OK. So… Susan’s making fun of me. I’ll own up to my deep dark secret. I don’t know know how to pump gas.

Do you still like me anyway?

I tried to think of something I could make fun of Susan for. Couldn’t think of anything. Couldn’t find a single thing online, even, to make fun of her for or anything about that place in the middle of nowhere that she’s from. That says something, I think. There’s lots written about NJ and lots written about Jersey Girls. Making fun of us is a hot topic, almost. Bruce Springsteen wrote a song about us, even. You don’t hear anyone singing songs about Mid-Western girls. So there.

Anyway, I spent a couple hours with my tongue in my cheek and came up with this, excerpted from a dozen different sources and meant to make you wish you were me, or at least, wish you were from NJ.

I was born and raised in NJ and while I often feel very damaged by this, I’m still pretty proud of it. I know what real pizza tastes like, and I know that a bagel is much more than a roll with a hole in the middle. I judge people by what exit they get off the Parkway. I can navigate a traffic circle–with attitude. I know that 65 mph really means 80. When someone cuts me off, they get the horn AND the finger. And they expect it. It’s a sub, not a hoagie or, worse yet, a hero, and I wash it down with soda, not pop. Yes, I drink cawfee, and lots of it. I’ve always lived within 10 minutes of a mall.

In NJ, I can watch the sun rise on the east coast and watch it set on the west. I can climb a mountain in the morning, swim in the ocean in the afternoon, and get robbed at gunpoint in Camden by night. It’s the only state where massive oil refineries and dairy farms are just a few miles apart.

Where I’m from… the shore… makeup, shoes and bras are optional, salty hair and sand under the fingernails a given, a strong attitude and a tough mouth a plus. I say what I mean and I’ve got a nice, cheerful laugh. I’m a Jersey Girl, and I’m one of the Garden State’s most enduring icons- a readily identifiable personality, as much a part of America’s cultural landscape as that other great Jerseyan, Frank Sinatra. I’m spunky and witty. I’ve got confidence- everyone from New Jersey has that confidence. A Jersey Girl is crunchy on the outside, and soft in the center. At the center of the crunchy sweet exterior, I’m tuned in and know how and what I’m working.

The Jersey Girl mystique is hard to put into words. One would never say earthy-that’s way too California. Gritty gets closer when you understand that a true Jersey Girl sleeps just fine with sand in the bed. Jersey Girls go to the beach, or “down the Shore” They’re not formal. We know good corn and tomatoes when we taste them, and we never pump our own gas!!!

So there.

😉

Is there anything people from your part of the blogosphere are known for or made fun of for? Big hair or a bad accent or ?

Parts of this made me howl with laughter:

From KGMom

Go ahead, you know you want to try it, too!

It sounded simple. So deceptively simple that I should’ve known it would turn nightmarish. We’d finally decided to spend the money to have central air put in the house. A couple thousand dollars, a couple holes in the ceilings for vents, duct work in the attic, the husband off from work for a couple days to supervise the AC guys. Simple.

That last bit was the dangerous part. While the husband was home to supervise, I was off chasing birds, and no one was here to supervise the husband. A husband with lots of time on his hands. Idle hands. Hands that have been itching for years to get their muscle into remodeling the bathroom. The one bathroom. The only bathroom in this little house.

Aside from my almost total inability to make decisions concerning anything as important as paint color and tile dimensions and faucet finishes, there was the stumbling block of this being the only bathroom in our house. That one in the picture up there, all torn apart. How do you manage a bathroom remodel while continuing to live there? We hadn’t figured that out and I thereby had the perfect excuse to continue to postpone any horrid decorating decisions.

Right. So everything seemed fine here when I got in from work at the end of day one of the AC installation. There was lots of banging and dust and strange men roaming about the place, but fine nevertheless.

Then I went away to chase birds.

There were periodic updates from the husband. The first inkling of a problem was the report of a crack in the dining room ceiling and vague mention of a leak *somewhere in the bathroom* discovered via a puddle on the workbench in the basement below. My panic was assuaged by assurances that it was a quick fix – a seal on the toilet – nothing complicated.

The quick fix turned into a need to replace parts of the subfloor damaged by said leak.

The next phone call had me picking out vanities from memory. See… there was another leak, in the wall, behind the sink… so we’ll have to tear the wall down to fix the leak. And while the wall’s down, we might as well replace the vanity, right?

Months ago we had walked through that aisle in Home Depot. And could I remember which one I liked?

At this point I wasn’t sure what I was more panicked about: the bathroom being torn apart or my husband making decorating decisions on his own.

😉

I got in yesterday to find a new bathtub in my driveway and sheetrock in my living room. As I write, the husband is tearing down walls and cursing and mumbling about replacing a windowsill. Luka is having a ball, snarfing up bits of fallen wall and the odd nail. And I’m wondering where I’ll shower for work in the morning.

But hey… the AC went in without a hitch.

😉