kerouac says

i always think these are going to be unbearably navelly, but i also like getting picked. la ketch, please finish telling about sleep training because i am living vicariously through other people's babies while i slowly go through another year's worth of viable eggs.

i can't believe i've never: slept with a girl. published a short story. been on law and order. these are all things i once believed were in store for me, but somehow, eh. not so much.

every time i think about [ ], i still cringe: this one time in AP english, the teacher--who i idolized, and who came to my wedding this summer, and is definitely more than an acquaintence--was telling some story about some author, and out of nowhere, for no reason i can determine other than i wanted to be some kind of proto-literary hotshot, i said, oh, i just saw a picture of him. i think i meant in the paper or something. really, i don't know why i told this lie.

because, of course, the author was J.D. Salinger. motherfucker. suffice it to say, there was no picture of him in the paper, or in any paper, like, ever, and everyone knew it. and instead of shrugging and rolling my eyes, which would have been par for my age, i weakly added: i mean, a picture about him. i think i meant a movie. and of course there are even fewer movies about J.D. Salinger than there are published photos of him. the worst was that i heard some voice say snidely, a picture about him? like, what does that even mean? yeah, i know, guy.

i think about this roughly once a week.

i wish i'd [ ] when i had the chance: slept with a girl. also, i wish i 'd taken my fourth year in college. i graduated a year early, even though i could have stayed on for a fourth year at half-time and paid virtually nothing. i did this because i thought i was going to get into an MFA, and when i didn't, staying on as an undergraduate seemed lame. it would not have been lame. it would have been wonderful. college is such a short, privileged time, or at least it was for me. i wish i'd given myself a little more of it instead of rushing off to san francisco to live with an asshole boyfriend.

i've never felt so out of place as when i: wow, lots of competitors. the time i had to go to catholic day care and the other kids were really fast and told dirty jokes. the time the drill team had a sleep over in the gym but my two friends who were on it too couldn't come, and i had to go hang out in the locker room. the time i was a page in the Senate and every other single adolescent in the program looked like a model. it was a village of barbies and ken. i was like, unfair. i cannot hold my own, here.

[ ] is my guiltiest pleasure: The Hills (i watch it for school!), and making cookies and then eating most of them before anyone comes home and finds me out. i fucking love cookies and have no self control. so far metabolism is handling this, but god only knows how long it will last.

i hope [ ] knows how grateful i am for [ ]: my husband. he does lots of good things, and fills in the blanks where i'm deficient, but i've been critical lately. i hope he knows what he does that i can't live without just as well as he knows what i'm frustrated about. i think i tell him both. i hope i do.

in my darkest hour, i secretly blame [ ] for my dysfunction: bad, irrecoverable gaps in my core. things that are fundamentally wrong in there. a brain that eats itself. bad juju stamped on my spine. rotting places. termites of the soul. moral aneurysms.

[ ] changed my life forever: learning to read. and then, twenty years later, meeting the monkey and knowing immediately that the jig was up, forever.

and because it's if customary: if you're reading? benlau, boo. you're it.