There are a lot of things in life that you just can’t be completely sure about. I can’t be sure that Republicans don’t actually hate poor people, that public schools don’t actually hate children, and that gifted children are really all that bright.

But now, the coup de grace, Taco Bell actually hates us. All these years they’ve been feeding us mystery meat. Have you ever watched them fill a taco with ground 35% beef? It comes in a tube that pops into a giant squeeze gun, like bathroom tile caulk. Squeezing the trigger doses each soft taco shell with an exact preordained measure of meat conglomerate. And there was ever a question that this stuff might be other than the highest grade of beef known to man?

This news has shaken the core of my belief foundation. What else am I only now beginning to question?

First of all, apparently it’s possible that I’m black. A doctor told me so a few years ago because of the way I scarred after an invasive surgery, but at the time I brushed that aside as just his weird medical opinion. Mostly because I’m the palest little Irish girl you’ll ever meet. But now, in light of my new attitude of constant questioning and doubt, I’m wondering. And as my black co-worker said to me, “It would explain your hair.” I let her comment slide.

An obvious culprit is religion. According to everything we’ve been taught, my husband gets to slide right on in to heaven when he dies but I have to wither in Purgatory for a few millennia. If anyone deserves to sit in a crowded standing-room-only waiting room with outdated magazines for a few thousand years, it’s him. Not saying I don’t have some sins to atone for, but c’mon, have you met him?

What else do we have to worry about? Can I really believe that televangelists are using my money to send missionaries to Borneo? Are Hollywood producers trying to inundate me with culturally relevant movies, or make a buck? Are bald eagles really endangered or is the government just trying to get me to stop eating them? Are trans fats truly bad for me or are people telling me that so they can horde them in case of a nuclear holocaust? First red M&Ms were safe, then they caused cancer, then they didn’t, but what if they actually do?

Thanks, Taco Bell. If you have been poisoning people all these years, why did you have to stop now? I know we live in an era of full disclosure thanks to the internet and all of the rabid conspiracy theorists, but some secrets are better off kept to yourselves. I guess it’s good to know the truth. Now I can take my business elsewhere, off to some other fast food chain that is only serving hand-raised free-range chickens that die of a stress-free natural death and were kind enough to marinate themselves organically before they died. And I’d like some trans fats to go with it, please.

I knew this would happen. Even before I ever had any kind of experience with social networking, this is exactly the kind of thing I worried about. There’s a really fine line between looking up old high school classmates and stalking someone from the comfort of your own manifesto-writing shack in the woods.

I thought I had taken very well thought-out precautions, like making up a fake email account to go with my fake name (seriously? You thought my parents actually named me Lorca? And I didn’t kill them in their sleep when I was in junior high school because the other kids were calling my Lorca the Orca?) And the secret agent steps weren’t even to be very mysterious or smugly peek in on ex-boyfriends who are now married to really fat women without them knowing I was laughing. I mostly crept around the shadows of Facebook because of the potential security threats from my job, or at least that’s what I told myself.

But it happened anyway. I’m being stalked by someone through Facebook, someone who keeps sending friend requests. I’m not even sure how this person knew I’m on Facebook, unless all of the mutual friends of mine called her up and told her. Now I get a daily friend request, which I’m too polite to flat-out turn down, but you would think that the fourteenth day in a row that your request went unanswered, you’d give up. Unless you’re completely obsessed, that is.

And trust me, this stalker is absolutely obsessed with me. It’s my mother.

I don’t know how she even found me on Facebook, unless the website somehow ratted me out to her. And I’m certainly not opposed to having my mother as a Facebook friend, but when I choose to update my status to, “Drunk again, I think I’m wearing my Snuggie upside down and backwards,” I’d rather my mom didn’t know about that.

Okay, that doesn’t happen that often. Right now I’d just rather she can’t find out I just killed all of my crops in Farmville due to extreme criminal neglect. I do own two of her grandchildren, after all, and I just don’t want to hear about it:

“Sweetie, how are things going?” “Great, why do you ask?” “Well, I just saw on Facebook that you haven’t looked in on your little farm game in quite some time so I just thought I would ask if you brushed the girls’ teeth today…” I know that’s how it’s going to go down.

And let’s be completely honest, there are parts of our lives that we just don’t share with everyone. If I friend her, did I just mutual friend her entire church choir? Are the old ladies in the soprano section now looking at my photo album from my trip to Las Vegas, which by the way I don’t even remember posting on Facebook but somehow I’m the lone straight person tagged in eighteen different pictures of a gay rights’ parade? Does the priest who gave me First Communion back in second grade really need to see that?

So, Mom, if you’re reading this, it’s nothing personal. I promise to bathe the crops in Farmville and water your grandchildren. Wait, I’ve got that backwards. You know what I meant. Updating my status to: “Please dear God don’t let my mom read this and call me about it.”

I had the cruelest nickname as a child. It is unbelievable how human beings can be so horrible to one another, how people can actually open their mouths and speak a moniker of such hatefulness. My nickname was Joey.

Right off the bat, all of the Joeys who are reading this may or may not feel my pain. It would be different if my name were, for some unknown reason, Joseph. Well, Josephine since even my parents aren’t cruel enough to name their first daughter Joseph. But read on and ease some of my agony.

My brothers were the ones to first christen me Joey. Bear in mind that these are the same heathens who tricked me into eating an inferno pepper from our garden. Please ask yourself why two fully grown college educated adults (my parents) would even grow such weapons of mouth destruction when they know that they have two sons under the age of eight and a smaller defenseless little girl, but that is sadly something that I haven’t had enough alcohol yet today to talk about.

You need to know why I was called Joey. So here it is…(deep breath)…because of my enormous feet. I’ll pause while you get tissues to carry you through the rest of this tale of woe. My brothers claimed that when I was born I looked like a baby kangaroo because of my freakishly large feet. No, please don’t feel my indignation, it isn’t necessary to kill them. I’m sure they’re sorry about it now.

The problem stems from the fact that I do have feet that are slightly on the large side. Nicknames and jokes are not funny when they’re true, a fact that men don’t seem to grasp as they will happily call one of their own brethren “Cyclops” if he only has one eye. Women just don’t do that to each other.

No, women try to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. MY girlfriends actually call me from the bathroom of department stores to tell me that the big shoes they keep in the back of the stockroom are out and on sale. They take on pimply-faced bowling alley attendants who try to prevent me from bowling because they don’t have shoes in my size. One lawyer friend of mine even went so far as to tell the hapless young man that he was in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act if he didn’t let me wear my own big shoes. I love my girls.

Every time I try to buy shoes, I shamefully imagine the other customers in the store gasping in horror as they see my feet, of salesmen running to their supervisors and quitting their jobs because “it just can’t be done, sir! I’m not a miracle worker, I’m a shoe salesman!” I’m certain children throughout the store can be heard whispering, “Joey! Joey! Joey!” under their breaths as I try to cram my hideous feet into yet another frightened pair of pumps.

I’ve learned to accept my feet for who they are and stop the torture. I started going to shoe stores and looking for the most comfortable, orthopedic-looking shoes I could find. Eventually I just started sticking my head in the door to these establishments and asking if any nuns shop there. If the answer is yes, I will probably find something to fit. They can’t kick you out of the nun-hood just because your feet are too big to wear those giant boat-shaped shoes even the small-footed nuns seem to prefer.

But on a recent shopping trip, one in which I wasn’t even looking for shoes because I hadn’t taken my medication yet, I saw the most amazing sight. It was a high display pedestal, towering above all of the other lowly shoes, one situated under an intense spotlight to best highlight this shoe’s grandeur and gloss. It may have been the very light of God beaming down on this blood-red stiletto pump of mammoth proportions. I immediately grabbed the young salesman by the sleeve.

“Young man,” I breathed, “how is it that this huge shoe rests in the place of honor amongst all this footwear?” Tears pooled in the corners of my eyes.

“We just picked the biggest one we had so customers could see it from across the store,” he shrugged. I now wear my favorite large blood-red pumps everywhere, even on a Saturday morning trip to Walmart to buy milk and dog food while wearing my ugliest sweatpants. After I got that young man’s blood off the heel from where I accidentally embedded it in his skull, that is. Take that, Joey.

My youngest daughter flounced back against the seat of the booth at the restaurant with an odd scowl on her face, crossed her arms, and announced loudly, “I want to talk about my birth mother.”

You’re waiting to hear about my momentary panic stemming from being unprepared to deal with these hard truths, especially at her young age. You thought I had planned on having a few more years before having to deal with this subject, but you’re not worried. You know how utterly brilliant I am so you know that I can make this conversation work. You are completely confident that I will be loving but honest as I describe a bittersweet tale of a selfless woman who was too young to raise a child, who tearfully handed her over to us and never looked back only because it was the very best thing for her baby, the only gift she could ever give her that would matter.

Bullshit. “Sweetie,” I sighed without even having to put down my fork, “we’ve been over this before. I am your birth mother. I have the photos and stretch marks to prove it.” I don’t know where my daughter keeps hearing this crap and it’s even more confusing because I know she’s not doing this in a fit of anger. She isn’t under the influence of teen angst, deciding that I am such a monster that any genetic link is impossible. Nope. She’s autistic and she picks up the strangest things to say at the absolute weirdest moments.

The oddest thing about her verbal quirks is that at times she can barely utter one or two comprehensible words, but when she really wants to get me good she can announce with perfect clarity, volume, and diction, “Why were you and Daddy making all that noise after I went to bed?” This is usually yelled in a crowded grocery store for maximum impact. Sometimes I think back fondly to the good old days when she couldn’t talk.

Unfortunately, this is all my fault. I carried that ungrateful creature to speech therapy sessions to the tune of about five hundred dollars a month worth. I replastered our kitchen walls with hundreds of homemade index cards with words printed on them, letting her touch the words as she tried them out in her little mouth. I learned rudimentary American Sign Language when it looked like this child just could not make the connection between the spoken word and life around her. I won’t even begin to complain about all the time I spent on other treatments, like physical and occupational therapy visits every month, as well as the special ed teacher she met with regularly from before she could even sit up. Is it too much to ask that she not embarrass me? At least any more than any other child?

Many people confuse a diagnosis like autism with some sort of mental or intellectual deficiency, but that is far from true. That little pip knows exactly what she’s saying and doing and is plotting for the most extreme impact she can get. And the problem is she knows I’m a sucker for it. Of course she won’t be in trouble for blurting out rude or humiliating comments because Mommy’s just so freakin’ pleased that she talks that she is bulletproof. She can have her snark and eat it too.

Oh, but you will rue the day, my child. I am even now plotting your downfall, furtively rubbing my hands in demonic glee because I know your demise is coming. You may have the gift of words, my pretty, but I have the eight-by-ten glossies of you playing naked in the sprinkler, of you sharing food with the dog, of you as a toddler kissing the cherubic boy who is even now growing up to be called The Aroma-nator in high school. Revenge is a dish best served cold and can’t nobody cook it like Mamma. Mark my words.

I am one of those truly lucky people who actually loves her job. I rarely don’t feel like going to work, and if I ever don’t want to go it’s because I’m on the verge of vomiting or someone close to me has already vomited and I’m in the enviable position of being the person who has to clean it up. I have often come to work when we’re actually closed, just to do some extra work, including one time I just forgot what day it was and showed up.

And now for the big reveal: I’m a teacher. Right off the bat you’re thinking I’m either the most dedicated teacher in the country or the one taking the most prescription pills. Neither. I just have the good fortune to work in a school that has a really awesome impact-the-future to bullshit ratio.

All of my students are currently being held against their will—like any public school student ISN’T, for that matter—in our detention facility. Not a single one of them wants to be there. Most of them are angry about their situations, some of them are confused, and still others are just numb to the whole thing. And yet, they are a joy to work with because I don’t have to put up with any of the crap that teachers in public schools tolerate on a daily basis.

First of all, we’re armed. That little black holster on my hip goes a long way towards making a kid desperate to know how Romeo and Juliet turns out. It also helps him remember to raise his hand before calling out, to go to the bathroom before class started, and to bring his homework with him on the day it’s due. The physical combat training I have to certify off on twice a year doesn’t hurt either. Well, it hurts a little, but you know what I meant.

All teachers should have it this good. My classes are separated by gender, by age, by physical size, and by ability, all things that make our program work but that you can’t get by with in the real world because you are somehow discriminating against a child by not making him sit next to a student who’s got three years and a hundred pounds on him. And you’re a bad person if you make a student believe he can’t read. The fact that the computerized test he was taking to determine his reading ability shut down in frustration during his test would be an indicator that he can’t read, but to put him in a class with other kids who can’t read is hurtful. It’s far better to put him in a class with kids of all ability levels so that he never learns to read.

It’s sad that I had to go to the correctional system to find an opportunity to genuinely teach students, but the job does have a powerful upside: every morning when I wake up for work and I look in the mirror I have to decide whether or not I am just too freakin’ hot for my own good. I do have to make myself aware of any inappropriateness from my students, and a number of them are registered sex offenders, so it’s important that I’m not too gorgeous for my own good. There has been many a day where I’ve taken that one last look in the mirror and decided, “Nope, I’m gonna have to dog-it-down some,” and have been forced to leave off my makeup, throw my hair in a pony tail, and change into sweatpants. It does wonders for the self-esteem. The fact that a woman my age is doing great if she can pull off “kinda cute” on a daily basis means I’m either working with the wrong crowd or the luckiest woman alive. Sadly, the rest of the world isn’t looking at me through incarcerated-colored glasses so I’m probably just deluding myself about my innate beauty, but don’t take this from me.

I am an avid runner, one who runs almost three thousand miles each year. Sadly, I completely hate it. If there was some way to eat as many Cheetos as I do without having to burn them off through exercise I would be all over that concept, but I am afraid it is not to be.

I make the best of it by being a part of a really dynamic group of runners, people who do this to themselves on a daily basis because their bodies actually crave the endorphin release that comes from self-torture. Or because they are constantly preparing themselves in case they find themselves locked in some sort of gulag and running to freedom is the only way to escape the starvation and the potential of freezing to death in a work camp. I personally believe they may be just too prudish for S&M and this is the closest they can get to painful physical humiliation without having to scour the internet for weirdos.

However it worked out, I found myself in charge of our club’s running race in our town lately. It was to be a 13.1 mile event, better known to the people as a half marathon, but more importantly it was a no-frills event, one without awards or fancy prizes or any superfluous safety considerations like medical assistance. The term for this kind of event in the running world is “naked,” and because I’m so strange, the Half Naked Marathon was born.

Obviously, once you put an announcement on the entire internet that you are hosting a Saturday morning get-together called the Half Naked Marathon, it’s really important that you not check your email. You would be amazed at the things people will send you when they find that your name is associated with these iconic Google identifiers. Red Bull actually called me and wanted to send the Red Bull Girls to the event, and they were the tamest offer I received. I spent several weeks explaining to strangers via telephone and email that no one at the event would actually be running without any clothes on. At least not on purpose.

I realize I am mostly to blame and that the strangers calling me had every right to feel gipped. Don’t go telling it like it isn’t, as mama used to say.

I can only think of one other instance of such blatent-yet-innocent false advertising: the ever popular but looked down upon art of underwater basket weaving. This poor maligned art form became the catch-all derogatory term for any kind of endeavor that seemed pointless, at least in the eyes of the masses. Have you ever referred to something by way of comparing it to underwater basket weaving? Of course you have. Have you ever tried underwater basket weaving? Chances are, you have not. And yet you smirk.

Let me help you for a moment: THE BASKET IS UNDERWATER, NOT THE WEAVER, MORON! I’m sorry, that was harsh, and not at all the kind of sentiment you would expect from someone who carefully works the fibers of a basket while plunging the entire creation into a bucket of very cold water. The fibers of that particular type of basket are very brittle when dry and very prone to snapping under the least bit of pressure (much like me), but if they are saturated they become very pliable. Insert random-but-hilariously-true alcohol reference here.

Admit it, all these years you’ve pictured legions of twenty-something college students wasting their parents’ carefully saved tuition dollars on pointless classes like this one in order to weave idiotic baskets in the university’s aquatics center while wearing scuba gear and claim it as their required art elective. One of my colleagues had never even pictured the scuba gear and just speculated that the weavers held their collective breaths for a long time.

All in all, there is a lot of false advertising in the world, as anyone who has ever watched the Saturday morning infomercial marathon knows. Sometimes it’s to cover up how bad a product is, sometimes it’s to make crazies on the internet think the runners in my town are really fun, and sometimes it’s just an innocent attempt to weave a freakin’ basket. You be the judge. But I am all for hosting the Half Naked Alcoholic Underwater Basket Weaving box social at my house. Bring your own crazies.

I finally opened an account on Facebook, joining millions of other people who are openly admitting they have nothing better to do. I’ve had an account with Twitter for a few weeks and I’ve already found a vital distinction between the two: with Twitter, I have to go looking for people in order to read their pithy comments, whereas on Facebook, a random classmate from junior high can find me and is instantly sent a humiliating and hurtful rejection email when I choose to click the little virtual button that tells the entire world I do not wish to be his friend. I was pretty sure that the rock I hit him with in seventh grade was my indication that I did not wish to be his friend, but apparently he believes time heals all wounds.

I do admit that I have been slightly fascinated with Facebook, but only because I’ve been an account holder for approximately four days. It will wear off shortly.

The only serious gripe that I have against Facebook is that now I am subjected to every random thought, photograph, and dubious accolade that all of these people think I need to know about. It’s like being invited to an acquaintance’s house for dinner and then being subjected to a slide show of her vacation to the Grand Canyon. Entirely against my will. I think ransom notes were exchanged.

My very dear friend went to Disney World and for the next week I was bombarded with photographs of her with every plush member of the Disney crew. The photos were cute, I admit, and the friend is very precious to me. Then she sent me a photograph of her telephone display that showed it was some 68 degrees warmer in Orlando than it is at my house. I hope It’s A Small World breaks down while she’s riding it and strands her for hours with that song.

However, her incessant bragging via Facebook about the fact that she is in Orlando and I am not pales in comparison to the daily horoscope a different friend has opted to automatically pollute my Facebook wall with, a friend who hasn’t bothered to check on the fact that thanks to an ongoing argument in the astrology world I am no longer a Virgo. Now I get to read about the freaking phenomenal day I would have had if all the astrologers could have just kept their damn mouths shut and not turned me into a Leo.

Possibly the worst thing about Facebook is I am content to look down my nose at the sheer uselessness of it but I still feel compelled to hit that little button on my phone to check it fourteen times a day (Yes, I bought a brand-new smartphone so I could have features like the ability to talk on the phone ans use the Internet at the same time…while driving my car and drinking a grande latte). I justify the compulsion by pretending that I only go there to ridicule it, like when I generically informed my entire friend list that I had updated my status to “Wearing my Snuggie.”

I will have to cut my Facebook time down to a bare minimum since I understand from genuine fans that it can really become an addiction, thereby decreasing my productivity. That’s a real concern of mine since I’m in a huge hurry to write the Facebook app that will allow all of the newbie Ophiuchuses of the world to know what is going to happen to them today.

There have been very few times that I’ve wanted to drive my car through the wall of a crowded McDonalds restaurant. I didn’t say it wasn’t on the list, I just said it doesn’t happen often.

I spent years in college to obtain a bachelor’s degree, five years in fact, since I changed my major a few times before realizing that my life’s work was destined to involve telling oversized children that yes, they could in fact go to the restroom. During those years I was a beautiful scholar, absorbing everything that I could about the educational process. Graduation day dawned as sunny as my future potential.

Less than a year later, I decided I had not learned nearly enough so I returned to graduate school at great expense and personal sacrifice. I began the process with a graduate writing fellowship, an entire semester of being sequestered in a stuffy classroom for eight hours a day to explore the craft of writing with eleven other disciples. From there, I continued on until I had obtained yet another degree in our wonderful language.

Over the years since college I’ve continued to teach, really and truly helping young people learn to love books, firmly believing that there is a book that speaks to everyone and if you just look hard enough it will find you. My mantra to my students has always been, “There are too many great books out there to waste your time reading one you don’t love.”

Then, just two short years ago, I held my breath and dove headfirst into the world of writing a book that someone could love. And then I wrote another. The process of even writing the book can hurt, as I discovered while driving home from work one day when I suddenly realized one of the key characters in my book was going to die. I sobbed all the way home.

The process of trying to get a book published is not for the faint-hearted. It’s like asking people point-blank to tell you whether or not they like you, and they are required to tell you the truth, because if you think about it, unless the book is a part of you, there was no reason to write it.

Now for the murderous rampage: Snooki from Jersey Shore has a book deal.

I was fine when Jon Stewart wrote a book because he is not only hilarious, he is actually very intelligent; ditto his cohort Stephen Colbert, who is a veritable snark genius. I lived through it when Denis Leary wrote a book because his at least was a foul-mouthed tirade on what’s wrong with our country and America needs more of those. But then rapper Jay-Z was given a book deal. And so was Paris Hilton. And so was the guy who pretended his son had floated away in a giant homemade balloon so he could get his own reality show. And so were sundry obscure relatives of only slightly less obscure celebtrities.

But then came Snooki. The embodiment of all that is wrong with America, New Jersey, and teased hair.

I spent years honing the craft of stringing as many as twenty words at a time into a useful, precise sentence, and there may now be a book in the Library of Congress by a young woman who cannot speak half that number of coherent words. Or even spell coherent. Where is the justice?

Hurry to the Guide to Literary Agents blog by Chuck Sambuchino to win a free critique of your manuscript by a real-live super agent!

Go to:

http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog

and look for the Eighth Agent Contest.

I have proven myself to be totally untrustworthy with the new coffee maker I got for Christmas. I cannot be left alone with it for even a few minutes, let alone an entire unsupervised afternoon.

In my pre-Keurig days, I would get up early and make a small pot of coffee in my four-cup Mr. Coffee. I would drink the first cup, sometimes catching it with my mouth as it dripped out of the filter basket, but once I’d downed that first cup I was awake. The remainder of the pot would go in my travel cup right before I walked out the door to be leisurely sipped as I dropped the children at their schools and then made my way to work. Granted, that second cup had been sitting on the machine’s burner plate for close to an hour, making it taste like road construction asphalt, but it was all I had to work with.

My NCD husband (non-coffee drinker) is truly an above par human being, because he’s capable of thinking vague holiday-ish thoughts like, “My wife likes chocolate, ergo, I should buy her a lot of Godiva chocolates and make her like me.” So the weeks leading up to Christmas were filled with tiny little hints about my Christmas surprise, hints like taking me to the department store, pointing at a Keurig coffee maker, and asking, “Do you like this one?” I never said he was a subtle human being, just very thoughtful.

Eventually, I found it would be easier and less potentially hurtful to just locate the specific coffee maker online, print out the item number and description, and find the names and addresses of six local stores that had the exact machine in stock. And why not? The real surprise would be the wrapping paper anyway.

So on Christmas Day, I drank my very first cup of Keurig coffee. Well, it was actually Newman’s Own brand, but it spit out into my eager mug from Keurig for which I will be forever grateful. By nine o’clock that morning, I was enjoying my fourth cup of Keurig coffee. Okay, this one was actually Caribou Coffee brand. And then I had a cup of Green Mountain Coffee brand. It was purely research, I had to find out which kind I liked best by sipping my way through the sampler pack that came with the machine in order to know which types of K-Cups to buy in the future. Or the next day as quantity would dictate.

Sadly, I ended up enjoying almost all of the sampler coffees. The good news is I was so hopped up on caffeine that I was able to take down all of the Christmas decorations, repack the ornaments in their boxes, roll up fourteen strands of lights from the shrubs out front, prepare our tax papers and our will, and take all of the present boxes and wrappings to the recycling center. On foot.

But here we are in the New Year and my Keurig addiction has not lessened. I think the culprit is the water reservoir on the side of the machine. I don’t even have to think about how much liquid is entering my body because I don’t have to fill the coffee maker. It is armed and ready at all times to provide me with liquid enlightenment at the touch of a button. I might need professional help. Or to at least switch to decaf.