Archive | Uncategorized RSS feed for this section

Warning: Online Dating Profiles May Lead to Flirt Messages from Your Dad

7 Mar

Well, guys who are old enough to be your dad, anyway.

As it turns out, I’m the world’s most recent member of MarriageMindedPeopleMeet.com.

The site is exactly what it sounds like and no, I’m not a willing participant.  My doppelganger signed me up.  You know, the one from California? I wrote about her some time ago.  Her name is also Jackie and her email address is separated from mine thanks to only one tiny, almost-indistinguishable period between her first and middle name.  And every time her classmates, favorite stores, and organizations overlook that tiny, important dot, I get sucked into her world.

She’s basically everything I might be in another plane of existence.  She’s from California, where my parents used to live.  She likes to hike and bike and accomplish various outdoor feats, the majority of which have confirmation numbers associated with them and are sent to me.  I can’t tell if she teaches or is just in grad school; I just know that one time I was sent an email asking for that day’s class materials to be resent.  She’s a class-attending, surfing, active California girl – the opposite of my pale, Central Pennsylvanian roots.  We’re two diverging shoots from the same name seed…I’m also in a steady relationship and she clearly is not.

It started with the account confirmation email.  I threw it in my Spam folder thinking it was just another runaway email intended for her but the correspondences kept coming.  My profile had been successfully set up, my matches were ready for review, and then suddenly: I had a New Flirt Message.

This is how I feel when I see I have a New Flirt Message

Since I already know so much about my doppelganger, I figured I might as well take the opportunity before I unsubscribe to see the sort of preferences she had locked in for herself.  I opened the email to find the faces of men in their 50’s with salt and pepper hair staring back at me, looking for love.  Her/my username? “Beachgirl” with some numbers behind it.

Figures.

The entire experience has been rather traumatizing.  Not just because the unsubscribe link sent me to the fifth circle of hell where I had to log in before I was allowed to unsubscribe, but also because 50’s men with salt and pepper hair is a category my own (married) father falls into.  And every day I’ve been receiving Flirt Messages from a group of fellows who could pass for his inner circle.  Their little internet portraits are lined up in a row and they’re all staring at me with lonely, wanton eyes. 

Of course like most oddities that cross my path, I considered leveraging it for the blog.  There were a variety of inappropriate uses that I mulled over, including a sidebar widget with my most recent matches.  Or the option of allowing my readers to fill out my profile and choose my picture. 

But I have limits, people, and fake-flirting with men twice my age in order to entertain my reader base is apparently one of them. 

Of course, poor Jackie California is over on the West Coast trying desperately to connect with this group of square-faced beady-eyed men and wondering why no one is flirting back with her.  And while I’m kind of quietly satisfied at this because she has failed to change her email address or to indicate to her contacts that the dot in its middle is crucial to delivery success in spite of my notifying her of my email interceptions, I’m also hoping she’s not taking it to heart that no one is getting back to her.  After all, she works out.  And tans.  And lives the good life we see on t-shirts in verse form.   I’m sure she’s lovely-looking for a middle-aged stubborn woman.

So if you’re out there and listening, Jackie California, know that this has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me not being into my dad.  One day, I hope you’ll understand. 

Until then, let’s finally change that email address of yours, hmm?  I’m not really the Stranger Danger type and These Flirt Messages are starting to give me panic attacks. ♣

P.S.  The Lohan hosted SNL on Saturday.  She got the 2nd highest ratings of the current season but also got some of the worst feedback of the season.  Apparently, a lot of people tuned in to see her fail.  Lesson learned: when seeking fame, one should just as well abandoning attempts to be awesome and begin attempts to famously suck. 

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Where’s My Fat Loss Hallelujah?

29 Feb

I really thought that when I reached my goal weight, it would be a little more like Jennifer Hudson with singing and magical fairies of fat loss and a little less oh, I don’t know – ordinary?

Mind you, I know not whether I’ve actually reached my goal weight.   It’s just that I’ve been jogging 2-3 times a week for about 5 months and I’m eating better and since I used to have macaroni and cheese and cheeseburgers twice a week and sat on my very cushioned tush every single day before that, logic dictates that I must have lost something. …Right?

The whole weighing-myself thing wasn’t going very well so I ditched it;  now I have The Naked System.  Instead of weighing myself, now I just stare at my pudge in the mirror every day.  I pinch it, I cradle it, I inspect it from all sides, and in the process determine my accomplishments.  If I’m overly soft, I get more motivated to eat and jog that day.  If I’m proud of myself, I decide it’s because I’ve been having pudgy naked time in the mirror every day and it’s working.  And if I stay the same, well, that’s because I check every single day and change is slow.

So I don’t have a number on the scale I’m looking for because I won’t let myself look.  I just know that 5 months ago I could take all the stomach fat in my hands and hold it in front of my body.  I was so married to it that I had considered a variety of Jackie Blog marketing tactics including a muppet, a voice, a variety show… But now the Pudge Muppet is gone.  I have forced my body to run against its will. It’s been months of jogging and eating better and having pudgy naked time and now when I wear my pants the second time after a wash, they scoot down my hips.

Photo borrowed from the magical fat fairy celebration parade.

I thought that was the sign.  I thought something epic like pants scooting down hips meant that  a fat version of me would burst out of the closet singing about the woman I used to be.  Then I could endorse a food establishment of my choosing and get a book deal and go on talk shows discussing the secret to how I changed my entire life and have nothing more important in my character than my ability to be fit.  Maybe I could even get my own google doodle.  (The o’s would obviously compose my former marshmallowy bottom).

But I even put on my skinny jeans the other day and there was no doppelganger bursting forth from the closet to sing a duet with me.  It was just me, singing in the mirror.  Naked.

It’s times like those that I’m glad my cats can’t talk.

I had sincerely hoped that by now people would start to notice, but the only one who’s said anything at all is the cleaning lady at work.  Either she’s  just trying to make me feel better or she’s the only one who I encounter in my daily life.  Neither is a preferable truth.

Maybe the change has to be more drastic.  Maybe I just need to get some better fitting clothes instead of walking around in my former fat suits.  Or maybe Angelina Jolie’s emaciated limbs at the Oscars made it impossible for anyone to look worthy of a fat loss hallelujah session.

I should probably just call JHud myself and see what it is that made her former fatty burst forth in vocal glory.   I want my nationally televised self-duet.

Until then, I’ll just keep rehearsing in the mirror. ♣

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Blue Ribbon Macaroni and Cheese

28 Feb

 

Did you think Lollipop Tuesdays had died?

They haven’t.  If you’re confused about why Lollipop Tuesdays aren’t every Tuesday anymore (or for that matter, why I don’t post every day), or you don’t even know what a Lollipop Tuesday is, you should probably check out the handy dandy “What’s Lollipop Tuesday?” header at the top of this page.  Now relax and strap in.  Because this week I entered a recipe contest.

As a homegrown mountain gal from Central Pennsyltucky, I felt like even though I’d never entered a cooking contest before, I could at least avoid embarrassing myself.  After all, when you’re raised in the roots cooking is just one part of a three-part formula for the perfect wife that some crazy hermit made up decades ago and is still being widely circulated in small towns with forks in roads: cooking, cleaning, baby-raisin’.  Hunting is optional.  I only ever really took to the cooking.

It also just so happened that the recipe contest was for Macaroni and Cheese, which was convenient since I just had my own Jackie Blog hunt for the Best Macaroni and Cheese in the Universe in December.  So I threw together my favorite parts of my favorite recipes and came up with a Jackie Blog concoction of cheesy awesomey goodness.

I wasn’t really sure what the rules were.  I went online and registered but I didn’t really get anything saying it was received and no one ever sent me criteria.  I didn’t even know what the prizes were.  I just knew that I had to cook up a vat of smokin’ hot mac and smack and take it to the venue by 1pm.  So I designated Dave my Transportation Manager, who threw me and my casserole in the car at 12:40pm and dropped us off while he parked.  With only 5 minutes until the entry deadline, I willed the elevator down with my mind, scurried into the judging room and plopped my casserole down: Entry #11.   It was precisely 1:00pm.

We then proceeded to wait ten full minutes for any late arrivals.    My tale of down-to-the-wire shenanigans weren’t quite as epic as I’d hoped.

Finally, it was time to begin.  We met the judges: 2 owners of 2 prominent food businesses in the city and 1 genuine lover of pasta smothered in cheese.  We also heard the judging criteria: appearance, taste, and-I-have-no-idea-what-else-because-I-was-stuck-on-appearance.

Appearance.

How could I have watched Iron Chef so many times and not have anticipated this as a determining factor?  I should have had a custom-built shelf above my dish that had three beautifully-prepared plates with perfect Macaroni and Cheese portions specifically for the judges.  They should have had firecrackers shooting out of them and have some sort of beautiful font displaying the name of my creation.

But I didn’t.  In fact, I didn’t even remember to bring a serving spoon.   And as my eyes stretched down the rows of the competitors, I saw beautiful thermal Pampered Chef totes, shiny and new casserole dishes that had fancy lids, and classic foil holders with wired burners beneath them.

I had my mother’s hand-me-down casserole dish that she let me borrow once when I was in college and I never returned.

At first I was nervous.  I didn’t consider appearance at all.  And what were the judges supposed to do without a serving spoon: paw it out of the cheesy vat with their bare mits?  Yes.  I decided yes they would.  In fact, I decided that casseroles should only be served in secondhand stolen dishes and reminded myself that I was there to write a blog post, not to impress judges.

Still, I was nervous.  I know this because when the first judge approached my dish and began to fish out a taste of the pasta with her pathetic plastic spoon, I winced as she lost the battle to the broiled parmesan and bread crumb finish, which was settled happily on the top of my concoction.  I grabbed Dave’s arm and clenched it hard as a huge piece of parmesan hung on her spoon and she had to contort her tongue to lap it into her hungry mouth.  I analyzed every nod, every dart of the eyes, every stroke of the pencil on paper.

I had lost.  I surely had  lost.

Dave laughed as my sanity slowly unraveled before him and tried to distract me with Bejeweled on his iPad.  I was sure to pause the game each time a judge approached my dish.   When the judges were finished testing, the audience was allowed to serve themselves buffet style.  I watched to see who took bites of mine and was disappointed when I saw much of my dish remained by the time I reached it.  I returned to my seat and saw a flyer that had been placed in my absence: it was an advertisement for a catering company.

…I was competing against catering companies?

I had talked myself into a deep, dark loss when one fellow jumped up and B-lined to my dish to get himself a hefty helping of seconds.  I was so happy I almost squealed like a freshly born piglet.  I had my victory: someone wanted seconds.  I told myself perhaps I would jest for third place.  That’s when the judges returned and announced there was a tie for first and second and they needed to retaste the top dishes to determine the tie-breaker.   The host of the event promptly walked over and grabbed my mother’s hand-me-down dish.

I freaked.

I freaked so hard that I had little tiny tears in my eyes.  I tried to hold back the excitement from my body but I only bottled it up and shot it out of my eyes like laser beams at poor supportive Dave, who feared me a serial killer and tried to coax the crazy out of my pupils.  It was me versus the Pampered Chef Super Awesome Casserole Tote.  I was so thrilled to have third place locked up.

After what felt like hours of the judges lobbing around more cheesy goodness in their mouths, a winner had finally been determined.

It was me.

I was so surprised to be announced first place that I let out a sort of strange yip in front of everyone and tried to tone it down for a casual walk up to the front to claim my winnings: a gift card and a certificate, deeming my recipe officially award-winning.  The judges looked pleased with the cheesiness I bestowed upon them and the audience all got in line to finish up what was left of casserole #11.

I waited for everyone to get their fill, truly amazed that I had just shown up for a Lollipop Tuesday and taken the top prize from a room full of hopefuls.  I felt like an imposter.  If only they knew it was all for a post.

On the way out of the venue, I called my mom to thank her for raising me right and Dave got a hot dog at the stand outside.  The fella inside asked who won and I said I did.   He asked me what the story was behind it and I explained Lollipop Tuesdays to him and that I run a blog but it’s nowhere close to a food blog.  He seemed pleasantly surprised and for indulging me and acting like he would tune in to read, I tipped him a dollar on the hot dog.

Sometimes you have to pay for publicity.

That night I sat around basking in the phrase “Award Winning”.   I referred to myself as an award-winning cook and my macaroni and cheese as a first-place dish.  And just then I remembered telling my coworkers I was entering a recipe contest that weekend and being laughed at by someone.  They made a joke about Kraft mac and cheese and said I was too young to cook well. I told her she didn’t know the power of being raised in the sticks.

And just then, I took out  my phone to send a proper foot-in-mouth-inducing text.

“Boo yah.”

Signed, First Place Chef. ♣

Before you ask, here’s the recipe.  Thanks to thesinglecell, who provided most of the recipe for thejackieblog recipe contest:
 
1/2 lb pasta of your choice, cooked and drained
2 tablespoons butter, divided
2 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons dry mustard
5 oz. sharp cheddar, shredded
3 oz. Raclette, cubed
1/4c. Parmesan, grated (plus some for sprinkling)
1 3/4c. heavy cream
3/4c. milk
Paprika for sprinkling
Cinnamon for sprinkling
1 cup white bread crumbs cut into 1/2 in. squares
 
Preheat oven to 375. Spray a 9×9″ pan (preferably a hand-me-down) with cooking spray. Pour al dente, drained pasta into 9×9″ pan. Melt 1tbs butter and pour over bread crumbs.  Set aside.  Blend flour, mustard and salt together in a small bowl. In a saucepan over medium-low heat, melt 1tbs butter. Add flour, salt and mustard and stir until blended. Add milk and cream, stirring or whisking until dry ingredients are dissolved and liquid is hot, but not boiling. Add Raclette, stirring/whisking occasionally until cheese melts. Repeat for cheddar and Parmesan, stirring/whisking often so the cheese doesn’t stick to the bottom and burn.  Sprinkle in cinnamon.
 
Pour cheese sauce over pasta; add bread crumbs and sprinkle with Parmesan and paprika and bake at 375 for 25 minutes. Then broil until top is golden.
 
Eat with bare hands.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Why I Should Host SNL Instead of Lindsay Lohan

22 Feb

I’m launching a campaign to host Saturday Night Live instead of Lindsay Lohan.

I feel strongly about this.  I thought hosting SNL was supposed to be a sign that you were relevant and that people wanted to see you.  On occasion, it’s also a tip of the hat to your ability to roll with a gag – to think on your feet – to be, oh, I don’t know- entertaining.  And though I’m really excited about how SNL seems to be pumping out some good stuff lately, I’m pretty disappointed in the choice to let The Lohan host.  Sure, she has a great rack.  And she’s been in movies an attempted a singing career and is now an official Playboy model.  And she’s hosted a bunch of times already.  And she generates more interest in what she wears to court hearings than I do in a well-thought out, carefully constructed blog post. 

But I was improv captain in college, folks.  And if I wear two bras and shove some padding on the lower inside of my bubblie wubblies, I can give the Lohan a serious run for her money.

All she had to do was beg and now she gets the coveted honor of hosting the coolest show on television.  It doesn’t matter that she’s not relevant or that the last time she showed up in public she looked like a bleached Oompa Loompa trapped in a straitjacket.  So if she can flush her celebrity life and hotness down the toilet, follow it up with a bunch of trashy appearances and questionable outings, and then beg to host and get granted her wish, I’m pretty sure I can lock this in with the old-fashioned method of straightforward bullets-by-numbers and overwhelming persistence.  Let’s do this.

Why I Should Host SNL Instead of Lindsay Lohan

  1. I have a proven track record of creating original content.  2011 was the year of The Jackie Blog post-a-day.  And I whooped it.  Hard.  
  2. I don’t think SNL has ever let a humor blogger host and it would be a great way to engage the Internet community and give young, semi-humorous indie bloggers everywhere a senseless feeling of hope.
  3.  I have a fiercely loyal following who would support my endeavor and tune in to reap the benefits of their fandom.
  4. “I Know Who Killed Me”  It’s a movie.  It’s bad.  And I didn’t tie myself for the Razzie Worst Actress  award in it; The Lohan did.
  5. My teacher told me I could do anything I wanted to do when I grew up and I’m grown now and I want to host SNL.  This is America, folks.  
  6. My day job is being Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada and this is my only hope to scrape together what remains of my soul before the rest of it is sucked away by Miranda Priestly and the Corporate Machine (which also happens to be a great band name).
  7. 8., 9., and 10.   
 
 
 
So this is the plan: I’m going to send out good thoughts into the great Internet nether and hope that the SNL gods hear my cry.  If that doesn’t work, I’m going to resort to old school mailings.  They’ll feature a hard copy of a blog post from 2011 and a reader endorsement Sharpied on a picture of The Lohan’s face.  You can go ahead and drop me a line in the comments if you want to sponsor a Lohan-face-note.
 
I’m not sure if that will get me an invitation to New York or a restraining order, but I’m willing to risk it.
 
I need to work fast and furiously.  Lindsay Lohan hosts on March 3rd.  That doesn’t give me much time.
 
Then again if this doesn’t work, I could just start lobbying now for her next comeback. ♣

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Please Don’t Make Me Shop

15 Feb

A carefully constructed Hell.

Clothes shopping is the worst.

It makes me angsty in all the normal ways, of course.  All the body-related ways.  I spend a lot of time looking at a garment and wondering how I’ll fit all my jiggly into it.  I do a lot of fatty math – things like “if I get a pair of pants that go really high and a blouse that goes really low, how much pressure per inch does it take for my muffin top to disappear into the nether?’

For the record, I’m still running.  That’s right.  I graduated from Couch to 5K and now I run.  Now it’s just something I do.  I don’t want to talk about it too much because I’m afraid I’ll scare it off.  Like the dodo birds.   But it takes a lot of running to undo the terrible wrongs that are hanging on my hips and when I’m encasing them in clothing, it’s really more a matter of trying to find what doesn’t make me look incredibly awful instead of what makes me look incredibly good.   I have special, nonspecific equations that have to do with the original cost of a garment vs. its clearance cost and how large that number has to be for me to convince myself that it doesn’t matter if I look fat in it.

But those are everywoman things.  The tip of the clothes shopping iceberg, if you will.  Even a casual jaunt through Macy’s gives me palpitations.  This past weekend I went to Nordstrom (yes, I had a gift card, and no I don’t make money off this blog) and quadrupled the Macys effect.  All the sales people were super attentive.  I don’t know where the people are in life who enjoy that.  Who goes shopping and hopes that an associate will ask them if they’re finding everything okay? Not me.  Even if I’m looking for something, I’ll wander around pretending to look at things that I don’t pertain to me at all until I can spot what I need in my peripherals. 

I lead a complicated existence.

I worry a lot about the unspoken rules.  Clothing stores don’t all use the same standards so there’s a gamut of things I have to figure out when I go to a new place.  Do I have to ask for a fitting room or are they unlocked? Do I have hunt someone down or will someone be back there waiting?  Is there someone to help me when I need a new color of the mediocre shirt that I’m hoping doesn’t make me look as fat in black, or do I have to get out of my naked suit and go find it myself?  Do they write my name on the back of the door, do they need me to take a number matching the number of garments I have, should I button and zip everything back up when I’m done? And of course the most angst-inducing: do I leave the clothes in the fitting room or do I put them on a rack outside the fitting room? 

Sometimes the rack has things on it that don’t look like fitting room rejects.  And if I’m not invited to do so, or if there’s no rack at all (bewildering), I have absolutely no idea what to do and to avoid being a self-entitled jerkwad of a person, I take my monstrous heap of rejected clothing back out to the sales floor and put each one back to its rightful home.

Most of what I do in life is motivated by self-imposed guilt.

Because I so often have to carry out the latter practice, shopping requires me to be quite sharp minded.  I can’t just wander in there without purpose or I won’t remember where I got clothing from, won’t intuitively catch on to the wardrobe practices, and may risk being scolded by store personnel for a clothing store faux pas.

Nordstrom has an added sense of danger for me.  Things in that store can be so expensive that they send folks who were raised poor like me to the hospital.  I used to go in there when I was young and play “guess how much this costs” with my friends.   Now that it’s not a game and I actually want to buy some of these things (remember the gift card.  And the fact that there are still clearance sales at Nordstrom) I have to be seriously careful about my public reactions to such atrocities.  One blouse I pick up could be $80, on sale for $40.  The next could be $1200.  The real challenge in that situation is to, of course, not pull the blouse downward when your torso wrenches to the floor in disbelief, thereby making the entire rack of clothes topple over.

After an hour and a half of panic-attack-inducing shopping, I finally wandered out of Nordstrom and into the great white light beyond the mall doors.  By the time I made it out, I had tried on about 40 different things and only bought three.  With no reject rack in sight and far too many clothes to wander out of the dressing room with to return to their homelands, I left about 25 in one fitting room and then went to the complete other side of the store to try on anything else I found.  I thought that by leaving half on one side and half of the other, the sales associates would split their contempt for me down the middle.  I was exhausted, and rightfully so: all that salesperson dodging, fitting room hiding, and body fat encasing is quite the chore.

From now on: online shopping.  My fitting room, my rules, and no one asking me if I’m finding everything okay.  Just a couple of cats awkwardly staring at my jiggle and a box with a return slip ready to be shipped. ♣

Tags: , , , , ,

The Thrills of Adulthood Part III: Dental Appointments

8 Feb
This post is part of an accidental series I apparently have, entitled “The Thrills of Adulthood”.  Check out previous versions here- The Thrills of Adulthood and The Thrills of Adulthood Part II: My Palace of Filth. 

Those are the eyes of a man you can almost trust.

I started this morning off swimmingly, with a trip to the dentist.  Let’s call him Ned.

My first in six years, folks.  I’m not ashamed to say it.  Listen: that crap’s expensive.  On the list of things to pay for as a young, struggling, adult larva, having a middle aged white guy scratch at my enamel with a metal hook and give me a live demonstration on how to pull string through my teeth isn’t at the top of them.  It’s not that I don’t think it’s important.  It’ s just that when you peer inside the wallet of a mid 20-something, you don’t find much.  All of it has already been wrestled out of our grimy little clenched fists for things we never knew we had to pay for before.  Like car insurance and oil changes and work clothes and groceries and appliances.  Some of my most sobering moments in life have been those in which I have to purchase something that is absolutely unexciting but necessary to higher adult functions.  Like kitchen sponges.  Or batteries.  Or a brand new shiny set of car tires, when I’d rather spend that money on an iPad.  Or a kiddie pool full of long noodles.

Yesterday Dave bought a new white board for us and I convinced myself that it was the most romantic thing that had happened to me in our entire relationship.  I cried.  There were real tears.

Anyway, adulthood is expensive.  And I haven’t even started to have babies yet.  Lord help me.

So I’m sitting in Ned’s dentist chair, trying to figure out what I’m supposed to infer from his handing me a cup of water and holding a funnel beside me (it’s not really intuitive, folks), when he begins to make me feel like a terrible person.  He starts to tell me how people die from bad teeth, how it’s linked to many diseases and deaths, and that he’d like to talk to me about my process.  All this in spite of the fact that I didn’t have a single cavity or much plaque to speak of.

My brother got me an electric tooth brush for Christmas (also a clear indicator of adulthood).  I expected him to give me a certificate or something.  I guess they only do that for kids, which I think it preposterous. Excitement over receiving certificates knows no age limit.

So then the Nedster starts going on about how the real goal after I eat should be to get rid of any of the food that’s left in my mouth.  You know, the little bits and pieces you savor as they swim around for a bit.  He believed that every time I put something in my mouth, drink included, I should then rinse or brush whatever is remaining away.   In fact, he so believed that this was necessary to my dental hygiene that he said I should steer clear of any “hard to clean foods” like cookies.

He went straight for the cookies.  Heartless.

Oreos, he said, are the worst.  Because even if you rinse afterward, you only get about half of it.

I can tell you right now, I’m not going to do that.  Get all the food out of my mouth after I’m done?  What about aftertaste, Ned? What about relishing? What about the sweet satisfaction after you’ve had a nice portion of something you’ve been craving for a long time.  What, am I just supposed to sprint and brush away the satisfaction? Good God, man – don’t you have a heart?!

I ate a small Dove chocolate square about ten minutes ago and my tongue can still remember the silky milk goodness on its surface.

But then I realized he’s playing a trick on me.  He probably loves Oreos.  If I would have looked closer, I might have even found a few crumbs lingering on his eye teeth.  But he’s realized that telling people to floss just isn’t working.  People will always do ever so slightly less than they really feel they should.  So he’s decided to change the game and tell people to do more.  If I’m busy feeling unhygienic and sad because I’m not rinsing and brushing after every snack, I’ll tell myself that I should at least floss.  I mean, I’m already slacking in the rinses – I don’t want to risk death because I also didn’t floss, do I?

I admire his wit.  I do.  I recognize this tactic from my childhood: asking to stay out until 10 because then I’ll get to stay out til 9 and all I really needed was 8? Yeah, I remember that. It’s very effective.  Nicely done, Ned! No wonder I bought your services instead of a pool full of noodles or 18 cases of chocolate milk that I’d have to brush away after drinking.

Speaking of which, I should probably go floss some of this Dove chocolate out of my mouth. ◊

Tags: , , , , , ,

The Great Bunny Acquisition

1 Feb

Pog, running from me.

I’m trying to convince Dave to let me have a bunny.

A small, white, fluffy one named Pog.

He has some concerns, naturally.  First and foremost that this is one of a series of campaigns I’ve started on behalf of new and interesting apartment creatures.  For some reason I feel that I can avoid my obvious fate as a cat lady by instead acquiring a taste for a strange parades of animals.  I can.

So along came the Pog campaign, right on the heels of a teacup pig campaign and not all that far from my request for a manageably sized puppy.  They’ve been denied, all.

Second on his list of concerns is the idea of Pog getting put in the washing machine.  Apparently, Dave thinks that my would-be-Pog-bunny-bundle-of-adorableness would snuggle himself right up in the crook of a hoodie or the soft nesting of a pillow, and that in my bumbling hurry, I would toss out the Pog with the pillows.  It would be a watery, warbly, truly tragic passing.

Also, all those clothes would all need to be washed again.

Third on his list of concerns is that I plan to capture this bunny in the wild, so as to not encourage breeding of an animal that already overbreeds itself.  Thus, my acquisition of Pog would require me to sever him from his bunny habitat and thus rip him from the paws of his loving friends and family.  To this I argue that life is nothing but pain and separation and that by never knowing love, Pog can never know the lack of love.

I might also just surround him with stuffed animals.  I had a lot of bunny stuffed animals when I was young and I think I could do a great recreation of Pog’s natural habitat.

Fourth, final, and most damning of his arguments is that he would end up taking care of the bunny after I got tired of it.  I don’t know how I could possibly get tired of a bunny.  I can’t even imagine that a bunny needs a whole lot of attention, really. What can they possibly do for fun?  

Have tea parties with the bunny stuffed animals, that’s what.

Maybe I can try a new tactic with Dave.  Perhaps I can lay out a solid business plan on PowerPoint that involves our apartment being made into a petting zoo.  We’re surrounded by lots of students, who I’m sure could use some pet destressing around midterms and finals.  And unlike cat cafes in China, or groups of puppies brought in to schools, my destress petting zoo will feature a wide variety of creatures and folks can pick what they pet.

See? There’s money in your passion if only you pave the path for it….and can convince Dave.  

 Guess I need to get started on that PowerPoint. ♣

Tags: , , , , , ,

The State of the Union in Awkward Pictures

25 Jan

Ah, the State of the Union Address.  It’s a time for hope.  A time for reflection.  A time to play drinking games with your friends based on the number of Applause Pauses and Standing Ovations.  

I like to watch the SOTU (that’s State of the Union, for the not-trendy-acronym-inclined) because I like to know what the forerunners in the President’s policies are after he’s had some time in office.  I’ve also watched a lot of action movies centered around killing the President so every time all the important people in the national government pile into a room with him, I like to watch just in case one of the Congressmen is actually John Malkovich and he’s there to assassinate people.

But as much as I like to consider myself both politically invested and an action film fan, I have to admit that the main reason I watch the State of the Union is because it’s one of the most deliciously awkward things you can watch in the comfort of your home.  

I don’t ever tune in until 10 minutes after it’s supposed to start because that’s how long it takes for the President to make it to the podium.  But if you want some extra time milking the awkward, you can tune in right on the hour and watch people try to shake his hand that aren’t on his list to stop and shake hands with.  Or you can take careful note of the folks that pull him aside and point to all their friends so that the President has to do an obligatory wave.  You can let your stomach twist as you imagine how these people are trying to ration their hand-clapping power because it’s going to be a long hour and a half, but they can’t possibly stop applauding when the President is still in the middle of his ten-minute-long entrance.

Instead of spending a lot of time discussing the variety of awkward experiences that take place in less than 90 minutes, I decided to take some screenshots for you of the live broadcast I watched online so you could see for yourself where to look for these treasures the next time we’re due for a dose of SOTU.  Enjoy.

This one wasn't so much awkward as it just made me want to tear the tie off his neck. He kept adjusting it throughout the President's speech, which made the lines go all willy nilly and made me want to scoop out my eyeballs with a spoon.

I don't know about you but I always feel awkward being the only one sitting while everyone else is giving the ol' Standing O. The SOTU is full of strongwilled half-souls, though, and you can always find people who will ignore every single idea that is offered up that evening.

After about 20 minutes, you can start to locate the sleepers. It's a bold move, sleeping during the President's speech. Bold indeed.

 

Ever have to sit by the boss during a company meeting? I can't imagine how much more awkward it is to have to sit here.

 

By far my favorite awkward moment of the night was when Obama made a terrible, terrible joke about crying over spilled milk.  It was the most tweeted moment of the speech.  After it received no love from the audience and an eye roll from the First Lady, even Obama had a look that made one wonder who he just fired.  Here’s a look at the audience reactions.

So there you have it, folks: the State of the Union in awkward pictures.  Now you won’t ever have to watch a Presidential Address again without taking time to appreciate the subtleties.  

After all, that’s where all the fun is. ♣

Tags: , , , , , ,

Stop SOPA, Save the Unicorns

18 Jan

I was going to post today but I like the magical Interwebz and I feel like you do too and I thought I should take a moment to point out that we might want to work together to save the magical Interwebz unicorns.

Some other people put it a different way.  You can check out their version here:

http://vimeo.com/31100268

Thanks for taking a few minutes to edumacate yourselves.  And for helping the pages you visit stay online.

Fellow unicorn lover,

Jackie ♣

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

2012: The Year I’m (Almost) Not Always Right.

11 Jan

Image from A Paper Proposal - click to explore their site of wedding-inspired awesomeness

This past weekend marked the twentieth time I have locked myself out of my own vehicle.

Admittedly, that’s a rough estimate.  But it’s probably not all that rough.

I was going running (sixth week of Couch to 5K, by the way, thankyouverymuch), and decided that I would tuck the key to my car in a tiny zippered compartment right above my jiggly bum.  This tiny contraption is courtesy of the super awesome pants that Dave bought me for Christmas.    But since it’s so tiny and located directly above my rearend, I thought it best to cut down on bulk and take only the key to the ignition and not the little button pad that locks and unlocks the doors.

Mark: this was a conscious choice.

You know that fleeting moment when you wonder if something will pose a problem for you and that you might want to pursue it to ensure that you are wrong but you convince yourself that you’re being illogical and choose to ignore it?  I think it’s called laziness.  Or apathy.  At any rate, for a moment I wondered whether or not I needed the button thingamajig to get back in my car but told myself that was silly and that ignition keys always open doors as well.  I locked the button whats-it in my car, tucked the ignition key into the secret ass pocket, and took off. I ran, I succeeded, I got back to the car, and the key failed.

Failed hard.

It’s unfortunate because I was hot off the victory of my week 6 run and excited to get back in the car and go take a much-needed shower.  I’m not a natural-born exerciser.  You know, one of those dames who can fun 5 miles and have a soft, beautiful glisten? I was bred to sit on couches and play video games and eat potato chips.  When I perform a task any more strenuous than brushing my teeth, I immediately break out in a coating of sweat not unlike the look of a sloppily glazed donut. I needed that shower.  Instead, I was outside my car fumbling around at the keyholes in the cold.  I decided to conquer the situation with my mind.  I deemed it a logical impossibility that my ignition key would not also lock and unlock the doors, and prayed to sweet baby Jesus to please do some sort of automobile miracle for me on this 28 degree day.

That also failed.

I was visiting my hometown and only knew one person in the area that I still kept in touch with on a regular basis and was within walking distance.  Unfortunately, I hadn’t seen her in about a year and didn’t want her first impression of me to be fresh off a 2-mile, just-out-of-bed-and-now-a-glazed-human run. But I had no choice: I needed someone with AAA and someone in her house had to have it. I didn’t know that for a fact.  I just knew her family, and her family was chock full of folks who would really need something like AAA.

The sister was my winner.  In fact, I cashed in on her third and final lock out call of the year.  Score. 

I finally got in the car and got to my cell phone to call Dave and tell him about how incredibly stupid I am, which I am apt to do on an almost-weekly basis.  I like to remind him that I need him around because when without, I can’t really function easily like other human beings.  Without his assistance, I’d be wandering the streets of the city barefoot and coat-less with only a kittens and slices of leftover pizza in a knapsack to accompany me.

Actually, that doesn’t sound so bad.

As it turns out, David had told me only one month ago that my key pad was absolutely required to open the car and I said that was no problem and why would I ever not just use the key pad.  Though I pretended not to remember this conversation, I had a movie scene flashback to my exact location at the time of its happening.  I was flippant.  And I had just paid the price.

Sometimes I just don’t listen to Dave because I don’t feel like it.  I tell him I won’t take a coat outside because I don’t need it and then I ask to borrow his only a few hours after.  I tell him I don’t  need to wear sneakers because sneakers look stupid with my sweater and then I ask him to stop somewhere to buy flats because my feet look like they were attacked by badgers. 

And I also tell him to stop rambling on about using the key pad and then lock myself out of the car because I forget that I need it.

Therefore, I have deemed 2012 the year that Dave is always right.  I’m boldly going where no woman has gone before.  I’ve dedicated 2012 to blindly following wherever Dave will lead me.  I have a good feeling it will involve more jackets, better shoe choices, and fewer lockouts.  It’s a win-win.  Either I find he’s not right and I can carry on henceforth not heeding his advice, or I’ll find that he’s almost always right and become a more efficient, more put-together human being.

Here’s hoping the latter also means less lockouts. ♣

Tags: , , , , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started