Old Bry looks nothing like New Bry, still acts the same.

The first thing I do when I wake up is reach for my phone to check my email. 

I've recently become obsessed with The Plaid Barn. Every day, The Plaid Barn posts one craft related item at a huge discount. They only sell one thing at a time and it is different every day. The posts go live on the east coast at 8am which means, depending on the item, it could be sold out by the time I wake up at 8am PST. 

And while I search for the day's deal, I get to wade through at least twenty junk emails. Like the one pictured below. 

While I realize it is the work of a complex set of algorithms and subtly planted cookies that Amazon knows to email me such things, it is more fun to imagine I'm on the their internal list of spinster customers.

I shudder to think of the things they would send me if I really did have cats. 

What Amazon doesn't know is that while I did Google search "pet strollers,"  it was so I could post a picture of one on Facebook as an example of what "rock bottom" is in pet ownership. Or at least that is what I keep telling myself. 

Truth is, I've always had a great love for pets. Here is some photographic evidence from my youth.

Two dogs, Mickey the wiener and Andy the poodle. I'm going to start a band called Poodles and Wieners. Or a burlesque show. I can't decide.

I always used to say "where is that picture of me double fisting two dogs?" until I realized that double fisting is something else. Please do yourself a favor and do not Google "double fisting." You can thank me later.

Clearly I have not out grown the double dog duty. There is Mondo and his frenemy, Rocky "The Rock" Johnson.

I realize that while I'm babbling on about dogs and double fisting, you are more concerned with the glasses I wore as a ten year-old. 

Take a look. Take it all in. This is Bry Hoeg at her best. I'm a dude.

Or how about this one? Classic. Don't be jealous. My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.

The Map of Places Not Forgotten

(a semi-autobiographical piece of fiction)

I drove the long way home today. Ten extra blocks due east of you to avoid looking at your apartment building, a place you no longer live, but where memories remain, even on the sidewalk in front of the big bay windows.

And I couldn't drive straight down Broadway because I didn't want to look at the place we shared our first kiss. You can't close your eyes when you are driving or I'd surely squeeze them tight every time I round 60th and Belmont. The long, lingering walks we used to take leave this city divided and subdivided by invisible boundaries that crisscross the history of our time together.

I learned to read a map in third grade social studies. The strict grid system stretched over the textbook pages - north, south, east, and west. If the blue car travels down Ash street and passes Main, Second, and Third streets, which street will it pass next? F-O-U-R-T-H, I diligently wrote in my tall, fat, loopy script, my eight year-old hands tightly gripping the pencil.

I learned to read a map in the third grade, I figured directions and found longitude and latitude. I could tell you where the longest rivers were and where to find mountains and forests. The alphabetical streets always ran perpendicular to the numbered ones.

I learned to read a map, but it doesn't help me avoid the places I cannot forget. The pubs and parks, the 7-11 and the movie theater.

The last time I saw you, we walked to the top of the hill. The moon was full and the cold was creeping through my coats and scarf. We stood and watched the stars come out and you told me a story about going fishing. As I listened to you, I closed my eyes and wished for more time. You kept talking, your low voice rumbling in the night and light puffs of breath swirled from your mouth. I looked further out in the distance, where the tops of the trees ended and the city lights twinkled, and I knew that I would think of you 1000 times in the years to come, but this was the last time we would watch the lights come on together.

So now I drive the long way home, following the secret lines on a map of places I've not forgotten.

Our Own Private Stand By Me.

This is by far one of my most favorite pictures of my two brothers and I.

That exquisite creature on the right, showing gang colors with a bandanna around her head, is me. To my immediate left is my brother MH and in front of us, with his head on our beloved (and clearly exhausted) dog Annie, is my oldest brother JH. This picture was taken by our mother CH during our very first ever hiking trip, into the wilderness of Blodgett Canyon. It was the summer of 1992 and I was 11.

I would also like to point out that I'm wearing boxer shorts, which I hiked in for days, and that you can clearly see the skin of my belly through the gap in the crotch of the shorts. I can neither confirm nor deny if I was wearing underwear beneath the boxers.

Here is another picture from the same trip. Though I'm looking away from the camera in this shot, you can still get the full effect of my tomboyness.

I'm breathtaking.

Speaking of breathtaking, apparently there is some story about me farting a lot in the tent one night and CB made me cry. I don't remember this. I'm sure I blocked it out as 1) farting is gross, and 2) I don't cry that often because there is something wrong with my heart and my tear ducts.

I recently gained access to a scanner so you can look forward to lots of old pictures of Bry Hoeg and learn more about my coming of age.

Like, for example, how I used to be cross-eyed and looked like Jesse Eisenberg.

And a complete series of pictures where my belly is sticking out.

Gird your loins. You are about to get to know me.

And on a serious note. No, seriously. Don't be mean.

When I was in eighth grade, one day in art class, I remember getting up to sharpen my pencil and hearing some snickering. I looked around and I saw a group of kids giggling. They were the popular kids.

We were drawing still-lifes and the teacher had assembled a jumble of branches, vases, and antlers on a table in the center of the room.

As I walked back to the table to sit down I had a small panic attack that maybe I had started my period but didn't know. Isn't it funny that as young teens girls, our biggest fear is that someone will know we are on our period?

 I sat back down at the table and the giggling continued. I finally approached the teacher and asked to use the bathroom. As soon as I got to the girl's room, thankfully empty, I was relieved to see that everything was fine. Even my hair looked good (This was shortly before I cut my bangs to look like Janeane Garofalo's as seen in Reality Bites). I was wearing my favorite flannel shirt, it was after all the height of Seattle grunge chic. My love for Kurt Cobain was in its early stages.

I returned to the classroom to find everyone cleaning up so I put the whole incident out of my mind and decided I was paranoid. But the rest of the day, and as I moved through the halls during breaks, I could feel people staring at my back, and when I turned it always seemed to be some of the group from art class in the vicinity.

Later that night as I got undressed, I realized that someone had written on my shirt.

I could only think of one moment when I had taken it off, in art class, so I wouldn't get charcoal on the sleeves.

Written in small blue ink, in the squares of the plaid, were the words SLUT, FAT, DUMB, BITCH.

From the distance of age and time, I can laugh as I think of these stupid kids writing such mean and untrue insults. Well perhaps FAT.

But SLUT? Come on. Not only was I still riding the Virgin Express, but my interest in boys didn't move past maybe we can hold hands.

DUMB? Never a day in my life.

BITCH? Maybe now, but in junior high I was anything but mean. I was a nice girl who just wanted to be friends with everyone.

But that night, as I hid the flannel shirt in the garbage can, I was convinced it was the worst thing that ever happened to me.

I was a nerdy kid. I read all the time. My mom had cancer. I spent two years of my life convinced she was going to die any minute. We didn't have any money. I shopped at K-Mart. I followed in the footsteps of two older brothers, one a sports star and one a well-liked rebel.

This was not the first bullying I was the brunt of, and certainly not the last, but it is a memorable event in that it was one of the first times I remember consciously deciding to keep it a secret.

Last night I had a conversation with a friend who admitted to bullying when she was younger. She said "I'm sure the girl doesn't remember it." And I got really angry. I said "Fuck you. She for sure remembers it, even if she says she doesn't."

Do you know how old I was when this happened? 14

How old am I now? 31

Is it the worst thing to happen to me? No

In fact, when I think back to that time in my life, I'm glad I got bullied because I think in the long run it made me a better person. But I'm also a strong enough and rational enough person to make it through.

But never in my life would I ever want a person to go through the same thing.

On a serious note, don't be mean.