddenly, I felt like the prude in wolf’s clothing. Porn hair I could do. But a sex swing? I was not dating a man with a sex swing! And I wasn’t really, because the man who owns a sex swing is not the kind who dates. He is the kind to say, after a month or so, “I’m not ready for a relationship.” I knew it then at that moment. He got up to dress.

Standing in front of the closet, mirrors pushed to one side, his white boxer briefs glowed in stark contrast with his dark skin. On went the uniform. There he stood, a wolf in another sort of clothing altogether. I considered the swing.

My month wasn’t up yet. So I pushed aside the prude and I took him right back out of his uniform. There was no sense in wasting porn hair.

If laughter is any sort of medicine, I should rightly be spending this week in rehab.

On Friday evening, Rachel, Enormous G and I saw Be Cool. I was fresh from the doctor’s office, the painkillers and muscle relaxers no longer at all making an impact on my system and I was in need of some distraction. And boy howdy, did I get it. Be Cool wasn’t a brilliant film, by any stretch of the imagination. Uma? Luminous but otherwise unimpressive. John Travolta? Eh. Just eh. But the supporting cast? Hi-fucking-larious. The Rock – whom I have loved with an unhealthy sort of passion since college when, from time to time, I’d come home to voicemail asking if I could “smell what the Rock is cookin” – had me in fits of giggles over his role as the gay bodyguard. He’s fantastic. And the eyebrow. Oh, the eyebrow. Andre Benjamin and Vince Vaughn had their moments, too. I was still laughing as I walked home, eager to get in touch with some Vicodin and my pillow.

Saturday was Miss Goes Down’s birthday extravaganza. We started it off with a trip to our favorite nail joint where, as usual, we snarked up the place. After dinner, we cabbed it to the birthday bar of choice where we met with the rest of the chuckleheads. Some highlights include snapping Ken to himself (dude brought it on himself with that Urban Outfitter shirt, I swear), dancing to Michael Jackson’s ode to pedophilia and witnessing Esther give Ari the “O” face.

I haven’t laughed so hard in…well, I can’t remember how long. And I honestly can’t remember what gave me so much to guffaw about. But when we left the place, I was hoarse. Also, when we left the place, I was pretty well intoxicated. We grabbed a couple slices of pizza (like Ari said, the grease had a lot of work to do) and I hit the hay sometime around 4AM. A rather unfunny moment came when I had to set my alarm. Even less funny when I had to wake up to it, fuzzy headed and reeling with post-drink nausea.

But over coffee, Ben resurrected the mirth when he delivered a line that will surely stay with me for a very long time. While, “I’m the guy who zapped the dot!” will mean nothing to you, I was still giggling as I brushed my teeth this morning. The guy who zapped the dot. Indeed.

I know there’s nothing shabbier blog-wise than a weekend recap. So, what I really want to say is, I’m a lucky girl. If ever there was a cure for what ails me, it’s time spent with friends and a really good belly laugh over nothing in particular. It’s like mainlining joy.

(Photo courtesy of Chris London)

I try to refrain from writing when I am either drunk or crying, which, if you think about it, is precisely when I should. You get more interesting (read: scandalous) entries that way. Back in the day, it seems every other entry was the product of vodka or tears. Give a girl a few months of careless drinking, pair it with a seemingly doomed relationship and you’ve got yourself some ill-advised, but captivating blogging.

I don’t do that anymore. Not exactly. I mean, right now, I’m tipsy. Which is not the same thing as drunk. A million thoughts are going through my head, and if you’ll indulge me, I’ll just drop them here as they come. I do believe it’s called, stream of consciousness, and if HD Thoreau (or whomever), can get away with a whole book of this crap, I can certainly put it in my own blog.

I have to go to the doctor tomorrow. Bi-op-sy. Another one.
I should have told the PWSWM, but I didn’t. I didn’t want them to do the thing they would absolutely, without fail do, and give me a giant’s portion of sympathy.
I have a hard time with sympathy. It makes me feel vulnerable.
I told B. He tried to get me to take off work, get a mani/pedi. His treat.
I almost typed out mani/pedi because I get self-conscious that the trolls – those who read the site with the sole and express purpose of finding something to criticize – would say, “mani/pedi, how chick lit of you.” Well, fuck you. Because, if you really want to see me as simplistic and shallow, go right on ahead. I’m busy having shit carved out of my body.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes. In one year. Loved stupidly. It makes me cagey.
I dated a man who owned a sex swing. A SEX SWING. Jesus.
I’m reading this looking for squiggly lines that mean I’ve misspelled. Tipsy, remember?
I smell my date on my clothes, which is nice. He is nice. Doubtful he owns a sex swing.
I should be sleeping.
Sometimes, I stay up, hoping my sister will call. That’s what I’m doing now.
Sir Hal is making noise in the bathroom and I swear to the God of helpless kittens, if he’s chewing on my toothbrush (again) and I have to go to Duane Reade in the middle of the night to replace it (again) I will shave him bald and set him out on the curb.
I need to take my old bedframe out to the curb. But it’s heavy.
And I need to go to Ikea and buy bedside tables.
I make lists of these things when real-life, important issues are pressing in on my chest and I start to lose perspective. Lists are good for that. Functional. Practical.
I’m surprised, in a good way, that people bought so many shirts. I love it. I want to run into someone wearing one at the gym (if I went to a gym) or in the park and then give them noogies for being so cool.
When Shiv gets married in England this summer, I think I will stay in Europe for a while. I don’t know how long so don’t ask and if you work with me, shut UP and don’t tell my boss.
Italy. I want to go to Italy. Where they LOVE to eat. And relax.
GRE. MFA. NYU. 2006.
I’ve been sad lately for little reasons that add up into one big reason to stay in bed too long.
When I’m sad, I want someone to buy me coffee and not ask too many questions.
I think I’ll talk to my sister tomorrow, because I typed the word bed and suddenly, I just want to be in smooth sheets, under three down comforters (the heat in my apartment is… wonky) and kicking around for the cold spots.
I’m going to be slightly hungover.

Photo courtesy of Brando at One Child Left Behind.

Tshirts have started arriving. Thanks for all the great emails!

If you have any issues with your order (wrong size, wrong color, etc), please email me at tshirt@thisfish.com. I did not handle the distribution, and most likely won’t be able to answer any of your questions, but I can sure forward it to the man that can!

Send photos to the same address and I’ll post ‘em!

On my way home from work last night, I stopped in at Barnes and Noble. I quickly kicked the snow off my boots and made a beeline for the escalators, not even peeking at the New Fiction table. I was a woman on a mission.

Left. Right. Straight down the aisle and another jag to the right.

I paused only momentarily – the slightest hesitation – before snatching the book from its spot on the bottom shelf. Then, intended purchase in hand, I did an about-face and headed for the cash registers. She scanned. I swiped and PIN-ed. We chatted, brightly and casually, treating the exchange as though the volume I was buying was not, even in some small measure, absolutely key to my future happiness. The farce of it all! Finally, book and receipt were bagged and I headed out into the icy night with my very own copy of The Princeton Review’s study guide to

The GRE.

The GRE? The GRE, you ask. Are you going back to school? When were you planning on telling us? This is the first we’ve heard of it!

I know, I know. Relax. I told Ben. I told my mother. And now I’m telling you. I’m going back to school. Just like I swore I never, ever would.

Which is so like me.

I’ve been thinking about it for some time, mulling over the idea and never requiring myself to make a commitment. It was the perfect non-plan! I messed up though and made the mistake of telling my mom. Now I have to do it. If I don’t, she’ll keep asking about it until I do it. Or change my phone number.

Which is so like her.

Then, there’s the added pressure of having your mother nail (and I mean NAIL) the GRE in the very recent past. If I tank, my five years out of school will be a pitiful excuse in comparison with her twenty five.

Heather: The GRE has math on it. MATH.
Mom: The math is mostly geometry. You’ve gotta know angles. And it’s good to know pi and volumes of spheres. Because that will be so useful to you as a writer.
Heather: I shall title my novel, Pie Are Squared.

Once home last night, I tried to read The Book – and got as far as opening the bag. But all that crazy GRE pressure proved to be too much (math and logic and vocab, oh my!) and I ended up fleeing to Ari’s. We passed the evening cozied up on the couch, eating Peanut M&M’s, and getting freaked out by Martin Short’s guest appearance on Law & Order.

Which is so like how I spent my undergrad years.

Looks like things are right on track.

Some mornings, not even the third train is the charm. You find yourself on the fourth then, packed with an uncomfortable fraction of Manhattan’s uptown population, wedged together like pickled cucumber spears, sloshing about in train juice. Someone’s umbrella is dripping on your black boots. The stiff-jawed man with the pock marked skin is breathing onto your bare neck. There’s an elbow in your lower back, digging through your raincoat and pushing your mental hotbutton marked with too many exclamation points.

@#*%!!!

God, it may even smell like pickles in here. Acidic and salty and foul. This is not the way you remember rainy days smelling.

It is the way you remember your elementary school cafeteria smelling, though. Mr. Prewitt’s bucket and braided mop and Brian Peterson’s retainer on his lunch tray. Coleslaw and the ill-fated sour milk carton.

Foul.

In contrast, rain was iron-rich clay mud on sneakers, fragrant concrete and dusty, dripping window screens with their octagonal perforations like a fly’s eye. A rusty red wagon, water pooling in the dip in the center where it was warped from years of rides on a gravel road. Nightcrawlers. Irises outside your window, spilling their rootbeer float scented runoff into the dirt.

Nothing on charmed train four smells like irises or clean concrete or even worms. You catch a humid whiff of train juice and wish for worms. Neck Breather hasn’t brushed. You’re tempted to smell your own armpits for relief. When you escape the pickle jar express, making a frenzied dash up the stairs for fresh air, you hope that, at the very least, rainbows are they way you remember them.

For someone who thrives on constancy, I’ve been unbelievably random lately.

My usual grocery store pattern (yogurt-canned goods-produce) has been replaced with aimless meandering and uninspired purchases. I either come home empty handed (except for day-old Portuguese bread) or with bags full of things that do not go together. Cereal, no milk. Hamburger buns with nothing to fill them. Frozen peas. I don’t even like peas, for god’s sake.

It’s not just my grocery routine that’s wonky. Everything is a smidge off center. There are dishes in my sink. I got caught staring, glassy-eyed, at the ceiling tiles at work. I haven’t blogged in days. The madness! It’s like I don’t even know me anymore!

I’d be concerned if I were not fairly certain I went through the same sort of personality rebellion last year while waiting for The Springtime that Would Never Come. Everything in my being revolts against winter; there’s really only so much of it I can take. It’s charming in December. By January, I’m lusting over Orbitz.com’s last minute vacation packages. And by February, I’m feeling insanely jealous of those woodland creatures that just miss the whole season entirely.

I don’t know how old I was when I first learned about hibernation — you know, bears and the like eating themselves silly and then sleeping for a few months until it stops being wretchedly cold. All I know is that I was a little resentful that not all mammals got to participate. I’ve probably never really gotten over that resentment. Case in point: I slept all day on Saturday. All day. I didn’t leave my bed until 7pm. And when I did, it was to take one of those confusing, pointless trips to the grocery store.

Upon consideration, it’s probably a good thing I’m not one of the bears. Saltines and OJ would make poor fuel for hibernation.

In any event, I hope this passes. My younger self would bitch-slap me for saying this, but I really do miss being predictable.

When I was in high school, our community participated in Turn off the TV Week – an attempt, sponsored in part by the baby jesus, at bringing families together… through complete boredom due to a lack of visual stimulation.

I hated Turn off the TV Week.

The idea of being deprived of critical episodes of Friends, ER and Felicity — even for one week — threw me into such teenage strife that to say I was disagreeable to the idea would be putting it mildly. My parents were accustomed to me being disagreeable though, and without ceremony, the cord was yanked and the cable disconnected.

Clearly, the idea was that without the boob tube as a distraction, families would be compelled to gather in love and unity — to play cards or bake or engage in familial conversations about relationships, the baby jesus and the meaning of life.

I was compelled to be somewhere with a television at 7pm on Thursday. If in the television’s absence my family discovered the meaning of life, I wasn’t home to hear about it.

Since moving to New York nearly a year ago, I have been television-free. Now, I do not own a television, but I will, from time to time, plop myself on my neighbor’s couch to indulge in highly intensive Reality TV binges. It’s therapy (think mind-erasers without the shot glass or esophageal burning). For the most part, though, I have no compelling connection to TV programming. I was unfazed by the end of the Friends dynasty and completely unaware that Buffy was no longer slaying vampires.

Another idol hath displaced TV. A greater idol and an infinitely greater distraction. I now care more if Leta is crawling. Or if I have an away message from Ari. Or if menupages.com has a listing for Ethiopian food.

I imagine that by the time I have children, Turn off the TV Week will have undergone a number of necessary alterations. Perhaps, Disconnect the Wireless Router Week or Hide the Blackberry in your Underwear Drawer Week. I’m not likely to force any of my progeny to participate, though. Because if I really wanted to find the meaning of life, I’d probably just have to Google it.

My new laptop is sitting in a cardboard box directly to my left. Yes, exactly where the flowers had been. No, it doesn’t smell nearly as nice, but damn if it isn’t just as distracting. I want to open it right now – to tear off that tape and get my hot little hands all over the portable computing goodness. I want to plug it in. I want to move my iTunes. I want to download and upload and type.

I want to blog on my new machine.

Alas, I cannot. I must sit here and imagine my sweet new notebook pawing to be let out of its box like a squeaky Christmas puppy. I’m consumed (consumed!) by the temptation to leap out of my seat and scream, “It can’t breathe!” whilst setting it free it in a dramatic mess of cords and accessories.

I keep telling myself to be patient. Work will end soon. Then, my precious, we will be together.

I have plans tonight. In my mania, I’ve thought about asking my date if he doesn’t mind if the new baby comes, too. You know, just three of us. Or, alternatively, not asking and hoping he doesn’t notice the awkward bulge under my coat.

Date: What’s that hump on your back?
Quasimodo Heather: Don’t stare! I just want to lead a normal life!

Overboard? Maybe. I’ve been known to be a bit obsessive. Like that time in the second grade when my aunt bought me a new swimsuit and I wore it under my clothes for three days before my parents caught on and took it away. There have been similar obsessions over a training bra, Peaches n Cream Barbie and an iPod.

I suppose that’s a quirk I should consider outgrowing. Eventually.

When I was a kid, I was something of a liar. I didn’t deal in little, “it wasn’t me!” white lies, either. I’m talking whoppers. Exaggerations, intricate, convoluted stories that took their birth more from my whirling, over-productive imagination than a desire to deceive anyone.

There was that time the family went camping and I caught a fish with my bare hands. No, really, I did. We were all playing in the river and…

There was a similar story involving a deer.

The thing about my tall tales is that, when it came down to it, I was a really, really lousy liar. My stories were hardly believable and what’s more, when caught in them, I lacked the grace to back down and admit that perhaps, it had been all in my head. I simply had no talent for lying. None at all. Not like Tyler Cope.

Tyler Cope lived around the block in one of those brown brick, split-level houses with a steep yard. Smaller than the other boys, he had floppy dishwater hair, hand-me down shoes and an imagination that rivaled – or rather, outperformed mine in an endless display of embarrassing hijinx. I have vivid memories of the summer he dragged his little red wagon around the neighborhood selling rocks (magic rocks mind you). The kid you didn’t invite over, he was irritating and somehow, always around. There was Tyler playing Encyclopedia Brown, spying on us from the behind the neighbor’s fence. And Tyler in the front yard making flour by grinding wheat on the tires of his upended Huffy. He was ubiquitous.

Until he was kidnapped.

The word flew through the neighborhood, mother to mother, over phone lines and backyard fences. Tyler Cope had been kidnapped. The attempted abduction – attempted, because in what our mothers were calling a ‘blessing,’ he’d managed to get away – left us with a fear of windowless vans and an awe for the bravery of little Tyler Cope. If we were terrified, our parents were paranoid. No more bike riding. No more Kick-the-Can after dark. Those of us who walked to school were quickly swept up into carpools. The neighborhood was on full alert.

Until Tyler cracked.

Maybe there’d been a Sunday school lesson about lying that week. Or maybe, Tyler was getting a little tired of being in lockdown with his crazy, frazzled mother. Word flew though the neighborhood that the abduction was nothing more than a product of Tyler Cope’s hyperactive imagination, making him a legend. And a pariah. The distinction lasted for years. YEARS. Nobody danced with Tyler at the sixth grade Halloween dance.

The Great Tyler Cope Lie highlighted the stark limits of my own lying abilities. So, aside from the occasional “Sick” day, I no longer even try. I know when I’ve been bested.