Desserts are my downfall. If it involves ice cream / chocolate / coffee / cookies / cupcakes / cheesecakes / sweet gooey goodness I'm going to be all over it or struggling to stay well away from it. Fruit, too. I will eat the fuck out of fresh fruit. I love everything that's sweet.

So, I'll look to nostalgia for my favorite dessert. When my brother and I were little our grandmother used to take us to Friendly's and we'd split a brownie sundae. Hot rich brownie with ice cream melting all over it and whipped cream and chocolate syrup on top. There were nuts and cherries, too. If I'd known what orgasms were I would have said it was orgasmic.

What made the sundae especially special was that my brother and I were meticulous about sharing it fairly to the point that we'd cut the cherry in half, and once we got down to the last bite, we'd bisect it and bisect it until it was nearly microscopic because neither of us wanted to take the honor of the Last Bite from the other.

It's all recommended to me by my friends, my Mikey, or my bands. Hint hint, tell me stuff to listen to. <3

I love karaoke, but only with people who are in it to be silly and goofy and have fun, and not take it too seriously.

My best friend and I will do AC/DC with full on Bon Scott voice, or I'll sing "Makedamnsure" and fling myself backwards onto the floor when I'm through. It's fun as all hell. But sometimes we'll be with someone who wants to sing like they're on American Idol and gives our antics the evil side-eye or just pretends they don't know us, and we will not stand for that.

I don't wanna talk. I just want to text you.

My Chemical Romance's "Famous Last Words" and The Beatles' "Let It Be" are tied for 1st place, and about ten Taking Back Sunday's songs are battling for the next spot.

I love children because they are brilliant, pure little human beings who are full of empathy, love, acceptance, creativity, and imagination. And then adults talk them out of it.

I love it. I could stand to love it a little bit less.

Sitar-day.

Soymilk. V8. Diet Coke. Seltzer.

Ketchup. Three different kinds of mustard. Balsamic vinegar. Stir-fry sauce. Tabasco sauce. Salsa.

Hummus. Four kinds of natural sugar-free fruit preserves and one natural sugar-free unsalted peanut butter. Soy cheddar cheese.

Baby carrots. Fresh fennel. Red Delicious apples. Golden yellow apples.

Walnuts. Cashews. Almonds. Pecans. (All unsalted)

Aaaaaand frosted cherry poptarts. Those are not mine.

My earliest memory is from when I was about two and a half years old. My mom took me with her to the doctor to listen to the heartbeat that was going to be my baby brother. My earliest memory is of falling in love at first sound.

Well. I'm all bony ribcage on top with long skinny arms, but I still have a poky soft little belly, so I think I look like E.T. I have been told I look like Olive Oyl, though. Whatever I look like, it's not nearly enough like Mikey Way.

I'm boring when it comes to parties because I prefer the quieter ones where I get to hang out and talk to people. When I was in college, my sorority and the other greek organizations made really fun parties that usually included some awesome theme or game, and I always had fun, but even then I preferred it when it was getting to be the middle of the night when most people had gone home and it quieted down. The rest of us would sit around talking, and sometimes we'd go to the basement of the fraternity we were close friends with and their band would play. They knew I wouldn't go home until they'd played "L.A. Woman" so sometimes they'd put it off.

The last weekend of the Taking Back Sunday / Thursday / Colour Revolt tour was one giant Best Party in Indianapolis and Chicago. I'm having such a hard time these past few months, I'd give almost anything to go back to those evenings for an hour or two.

I've always preferred to call them "invisible friends."

At 11:11 in the morning and in the evening I foolishly wished for people to have more empathy for one another. No more indifference or hatred. Compassion and a desire to understand each other and help one another. I think lack of empathy is at the heart of all intolerance and prejudice, of the imbalance in wealth in our country, of inequality, and of violence.

As far as doing anything fun and celebratory, though, I met mySteph in Jersey after work and we went to the Tick Tock diner and made a trade of our old My Chem merch.

Scissors, obviously. ;)

Every once in a while, I'll have myself a merry little anxiety attack worrying about just this. That nothing I know is real. That I'm in the Matrix, or in a coma, and everyone I love is my own mind's creation or a distortion of people I knew Before. Maybe my best friend is really my deceased sister, and my husband is someone I saw in a supermarket once, and my brother who is practically my twin is actually myself and I'm the one who doesn't exist. Maybe I'm from a rural town and have only ever dreamed of seeing New York City. Maybe Adam Lazzara is my psychiatrist. I seriously would not be surprised.

It's part existential and part too much sci fi, but I think overall I like it here. If I'm in a coma I'd rather stay. Real or not, it's real to me.

Most of the time, it's all about the ketchup. A lagoon of Heinz ketchup.

But sometimes I'll have really good, really hot and thick cut fries, and I'll have some really good, spicy horseradishy mustard on hand, and I'll put them together and wriggle with happiness.

My mother had a large, gaudy, gorgeous opal ring that was stolen from our apartment when I was little. It had belonged to her aunt, and I forget who it had belonged to before that, but it had been passed down through a few generations and it was supposed to be mine when I turned 18.

There were some neighborhoods of New York City that were really disgusting in the 1980s, and I lived in one in Brooklyn. I always tell people that NYC isn't the dirty violent hellhole of crime you see in movies, but in the 1980s, it actually was, and there was a streak of apartment robberies one winter. My mother's opal ring and one other piece of jewelry were taken when our apartment was hit. That was all that was taken.

I was devastated that the one piece of jewelry I was to inherit from my mother's side of the family was gone, but more than that I was surprised that a burglar would go through the trouble of kicking in three doors--the doors to the building, the stairs, and our apartment--and ransack our whole apartment and find only two little things worth stealing. I felt very judged. Even though I was a child, I knew we didn't have a lot of money, but I never felt so ashamed of it as I did thinking about a stranger, a criminal, looking at our possessions and deciding what had value. That made me feel sick.

Psh. I still sleep with the Care Bear I've had for so long I don't remember not having hir. At this point ze's less to keep the nightmare's away and more that I don't breathe well unless my arm is supported, but I still sleep hugging my little Care Bear.

I have a lot of horror stories scattered throughout my concert experiences, which are overall positive. Nothing can ruin the way it feels to be crushed in with people who are all singing together, and knowing that we may not be connecting the lyrics to the exact same experiences in our individual lives but we're still sharing something deep and emotional together.

I've also seen a lot of really beautiful behavior at concerts, people looking out for one another and sometimes being generous with whatever picks or setlists they get their hands on. I believe in concert karma when it comes to that. When you go out of your way to look out for someone and make sure they're having a good time, someone else will end up looking out for you. The love comes back to you somehow. I was even lucky enough that the night I gave a crying stranger my treasured but unused Mikeyway pick, I ended up catching the pick Mikeyway threw after the encore!