…and probably don’t want to know about me, but since I’ve been away for a little bit, I’ll treat you to something revealing and narcissistic just because that’s the kind of mood I’m in.

1. I own a pair of Arizona cutoff denim shorts from 6th grade. (Yes, that’s them above.) They’re high-waisted as hell and at one point in my teenage life I cut them shorter than their original Bermuda-length. I received them as a birthday present on my 12th birthday from my old friend Sarah, who loosely inspired the name of this blog. (Lance. Not While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping.) No, I don’t wear these suckers. I save them for body image purposes. Feel free to elbow me in the face for this, but these shorts represent a standard to which I hold myself. I don’t slip them on often; maybe once or twice a year. I use them as a means to gauge my weight and fluff my ego. I can’t possibly be the only woman who holds onto an item of clothing for the mere purpose of being able to say, if I can still fit into these coochie cutters, I’m doin’ alright. Last week, I sauntered out of the bedroom wearing the Arizona cutoffs and Joe just shook his head in disgust. “That’s a disappointment waiting to happen,” he said. “What?” I asked, appalled by his response. “After you punch out a few kids those things are never gonna fit.”

2. I haven’t been to the dentist in 16 years. The last time I went to the dentist was around the same time I received the Arizona cut-offs. No, my teeth are not rotting.

3. I unabashedly love country music. And the same goes for country music videos. It comforts me and reminds me of home. It gives my erratic consciousness something simple to focus on. It fills me with warmth like a cold beer on a hot day and makes me wistful for dusty roads, lemonade, orange Popsicles and corn on the cob. Like most popular music, country music has been bastardized by corporate branding and political pandering, but that doesn’t mean I don’t cry when I hear an old Alan Jackson song. Remember when we had Verizon FIOS for less than four hours before our flat screen imploded? Those four hours were spent tuned to CMT. While I worked in my office, Dixie Chicks and Brad Paisley videos played out on the flat screen. I’m certain if I reveal this, my non-country-music-loving husband will have some wiseass thing to say about what really fried our TV, but I’m putting it out there anyway. I might not always agree with the politics of country music, but I can belt out Tobey Keith’s Should’ve Been a Cowboy better than a drunken Texas frat boy on a Friday night. Sure, the Top 20 stuff is hokey, aw-shucks, good ‘ol days, god-fearing boozy righteousness, but it’s the chicken soup to my homesickness. So alert the hipster police. I’m a card-carrying, shit-kicking redneck at heart.

4. Every year Joe and I top our Christmas tree with a Godzilla action figure he received as a get-well-soon present when he was 10 years old, after he suffered a concussion in a sledding accident in the Poconos. We do not own an angel tree-topper or a Christmas star. Just Godzilla, usually with a red bulb dangling from his claws.

5. Speaking of oddball childhood memorabilia. When I was six or seven I cranked a Judy Jetson charm out of a gumball machine at a grocery store. I’ve kept the charm in the zipper compartment of every wallet I’ve ever carried since – until now. When my best friend Ro was visiting last month, I gave her the charm so she’d have something borrowed to wear on her wedding day. Personally, I’d like to see the charm tied to her bouquet, but I understand if she thinks that’s too obnoxious.

6. I use something I like to call an exfoliating glove to scrub dead skin off my face. I preface this by saying: I hate my skin. I rarely have a good skin day and when I do, it seems it’s on days I don’t have to leave the house. My skin, it mocks me. To combat the dry patches that pop up on my chin and forehead, I scrub my entire mug with a blue glove that has the consistency of 80-grit sandpaper.

7. When I was a freshman in college I published an essay I wrote for my 11th grade English class in a self-help, feel-good book titled, A Cup of Comfort for a Women. Last week I was at a St. Pete discount store with my sister-in-law, Leilani, when I came across a copy of this book for $2.99. I bought it. It’s the closest thing I have to a published novel.

8. I have my mother’s ugly hands. Sorry mom. (You know they’re ugly.) The nails are bitten to shards. I’ve tried to quit this habit, but the lulls between biting are so few and far between that I’ve given up trying. I’ve convinced myself that I miss my mom so much that I’m willing to let a genetic predisposition to gnaw my fingernails slide in an attempt to mirror her fugly digits so we don’t feel so far apart.

9. There’s a plastic plate on my kitchen table stacked with clay penises. I inherited the pile ‘o peni after hosting my sister-in-law Rosey’s bachelorette party last weekend. If you’ve never participated in a clay penis-molding contest, you’re sorely missing out. Oddly, my sister PK won the contest, not because she stuck little clay pubes to her knob, but because we let the pug choose the winner and he chose PK’s hairy phallus. It goes without saying that the pug is not a fan of man-scaping.

10. I’m performing in a play next month at a community theater in Tampa to raise money for my mother-in-law’s three-day breast cancer walk. While I interview performers on a weekly basis, I’ve never actually performed in a piece of theater. After rehearsing my part this afternoon, the show’s director remarked, “Well, I can tell you’ve never acted.” You ain’t sayin. The play is a series of monologues titled Talking With. Written in the 1980s by a playwright of ambiguous gender, the show was a last-minute substitute for The Vagina Monologues, which the theater company was unable to obtain the rights to. The Vag Monologues would have been a walk in the park compared to this. Not only do I have to memorize the script, I have to ACT it. Good news is the scene calls for a cat on a leash, but since we don’t have a cat docile enough to behave on stage, the director wants to use Cubbie instead. That’s right. I have a thespian pug.

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PS. If anyone in Tampa/St. Pete/Sarasota is interested in seeing Talking With, the show is June 5 and June 6 at the Carrollwood Players. Tickets are $15. All proceeds go to the Susan G. Komen 3 Day For the Cure.