—-

I sighed far too loudly. Long, exaggerated, and unnecessarily audible, my exhale did nothing to improve the mood my parents already steamed in.

“FiiiihhhhNALLY.” In the gravel driveway, Dad clicked off the engine and I heard nothing for a minute, the blackness that hits your ears when you meet sudden silence after hours of persistent white noise. Then Dad’s short breaths as he unbuckled and opened the door in quick bursts of motion. Mom whipped around in her seat and stared at me for a minute, the “See what you did?!” look I must have liked, given the amount of times I incited it.

“NICE touch.”

Years later, I wouldn’t wonder where I got my sarcasm.

I was never a bad kid. I just always seemed to push all the wrong buttons, and only usually when no buttons were left to push. Mouthy and dramatic, I’d been in trouble at school a few times. Really, you try to find me a nine-year-old girl who isn’t mouthy and dramatic.

Inevitably, I blame any and all bad behavior in my younger years on my little sister. I was fine before she showed up. I mean, I don’t really remember; I was three when she hit the scene, but all of that obnoxious acting out? It all stemmed from some subconscious jealousy I harbored from the minute Mom left the hospital that day with that hairy, fat little thing. Really. Ask a shrink; I’m sure I’m right.

Even at that point – I was nine, she was six – she still just sat there, a fuzzy ball with a weird smile, quiet in her car seat having just awoken from the three-hour drive. I was still “acting out” as they called it because I didn’t have a companion yet. We looked at each other just before I turned to open the minivan’s sliding door.

Either go back where you came from or start being fun, I thought at her – really hard. She yawned and rubbed one eye, and I characteristically flung myself from the van, leaping into the night air and onto the gravel. Mom and Dad carried water jugs and coolers from the back of the van into the cabin. They didn’t speak much, just a “Where did you put the towels?” or “Did we bring batteries?” It felt okay to me, though, like they left all the short breaths and tight lips in the van, that blue box full of family tension.

“Come get your sleeping bag,” Mom said, and she tossed it. I caught it by the cord and felt it begin to unravel, so I balled it into my arms and hurried inside.

With my sleeping bag safely situated on my bed – which I first checked, double-checked, and triple-checked for spiders – I snuck to the back door before I could be roped into another armload. Outside, the lack of moonlight turned the air black. I grimaced as I stomped a rogue driveway stone, then realized my opportunity. I picked it up, the sandstone cold in my palm. I let my memory walk me to the deck railing. I knew the river flowed below only from the nextdoor cabin’s lanterns reflections on the water. Holding tight to the rock, I wound my arm like I’d been practicing in softball that summer, and I flung the tiny piece of driveway into the abyss. I heard a small plop.

“Yessss,” I whispered.

I ran – again, dramatically and unnecessarily – back to the van to help finish the night’s unpacking.

Long before I had any idea who John Denver was, I called West Virginia home.

Summer wish list:

1. Chicago Blues Festival, Chautauqua, South Branch

2. A grill, which brings an appropriate number of cookouts and reason for me to listen to The Clarks again, because I’m fairly certain the Someday Maybe album provides the fuzzy pink insulation of my well-developed music soul, and I can’t really get sick of Scott Blasey.

3. An otherwise established level of promiscuity, or just a friendliness that will generate involvement with people who are not otherwise dating, married, or gay. As my track record is plummeting.

4. Maybe fewer mosquito bites. But I’ll take them for my figurative team if I have a line in the water or a book in my lap.

Life is changing, there’s a blue flame dying and a sparkler igniting, and I’m looking forward to where it brings me.

I’ve been thinking recently how the young, high school Tanya would feel about the old, 23-year-old one. She’d be a little pissed I haven’t yet gotten on Jeopardy, but I’d promise her the time is nigh. Can you just imagine if she saw me sweeping the floor of a used – charity – bookstore in SoHo, listening to the Decemberists and full of samosas and tea? Would she be disappointed in my recent inclination to only engage with dudes in fairly serious relationships, or would she understand that that’s what takes the pressure off? Would she tell me to clean my fucking room? (Shut up, Past Tanya, I clean the kitchen.) She’d certainly be pleased about the return of Antwaan Randle El, and she’d love that I closed the door of my office to whisper-scream all afternoon.

Here’s a thing about brussel sprouts. If you’re roasting them, be prepared for a delicious dinner, but the smell from the oven will make your apartment smell like a fart for at least 12 hours.

Notes on New York: This weekend was not one for resting. After a miserable sleep on Friday night, I awoke at 3:30 Saturday morning to get in line for Saturday Night Live tickets. I was back to sleep by 8 a.m., though we all know a nap never really can make up for what you’ve missed. So after a long afternoon of cleaning and movie watching ( A Serious Man and Reality Bites, if you must know), and one apple & goat cheese omelet later, I went back to Rockefeller Center, where I followed Brian Williams into the studio and pretended very hard that we were best friends. I had ticket #69, so the 12-year-old in me was secretly a little thrilled when we didn’t get in, because I get to hold on to that special ticket forever. I went to La Lanterna & met dear friends for wine & cheesecake, then to a surprise party where I happened to get pleasantly pleasant, and things were brilliant for a few hours.

And then they turned fantastic. A real-life musical greeted us on the train ride home, with an entire subway car singing Feliz Navidad while hanging from the handrails and standing on the benches. I’m sure if I remembered it clearly, it would be the best experience of my life.

And then, of course, Sunday was a day to sit in the sculpture park and try to get through as much of my current Christopher Moore book as possible, since another one is sitting on the library shelf, sweating it out until I manage to reach it.

::and that’s my life in nyc as it stands today::

And now, I cannot stop thinking about District 9, the upcoming Alkaline Trio show, or cooking artichokes to dip in a bagna cauda.

“All right, you think you’re done crying yet?”

So, so beyond that.

No need for me to explain the details of SBUD; it’s been done. When I thought I’d be writing a quirky, memorable BV column and a speech to make my friends cry, I didn’t expect to be infecting myself forever.

The ride home from Bonaventure Sunday, my second homecoming weekend, was silent, sleepy, yet still jarring. It left me wondering when the visits will quit becoming heart-rending reminders of the lazy lovefest of those four years, and will begin feeling like happy reunions.

For now, it all feels frighteningly normal. I can still wake up on the floor of Bain’s room and even for a millisecond think I might be a college freshman, trying to catch a nap between comp & crit and lunch, while my fairly instantaneous best friend plays video games starring a handsome and wholesome young golfer.

You have no idea how hard I hugged Adrienne, having held out more than a year since we’d last seen each other, and after a minute of gasping for air, we clinked our OP cups and had the same conversation we did four years ago in her Gardens apartment.

Noelle hooked up with the same guy; Uuk wore a Dinosorgy t-shirt; Sam & I baked a cake for Anne Marie & Amy; Em ate a championship meal at 3:30 a.m.; T got stoned & let me borrow her shoes; Curtis snored at an unhealthy volume; TJ did all those unspeakable things TJ always does; Jordan’s an elitist; Danza & I tried unsuccessfully to tear into each others’ egos; Regan watched MTV Jams. We all lived college as we knew it. I even made a chipwich in the Hickey (with birthday cake ice cream!). And I can sit and lament it wasn’t the same, but who expects it to be? My roommates weren’t there. Neither was my room.

I get it, Life. I’m a grownup. Some of my legitimate friends are legitimately married. (Which is terrifying, just FYI.) But how weird is it to talk about things like this in the BV? Or to talk to PJV about cover letters because I’m actually receiving them?

Honestly, when I started writing I expected to have hilarious things to say about the weekend. And it wasn’t without its share of mishaps (or brilliant happenings, all depending). I trashed Bain’s living room & simultaneously wasted all of his popcorn and Cap’n Crunch trying to throw them into my friends’ mouths while they spoke. TJ tossed “used” condoms into sleepers’ beds. Curtis sang along to country songs. (This last one probably wasn’t supposed to be a joke, but seriously?)

But for as much fun as I had, a palpable sadness followed me, like Winnie the fuckin’ Pooh. One of those I-can’t-believe-I’m-a-grownup rainclouds. It didn’t help that I had a severe falling out with one of my closest friends at a dart game in the Rathskeller, but that’s what happens when you date awful people.

Didn’t I ask for this, though? Isn’t that brilliant spark that lives in Bonaventurians the same thing that causes this awful SBUDing? (I mean, I guess it is. I pretty much wrote the disease’s symptoms, so, yeah, I can say that.)

Eh, as usual, I’ll take it.

I came home with a raspy throat and a new colony of cats living in the backyard, vocalizing a return to real-worldiness (or just vocalizing the most miserable, awful sound in the world. Seriously, I still am not sure if I want a can of tuna or a bow & arrow for them.), and there was a new book of poetry waiting when I got home from work tonight. (Thanks, PJV.) And I keep acting accidentally depressing, blasting songs like “Into the Mystic” while I dust my photo frames, since I suppose I enjoy living in a movie cliché, but I just like to think back to the Ursula Le Guin quote I scribbled on the wall of the bathroom in the Hickey Tavern in 2008:

“It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.”

To quote one of my best friends: “The good journey, bitches.”

It’s Friday and Matt Howard’s coming to visit and explore New York City at Christmas, and I got to be late and ride the V train to work this morning, and I got to eat a fourth piece of chocolate from my Advent calendar, so one would think things should be joyous and bumbling, but no.

I’m anxious and I’m sad, and it’s all the fault of last night’s episode of The Office. Parks and Recreation was bad enough, with poor Tom Haverford being all Sir Mopes A Lot since he split with his green card Canuck wife.

The Office’s cold open with Michael’s Elvis voice and Andy’s baby voice was just so promising. And then disaster struck.

Where did the writers think they could find humor in disappointing a class full of kids wanting to go to college? I felt terrible for and hated Michael at the same time, and my insides were practically braiding themselves they were so twisted. Nothing. Was. Funny.

My heart longed for The Office of Yesteryear (necessary invocation of melodrama, thanks), when Christmas was a trip to Morocco with Meredith’s head aflame, or a rousing game of Yankee swap, or the most prudish rendition of Little Drummer Boy ever performed in office karaoke.

So I share today one of my favorite Christmas moments from The Office. From the episode “A Benihana Christmas,” meet the funny-awkward Michael Scott, not the dream-destroying & unfunny crying man we met last night. Needless to say, I will be harshly judging this year’s Christmas episode. Let’s see what you’ve got, you twisted bastards.

(Here is where I WANTED a clip of Michael marking his Asian gf’s arm so he could differentiate her from another Asian waitress, but that plan failed miserably. Instead, I offer a brief look at the most evil Christmas game of all time, Yankee Swap, and then a lengthy clip of The Office UK, when Tim & Dawn finally seal the deal. Though it only makes me a little weepy, while Jim & Pam’s first kiss can make me hysterical. That’s enough.)

And we settled in to watch Rudolph, and the Rockefeller Center tree lighting (during which we cried…troops! their families! ::sob::) and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, which got me thinking about Christmas bonuses, and how much I’d love to have a swimming pool. Full of the jelly-of-the-month club.

I stopped liking Ralphie long ago. Whine, whine, pout, shoot yourself in the face, look awkward, whine. Things like this are funny IF YOU ARE CUTE. Fail, Ralphie. Sorry Hollywood had to capture you at the most excruciating of your awkward years and try to redeem it with a lisp. And I’ll give them that — the Lisp is Ralphie’s one good quality, especially since he has a friend named Schwartz. And a chubby kid saying “son of a bitch” makes me smile in any context. But that’s it, Ralphie. If you just said “Schwartz” and “son of a bitch” the whole movie, I might like you. But as it stands, I imagine you blind with “thoap poithoning” and I grin maniacally.

But your brother, Randy? With gems like the Meatloaf Rap, My Zeppelin, and I Can’t Put My Arms Down, you rock this movie boat. And in the movie’s alternate ending, Randy shoots Ralphie in the face, thus saving him from future thoap poithoning and Little Orphan Annie decoder ring disasters.

And here we are, in Randy’s shining moment.

No, all of my favorite Christmas specials are cartoons, stop-motion animation, or Muppet adventures. My mother taped a half-dozen specials from TV onto a VHS in 1992, and my sister and I still watch it several times a year, commercials and all. We’re probably the only people outside of the Playskool and Nabisco companies who can sing jingles to ancient Ritz Crackers and Playskool Dinosaurs ads. And that sure makes us special.

We begin with one of my favorite events in television history, and it happens so rarely that it’s always a big to-do, but when you throw CHRISTMAS into the mix, my nostalgia & my six-year-old brain get together and drink Huggies and eat wax bottles and have the happiest day of their lives. I’m talking, of course, about the Sesame Street gang and the Muppet Show gang teaming up for one gargantuan Jim Henson extravaganza. And Christmas carols. I will keep you from the elation no longer.

Or in amazing car speakers, but that makes me think about how much I miss car speakers, and it’s too sunny out to complain.