Duchess Jane

I woke up on the morning of the first day of my 30th year in a patch of sun, with the best dog in the whole world perched on my chest, staring at me, anxiously willing me to wake up and play.

I picked up the key to my new place on Monday night.  I have a complicated relationship with keys.  That's the opening line of a post I haven't finished yet.

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I'm having a bad week in a multitude of different ways.  Moving stress, life stress, work stress, side-project stress, getting older stress.  It all culminated last night at around 9 pm when I was puking up my toenails in the Stately Manor bathroom, for no other reason than stress.  This morning, I looked in the mirror, examined the damage - I annihilate every blood vessel around my eyes when I vomit, so I look like I've been in a title fight - I thought "Yeah, this is a breaking point."

So I'm about to get really fucking selfish for awhile.  More selfish than some view me already.  I'm probably not going to have time or patience for your bullshit for awhile.  I'm probably going to put a little less love out there when I know I'm going to get kicked in the teeth for it.  Maybe I'll be more like a Jennifer, maybe I'll give you my pencil, but not my kidney this time.  Your lack of planning will not become my emergency anymore, not for awhile.  Not until I can get through a day without having so much awfulness boiling inside of me that it has to be purged somehow.

And you'll all just have to fucking deal with that.  The time has come.

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I will be turning 29 on Saturday.  I'm celebrating in a couple of different ways which I've selfishly organized myself.  I've spent years throwing really big birthday parties for a significant other and spending my own birthday quite lonely, and it's a sensitive subject.  But I refuse to be lonely this year.  I'll be at Vic & Jim's at 8 pm on Friday night.  Any and all of you are welcome to come buy me a beer.  Amy of the Ooops Sisters will be in town from Boston for the weekend, and she and Marc and I will be headed to Milwaukee on Saturday night for the Avett Brothers concert.  There will be a gathering at the Milwaukee Ale House before the show, so if you're in the Milwaukee area, you're welcome to join me there as well.

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This week, years past:

2009:  I made anonymous phone calls.  Or at least daydreamed about them.

2008:  Duke and I threw a 1986 Superbowl party.

2007:  I gave up Jello-wrestling for Lent. 

2006:  I finally got a speeding ticket, the 12th time I'd been pulled over.

DuMom:  Hey is it Wrecks' birthday today or tomorrow?

Jane:  tomorrow.  we wouldn't have to remember this shit if that slacker would just get a Facebook page

DuMom:  that could be done...

Jane:  heh

DuMom:  he could be friends with Minica, Buddy Christ and the Golden Driller

Jane:  somebody is going to start a "1,000 Strong to Institutionalize DuJane" page if I create one more fan page for a non-human

DuMom:  not institutionalize, not incarcerate, what is the word I am looking for?  cannonize?

Jane:  bwahahahaha

I spent this weekend at the Rockford Home Show, shaking hands, smiling, and trying to sell stuff.  Every year, after about 5 minutes, it feels as though I never left this show last year, the year before, the year before that.  It feels as though I am living in a loop, it never ends.

And you know my name
And you take my hand

Probably the oddest song to get stuck in my head for this experience is the Vulgar Boatmen's "Drive Somewhere", but there it was.  Something I've always noticed about this song is that it begins as though it's reprising something previously started.   It speaks like I write sometimes, like I think all the time, in the world's longest run-on sentences punctuated by just enough of a break to take a breath.

The same faces walk past, stop, tell me the same story every year.  This year, it was 100% good stories, not a single complaint.  And you service my furnace.  And I bought this from you.  And we call you every year.  And I went to high school with your boss. And we see your trucks everywhere.

And there I am, for nineteen total hours, on my feet, shaking hands and listening to the stories, year after year after year.  Don't get me wrong, I'll never stop doing home shows as long as I'm in this industry, they are an amazing source of community connection in addition to sales leads.  But there's something so repetitive in what we do there that it doesn't take long before I zone out, move and speak by memory, it is such an endless string of the same conversations over and over again.  It's so hard to remain inside of my brain.

On Saturday night, I left the show for the night and plugged in "Drive Somewhere".  I was thinking about last fall, when I first heard this song, at a time when I was feeling pretty trapped, feeling the wanderlust, needing to move my body and my brain in a direction other than the same loop I was repeating.  I listened to "Drive Somewhere" then and I tried to google the lyrics and landed on Rolling Stone's review of the album and thought "Yep, that's it, that's the feeling right there": 

It's impossible to hear lines like "We're gonna drive somewhere" sung blankly and repeated over and over, on "Drive Somewhere," without wanting to get up and walk around the room very fast.

And I was in my car.  And I turned it up.  And I was driving too fast.  And I took that turn wide.  And I sang along.  And I drove somewhere. 

I launched Stock Car Driver's website last night.  I won't be typing his name out here to avoid the DuJane google bump when his search engine rankings are already not where I want them to be, so he'll remain SCD for now.  But check him out.  I've already had to moderate one comment.  And by moderate I mean delete.  After saving a copy because it was hilarious.  Inappropriate, but hilarious.

I'll be working the Rockford Home Show this weekend and the first one of you who brings me Starbucks will get a hug.  No really.  I will hug any of you random creepy internet stalkers that show up, provided you're carrying a venti chai latte or a mocha.  The good news is that I'm not set up next to the Total Eclipse of the Heart Hot Tub Guy or the Flag Pole Man this year.  Bad news?  I'm next to the 82" television guy.  I'm warning you, TV Guy.  If your TV is playing the Total Eclipse of the Heart video, Ima kill ya.  And I'll get away with it.  Justifiable homicide.

I can't count the number of people who have emailed me today about Carly Simon revealing the target of "You're So Vain".  Love it.  Love you guys.  Clowns in my coffee, all of you.

Have a great weekend, my friends.