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Maybe I Should Just Go Commando.

2 Feb

It’s February 2nd and I’ve completed my taxes.

Which, I guess, is exactly how I thought my enthralling life journal entry would start in my early thirties. 

It’s a strange time in jackieland. For example, I’ve completed my taxes and should feel like an accomplished, grown ass woman. But just the other evening I know that I genuinely ripped a hole in my underwear at the theater from like, just pulling them up casually. It’s hard to get a grasp on where my degree of maturity lies when I’m able to complete complicated tax forms unassisted while also not being able to just put on my own damn underwear.

I’ve been experiencing a lot of this in my current decade of life – badassery accompanied by befuddling incapability. Just a few short months ago, I found myself with a flat tire the same morning that I was due at a local university to interview supposedly bright young minds for the opportunity to get a scholarship. I recall that morning being frantic. I’d stayed overnight somewhere I hadn’t originally intended to stay (again: it’s an interesting decade) and thought I’d go home in the morning to make myself presentable before popping over to campus. But the flat tire put me in a position to have to go straight there with no opportunity to go home. Not being in my own house, and not being close enough to those I was staying with to borrow what I needed or request a shower, my only path to grace was a Family Dollar located across the street.

I had no intention of landing myself in day-long interviews with young, impressionable minds when I had a mouth full of plaque and some pretty staggering body odor – so I had to take what I could get where I could get it.

One pack of too-tight peach leopard print underwear, some knock-off-brand travel toothpaste, a washcloth once-over, and a bottle of deep-discount Nikki Minaj body lotion later,  I’m at the university very seriously interviewing a student about her level of general competence and looking pretty damn put together. And I’m thinking to myself: am I really judging this girl’s right to a merit-based scholarship while I have a bag beside me with a tow bill, a half eaten box of Pop Tarts, and a ball of dirty underwear?

Yes. Yes I was.

Side note: why do most of my adulthood challenges involve problems with my underwear?

I am, however, making progress. For example, as many of you know, I’ve been working for quite some time on initiating a daily morning ritual. As yet another way of combating what seems to be an absence of polished presentation of my own adulthood, I have been attempting to mold myself into a “morning person.” I had visions of waking up, eating a real breakfast, reading something or other, and taking my damn time before I got to work. Kind of like a dad from a comic strip. At the time I set out with that goal, I hadn’t actually seen the sun rise with my own eyes for at least a year. And finally, nearly two years later, I’ve gotten myself in line enough to complete a daily morning ritual every day of 2018.

Oh, did you think 365s weren’t a thing just because I started to post less?  

Hey: this seems like a real good time for my jackieblog soap box. Allow me to address the importance of a 365 Challenge in your life: yes, yours.

If you’re a new duck around these parts, you should know that this whole blog thing started with a daily challenge. It’s kind of a big deal around here, the 365. If you haven’t yet already in your life, I urge you to deeply consider a real dedication to something you want to better about yourself for 365 straight days. It’s simple and incredibly hard all at once and you can totally do it. You can read all about it and about lots of badass mofos who have done it before here. 

Don’t worry if you think you can’t pull something of that magnitude off. You definitely can. I know because I did and I can’t even put on my underwear without struggle. Or find a bathroom in a public place. Or try new things without paralyzing amounts of fear striking through my heart. So you can totally do it. You don’t even need to wait until the beginning of a new year. You can start any time, and you should.

Okay – soap box back in the closet.

All this talk of my general incompetence as compared to what is perhaps the public perception of my competence has gotten me thinking: it’s been a long time since I opened the local paper, randomly selected a frightening new adventure, and sought to conquer it. What do we call those? Oh, Lollipop Tuesdays. It’s been a hot minute since I set out to compete in something I had no business competing in, or showing up at a club of which I was not a member. I’m worried I’m too rusty. No: I know I’m too rusty because thinking about doing it makes me upset.

Sigh.

The time has come.

I’ll be back soon to report. Wish me luck? ♣

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The Island of Misfit Pets

6 Jul
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photo cred: tao lin on Flickr

 

I did it guys. I finally got a new cat. I know you were worried.

That’s why I sent out last week’s blog post as a silent cry for help on the wind rather than written words. Because I was preoccupied with forcing two distinct members of an incredibly territorial species to work through determining who the Alpha between them will be without losing fur or blood in the process. It’s hard work, being a cat lady. I know it looks like we just lay around with our cats all the time but that’s our reward for having spent several months to a year with no sleep while we try to bait and lure and feed our companions into coexisting in the same room with us.

As those of you who have been following along will remember, I recently lost one of the best cats to ever live. Top ten, she was. And when she passed, I got super sad and my remaining cat – a kitten – was confused and weird about it. My plan was for him to learn from her super cool ways and for him to grow up to be totally great. But she was sick and he kept running his head directly into hard objects – seemingly on purpose – so he couldn’t have remembered anything anyway.

As the weeks and months went on and Monk was left to his own concussive devices, it became clear to me that he needed more than just me in order to get by. He followed me into absolutely every room. He would wake up from a dead damn sleep because I needed to go grab a tissue or a drink, follow me sleepdrunkenly into the next room, follow me back, and lie down again. While that’s endearing and all, it can translate to moments like when I’m trying to relieve myself and he’s staring at me, directly in front of the toilet. Or when I’m trying to take a shower and he’s screaming outside it because he can’t get in and then screaming inside it because I let him and now he’s wet. These, along with a host of other adorably awful habits, have led to a sincere decline in hours of sleep, because cats are nocturnal and I’m asleep at night and he absolutely hates that.

So I got another cat.

Here she is: her name is Lil.

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Lil is her preferred name. Lily if you must. Pippalily if we’re being fancy, and sometimes we are.

I got Lil from Animal Friends after help from a few volunteers and an adoption counselor who listened to my plight and tried to help me find the right personality to put in my Monk blender. My hope was that I would find a friend to balance him out a bit and give him something that would occupy him, thereby cutting down on a slew of terrible habits we had developed. Hopefully including his tendency to charge walls with his head.

In some ways it worked. In others, it became far worse.

You never know what you’re going to get with a cat. There’s just no way to know what they’re made of until you get them home and comfortable, and that takes time. It’s then, when you’ve worked for weeks to help them achieve optimum comfort – after you’ve put cat trees all over your house, matted your clothes with their fur, tripped over and stepped on toys around every corner, and begun to let them eat your breakfast yogurt with you– that you realize you have, in fact, fallen in love with an asshole.

Sometimes they’re not assholes – they’re just broken – and I get broken ones. Ones that squawk, ones that suddenly jump up and clutch the middle of the window screen with all four paws in the dead of night.

My parents have one who wants you to spank his ass. I’m not even kidding. He loves it. I’ve spent many a visit to my parents’ when dad and I will be up late watching a movie and an action scene will be underscored by the spanking of the cat’s ass by my father while it squeals with joy.

Maybe it’s us, though, now that I think about it. Our family is like an island of misfit pets. 

Lil likes to make biscuits. That’s when they knead your skin and fat to make a bed (usually on your belly); it’s super great for your self image. I’ve only known her for about a week, and man: she loves to get pastries moving. She does it all the time, everywhere she goes. She’s obsessive. There was no way to know in the shelter.

This is only week one. Imagine what I’ll find when she gets settled in the rest of the way.

Anyway now that I have two of them again, certain Monk behaviors have already been curbed. Others have gotten significantly worse because Lil does them too. Which makes me think that my love of cats might be the largest negative contributor to my emotional and physical wellbeing. Here’s how things are shaping up on my Monk habit-ridding list, one week in:

  • Wailing at the top of his kitten lungs when he suspects I might be within a mile of the house but not inside it.
  • Suddenly and without warning breaking into a dead sprint from one end of the apartment to the other, often across my chest as I sleep – DOUBLED DOWN
  • Obsessively eating garbage that can legit kill him
  • Getting on the table, fighting the human for food – DOUBLED DOWN
  • Punching me directly in the eyeball to wake up in the morning – DOUBLED DOWN
  • Waiting until I round a corner and grabbing my legs like a razor-clawed koala
  • Staring directly into the depths of my soul while I relieve myself – DOUBLED DOWN (It’s a little like the twin moment in The Shining. And sure, I can close the door – but they yell. Loudly.)
  • Eating my hair
  • Spontaneously splatting one’s self onto the middle of the window screen and holding on with all four paws until I pull them all out

So, it’s going kind of okay? I guess? Except I’ve picked up a host of other, 2-cat-specific scenarios, such as:

  • Allowing them to be in the same room momentarily only to find Monk putting Lil in a sleeper hold within 60 seconds
  • Play fighting with me directly in the middle. If I move, they move – and start from the top
  • Yelling at the top of their lungs because they’re not in the same room; being totally asinine when they are

At the moment, for example, I’m going about my day out in the world, while I’m quite certain Monk is boring a hole through my bedroom door so he can go strangle Lil for funsies. It can take up to a year or sometimes more to get cats to play nice – and sometimes they just never do.

Wish me luck, y’all. Remember that the species I’m dealing with here is incredibly territorial. If I’m too successful, it’s possible for them to join forces and push me out altogether.

If that happens, I’ll try to grab my laptop in the frenzy so I can tell you about how it went down. ♣

PS – Adopt a pet. There’s nothing quite as heartwarming as a punch or two to the face every morning because you’ve been missed in the past 8 hours. Really.

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I Need Your Dog Real Quick

10 Jun

I’ve been in Portland for a few days for a work thing and I’m wondering if I’ll bother to jump the plane back home. Portland, Oregon – not Portland, Maine – just in case you were wondering. I’ve been told no one but me ever does, but hey: just in case.

I think the hotel I’m staying at is built specifically to keep me here. There’s a button on my phone that I can push that says “get it now” and if I push it, I can have them deliver a pint of locally made ice cream to my door. On-demand ice cream. The new world is a marvel.

They also have something called a dog spiritual menu. At first I thought this meant that I could steal a random dog from the street and pamper him with a hot stone massage or get its chakras balanced, but it turns out it’s just a library of books available to me on pet psychology and whatnot. However, the front desk is also happy to help refer me to a pet psychic if it will make my stay more memorable, so I’m currently on the hunt for a dog with an owner who isn’t paying much attention to them. 

pet psychic

I know, pup. I have a lot of questions too. (photo cred: Joseph Morris)

There’s also a pillow menu. In case I’m not content with the 6 pillows on my bed already, I can call someone and custom order the type of pillow I would prefer. I’m not sure how to do that without sounding like a total and complete A-hole, but the curiosity is killing me. Do they bring sample pillows for me to choose from? Do they wheel a cart into my room with little fancy placards labeling their firmness? Why aren’t the pillows they bring up already represented among the several pillows already on my bed? WHY ARE THEY WITHHOLDING SECRET PILLOWS. WHY DO I HAVE TO CALL TO UNLOCK THEM?

In spite of these luxuries, this boutique hotel is lacking the only amenity worth booking for: the good old fashioned continental breakfast. I gotta say, I’m getting pretty tired of classy-claiming hotels that don’t give me free breakfast. In what world do I shell out more money than it takes to stay at a Holiday Inn to have my morning made-to-order omelet replaced with nothing but a pitcher of fresh cucumber water? Why can I rent a book from a dog wellness library and not get some free morning toast?

Maybe I’d feel differently if the amenities were geared toward cats instead of dogs. I’d swap out my free daily breakfast in exchange for someone getting inside Monk’s head. That cat is in dire need of some psychoanalysis. Really. I should have put him on a leash and stowed him in the plane. I could distract him with a damp sponge bath at the hotel while I have someone get to the bottom of what makes him punch me in the eyeball with his furpaw at 4am.

Even if they offered a cat spiritual menu, I’d still need to work up the chutzpah to pick up the phone and request it. I have yet to work up enough to request the pillow menu and ice cream. I don’t mean that from a lazy perspective (although – yes.), but just from a phone-hating perspective. I don’t even like to talk to my friends on the phone. I have a longstanding friend (15 years now?) with whom I have only exclusively chatted online. I credit it as the reason we’ve been able to hang in there so long. Still – the curiosity is killing me. I should call.

I really have to continually work at to getting over these sorts of little hangups in my quest to not become a bitter old shut-in. So, it’s decided: tomorrow is the big day: I’m going to pick up the phone, dammit. I want a firmer pillow. And a body pillow. All of the secret pillows. I should also grab a dog real quick just to get my full money’s worth from my stay. If I can just work up the courage to commit a tiny bit of random dog theft and pick up the phone, I can celebrate my wins in a pile of pillow with a $12 pint of hand-delivered ice cream.

Maybe I can even manage to save half of it for breakfast. ♣

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Thank You Lord, for the Death of My Phone

31 May
phone RIP

photo: Judit Kline on flickr

Wow, last week’s post was an emotional knapsack that was unpacked every time a new wave of friends and family read it. Which was kind of the point, I suppose– that’s a lot fewer people who will be upset when I go to the court house or Costa Rica or nowhere at all. It’s also exactly what I had the most anxiety about. (See how I feel when people I know read my blog).

That was a nice fast-track to figuring out how to have those conversations on the daily.

Just kidding; I was terrible at the conversations.

After the last post, my phone had at least three texts each and every day from brand new people with ideas for how they thought I could have a wedding in a way that was low key and palatable for my perpetually anxious and awkward self. I also had phone calls. Someone even took it upon themselves to start asking around about arrangements with the most excellent but terribly executed intentions (Iknowyou’rereadingthis, it’stotallyfindon’tworryaboutit, Iloveyoupleasedon’tcallmeandtalkaboutitmorexoxoxo). And the sweet whisper of elopement echoed ever louder in the chambers of my brain.

I was beginning to groan every time my phone received a new text because it was inevitably about the post – a post about how I wanted the attention surrounding the subject of the post to go away. I realize, now, my naivete and that there is humor somewhere in it all. Regardless, the joke never translated well for me. Or rather it did – but into more of a firey hell rage than schoolgirl laughter.

Admist all the personal backlash, following a particularly serious big-girl-pants day at work, I came home to realize I’m getting too lax about the definition of a week when I say I’ll post “weekly” and that it was time to throw up a post about whatever dried up bits were in the corners of my brain. Just as I was about to settle in to a nice evening celebrating my work wins and anticipating a high five by the end of the night for posting to the blog, I checked my phone for yet another wedding-related text and found instead a sleek, solid black bar where my phone used to be. Dead.

No warning, no reason, no sense. Just gave up the ghost.

I immediately thought of all the many ways this was going to cause me pain in the coming days. I couldn’t take a work call going from one place to another, I couldn’t use my phone to ignore the men hassling me downtown using various pastry references for my body parts, I can’t text my mom in the morning to make sure she doesn’t go postal and burn down the post office where she works. This could get serious.

I immediately made myself a plate of bacon for dinner to come up with a game plan.

Alas, I had none. But as I chewed on the skins of dead swine, it occurred to me that for as long as it takes me to figure out the phone situation, I wouldn’t have to endure the nagging from anyone about wedding-related hootenanny. I could just keep the thing shut down and avoid it all. Hell, I could double down and get off all social media, put whatever I want on my blog, and force people to have to interact with me virtually to tell me how they feel. Perhaps this is the answer I’ve been looking for since I first set out to find a blogland Jackie / real Jackie life balance.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a plan for the in-person conversations yet (which truly are the worst of them all) grey gardens 2except to perhaps fashion a disguise for myself. Some sort of Grey Gardens-esque getup that no one will venture a guess that I’m hiding beneath. Disguised by day, unapproachable at work, and absent on social media: it’s the way to revert to the life I wanted – to have an open space to regale internet-based strangers with the hyperbolic inner monologue of my brain, to sometimes push myself to do something terrifying with the safety net of sharing that humility with people I would never have to worry about meeting or talking to, and to have a healthy online social life in lieu of a real one so as to prevent myself from shriveling up like hermity little raisin.

If properly leveraged, my brick of a phone could open the door to the next big chapter in my life: complete absence from reality. Let us take a moment to thank the Good Lord above for this unexpected blessing – both for the phone’s sudden passing and for the ability to see the silver lining in what would, at first glance, simply be a modern-day mediocre tragedy:

An iPhone Prayer

Thank you, Dear Lord, for the death of my phone

Though at first I cursed this wretched life

For the people who speak to me

For those who recognize me at parties

For those who traversed the space between virtual and true realities

Verily, Thou hast opened mine eyes

To a bright, new world where I can be my truest, most absent self

To the lack of damns I can give to those opinions for which I once deeply felt

To finding the beauty in the hand I have herein been dealt

Thank you, Dearest Lord

For opening my eyes to this unexpected boon

For its coinciding with Season 5 of House of Cards

…And for Dave’s iPad being left at my home so I can binge-watch it all in my room

Amen. ♣

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Cats and KonMari

11 May

I just want you to know that after my last blog post, Monk was really lovely for about three straight days. I started to feel a little bad for publicly shaming him. Then one day I was washing my face and as I bent over to rinse, all soapy-eyed and disoriented, suddenly he launched from the back of the bathroom toilet to the back of my body. I stood up and yelped and he got so scared that he dragged his claws down my back to hang on for dear life.

So. I have to get a second cat now.

cat face

Illustration by The Gross Uncle. Check him out on Twitter!

I can’t do this anymore. I’ve been thinking for a while that I’m starting to look older than I feel, and while a portion of that is just the reality of aging, a serious part of it is that I wake up at least 3 times that I can remember the next morning from Monk just pushing shit off of shelves and onto the floor. All night long. I can play with him, feed him, let him sleep on my face, open windows for him, let him push through all the blinds and break every single set in the house – doesn’t matter. He thrives in chaos. He wants to watch the world burn.

I feel bad for whichever future cat has to put up with him. I’m just hoping it helps him chill out. Probably best if it’s a really fat one with a strong batting arm. And maybe an unnerving stare. It’ll be super weird and change the vibe of my apartment, but I’ll probably be able to do something about these bags under my eyes.

Partially because of Monk’s inability to allow things to be on open, horizontal surfaces, and partially because I recently read Spark Joy: The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I’ve developed a sort of obsessive habit of organization and systemization in my house.

One would think that with all my office jobs, I would have employed approaches to organization in my own home, but it really hasn’t worked that way for me. You might recall this from my frequent posts about the disgusting filth that is my apartment. If you need to get caught up, I think this shining diamond where I admit to hanging fly tape around my apartment and lived in filth until two flies mated on me will do the trick.

Apparently that’s the final straw for me: flies fornicating and turning my limbs into their love den.

Anyway I read this book on the life changing magic of cleaning up your crap, and it really flipped a switch for me. And like anything good in my life, I’ll just way overdo it until it’s actually kind of harmful.

If you’re not familiar, Spark Joy is a book about the KonMari method. You might be familiar with some jokes about it. They boil down the KonMari philosophy to hugging all of your possessions to feel whether or not they bring you joy and then ditching them if they don’t. It’s quite a bit more complex than that, but I have to admit: she does tell you to hug things. I skipped that part. I can get a sense of my level of joy from just looking at something. It comes along with my knack for being distant and judgy.

The more complex elements of the book involve proper use of containers, assigning everything a place, and giving everything you own enough room to breathe. Clutter is actively sought out and destroyed. Boxes begin to form systems that then run the regular functions of your life almost automatically.

This might not be true for everyone, but it’s true for me.

I took a note from the KonMari method that I needed to arrange my life in a way that best suited the things I do every day. Why, oh why do I get my makeup out of the bag every day, use it, and put it back in the bag? I should just keep it out and find a way to  present it so that looks all right while it’s out so and I won’t feel like the place is a mess. Also: why do I put the things I often need in hard-to-reach, ridiculous places? Why do I let a cupboard in my house be continually overflowing so that every time I open the door I get upset?

Of course, this sort of life-changing magic is what I probably need on my quest for super humanism, so I’ve basically gone section by section through my house and eliminated these occurrences. I know where almost everything is, I have implemented quick and easy systems, and my whole apartment is almost entirely customized to me.  

I think it’s beginning to be a problem.

I have a lot of systems now, and I really don’t like things to be out in the open. If I have clutter in an area because I’m working on a project, the materials all need to be in a basket or a bowl. All the cheese in my fridge goes in its own basket. Things I have to do are organized by section and type. I now have a To Do List template that breaks up my to-dos into correspondences, errands, tasks, and notes. Yesterday I asked our graphic designer at work if she could make me a desktop screen for my computer that was separated into labeled sections for my desktop icons to be visually filed.

I started to really wonder if I was having an issue when I insisted that my dirty silverware sit in a bowl in the sink because the look of them scattered all over the bottom of the sink made me kind of crazy.

At least I’m not hugging them all?

Admittedly, I think things are getting a bit out of hand. I was meal prepping for the week (putting lunches together for work) and decided to overhaul my kitchen cupboard with boxes for each type of lunch item: grains, bars, spreads…I just think it’s gone too far.

Of course I can’t just go back to letting things go; I have a monster cat on the prowl and if I leave my craft supplies out mid-project he will knock them to the ground. I can’t leave a ponytail holder out without him putting it in his teeth and carrying it to a hidden nest he’s made somewhere in the underbelly of my living room couch (THAT’S WHERE THEY ALL GO).  He has some strange obsession with seltzer water that means I can’t even put my drink on a table and walk way. If I do, he’ll knock the entire thing over and act like it was that way when he found it. Like I said: he just wants to watch the world burn.

So I guess I need to start searching the cat adoption sites again. Actually, a cat café just opened up near me (this is real. This is not a test). It’s a place where you can get coffee and hang out on the bottom floor or go play with adoptable cats on the second floor. Maybe I’ll just go take a look real quick – you know, just to see what’s there.

If I find a 20 pound one with a real mean stare, I’ve got a winner. ♣

foot eater

Illustration by The Gross Uncle. Check him out on Twitter!

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A Prison of My Own Device

20 Apr
hamster

Jess Bradley – Hamster Prison (check out her flickr for some great little cartoons)

Let me just bring you up to date real quick here on how my last few weeks have gone since I started to post again.

Week 1: Jackie announces that she hasn’t posted for a long time because there’s been this difficulty in reconciling cartoon-like Jackie from blogland with real-life Jackie from actual-job-I-like land now that her personal and digital circles have intertwined. She declares it a challenge and commits to post every single week in spite of it to see if it kicks it back up.

Week 2: Jackie posts a recent and deeply embarrassing chronicle of how her inability to find the bathroom in a local restaurant lead her on a journey of the spirit (she edited out the part where she shame cried). The same day, her workplace announces on social media that she has been promoted. A surprising amount of people read it and are supportive. They come to her personal page. They see her blog. They wonder how someone who cannot find a public restroom is responsible for running an organization. They make this joke to her in person. She is deeply uncomfortable.

Week 3: …

That’s where we are. We’re on week three: deeply uncomfortable. As in, I announced why this was weird now, I wrote a post to follow that up anyway, and it immediately became extra weird.

awkward giraffe

This is how I feel inside when someone mentions the blog. If you look closely, you can really see the struggle. (photo: Thomas Hawk on flickr)

But I mean, it would be SUPER awkward if I stopped writing now because a few posts ago I was all “Challenge Jackie to the charge!” and three weeks later I’d be like “nah, jk it’s hard and stuff.”

I wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t make those sections on Lollipop Tuesdays and 365 and 30 Day Challenges all over the page.

Dammit.

So here we are, friends. I’m stuck in a prison of my own device, and you’re watching it because Netflix and HBO have taught you that you can actually watch a lot of truly disturbing things and still be kind of okay on the inside. So, welcome to whatever panic train this is all about to be. Thank you for your fascination. ♣ 

This post was brought to you by Halo Top Ice Cream. Perhaps I’ll begin to allow the foods that drive my posts to publish phase to underwrite my blog. Is that how I can get free snacks? Snack sponsors. Yes. For my sorrows. Halo Top Ice Cream: more expensive than Ben & Jerry’s for half the creamy taste and one fifth the post-pint guilt.

I’ll probably have to give a better endorsement than that if I want free snacks, huh?

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Letting It Go: A Birthday Bash Tale

18 Aug
olaf

Olaf is property of the Disney folks. This image can be found over at LetsPartyShop’s Etsy page. Click to check ’em out. 

On Sunday, August 14th, 2016, a bathing suit was yanked up my torso, giving a slight smooth to my otherwise blatant belly bulge, yanked over my shoulders to pancake my mediocre breasts within, and waddled out with my gelatinous, thundering thighs below into a community pool. It had been five years since I’d been in a body of water, but it was my niece’s fifth birthday, dammit, and I wasn’t going to infest her precious little baby brain with self-consciousness and terms like “body positivity,” “goal weight” and “thigh gap.”

This was a big win for me.

I hated the idea of a pool party. Really – why, OH GOD WHY, did that have to be the location? My aversion to watery outings isn’t just due to the need to sport a swimsuit; it’s compounded by a host of other awful traits that recreational water activities feature: hordes of people, gaggles of children, metric tons of sand, wide open spaces, bright blazing sunlight, and a general lack of cats, video games, and pillows. To add pain to pressure, she had chosen the most obvious of themes: Frozen. How, after three complete rotations of the earth, little nuggets across the country are still holding on to Elsa and Olaf with their tiny, grabby hands, is beyond me.

Back in the day I recall many a family outing where I didn’t care how much grease slathering I had to do to get out in the water – and no amount of sand in my danger zones could stop me from burying my entire self on the shore. We used to have regular family outings at a local dam and I would get so excited I would nearly vomit before we even got to the car to leave. (I didn’t get out much as a child.) But now, every element of the pastime annoys me and I’ve actively and successfully avoided beaches, pools, lakes, and ponds. I will, from time to time, indulge in kayaking on a river. Because it is a solo activity, void of sand, and can be done in shorts and a t-shirt. If a child approaches me, I can swiftly paddle away.

Alas, when my niece looked up at me with her big, brown eyes and curls to match and asked me if I would come to her birthday party, I knew my days of comfort and curmudgeonry were at an end.

I considered just staying out of the water all day. There are pavilions and grass patches, and a variety of perimeter sections at a pool, and on the right day with only a slight amount of people, I imagined that curling up on a bench and reading a book would be kind of nice. I might even feel a little outdoorsy. But this was a birthday party for a five-year-old. There would be no reading, no sitting, and no relaxation of any kind. We had dibs on the giant, central water slide and I knew I would have two choices: go down it twenty-two times in a row, or go down in her memory as the worst of all the aunts.

Having chosen the former, I found myself in the bathing suit section of Target at 10pm the night prior, picking over the clearance section of the suits that were left behind. Mid-August is a beach-shopper’s wasteland, with mismatched and poorly-sized two-pieces, one-pieces in animal prints, and a handful of misshapen cover ups.

I had twenty dollars, a black tank top at home I wasn’t sure even fit me, and a modicum of chutzpah.

I also had the Dave, who found me picking over the beachgoers’ desert with my grumplepuss face on. I had acquired two bottoms I was sure wouldn’t fit me, and a cover-up I was secretly hoping I could pair with jean shorts for the day if it seemed my niece was suddenly lukewarm about my presence and I could cut out pool time. I knew that was unlikely.

Dave was lovely, as Daves are, and encouraged me to go try things on. It made a lot more sense than my approach, which was to stare at things and pull on them until I gleaned whether a six dollar piece of fabric would really make my ass virtually unnoticeable. The first piece was an absolute no. It had this extra band of fabric above the top line of the bottoms that was an attempt at some style, but it was made of elastic and only served to divide my singular fat roll into two distinct, smaller rolls. That was, perhaps, a bonus, as it made the second pair I tried on appear almost flattering – returning my belly bulge to its original full glory.

I stared at my too-large hind-end in the too-small bottoms and told myself that this was the year of #selflove. That lighting at department stores was less flattering than sunlight. That my tank top at home would help cover up some of what was now flailing about in the fitting room where I only had my t-shirt bra for coverage. That five-year-olds don’t see fat. Try as I might to believe the pick-me-ups, I really couldn’t fathom walking around in those bottoms. They left very little to the imagination, and I prefer people to imagine me majestic.

I must admit that a portion of my hesitation was due to the superior genetic makeup of my sister-in-law’s family. She is one of twelve, and the parents who spawned them created a unique and superior mix of genes that led to tan skin, fantastic hair, high percentages of muscle composition, and a disposition for sportiness that hatched a litter of chiseled beasts. It’s a genetic unfairness that is to blame for my five-year-old niece’s washboard abs. The niece for whom I would have to hope beyond hope that when I woke up, I would get the gumption to squeeze my pasty, puckered behind into a too-small budget bikini bottom.

It was 9am when I rolled out of bed, threw on the suit, stood in the mirror at various angles while repeating body positive mantras, and hopped in the family wagon to meet my niece’s pool posse. I told myself I would find the magic on the way. I have a theater degree, for Pete’s sake, and I was going to use it to play the part of someone who gave no damns.

We pulled into the parking lot at exactly the same time as my brother, and the excitement coming from the vehicle was palpable. It was stacked from front to back with all the trappings for a Frozen-themed birthday pool party, and somewhere smushed between were my nephew, the birthday girl, and my little baby pudding niece. I went right for Pudding Niece. We were as one this day – our thighs were glorious, we needed to be near food at all times, and we probably should have stayed out of the water.

It took all of five minutes after getting my wristband on and pushing the stroller inside before Birthday Niece requested my presence at the water slide. It was time.

I cued up some motivational 80’s pop for my own personal montage in my mind, and shut down the give-a-damns. I greased up in SPF 50, got any trace of makeup off my face, smoothed down my peach fuzz legs, and chub rubbed my way out to a terribly exciting looking slide. Birthday niece’s grandmother was poolside – one half of the dynamic gene duo that led to the long-legged hatchlings scattered about the pool. She was a wondrous gazelle. I carried on.

I could feel my butt jiggling. I feared my cheeks would shimmy their ways to each opposite side and my too-small bottoms would remain lodged in the in-between. I thought about how my top was pulled down slightly too far in order to eliminate the possibility of midriff; I wondered if my unsupported breasts would rip free of their burden at the bottom of the slide. I remembered my mantras. I climbed the slide. Birthday Niece and Smiley Nephew were in tow. They were awful thrilled that I was joining them and their little wobbly friends. I coached them through the launch procedure, as it seemed the unenthusiastic high schooler’s barely-muttered “…go…” didn’t quite to the trick. They took off, grins blazing. They reached the bottom with splashes much greater than their sizes. They were slowly brought to the top thanks to their arm floaties and life vests. They waited for Aunt Jackie to descend.

In that moment I didn’t think about how anyone else perceived me but them. It didn’t even matter what I thought. All that mattered was that I be there, and that I enjoy myself with them – and there wasn’t any room for my adult, media-contrived misgivings. I thought about my nephew’s big, bright smile and how he needed a little scoot to get down the tunnel. And Birthday Niece, who left her tiara poolside so she could have maximum funtimes. And Pudding Niece, who had big, beautiful thighs, and dimples on her shoulders, and was a glorious little creature who would grow up to be beautiful not because of her superior genes, but because every family member she has is going to affirm for her that however which way she grows, she is majestic.

And I launched and splashed.

And I launched and splashed again.

And I launched and splashed twenty more times, with Birthday Niece in tow.

Surprisingly enough, it was a big bucket of fun. As with most things I do, it was a reminder that just because I hate something at first doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. After all, I hate almost everything at first. And it reminded me that sometimes you’ve just gotta let all the stupid, silly hangups go for something bigger than yourself.

Or in my case – three smaller things. ♣

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How I Almost Engulfed My Father in Merciless Hellflames

13 Aug

Last night marked the single, most epic baking disaster of my life.

It is a rare and sad occasion when I set out to produce a batch of wholesome chocolate chip cookies and instead almost produce a body count.  I was a victim of my environment, really.

Having received an early morning phone call that my sister-in-law was having contractions, my family packed up and drove to my brother’s  house for the weekend to wait on the arrival of a soon-to-be-bundle of girly joy and sunshine sparkles.  But the labor was long and slow so instead of waiting it out at the hospital, my parents and I slept over at my brother’s house and anxiously awaited the real action.  

Long and late into the evening, my sister-in-law had not yet been officially admitted and my old folks (being old folks, after all), passed out.  My mother made it a conscious choice and retired in the upstairs bedroom.  My father, however, fought the urge and failed, passing out on the couch to a rerun of “Cow and Chicken”. 

Being designated the main line of communication for my brother’s updates and having a sudden urge to prove a wonderful aunt, I went about baking up a batch of chocolate chip cookies.  Entirely out of my element, I gathered all the necessary accoutrements and began relishing in my domestic prowess.   Halfway through, I realized I forgot to make sure my brother had baking soda and resorted instead to baking powder, which Google assured me was just as good as its soda-y counterpart so long as I tripled the measurement.

Lies.

As I repeated batch after batch of terribly flat, terribly depressing excuses for cookies, I started to lose hope.  The only solace I found was in my sister-in-law’s well-equipped kitchen, bursting with Pampered Chef delights.  I remembered earlier in the day my mother had found a square, rubber nondescript and wasn’t sure where to put it when we were cleaning.  Assuming it was a pot holder of some sort, I placed it in the appropriate drawer and went about the rest of my business.   And since said rubber nondescript was in the pot holder drawer, my brain later reminded me of it and I used it to house the baking pan as the cookies cooled between batches.  

When I was on my fourth batch of tears and resentment, I made my way over to the oven to pull out the disappointing fruits of my labor.  Before opening the oven, I shot a glance over to the counter to make sure the rubber-nondescript-assumed-potholder was still there, ready for cookie landing.  

It was not.

Knowing there could be no other answer, I jumped to the oven to confirm my fears: the rubber had stuck to the bottom of the baking pan and it was now a melty, smoky mess in the heart of the oven.  With the rubber dripping everywhere, my mother sound asleep upstairs, smoke filling the house quickly, and my father passed out on the couch, I had some quick decisions to make.  Unsure of the best solution, I instantly went to wake my father for his assistance.

But it occurred to me that I wasn’t sure how to wake him in the middle of a smoke-filled room without instilling a sense of panic.  

I stood over him, playing with the phrasing, wrapping my head around the syntax, and measuring which part of the explanation should come first.  What does one say when bringing another out of deep sleep for assistance in a fire?  Figuring there was no good way to do it, I resolved to let him sleep (and perhaps die a firey death) while I went solo.

I yoinked the rack out of the oven and put it in the sink, where the maroon rubber nondescript melted into the basin, serving a grueling death for being mistaken for a worthy potholder only hours before.  With the entire living room smelling like burnt rubber and smoke billowing from the oven, I ran around the house with real potholders in my hand, fanning the smoke away from my father’s head and the smoke alarm simultaneously.

I was a penguin, flapping silently and violently in an attempt to not disturb him.

After five minutes of pure freaking out, I was a sweating, heart-racing mess and thankful to the good Lord in Heaven for sparing me the lifelong burden of murdering my family.  I cleaned the oven, tossed the cursed cookies into the trash, and put my feet up to bask in my narrow victory.

Interrupted by his overwhelming urge to take a leak, my father stirred on the couch and rose slowly.  I calmly confirmed that my sister-in-law had officially been admitted to the hospital and he smiled.  Thinking this was as good a time as ever to drop the bomb of his almost-death, I casually mentioned that I almost burned the house down because I didn’t know what to say if I tried to wake him in the middle of a smoke-filled room.

He sleepily replied: “You say ‘Dad, don’t worry – we’re okay – but the house is burning down and I need your help'” – and chuckled on his way to the bathroom.

Surprisingly lighthearted reply from a man who narrowly avoided engulfment in cookie and rubber hellfire. ♣

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Only You Can Save This Blog.

13 May

I have gone to bed so late, so many weeks in a row that I might just start skipping sleep altogether in order to avoid the awful process of waking up.  I keep telling myself I’m going to go to bed early on a weeknight or sleep in late on a weekday to hit the reset button but I never do.  I tried it a few nights ago but couldn’t get to sleep (very unfunny) and I ended up wasting 3 hours of my night just lying awake in bed.

So I just stay up doing frivolous things, trying to make my day last longer so that I feel like I work and have a life.  I don’t – it’s a facade.    I don’t stay up doing anything important; I just stay up.  I eat peanut butter toast and watch entire seasons of shows on Netflix and spend an hour on StumbleUpon and read people’s Facebook updates.  I’m so lame that it’s becoming painful.  

I have gone so many weeks on four hours of sleep a night that I have to peel myself out of bed in the morning.  There has never been a better display of man’s willpower than my waking up each day.  I set three alarms – each 15 minute apart from each other.  The first is the time that I would like to wake up.  It’s my ideal.  If I get out of bed at the first ring, I’ll be 5 minutes early for work, freshly showered,  have eaten breakfast, will have an outfit I’m not miserable in, and will be sporting a fine face of work-appropriate makeup. If I get out of bed at the second alarm, I will have to choose 3 out of 5 of those options.   If I get out of bed at the third, I will have to forfeit all but one.  

But lately I’ve been so tired and miserable that when the third alarm goes off, I snooze it for another 15 minutes.   When I wake I will accomplish none of the above tasks, but the jump start I get from knowing I will be late for work if I don’t wake up immediately and bolt out the door in 10 minutes or less is the only thing that will get me up.

I’ve been doing this over and over again.  Yesterday it got so bad that I couldn’t possibly leave for work unshowered again so I still slept in and resolved to be late.

This has to stop.

I’m a good worker.  I really am.  I usually work right through my lunch break and stay late and break lots of labor laws and things.  But lately I’ve been so absolutely zombie-like that I can’t bring myself to get up and at ’em in a timely manner.  I recall having to peel my eyes apart and splash my face with freezing cold water a few days ago just so that I could see straight enough to put my clothes on.   Once I get there I only make it to 11:30 before I need to go order the the tallest, tastiest, non-coffee but coffee-like drink I can stomach in order to get myself to have enough energy to type an email.

I look like death.

When I go outside, I’m as a member of the underworld visiting the surface for the first time.  The light disgusts me, the bird chirping echoes through my weak, soggy brain, and my limbs are all worn and jagged from being jolted into performance from a dead sleep.   I suddenly find myself absolutely incapable of effective communication.   If I attempt to string more than two sentences together, my brain goes into a total meltdown and my eyes travel up and to the left, where they sift through the soft, gooey, deteriorating pockets of my mind for the right word.

It’s usually a simple one.  Like “pants”.

I only have two options from here.  I can either find a way to restore sleep to my body by effectively going to sleep earlier, sleeping in later, or just giving in to my urge to conk out at my desk instead of guzzling caffeine.   Or I can keep going on as I am and become a fully-fledged, certifiable whack job.  Unable to find the words for anything at all, my sentences will deconstruct themselves into incoherent babblings.  My eyelids will sink down to allow only a sliver of light into my eyes.  My face will become pasty, droopy, and inspire fear.  No longer able to force my body to function without allowing it to recharge, I will ooze from place to place on the floor like a slug.

A decomposing, incoherent zombie slug.

I will be unable to keep my promise to write a blog every day because I will no longer be able to comprehend language.  Already, I find myself staring at my screen wondering what to write.   Not because I have no idea, but because I cannot navigate the idea.  I compose entire paragraphs that seem to be written by a 3rd grader who speaks English as a second language, delete them, and upgrade them to that of a 6th grader who speaks English as a second language.  I stare at commonplace words for several minutes, suddenly questioning if they’re really words at all.

My lack of sleep is threatening thejackieblog.

If I don’t post tomorrow, come to Pittsburgh and search the streets.  You’ll find me there, oozing my way through the masses and hissing at daylight.

If you spot me, stick me with a bear tranquilizer, put me on a park bench, and force the regeneration to begin. ♣

The High Hurdles in Slug World

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Fear Mongering

3 Jan

Listen, let’s set up some ground rules.  You know, like kickball.

You’re excited, yes.  I understand.  There are few things more thrilling in life than hulking over someone else’s, mouthbreathing loudly.  Personally, I think it’s the bee’s knees – but you’re going to have to control yourselves.   Texting me at 2pm asking me where my blog update is when I don’t even get off work for 3 more hours is borderline terrorism.   Well, if we’re in the Bush era, anyway.  In the Bush era, Tide commercials were terrorism.

I’m sensing that my 365 project is setting a precedent for fear mongering, not only from you to me, but from me to you.  That’s right: I propose that I am scaring you.

I say this because blogging used to mean that I waited around until something interesting or maddening enough happened so that I had material.  But now… now I’m making things happen so that I have something to blog about.   Friends are wondering if I’ll use them as subjects, my cats don’t lick themselves in front of me anymore, and my coworkers are huddled under their cubicles with the phone already dialed to Corporate waiting for me to blog about work.  One even timidly asked if he was “allowed” to read it.   

Let’s be clear about something: I can be an asshole, but I’m an asshole who needs to pay bills.  Catch my drift?   Besides, when brainstorming today about what I might feature for my first of the Lollipop Tuesdays series (see below), a friend suggested I set up a hot dog cart on the Executive Floor.  How could I possibly stoop to blogging about office politics when I could blog about slingin’ weiners to top execs? Furthermore, my own boyfriend was scared out of his wits before he left that I would make my entire post about his newfound desire to attain a man purse.   Which, I’ll admit, is very appetizing.  Really.  Even just typing the words now has gotten my carpal tunnel all hot and bothered. 

So listen: everything is going to be okay.  Say it with me: “Everything is going to be okay.”

Yes, I have to blog about my life because though I’m inspired to try this project, I’m not inspired to focus it on food or movies or baby animals wearing turtlenecks and eating pasta.  But I’m not out to get anyone and chances are that of all the absolutely moronic people I talk to each day, you’ve got some tough competition to make top rank.  That’s a heartfelt compliment.

All right – so we’re clear now.  I won’t attack you intentionally, and you won’t text, email, call and harrass me if I don’t post before 6pm.  And for the record, my deadline is actually 23:59:59. ♣

Today: We had a little blog therapy together.  Don’t you feel better now? I know I do.

Tomorrow: Lollipop Tuesday.  There’s only one way to find out what that means.  Stop by- it could be kinky.

*Keep an eye out for updates and reveals as Twist365  trudges onward.  With an artist for a father and a software engineer for a brother, I have to be able to pull off something cool eventually, right?*

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