1.  Pole dancer alarm clock.  Now, when my alarm goes off in the mornings it happens to sexy stripper music, flashing lights, and a rotating disco ball.  If you don’t have one of these, you don’t know what you’re missing.  Thank you, Southerner.

2.  Nike neon/gray trainers. Before Brother J gave me these shoes, I would not have been caught dead wearing sneakers outside of the gym.  Now, I hope I’m buried in them.

3.  Praying Mantis Kit.  Another item I can cross of my life list.

4.  My engagement ring.  It’s a black diamond set in a band that the Southerner designed himself.  I absolutely love it. I especially love when someone notices it, yanks my hand forward with an “Oh my God, where did you get that!” and I get to tell them our story.

The Southerner and I both agreed that the hotel was very nice, but extremely overpriced.  If we visited Sarasota again, we would stay elsewhere. Although, let me just tell you that given the fact that I was pretty much sick all weekend, that bed tray was almost worth the nightly cost.  So was the Whole Foods within walking distance of the hotel.  I find that cherry-cheese danishes and lattes in bed make me feel better a whole lot faster.

During the day, I wandered in a feverish haze around downtown Sarasota, familiarizing myself with the local shops. By night, the Southerner and I ate several delicious pizzas and listened to great live music at the Gator Club.  We weren’t entirely sold on Sarasota, but we enjoyed our weekend.  Especially the live music at the Gator Club.  The morning after we went there, I woke up to several text messages I’d drunkenly sent myself with the band’s playlist so that I’d remember them for wedding planning.  See, sometimes drunk texting is a good idea.

My absolute favorite part of the whole trip: stumbling into this boy-band during the Saturday morning farmer’s market on Main Street.  Their instruments were entirely made out of “found objects,” and my fourteen-year-old inner-child was totally crushing on their inventiveness and dreamy hipster looks.

For women who have to get a colposcopy and want to know what it’s like: it’s uncomfortable and makes you continually curse the fact that you were born a woman and this is your plight.  Your gyno inserts a metal telescope into your crotch and looks around in there for what seems like a really long time.  In my case, the doc also decided she needed to take a couple of biopsies around the cervix-area.  These did not hurt at all.  However, the doc demonstrated considerable surprise that I did not seem to be in any pain, so I guess it might be painful for other women.  Then, I also needed an endocervical biopsy (because I’m extra fucking special) which was like having someone rake the leaves inside your vagina.

Overall, the colposcopy is uncomfortable but not especially painful.  If you have to have one and your scared, feel free to contact me with questions.  I highly recommend going to McDonald’s for a Big Mac immediately following your visit.  It will make you and your vagina feel much better.

Results in on Friday.  Please think good thoughts for me.

The Southerner went out of town last week and returned this Sunday with a small pimple-like bump under his left pit.  I kept asking him if he wanted me to pop it, thinking that this might get him to stop making those weird whiny noises men make when they don’t feel well, but for some reason he refused.

Monday morning, I awoke with a feeling of extreme discomfort under my left pit and a tiny pimple-like bump.  The Southerner now had a bump under each arm in addition to a rash on his cute Southern bootie.  As he described the rash to me over the phone and I told him about my armpit, I noticed that my ankles were starting to feel funny, almost itchy.  Hello, rash city.

As an afterthought, I called my dad and warned him to be on the lookout for butt rashes and pimply armpits since he was the last person in contact with us.  Only to get a call from Dad a little while later. He too had a rash under his armpits! WTF!

The Southerner spent hours looking up our symptoms on Web MD, rattling off a list of diseases that we might have like cat-scratch fever and mononucleosis.  Given that the Southerner is a doctor, this seemed really funny to me.  Doctors drive themselves crazy-paranoid looking up shit on Web MD too! I have to admit though that later on when he insisted on taking my temperature, I was totally turned on. Of course you can take my temperature, Doctor, and while you’re at it would you mind taking a look at this rash on my butt ?

After a visit to Urgent Care, we still don’t know what we have, but it’s definitely not mono. At least, now I can stop accusing the Southerner of making out with monkeys while he was out of town.  Because everyone knows that’s how you get mono, right?

Turns out our New Years cab problems did not end in New Orleans. Last night, after waiting for forty-five minutes we learned that no cabs were actually servicing our area so we quickly made an executive decision to pour our drinks in to-go cups and ride our bikes downtown.

I’ve ridden my bike in heels before, but last night was exceptional.  I actually had some French women stop me on the street and commend me for my bravery.  I made it two miles without spilling a drop of wine.

We parked our bikes by the park in downtown St Pete and joined the hordes of other Floridians enjoying the 75 degree weather and spectacular views off the pier.  On our walk, we stopped to fill out notecards with our wishes for 2012 and pin them to a wishing tree.  This kind of shit always makes me emotional and super happy.  I loved that someone in downtown St Pete had taken the time to create the tree and put out notecards and pens for everyone.

We ate dinner at the first restaurant we walked into.  A six-course dinner with a bottle of champagne at a little table on the sidewalk and no one bitched about us smoking.  There are moments with the Southerner when time completely stops and it’s just the two of us.  Moments where I know that life with this person will always be exciting and whole.

After dinner we rode our bikes back home, had an hour-long conversation about AK-47s and the end of the world, and waited for the beginning of 2012.  At 11:50 p.m. we got back on our backs armed with a shitload of fireworks and alcohol (I just realized how dangerous that sentence sounds) and headed to the bay by our house.  At 12:00 p.m., after a mini make-out session, I put my head on the Southerner’s shoulder and watched the amazing fireworks display put on by the city of St Pete.  After it was over, I made sure to tell the Southerner that his fireworks were better.

2012, day one: so far you’re the tops.

Main topic #2 dealt with my desire to immediately want to share my entire life with someone I met that excited me.  To want them to share my level of enthusiasm with respect to this desire. To want someone to like me as much as I liked them. And my inability to understand when they did not.

Years later, I still get this feeling.  The Southerner and I will meet a new couple and after hanging out a few times I can not grasp why they haven’t asked us to be the god-parents of their unborn children, while the Southerner is busy actually enjoying their company.   For this wholly unhealthy way of thinking, the therapist made me repeat the words “wait, wait, wait” as if they were my own personal mantra.  Except she would make me sound them out like “w–a–i–t, w–a–i–t, w–a–i–t.”   It always struck me as funny that I was being made to pronounce a word that indicated the suspension of something by suspending the word itself.  But, the mantra actually worked and stuck.  I still find myself holding my breath sometimes and slowly forming the words in my internal monologue.  They instantly calm me and cause me to reassess whatever bad decision I was about to make or semi-crazy thing I might have been about to utter in polite company.

Unfortunately, I can’t quite remember what the therapist told me to do about my “what-if” issue and I’ve found myself thinking a lot of what-ifs lately.  What if the Southerner and I are married for 20 years and he suddenly decides to leave me? What if the Southerner and I are married for 20 years, have children, and he suddenly decides to leave me? What if the Southerner and I are married for 20 years, have children, my inner thighs start touching one another, and he suddenly decides to leave me? What if?

The difference between me now and me then is that I am capable of turning the what-ifs around.  What if the Southerner and I are married for 20 years, have children, my inner thighs have started to touch one another, and we’re happy?  We’ve had some hard periods, but mainly good ones, our children don’t hate us, and we’re truly happy. What if?

What if 2012 is the best year of my life so far.

2. I love arts and crafts and DIY projects.  For Christmas, the Southerner and I made 18 jewelry trees, one for each woman in our family.  This project was so much fun to do together and I love that the branches on the trees are from our backyard.

3.  I want to make out with Miranda July.  This isn’t a new thing.  I’ve wanted to make out with her since my mid to late twenties, but Cracker Jack gave me her new book for Christmas and now I REALLY want to make out with her (Miranda, not Cracker Jack).

4. I’ve finally figured out why I love reading personal blogs and writing my own.  I have always wanted it to be ok to obsessively stalk people I was interested in. Blogs allow me to do that without feeling creepy, and writing my own allows me to give that opportunity to someone else.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year’s everyone! The Southerner and I will be snuggled up together in a hotel room in Sarasota to bring in 2012.  May your evening be filled with fancy champagne and Belgian chocolate-dipped oreo cookies.

Me: Whoa, Stevie Wonder, why are you wearing sunglasses indoors at night?

Dad: They’re the only glasses I could find that fit my prescription.

Me: Don’t you think that’s bad for your eyes?

Dad: No worse than not being able to see the TV at all.

As if this conversation wasn’t strange enough, Dad was simultaneously yelling at his $600 Macaw to “shut up!” while the bird, in an adroit demonstration of his market value, squawked back “shut up, shut up, shut up” with an occasional ”bye-bye” and “hello” thrown in for good measure.

My dad wears sunglasses to watch tv while talking to his pet bird and drinking a glass of fancy port.  It’s like my very own B-version of The Royal Tenenbaums or, what I prefer to call, ”My Childhood.”

Southerner: Umm.  Not really.  You’d be knocked unconscious so it wouldn’t really be up to you at that point.  So there’s no point in worrying about it.

Me: But what if I wasn’t? For Christmas, I want one of those emergency glass kits that cut a hole in the window of the car just in case. Or maybe I should just try to pop the trunk and swim out that way.

Southerner: First of all, if you do, for some reason, find yourself in the middle of the ocean in your car you should take several deep breaths.  You should NOT try to swim out the trunk. That would just make the car fill up with water faster.  You should try to roll the window down and swim out that way.  But, like I said, you’d be unconscious and the likelihood of your car somehow flying over the side of the bridge is about one in a million so you really don’t need to worry about it anymore.

Me: Yeah, and even if I wasn’t unconscious the sharks would probably get to me before I could do anything anyway.

Southerner: Don’t you find it odd that every day you contemplate your car flying over the side of a bridge and being eaten alive by sharks, yet I can’t get you to wear a helmet when we go bike riding?

I love lists, but Christmas lists weird me out.  For me, the joy of getting a gift is encompassed by the element of surprise and level of thoughtfulness you put into it.  So, when asked to hand over my list, I lied.  Or kind of lied.  Why? Because the things on my list are special to me.  Some of them are silly and sparkly.  Some of them are simple and delicate.  They’re special because they’re frivolous items that I’ve kept to myself over the  years, things that I would never actually buy unless money was no object.  Because I don’t need them.  And I don’t want to live in a world where I can have every single thing I don’t need.

That said, here are a few things on my real list that I don’t need that make me happy. (Click on the photo for product info):