Good Day / Bad Day

It makes me sad to realize how much Doug must have liked Suzy... while from what I gathered, she didn't like him nearly as much. He wanted to buy necklaces. He had to double-check if Suzy really wanted to hold hands with him. He even said he loved her. Poor guy. Clearly, I wasn't so sympathetic at the time.

I wish I could remember the details of this "math game" that made us all so sweaty. That is so weird. Mmm math and physical exertion... I can't imagine a better combination.

"All Stars" was a chorus made up of the best 5th and 6th grade singers in the district. Both years, I was one of the four kids chosen in my grade. For the Spring Concert, the four of us sang a song together. And supposedly while doing so, Doug looked at me with zombie eyes. I don't understand why I didn't draw his hair accurately though, considering like 90% of my grade school crushes, he too had hair that "went like this". Which also explains why he was able to put my scrunchie in his hair.

Finally, I love that my strategy for getting Doug to hang out with me over the summer was to entice him with the great climbing trees in my backyard. I suppose it worked once before...

In 2nd or 3rd Grade, there was a boy named Brian who I knew through the soccer team I played on at the time. He happened to live in my neighborhood and would wander over to my house every once and awhile to climb our trees. One time, he climbed so high, he got stuck and I remember my mom calling out from the kitchen window, "Do you need help??" Another time, he jammed a stick down a crevice in a tree and an entire colony of ants started pouring out. And you know how I hated ants. But that has nothing to do with anything.

Anyhow, one day after bonding over our mutual love for tree-climbing, Brian invited me to go over to his house. Ooh! I had never been to a boy's house before! So I went. I later got in trouble for leaving without telling my mom. But it wasn't even worth it because once we got Brian's house, he spent what seemed like hours showing me his entire baseball card collection, telling me details of the players, the Beckett prices, etc. Snore. I was so bored.

But point is, Brian voluntarily hung out with me because of my awesome trees and even invited me to his house. If the trees worked with him-- why not try it with Doug? Boys are boys, right?

POG Fight with My New (Old) Crush... Doug

I haven't made a list recently and at an impressive 6 pages, this entry definitely needs one.

1. For some reason, that night at Grandma's, we had to sleep on the hardwood dining room floor. I can't remember why we couldn't sleep in the upstairs bedroom. It might have had something to do with the fact that one time when we stayed there previously, Kasey and I pulled a bunch of the "bumps" off the egg crate mattress pad and blamed it on each other. Anyhow, we were sleeping on the floor and that's how the big black carpenter ant so easily crawled in my sleeping bag. I don't know what I was so scared of. I probably imagined waking up completely covered in ants or suffocating from ant inhalation. Yuck.

2. I love how I always wrote that Doug and I were "| | this close". I remember wondering while writing these entries if that was an accurate representation of how far apart we were. I mean, that distance looks pretty small on paper, but when you think about it in real life, Doug and I would be REALLY close. We might as well have been touching. So I'd wonder if we were actually whole inches apart. But then I'd think... even though it might be more accurate when translated to real life, writing "we were |                                                                                     | this close" comes across on paper as a bigger distance than it actually is when translated to real life... and it wastes a lot of paper. So I decided to stick with "| |" because accurate or inaccurate, it gets the point across.

3. I asked Suzy to break up with Doug? Doesn't that violate some kind of girl code? You're not supposed to like or date a friend's ex, let alone a friend's current boyfriend! In my defense though, I did like him first. Ha. So there. No but really, can you imagine crushing on your friend's b/f now and being like, "Hey, do you think you could dump your man? I'd like to date him. Thanks." Yeah, that'd go over well...

4. "He said he didn't like me a while ago, like Wednesday." In sixth grade, apparently a "while" was 3 days.

5. Dammit. I started liking Doug again. Honestly, had I ever really stopped?

Radio Show Clip #8

Remember the TV show "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman"? When that show came on in 1993, I had to BEG my mom to let me stay up late to watch it. I don't remember much about the show now but I do know that I quickly fell in love with the sexy Dean Cain.

Here's an interview I did with my crush Dean Cain (who sounds suspiciously like me using a deeper voice)...

I'm glad I at least lost the annoying Maxie voice for that interview!

It's so sad that Dean Cain marrying Lois Lane from the show (which never happened in real life btw) totally ruined my chances with him. Nevermind the fact that he was a famous actor in LA and I lived in small-town Pennsylvania. Or that I was 10 years old and he was 27. He was probably having sex with supermodels and I didn't even have boobs yet. Aw.

Did you notice the part when I said "hold on a second"? I'm pretty sure at that point my mom was calling me from downstairs for dinner or something and I had to stop the tape. Ahhh the complications of recording a fake radio show in your bedroom...

I'm Almost Positive Doug Likes Me

In regard to those nicknames... we've already covered Supergirl. The second one got cut off but it says "Bertha Winterbottom". I can't remember where the names came from but for a month or two, I was "Bertha Winterbottom" and my friend Lianna was my husband "George Winterbottom". Also, my friend Lindsay was "Yin" and I was "Yang".

We probably only used these names when writing notes to each other in school... but I wouldn't really learn how important it was to use nicknames in notes until 7th grade. I wrote a note to my friend Leah which included a clever poem making fun of the shop teacher. The only part I can remember was something about him waddling like a duck. Well, I neglected to use code names in the note... and that normally wouldn't have been such a big deal... if Leah hadn't accidentally dropped the note and if the assistant principal hadn't picked it up.

This was the same assistant principal who I mentioned earlier perfectly fit the role of the Wicked Witch in the school play. Can you believe she gave me a Saturday detention for that silly poem? I guess it must have said something a little more offensive than simply critiquing the shop teacher's gait... but I always felt that Saturday detention was too severe of a punishment. The assistant principal should have been supportive of my extra-curricular interest in poetry!

The girl who sat next to me in detention was there for writing a poem too... except she said hers was for an assignment and that the teacher thought it had inappropriate "sexual content". Sexual poetry?!? In seventh grade?

Everyone Thinks We're Dating

Last I mentioned it, I didn't like Doug anymore. So why was I now trying so hard to convince myself that he liked me?

A friend of mine made the observation today... how could I think Doug was such a good friend when he was always reminding me how much he hated me? Well, you have to remember, this was at a time where nothing really made much sense. A lot of times, kids would pretend they hated their crush-- especially if they were embarrassed to admit it. And in sixth grade, "flirting" usually meant being mean to the person you liked. So when Doug was mean to me, even if he really did mean it maliciously, I instead assumed he was flirting... and it only encouraged me more.

Staring Problem

Oof. What an awkward time for everyone involved. I certainly didn't have much to look at in 6th grade... but I suppose any chest at all was interesting enough for curious hormonal eyes.

I can't remember if it was 5th grade or 6th grade when I started wearing an actual bra. I hated it. It was so tight and itchy and uncomfortable. So I set a goal: in order to get used to it, I vowed to wear a bra every other day. I even marked on/off days on my calendar. Well, that didn't work out so well because I usually ignored the schedule in favor of comfort. Hey, at least I tried.

And then, one day, I discovered sports bras. They were actually comfortable! I hid my regular bras in the back of my drawer and instead wore a sports bra every day. That is, until I grew enough that my mom said to me (I shit you not)...
Mom: Don't you have any regular bras?
Me: They're too small.
Mom: Well we need to go shopping. You can't wear sports bras every day. You look like you have a uni-boob.

At my mother's insistence, I made the transition from sports bra to regular bra and became a real woman. Good thing too... because that would have been pretty awkward if I only ever wore sports bras through high school and college. Can you imagine every time when hooking up with a new guy, having to clumsily wrestle your way out of a sports bra instead of simply unclasping a regular bra?

Thanks Mom! :)

Radio Show Clip #7

Join us while I play Super Mario Bros. on NES and Dawn provides color commentary...

Man, how bad did I suck? This must have been before I got my own Nintendo and went from friend's house to friend's house monopolizing their NES controller instead. I don't know why I was struggling so badly. I remember playing Mario so much that eventually it got so easy and boring that we used to challenge ourselves by lying on our backs, tilting our heads back, and playing the game upside-down.

Playing Nintendo reminds me of many things... but one of those things was the time my sister Kasey got a new puppy.

We got the little black lab mix at the Humane Society one night and my sister named him Jellybean. I thought this was an awful name because: #1- Jelly beans weren't even Kasey's favorite candy and #2- I have always hated black jelly beans. Ugh. But it was her dog and I didn't really have room to talk considering I named my cat Easy. Actually, I named my cat Daisy... but had to think quick when the vet informed me that my stray tabby was not a girl cat, but actually an already-neutered male. Whoops.

So anyhow, we got Jellybean home and that little terror ran crazy around our house, peed everywhere, and barked all night. I know, that's what puppies do... but my parents already had three young kids and my little brother was probably just out of diapers himself... this puppy put them in over their heads. And what was the straw that broke the camel's back? Jellybean chewed through the wire of one of my Nintendo controllers. Aw hells no.

So my parents "returned" Jellybean to the Humane Society the next day and bought me a new controller. Poor Kasey. How heartbreaking. It seems like stuff like that was always happening to her. Like the time my parents returned her Pow-Pow-PowerWheels when they realized it lost its charge in 15 minutes.

But when I think of NES, I still remember how my Nintendo was awesomer than a puppy.

Pittsburgh Pirates Game

You may have noticed in the last entry, at some point in 6th grade, I started calling myself "Supergirl". As if giving myself a nickname wasn't conceited enough, I gave myself a nickname beginning with "super". The fact that I was just an innocent little twelve-year-old girl at the time is the only thing saving my former self from being considered a total douchebag.

I don't really understand why I chose that nickname either. There certainly wasn't much "super" about me at the time. I was weird, nerdy, pre-pubescent, and had hopeless crushes on boys who constantly told me they didn't like me, lived in other states, or were on TGIF sitcoms. Maybe it was a purposely contradictory nickname... like how some fat guys go by "Tiny". Or maybe I wished it'd be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Either way, it stuck for months and I even came up with a Supergirl symbol too.

Haha I thought the first 100,000 kids at the Pirates game got promotional balls & bats. Three Rivers Stadium only had a capacity of 47,952. And the average attendance in 1996 was only 16,446. Ouch. Just an example of how kids don't really understand big numbers. Anything over 100 was a lot to me. Same goes for money. Sure, I'd babysit for $4 an hour... I had no idea how little that really was. Honestly, I don't think I had a good concept of money until I was in college and it mattered.

Oh and if you're already getting annoyed with the whole talking diary thing, don't worry... I did too and pretty soon AB won't be talking much at all anymore.

Introducing... Diary #3!

I warned you it was creative. A talking diary. Pretty cool, huh?

With all the booze talk, you'd think I grew up in a family of alcoholics. But that's what's so weird to me... my parents rarely drank. Same with everyone in my extended family. A beer here or there but that was it. I have no idea where this fascination with alcohol came from.

You'd also think that maybe this fascination would have carried into the future... but no. I always feel slightly pathetic when I take a health survey at a new doctor and have to check the "1 or fewer" box for "number of alcoholic drinks consumed per week". That's down from the raging "3 to 7" I used to mark in college... and even that was sometimes an exaggeration.

So, yes, this whole "AB" thing really perplexes me.

But I'm happy to see that I was very much aware of my nonexistent chances with Joe!

Diary #2 Closing (plus some present-day bitching)

Don't worry folks... we definitely will read my next diary... starting tomorrow.

Of all my diaries, Diary #3 (aka "AB" for reasons you will soon find out) is by far the most... interesting. Perhaps not necessarily in content, but definitely in writing style. Let's just say it lacks no creativity. You'll see what I mean.

Anyhow, in more modern news, I'd like to take a minute to bitch about the two and a half hours I just spent in the kitchen cooking Pierogi Lasagna. It's currently cooling on the stove... so I have yet to taste how it turned out. But I ate so much Easter candy in the meantime, that I'm not even all that hungry anymore.

I was intrigued by the half-Polish half-Italian description (as well as the 2 pounds of cheese and 3/4 cups butter) and undaunted by the warning that it's time consuming. Ha. She wasn't kidding.

It probably wouldn't have taken me quite so long if I hadn't had issues with my stockpot. First of all, I only have one stockpot-- which means I had to cook the lasagna noodles first... then the potatoes. Not a big deal... except for the fact that my stockpot is from the discount grocery store and leaks from its handle's screw holes.

Side story of why I'm stuck with that crappy stockpot anyhow... One night during dinner with my old roomie Julie...
ME: Julie, did you put pepper in these mashed potatoes?
JULIE: No...
ME: What's all this black stuff?
JULIE: Um...
ME: Did you use the hand mixer in the non-stick stockpot?
JULIE: Yep.

In fear of getting cancer from the peeling non-stick coating, we threw out that ruined stockpot (after taking our chances just once and hungrily finishing our Teflon-laced mashed potatoes first). And, well, I haven't gotten around to buying a new pot yet because I'm lazy, cheap, and this one typically works well enough.

Well tonight it was streaming water from the handle. So I could either let the water drip out slowly and sizzle on the burner or stand there and plug the hole with a dishtowel. Fun.

And to make the situation worse, somehow I managed to burn (and I mean burn) lasagna noodles to the bottom of it too. Before I could cook the potatoes, I had to scrub the crap out of that f-er.

So yeah, I'm not too happy right now. This better be the most delicious thing I have ever consumed in my life. I guess we'll see...

---

I must say, the Pierogi Lasagna was pretty darn good. Not the tastiest thing ever but pretty yummy. I still haven't decided if it was worth the time though. I think if I were to make it again, I'd probably add a sprinkling of bacon. Mmmm. Not that it wasn't unhealthy enough already... haha.

Doug's New Girlfriend

Oh how pathetic. Rachel was dating Justin. Doug was dating Suzy. Joe was dating... Mia Sheck. Everyone was in a relationship but me.

So to mitigate the situation, I'd call Doug and discuss his love life.

Awesome. I rub salt in my own wounds.

I wish I could remember those phone conversations between me and Doug. What could his love life have really involved in 6th grade anyhow? Maybe he wrote notes to his girlfriend in school or talked to her on the phone. But I doubt they went on dates and she certainly didn't sit at his lunch table. Did they (*gasp*) hold hands? Or kiss outside the school buses?

Even if they did-- would he tell me? Unless I suddenly remember, I guess we'll never know!

Radio Show Clips #6

In the most boring interview in fake radio history, Maxie asks Dawn about her pets...

Ahh gotcha with the ol' "pet sister" joke!

You thought that was bad? Remember, these clips are the highlights. Be glad I'm sparing you the majority of my hours and hours of preserved unamusing mid-90's elementary school humor. Actually, most of it isn't even humor... it's just kids sitting around doing kid things with kid imaginations. Which, hearing it now as an adult-- is pretty damn boring.

Dream about Joe

The entry when Rachel accused me of not taking things seriously is here. So stupid.

I don't understand the crush on Joe. I was 12 years old, Joe lived in Wisconsin and we didn't have email, or Facebook, or cell phones (did you notice Doug wrote to Joe? That was snail mail folks). Joe was pretty much lost and gone forever. My crush on him was about as realistic as my crush on Rider Strong.

At least I wasn't the only one who naively liked Joe. I'm surprised Meghan and I didn't get in a fight over who had the bigger crush on a guy neither of us would ever see again.

Rachel dumps Doug!

So... five days earlier I *LOVED* Joe... and now it's back to Doug. Dammit. I wonder if Rachel hadn't broken up with him if I would have started liking him again anyhow. Probably.

By the way, how awesome were relationships in 6th grade? In one day, Rachel decided she liked Justin/Fergie and quickly proceeded to ask him out while she was still dating Doug. And once she secured her chances with Justin, then she broke up with Doug.

I also like how I got my relationship advice from a teen magazine. I guess at that age, a magazine was as good of a source as any... but I remember swearing by those articles and quizzes ("Are You a Flirt?" "Does He Like You?" "Is He Your Type?"). Here's a thought- if you need a quiz to determine if he's "the one", he's probably not.

Rachel wrote her note on a typewriter I used to keep in my bedroom for writing stories or letters to my friends. That reminds me that sometime around this age, my friend Meghan and I were garage sale hopping in my neighborhood when Meghan fell in love with the most beautiful baby blue typewriter. She even haggled the price down from $5.00 to $2.00. But when we went to carry it back to my house, we quickly realized that damn thing had to have been made of pure lead. We traded turns lugging it and by the time we made it the two blocks back to my house, our arms were burning. When Meghan's mom picked her up later that day, she was not too excited about Meghan's purchase. The beautiful typewriter that Meghan was originally so proud of sat unused in her closet for 3 years before it got thrown away when her family moved to South Carolina.

Haha... I was so computer-illiterate that I couldn't even load a floppy disk! In my defense though, Windows 3.1 wasn't terribly user-friendly. But the humor in this is that I grew up to be a computer programmer/analyst.

Okay, one last thing before I go. Did you notice the Ren & Stimpy reference on the orange pocket? That show was so annoying. I refuse to embed the Happy Happy Joy Joy video on this page because I can't stand it, but if you want to watch it, by all means...
Happy Happy Joy Joy on YouTube

And now... I love Joe!

Ouch. 2.7! After that crushing blow, I momentarily gave up on Doug to pursue the first guy who came along who may have actually liked me. Who said anything about standards? And never mind the fact that Joe lived in Wisconsin. He considered me a 7.5! Hells yeah, relatively speaking.

In 12YOMe's defense, I did think Joe was cute before I found out he rated me 7.5.

Ugh, who knows what that fight was with Rachel. That doesn't even make sense. I'm sure it started out as a little argument and then escalated when we realized that yelling would get other people's (boys) attention. Drama queens. But I guess it worked. Oh and sorry for the confusion, that was a different Joe who cheered me up after the fight.

Finally, if you didn't catch the altered version of an already obscure reference at the beginning of the entry... "Hellooooo Doctor!" was my take on the phrase "Hellooooo Nurse!" from Animaniacs... which was a pretty awesome cartoon from 1993-1995 if you don't recall.

Here's a clip to jog your memory:

Radio Show Clips #4 and #5

On this day, my fictitious Jet-FM 102 radio DJ persona Maxie took some medicine without knowing what the side effect "drowsy" meant. Some really obnoxious fake snoring ensues.


Then, a few days later, I recruited my friend Dawn to play the person who called in to the radio station to tell me the meaning of "drowsy" and in doing so, apparently won co-host for the day.


Just as I didn't always talk in the Maxie voice, Dawn didn't always giggle that much either. I think it's really cute though and infectious even. It makes me wish I would have picked a cuter and less annoying radio voice myself.

Doug's PRO/CON List

Ha. You didn't think I was going to give up on Doug that easily, did you?

How could I give up on someone who gave me 5 PRO and fewer CONS than his own girlfriend?! He certainly wasn't leading me on... but he was giving me a slight glimmer of hope.

I'm confused though that "weird" was a PRO. Hmm. I don't know what I did that was "weird", but if it was a PRO in Doug's eyes, you better believe I was going to keep doing it.

I'm Bummed (including an AWESOME middle school relic)

What was in that purple construction paper pocket, you ask? Pretty much the most awesome middle school relic ever... a quintessential example of prepubescent boy-girl communication ... possibly the holy grail of all preteen nostalgia...


YES.

Notice how I wrote the P.S. instruction to return the note to me after filling it out. Did I really think that Doug would fill it out and then put it in his pocket and walk off with it? I clearly did not invent the "Circle Yes/No" note... what made me think that Doug hadn't encountered one before and wouldn't know what to do with it?

In the diary entry, my sarcastic suggestion to rip holes in Doug's shirt to make him go out with me was a reference to the first middle school dance where that tactic worked for Rachel to get Doug to dance with her. I wasn't serious about doing it myself, but it confused the hell out of me. How could Doug like someone who was so mean to him that she ripped his shirt? ...And not like someone who was *mostly* nice to him (me)? I guess I hadn't learned yet that there's a little more to attraction than just whether someone is abusive to you or not.

So it was official. Doug didn't like me. At all. The Doug drama was finally over.

Or was it?

Trapper Keepers

I have three comments about this entry:
1. Trapper Keepers = awesome. Do they still make those anymore? Oh... of course they do. Trappers will never die. You can go here for a "3-D Demo" of the modern, redesigned Trapper Keeper. The Trapper I had in 6th grade though was the kind with the cloth-ish cover and zipper around the edges. Wait a sec... now that I think about it... that was made by Five Star, not Trapper. Whatever, Mead makes them both. Oh snap. Apparently Five Star makes binders now with SPEAKERS in them! Oooh that was posted over two years ago... I am so far removed from today's Trapper culture...

2. I like how I started listing reasons (again) why Doug must like me but then quickly wised up and admitted that he's probably doing those things because he "just thinks of us as friends." Duh.

3. "Peace be with you" in letters and symbols? Really? Hmm. Must've had church on the brain.