Over the past month, I’ve been given three awards by six different bloggers, and true to form, I’m just getting around to acknowledging them now. It isn’t that I’m ungrateful. It’s that I’m self-conscious about a lot of things, so I’ll never get used to receiving an award. I don’t even know what to do with a casual compliment. If someone says, “Hey, nice shirt,” I launch into a backpedaling flurry of deflections and explanations that would make you think I’ve just been mistakenly given a Nobel Prize in Economics.

“This shirt? Oh, well, I didn’t make the shirt. I just bought it. And it was on sale. Actually, it was buy one, get one free. It was made in Bangladesh. That’s really why I bought it. I figured, Bangladesh, it must be good quality. I feel a little guilty, because Bangladesh is one of those places I don’t think…