Dear Dr. Maude,

I don’t know if you remember me. I’m the girl who lives upstairs and used to write you e-mails. You know—the ones that you never replied to? I know—it’s been, like, six months since I’ve written to you. (Can you believe it’s already April and I’ve been living in New York City for a year?! I can’t.) Sorry about that. It’s just that (a) after the wedding my life got really, REALLY busy, and (b) I guess now that I’m so much wiser—you know, seeing that I now GET MY PERIOD AND ALL—I realized that the chances of you writing back to me are about as great as me waking up with my hair down to my butt. (Not that that won’t happen at some point, but it’ll probably take at least four years.)

Anyway, if for whatever reason you do read these e-mails and just don’t respond to them because, I don’t know, you just don’t, but the fact that they’re no longer appearing in your in-box makes you sad, then I’m sorry. But like I said, things have just been crazy.

First of all, other than everyone eating a lot of apples over the weekend, the wedding went very smoothly. When Blair Lerner-Moskovitz showed up, I didn’t think it would, but it did. We even kind-of, sort-of danced together for a second. Since then we’ve been hanging out. Not really in a boyfriend/girlfriend way (I’m not even exactly sure what that would mean, but I just intuitively know—probably because I AM NOW A GIRL WHO GETS HER PERIOD and therefore has excellent intuition—that that’s not what it is. Maybe because there’s no kissing involved.)

Instead we do things like go for walks in Central Park and to different bakeries around town. And next weekend we’re going to ComicCon (have you heard of it? It’s a comic book festival) which, to be honest, I do NOT want to go, but I am because sometimes with friends you do things they want to do. Even if you have no interest. Laurel says that we’re just taking it slow, which is a good thing and the best basis for a relationship. At least that’s what all the articles in the magazines she reads say. I’m not in a hurry or anything. I’m just happy I have his name in the crush log. Although I still have to find boys for the other two crushes…

I got back from the wedding to a ton of e-mails from kids needing advice. Because my fingers got all crampy typing up the responses, I came up with an idea that I hope doesn’t make you feel like I’m a total copycat when you hear it. In order not to have to type so much, I decided that once a week, I would hold a meeting after school where kids could come and ask their questions and get advice right then and there. It’s not filmed and aired on TV, so it’s not like I’m COMPLETELY copying you and I have my own show or anything, but I guess it’s a little like what you do.

Well, it totally took off. To the point where I had to move it from the classroom where Spanish class is held to the cafeteria. I don’t think you’ve ever been to my school, but if you had, you would know that the cafeteria is REALLY big. It doesn’t get completely filled, but sometimes it’s close. I’m even thinking of continuing it during summer break.

So, as you can imagine from your own show (not that this is an actual show), I’m very busy. Plus, ever since the Week with Wendi episode aired back in February, I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails from different kids around the country asking me for advice about their own blended-family issues. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but there are a lot of us blended-family kids. In fact, not to tell you what to do, but you might want to do an episode on that subject.

I don’t know if you saw it, but the show turned out great. There was some stuff with Mom acting all stressy, but it was balanced with footage where we were all getting along and acting goofy. I guess to the average viewer, we may seem a little weird, but according to Mom, EVERY family is weird in its own way. For someone who isn’t big on reality shows (unless she’s super stressed out about getting married), Mom was very happy with how it turned out.

Marci—that’s Laurel’s publicist—got the network to agree to repeat the episode again in January right before the Academy votes for the Oscars. Hopefully it’ll help. Although from the dailies of the movie that Laurel let me see, she won’t need any help at all because her performance is AWESOME. (In case you don’t know what dailies are, that’s the footage from the day’s shooting on a movie or TV show.)

Well, I should get going. Beatrice is coming over so we can take photos of Miss Piggy and Dr. Maude to submit to this Animal BFFs contest I saw advertised on the Animal Planet website. They’re so BFF now it’s a little on the nauseating side. I know I said I wanted a kitten to make up for the fact that my other cat hated me, but I didn’t think about the fact that THIS would happen.

I hope everything’s good for you. This is going to sound weird, but even though you never wrote me back, you’ve really helped me over the last few years. It’s hard to explain, but just knowing you’re out there somewhere has made me feel better as I’ve dealt with stuff.

Maybe we’ll run into each other in the elevator one day.

Or not.

yours truly,

Lucy B. Parker