i’m getting that feeling again, the one i had last summer. you remember the one. it was the “why should i write if i don’t have anything to say?” feeling. which i bet you actually don’t remember, because i didn’t write about it! if you remember things i didn’t say, you are stalking me.

don’t think i can’t see you watching me from the other side of that fence, there.

what am i doing instead of writing?

1. selling my collections of vintage shoes and fabric on ebay. selling my jewelry at ridiculously low prices. rusty probably doesn’t remember this, but he told me to do it. “sell everything you own and go on your trip!” he said. so i am. except for the brown 60’s spectator pumps. those are too awesome for anyone else to own. take that, rusty!

2. breaking my printer. it screeched at me, ate some paper, spewed ink everywhere, and then died. remember that south park episode where cartman says everyone craps their pants when they die? it was kind of like that, except with ink instead of crap.

3. reading the world according to garp. i get most of my books from half-price, and this copy of garp is no exception. it’s fraught with the usual typos you find in stuff from half-price: “is is” instead of “it is,” “there” instead of “their,” characters’ names misspelled. i often notice these typos, and it’s usually easy to ignore them and move on. but i folded down the corner of the page on which the phrase “summer cramps” was used in place of “summer camps.” summer cramps! how awesome is that?

it made me think of my own summer camp experiences. they were crampy in their own way, i suppose. central texas summers made everyone sweat so much that even three showers a day didn’t help; the sweat came back as soon as you turned the water off. we were tired and hot and dirty all the time, and no matter how clean or cool or well-rested i was (and i never was), none of the boys ever liked me. it was probably the braces, or the acne, or the fact that my hair was held in place with so much gel it didn’t even move in the nonexistent breeze. i think one summer i used up an entire bottle in the course of a week.

when it was time to leave, all the other girls would cry, and promise to write, and make out with their boyfriends behind a tree. i might have cried, too, but my tear ducts were clogged with sweat and makeup and hair gel. those were some crampy summers, all right. john irving may not have known what he was typing about, but i sure do.

4. googling minor celebrities, witty online forum posters, and astros baseball players to find out if they’re single. i have no business dating anyone right now (or possibly ever), and it’s unlikely i’ll meet these people or even like them if i do. but still, i google.

and i’ll tell you why. i’m at the age (28) where everyone i know is getting married. i don’t necessarily want to be married anytime soon (or possibly ever), but when everyone i know is forming tiny armies of two, it leaves me a bit lonely. that’s not a very strange feeling to have, but this might be: what if everyone in my approximate age range pairs up and i’m the only person left? it’ll be like in school where nobody ever picked me for anything, so i had to work with the teacher. except there’s no teacher in this scenario, and if there is, he’s forty-five and creepy and i definitely don’t want to marry him.

i probably don’t want to marry any of the celebrities, baseball players, or forum posters i’ve googled, either.

5. finding this. the person who has that blog is not me. she’s so much not me that she’s the opposite of me. it’s funny; last september i signed up for myspace to download some pictures a friend had posted. when i tried to use bluishorange as my username, i was told it was already taken. i thought maybe i’d signed up and forgotten, but i never received a response to the forgot-password request i sent. and now i know why:my name’s being used by a seventeen-year-old!