More Lessons in Living Your Life Wisely, as taught by Niece-y herself

1. Always carry water with you; it’s important to stay hydrated.
2. If you can’t sleep, wake up everyone you know so you will not feel lonely.
3. There’s really no reason to be self-concious when you’re naked. It’s just naked.
4. Run after everything that looks interesting.
5. Watch your step. If you trip, there will almost always be someone right behind you to break your fall, but not every time. Especially if you move really fast.
6. Sharing is overrated.
7. Always take the stairs; it’s more fun.
8. Who cares if you get dirty?
9. When someone tells you no, just start laughing. It throws them off.
10. Conversely, if you don’t want to do something, say no. Don’t worry about hurting anyone’s feelings or being polite. Nancy Reagan was right; just say no.

That’s a headline from today’s Post.

Seriously, is anyone out there aruging that crack is good for society? Because that might be refreshing.

When Fall comes, I think of you.

Because no one else has replaced your presence yet. No one else has appeared at just the time you did, so my memory of them would be connected to a rising chill, descending days and my winter coat. You still occupy that particular space, so each year, I pull you on with my knee-high black leather boots (only to be worn in after Labor Day, you know); I scratch you into my skin with my 100 percent wool cowl-neck sweater and I cocoon myself within you in my pile of winter blankets.

Of course, you marked me, so you stay with me. But that’s not why I think you in the Fall.

I think of you because no one else has come to rent out your seasonal space, the same way I think of food poisoning when I see pecan pie.

That’s it.

When the Fall comes, I think of you. Because of a logistical glitch.

Today, she is waiting for the train.

She woke up with that heavy-headed feeling that settles in after a good cry. Only she hadn’t had a good cry. She had taken a Tylenol PM two nights ago, and that usually knocks her flat for days, so maybe it was that.

Today, she is pondering how exactly she will fill all this time left in the waiting room. American women have ridiculously long life spans, so she’s figuring she’s got a solid 50 years to fill. There are long-term things, like having a baby or getting a Ph.D., and short-term things, like taking a trip to South America or mastering the art of driving stick.

All of those things seem like decent things to do to break up the time, she thought.

She can’t stop thinking about that picture, the one taken when she was five, in front of the fireplace at the white-house-with-the-green-porch. That’s the first house she remembers living in. It was a good house. Her mom used to spray down the green porch with a hose and let all the kids play slip ‘n slide on the slick concrete. This was clearly a major head-injury hazard, but that was back before the days of helmets, kneepads and car seats for five-year-olds, so it probably didn’t seem so like it would offend CPS at the time.

In the picture, she’s wearing her favorite Strawberry Shortcake dress with the blue ribbon that tied in the back. Her mom put her hair in pigtails and tied them with hair bands that had big red plastic marbles on the ends. She has on her white frilly socks and black patent leather shoes. It’s all topped off with a grin full of gaps where her baby teeth were falling out.

She hates that picture, but really she loves it. It’s her favorite picture, because everything was perfect. She had long pigtails and she was sure she was the prettiest girl in all of kindgergarten. She wonders if things would have been different if they had stayed in that house.

But she is who she is, so it doesn’t matter. Wasted energy.

Her father had a book called “Waiting for the Morning Train.” He had her read a passage from it at his funeral. She didn’t know which one he wanted her to read, just that he wanted her to read a passage. She figured it was the last two pages. That’s the part about the train. It says that the train comes to get you when it’s time, and the conductor says, “all aboard!” and that it takes you to where you belong when things are finished. He dad liked it because it talked about a train, and he loved trains. He liked that instead of the Grim Reaper or St. Peter, all he had to do was wait for a conductor to say, “all aboard!” and he could take a train ride. That’s what he liked best. Riding trains.

So now she is thinking about the train, and wondering what she should do until it gets here.

She’s just trying to pass the time.

Me and my boyfriend had a fight. We totally had to break up over it.

It was ok though, because we hadn’t met yet. It wasn’t like it was a big traumatic thing or anything. It was, however, more energy than I’ve ever put into a conversation with any man, let alone some dude I’m e-mailing on a dating site.

We were totally connecting in the beginning, and it was cool. He was all smart and in touch with his feelings ‘n stuff. Then he started taking a week to respond to my e-mails, even though he was logging on everyday. And I was like, WTF? Am I getting played online? That is so not happening to me. Plus, we’d been e-mailing for a month, and while I found his online persona engaging and all, I was like, seriously, I need to assess your skills in person so I know if this is a worthwhile investment. So I was like, Let’s meet, and he took five days to get back to me, and then he was like, I’m just so busy, but we can meet, and I was like, “Oh thank you for your approval (we can meet? seriously) and five days? I see you log on everyday. And busy? What exactly do you do at work for eight hours a day? Because I know your surfing the Net half the time, just like everybody else. Anyways, I didn’t say that to him.

But I did say, “Your response time is a little off-putting and my natural response is to be hesistant, as I don’t know you from Adam, Eve or Abraham or Curly, Moe or Larry.”

And then he was like, “I need to assess your response. This leads me to believe I possibly don’t have the time to invest in a dating relationship right now, as I am already pressed for time and falling down on the online communication.” And I was like, “Ok, I hear you,” only it was much more eloquent and philosophical and smart than that.

And then he e-mailed back and said, “I want to thank you. You have provoked me to some introspection that made me realize that this is so important to me, I want to be able to really devote time to it, and I can’t do that right now. I’m letting my subscription here expire at the end of the month.” And then he was like I hope you find someone, you deserve to, and I was like, Um, yeah, I know that.

So we broke up. It was a very intense relationship, as you can see.

I forwarded his thank you note to the Great and Powerful Best Friend, and she said:

“…he very much wants to sound important and intelligent. I bet he was a super geek in high school and is counting, overly much I might add, on adults not calling other adults booger-face geeks.”

And I was like, exactly.

Fucking booger-face geek.

November, you douche, I can’t believe you called this a ghostblog.

You guys are killing me. Let me brush the rust off my knuckles and see what I can do.

I’ve been enjoying keeping my life a secret for awhile.

“So this guy went out of his way not to talk to you?” he said. “That’s sad.”

Yes it is, isn’t it?

My best girl’s house is still standing, thank God, Buddha or whatever Deity you choose.

The Panty Lady has said that as of right now this very moment, her house in God’s Country is still standing. Although most of God’s Country has been wiped out.

The firefighters blockading her neighborhood said there is a 50 percent chance the fire will jump the fireline and eat her house for lunch. Her neighborhood is the only remaining neighborhood in Tahoe still under mandatory evacuation.

“Ok, tell all the firefighters that I will sleep with every single last one of them if they save your house,” I said. I know where my loyalties lie, and I know when I need to pull out all the stops to help a sista’ out.

“Well, there are also busloads of prison inmates fighting the fire right now, do you want me to tell them you’ll sleep with them too?”

“Oooo. No. Only firefighters. Like they have to produce some sort of firefighting certification and prove that they personally helped to save your house. I only have so much time, you know.”

Like I said, I know when it’s time to pull out all the stops, and I definitely only have time for firefighters. The prison inmates, however, will get a great big hug from me for saving my girl’s house, which is in the middle of where God’s Country used to be.

Do you think Prince was a bit surprised when he heard JT do SexyBack? I think he was probably like, “What, bitch? Wendy, Lisa, get over here. What is this kid talking about? Did sexy go somewhere? Is there a sexy deficity that I am not aware of? If so, has the entire world gone blind and deaf, because I’m right here. Look at that kid, is he a virgin? Does he always dress that way? Wait, is he saying ‘PreppyBack’?”

 Because really, it was quite presumptuous of JT to sing that shit.