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Milton Waddams Is My Spirit Animal

7 Aug

I’m starting to really resent my student loans.

Well, I guess I’ve kind of resented them for a while. Since about the time they started being, you know, due. 

In my slightly older and barely wiser years, I’m now starting to recall all those conversations I blacked out for when I was younger. Those ones about how I was going to pay for college and how banks will just give you money and that everyone was doing it and it was the only way to get an education. Kids all across America were being told that they could go to college if only they filled out the FAFSA and clicked their mouses a few times. 

Well, I’m sure not all kids were having that conversation. In many homes across America, the conversation was whether they should pursue the scholarship for dressage or for water polo. But in my town, horses were for the Amish and swimming was only in a river, so my conversation was pretty average: I took out a lot of money on the understanding that everyone was doing it, and that it was the only way to make sure I got a job.

What a bunch of malarkey.

I had grown ass adults selling 5- and 6-digit loans to me like crack dealers. No interest while in school they said. You’ll make more money when you graduate they said. It’s good debt because they can’t take your education from you they said.

High honor roll, folks. I was clearly undeserving. How did I listen to that bunch of horse manure? They can’t take my education but they sure as hell can take my life post-college. And they have. They haaaave.

As many followers of the Jackie saga know, I was once a visiting member of the corporate jungle as an executive assistant for a nice chunk of my life. I indulged in their expense reports, their endless office supply closets, their galas and lunch meetings. I had to eventually quit because it was going to give me a freaking stroke but man was it nice to have that paycheck.

Of course when your job pushes you to the teetering edge of major stroke risk, you’re inclined to spend your money on things that help you forget about said impending stroke. Like great food and shopping and online orders and drapes and anything else you can stare at while you’re not at work so you can feel like you’re not at work. But after a while you realize that you’re spending over 40 hours a week with a knot in your stomach and if you add the hours you stay awake at night because you get woken up by texts and emails from your boss that remind you to do something you already did two weeks ago, you realize that your entire life blows, excellent food and furniture or not. And you can either continue on the path to unhappiness and strokedom or try to get a job you enjoy.

So that’s what I did. I left my big, beautiful wood desk in a private suite, threw all my business professional clothes in the closet, and sailed into the ocean of non-profits and jobs in my field to see if I could piece together enough money each month to pay my bills. At the moment, that consists of three part-time jobs: one non-profit, one for-profit, and one constantly rotating theater thing. With those powers combined, I’m Captain Jackie: almost content citizen who can almost pay her bills…if we don’t count those enormous piles of cash she owes to the banks who gave her an education all those years ago. You know, the ones big enough to have bought a house or a new car or fund a wedding, or do all three meagerly. 

The peculiar thing about such a move is that when you switch concentrations of work (unless you’re a lucky bastard), you go from climbing the ladder in the field you were working in and somewhat respected for to having to go to the bottom of the climb again. It’s like being in the 80’s on chutes and ladders just when some jackass of a snake bites you and sends you to the first row again. And so the majority of the last several months of my time at work have been attempting to demonstrate that I am indeed a fully functioning human being, capable of great feats when equipped with tasks, a computer and organizational goals.

Of course, being equipped at all is a bit of a task in the nonprofit world. In fact, I went into work just this past week to find an email stating that someone else was being hired and that it would be great if I could pack up my files and move to the back corner of the office, where I started when I got hired, and used the company-shared laptop instead of the beautiful, large-screen Mac that comprised the sole perk of my working environment. 

Well that and the chips at staff meetings are pretty good.

milton

Milton, my spirit animal.

So I’m feeling a little more Milton Waddams-y than usual and while I’m juggling these three gloriously half-baked bill payers, my resentment grows toward that enormous wad of cash I borrowed for a few years that could have been a mortgage or a backpacking trip throughout, well, the entire freaking world really.

I don’t like to be discontent, and discontent I am. So August is the month of shaking things up. I’m sucking at a lot right now (by the by, I didn’t work out at all for two days in a row. TWO DAYS IN A ROW. I fell off the trolley. Please don’t leave me). My first plan of attack is to download Final Fantasy 8, fashion a blanket fort in my living room, and live in a pile of cheese curl powder and my own body oils until I complete it. Then once I’m done mourning the Jackie of Suckage Past, I’m going to dive directly into the bowels of Jackie of Amazeballs Future. I don’t know what she’s like yet, or how uncomfortable her bowels may or not be as a dwelling space, but I’m excited to find out.

Unfortunately I’m quite certain that every version of Jackie comes with student loan debt and not a backpack full of world-traveling possibilities.

But that’s okay. I’m going to cope. I’ve gathered the blankets and simply have to acquire the cheese curls and I’m all set.

See? This adulthood thing is easy. 

See you on the flip side. Jackie of Suckage Past, out. ♣

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My Pole Name is Jasper Highland

24 Jul

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s been quite some time since I’ve regaled you with tales of my new adventures in suckery, lovingly dubbed “Lollipop Tuesdays”. If you’re new to the pond, check out the conveniently placed “What’s Lollipop Tuesday?” header at the top of this page to cool the burning sensation in your cerebrum.

I need to find money and time and get my behind out into the world to do new things more. This year I’ve been a wee bit slacking, and my most recent plans fell through. So here’s a look at a Lollipop Tuesday past, partly to satiate you and partly to motivate me. After all, once I’ve pole-danced, I can do anything. Enjoy. *

Jackie's avatarThe Jackie Blog

Ladies and Gentlemen, Happy Pole-Dancing Lollipop Tuesday.

What? Pole Dancing!?

Yeah, I thought if I just threw it in there unexpectedly it wouldn’t hurt so bad.  Are you all right?

In order to understand how incredibly awkward an experience this was for me, you have to first understand that I, Jackie, am not a sexual being.   Perhaps somewhere deep, deep within me, there is a ferocious, sexy monster just waiting to be unleashed from years of pent-up frustration.

And if you look real hard in that same place, you might also find a unicorn.

So suffice it to say that when I answered the phone with a proposition on the other end that I join a group of ladies for a birthday party at a pole-dancing lesson and I actually said yes, I was instantly paralyzed with fear.

Paralyzed.  With.  Fear.

The problem is that there are two different Jackies at…

View original post 678 more words

The Pros and Cons of Half-Jackies

17 Jul

I spent a large portion of last evening weighing the pros and cons of donating my eggs.

I just turned 27. There’s a lot to do.

By “a lot to do”, I mean “shit’s expensive and sometimes I think about donating my eggs”.

Sometimes isn’t a lot. It’s like, three times. Once, when I saw an ad at a bus stop saying I could snag 10 grand for a little potential half-Jackie, once more the other day when I made a joke to Dave about it, and for the third time last night when an excellent friend said she’d been considering it.

Some friends get coffee, some donate eggs together.

We’re both logical beings. Kind of. And after we measured each other’s level of sincerity (mine was at 15%, hers was at 45%), we began to look up everything we could possibly find on the magical interwebz about the pros and cons of donating our eggs.

In case you’re curious, it’s not as easy as just looking good on paper. Sure, it’s pretty standard that people want babies from degree-carrying, attractive egg donors, but there’s a whole lot that goes into the slushie that is my body that I can’t really control. Suddenly, I found myself poring over pages of desirable egg donor qualities, measuring how I stacked up next to what was one of the highest rated potential donors: genius Asians.

If you’re reading this and you’re an genius Asian, get thee to a hospital. They’ll suck your eggs right out of you and slap a check in your hand in no time. I, however, don’t get in so easily. I’m the kind of gal who has done what I can with what was given to me. And what was given to me was a big pile of recessive, sickly, or otherwise degenerative DNA. I got my mother’s creaky knees and migraines, my father’s asthma and allergies, and more teeth than my mouth got the memo for. I’m blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and so pale you can map the blood flow through my veins to most of my major organs. My family is chock full of brown haired, hazel eyed natural tanners so I’m either adopted, or I’m a great underdog story about a mess of genes that lost every war they fought but turned into a fully-functional person in spite of it.

I’m thinking there won’t be a big rush to my egg donor application.

eggs

I like to think my eggs look like this. Close, right?

I’m thinking they wouldn’t be too supportive of exchanging a half-Jackie for a cool ten grand, in spite of the fact that it could fix my car, get me a nice deposit on a new place, and get me out of credit card debt. I mean, when you look at it that way, kids are really great.

Of course, the magical interwebz also had a host of horror stories to share, which brought my 15% down to a 5%. I have to admit that it was mostly the part about how you have to inject yourself with hormones and how after you do all that if you’re unable to have the eggs extracted even if it’s through no fault of your own, you only get a couple hundred dollars. You also sometimes have to wait for over a year or two to get matched with someone, even in the event that there really is a mother out there who wants a gawky, toothy, snarky half-Jackie for her own… which is unlikely.

So all that got me thinking… what would I rather do for 10 grand than wait two years, pump myself full of hormones, bring a human being into this world that I can never see, and have someone stab my ovary with a transvaginal needle, resulting in possible complications for which I have no medical insurance coverage?

Lots of things. But mostly probably a 365. After all, I’m half way through mine and it’s about time I start kicking around some ideas for next year. It is possible that I could raise $10,000 in a year by extreme couponing, gigging on the side, and hoarding spare change like Gollum? Maybe I should raise the stakes on myself and if I don’t have $10,000 in my account by the end of the year, I have to apply to be an egg donor.

That’s a fun game. ..all I need is a good name for the journey.

Now taking submissions. ♣

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The Great Filth Festering

10 Jul

My apartment turned on me yesterday like milk: all at once and gag-reflex levels of sour.

You see, for the past several weeks I’ve been trying to work on that switch in my brain that goes off without warning and sends me into a frenzy of I CAN’T LIVE IN THIS MESS IT’S DISGUSTING I’M DISGUSTING I HAVE TO FIX IT ALL RIGHT NOW.

Sometimes this will happen when the house is truly messy. Sometimes it will happen because there is a sock on the floor in the kitchen and I can’t explain how or why. The attacks come from nowhere and there’s been little that has proven helpful in confronting it.

Lately, I’ve been working on it by trying to ease into the filth. Not nasty filth, but a general lived-in filth. It’s been difficult, but it’s all part of the trying task of not being a crazy person. The plan was to get comfortable with a shelf undusted, cat litter unscooped, a dish unrinsed. You know, like a well-adjusted human being might do. So as part of training over the course of a week, I had been letting a few things accumulate to which I’m typically quite attentive. Like the garbage. And the dishes. And, well, lots of things.

Remember: there’s no judging on The Jackie Blog.

Anyway, I had decided my training session was over and that I would clean the house thoroughly this past Monday evening after work. Unfortunately, we were faced with a bit of a family emergency that needed tending to and left at 6pm for a five hour drive to address it and then turned around at 4am for a five hour drive back. Which was fine. It was good. The problem was that while we were gone, the house turned.

It appears I had come up right to the brink of disgust. At the time I’d committed to cleaning the place, I had a 24 hour clock counting down to the moment when milk gone undrunk would turn sour, vegetables uneaten would transform from overly ripe to rotten, and all hell would break loose. Dave and I returned from our overnight voyage and went straight to work without returning to the house. All day, my house was left to fester. By the time I got home, I was almost certain I’d need a priest to exorcise the unholy demon of nasty.

There was a plague of fruit flies in my kitchen, feeding off what appeared to be several thick pockets of stench and grossness.

The most obvious culprit was the trash, which had swelled past its max capacity and as I recalled, was a glorious feast for flies since it had scraps of last week’s corn on the cob, watermelon rind, and other epic bits of festery awful. I tended to it and moved to the next cluster, which was gathered around my banana keeper.

Yes, we have a banana keeper. We eat a lot of bananas. We also apparently don’t bother to throw away the top of the bunch from which the bananas hang sometimes. So there, in the awkward half-pieces that were torn from the dislodged fruit, lay nesting several fruit flies. But that still wasn’t the worst part.flies

I realized the dishes needed to be done so I cleaned out the sink and washed the basin thoroughly and remembered that the last time I did that, I promised myself I would rinse my dishes so I would never again have to stare curdled milk in the face. It was chunky. And smelly. But that, too, was not the worst part.

I continued to move about the kitchen, darting from one pocket of air to another, eyes alert for any resettling of tiny black dots outside of my wine glass trap and incense sacrifice. Suddenly, I spotted it.

There, below the banana keeper, I followed a cloud of little black specks to something I tucked away in the far recesses of my brain several months ago: a brand new bag of potatoes.

I remembered it vaguely, the day Dave proudly  told me he was going to “do some rearranging in the kitchen”. For the most part, his changes were upgrades. I was left with more counter space and more room at the bar and was quite pleased.  In the process, however, the potatoes I usually house right on the counter so I remember to use them (a bag of potatoes for 2 people is just unreasonable) were moved to the bottom rack of the bar beside the cookie jar I’ve never once used.

Cookies don’t need jars. They need bellies.

There, beside my unloved bastard of a pastry basin, was a bag of what …used to be potatoes. It had grown and shrank and oozed and leaked its putrid juices into the cracks and crevices of the bar and into the drawer below it, where my once-peaceful collection of teas dwelt.

Apparently I don’t have tea very often either.

Needless to say, I spent last evening whipping the house back into shape. I’m still trying not be crazy about it though  so my bedroom and the living room and the kitchen are squeaky clean, but the 6 square feet that is the bathroom closet leaves something to be desired.

If I clean everything, I won’t learn anything, now will I?

Seriously though. Those potatoes had eyes. *Shudder*

So here I am, staring down the barrel of 27 years old (Friday, to be specific) and still finding myself in situations where things are so absolutely disgusting in my living situation that I can’t recognize a bag of root crops even when a fly swarm leads me to it.

I won’t post again until I’m an entire year older than I am today so I should take this moment to reflect. But I do a lot of reflecting around here so do me a birthday solid instead and join me in finishing these statements at whatever point you find yourself in life. I’d be tickled to read the answers. Also, there are four and it’s fill in the blank and what kind of strangers are we if you can’t write four words for my birthday?

Probably the kind of stranger who stopped reading once they realized the whole post was about the depth of my filth. So a tip of my hat to both those who bowed out early (mad respect) and those who made it this far (troopers, all).

May you all always find the bag of potatoes while it still holds actual potatoes. ♣

 

Please leave a comment with whatever answer is appropriate for this time and juncture in your life or for your mood on this particular day. Try to forget about the flies and potatoes. And thanks. Happy Birthday to you too.

Right now I’m trying to be at ease with imperfections

I find myself eating a lot of buttered toast with cinnamon and sugar

I’m kind of hoping to win the lottery for my birthday

I’m feeling pretty good about my mostly clean home

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Goalsmack Month

3 Jul

Guys, it’s an important time of year.

I’m not talking about the birth of our great and glorious beer-drinking reality-television-watching nation or even the birth of myself (occurring the week thereafter but unrelated to beer or reality television) or Christmas in July. I’m talking about the halfway point to New Year’s Resolutions.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that the beginning of this month marks the halfway point for my Fat Ass 365 Project, wherein I vowed to do something health-related and workout-y for 365 days in a row, culminating in a 10K at the end of the year. Back in spring I participated in a 5K to keep myself on track and accountable and thererin concluded that I would rather die a slow and painful death in private than to be forced to do it publicly by running a long distance race..

Unfortunately, I’ve already committed online, in person, over the phone, and in print- I’ve locked myself in via every communication channel possible. I even have an accountability buddy. That is, a buddy who will come the day of the race to knock on my door and drag me to the starting line. This, of course, is all part of a well-constructed plan by pre-5-K Jackie, who believed she could do whatever she put her mind to and didn’t want to put up with wussy Future Jackie’s sissy whining. She set up safeguards and guarantees to ensure that Future Jackie couldn’t wiggle her way out of anything. Post-5-K Jackie, however, has the good sense to acknowledge how incredibly difficult it was to simply jog three miles straight and isn’t “sissy whining” so much as she’s “certain she will die”. 

But it’s too late. I’m locked in.

Death impending or not, I’m halfway to the reckoning. A little closer, actually, since the 10K is late fall. That means that in two weeks I officially start my training schedule. It’s not official, really. It’s just a piece of paper I tore out of a magazine that promised me lots of things. 

So I’m staring down the barrel of my New Year’s Resolution. So far everything is on track. I’m still working out, I’ve cut down my complaining to occasional, and when I think about running a 10K I still puke a little fear into my mouth. How you doin?homer

Many of you are in the midst of grand undertakings as well. Some of you got started bright and early in the year and some of you just hopped on board recently. You can start a 365 any time, so if this paragraph has you feeling left out, feel free to jump in any day now. If you’re nervous about doing the whole thing, you can always start a 30 Day Challenge. The mention of either is enough to get me all hot and bothered.

While you’re all assessing progress, charting future plans, and/or scolding yourself for negligence, I’ll be paying extra attention to Jillian Michaels  and logging more miles on my bike in the hopes that I can lower my risk of Death-by-10K. Maybe if I kick it up a notch these two weeks before training, I’ll thank myself later. 

Unlikely.

But first I must celebrate the glory that is Old Glory. I plan to do so with two toddlers, a baby, and a kiddie pool. I made cookies. It’s going to be excellent. 

Happy Almost Independence Day/My Birthday/Christmas in July/Goalsmack Month. And don’t forget – it’s never too late to join the crazy. ♣

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The Path to Crotchety is Paved with Typos

26 Jun

 

I’m having a hard time taking part in daily life with other humans without their blatant spelling and grammatical errors making me feel all funny inside.

This has been an issue for me for quite some time. I’m a lover of the English language, a relisher of commas, a juggler of prepositional phrases. I need things to be in their proper order.

For those of you unawares, a prepositional phrase is basically anywhere a squirrel can be in relation to a tree. Up a tree, down a tree, around a tree, in a tree, on a tree – squirrels can be lots of things to a tree and most of those things are the beginning of a well-formed prepositional phrase.

Some of you are going to mull over this for a while and come up with some things that squirrels can do in relation to trees that are not, in fact, prepositional phrases. Some of them might even be a little dirty. But you’re going to have to take that up with Mrs. Bennett, my 7th grade English teacher. Besides, this isn’t really an English lesson. Or about squirrels in trees (or inside trees or beyond the trees…) It’s about how I need to stop being so judgy mcjudgy about people who genuinely can’t get a handle on whether you make something plural by just slapping an apostrophe “s” on the end.

For the record, YOU DON’T. OKAY?! YOU DON’T. THERE ARE RULES. IT’S NOT THAT SIMPLE.

I’m sorry.

I’m not sorry.

I’m trying to be more sorry.

I think it all started around 1994. It was during this year that Ace of Base descended upon America with its hit The Sign from the album Happy Nation. My older brother had just spent his hard-earned George Washingtons on one of his very first cassette tapes (if you’re under 15, please click here) in order to listen to its Swedish pop glory any time he wanted.

After a bit of rewinding, of course.

I was giddy with glee at the idea of holing up for the evening to listen to it and had convinced him to let me. I shoved it in my cassette player (again, here) and began to sing along to each song, using the cassette insert to follow along to the lyrics.

That’s when my stomach began to feel funny. There were several…adjustments…that needed to be made for the lyrics to be accurate. Some of them were, I’m sure, Swedish quirkisms and lyrical liberties. But there were without a doubt several typos and oversights that made me feel as if some terrible injustice had taken place and so I set out to correct them. One by one. In pen.

My brother was so ungrateful.

I tried to show him how I’d improved his life; now he could listen and read and not feel funny in his stomach.

As it turned out, he was totally fine going about life as the owner of the inaccurate, typo-ridden lyrics enclosed with Happy Nation. In fact, since I’d marred his previously pristine cassette tape, he washed his hands of it entirely and bequeathed it to me out of what could have only been disgust for grammatical perfection.

The upside is that over the years, my brother continues the practice of bequeathing items to me in favor of better items for himself. The downside is that I’m staring 27 in the face (July) and I’m pretty sure I’m just as much of an asshat now as I was when I white-knuckled that pen in my hands at the dewy age of 8.

I’m plagued by a need for grammatical correctness. I don’t frequent restaurants that don’t demonstrate proper command of the English language on their signs or promotional materials for fear the menu would send me into a tizzy. I can’t enjoy a stroll through a neighborhood without proofreading sandwich boards. Everywhere is an improperly pluralized noun; lurking behind each corner is a homophone misunderstood.

I’ve begun to work out these anxieties in my work life by applying myself as office proofreader wherever possible. Recently, this has escalated to post-it notes on the mistake-containing materials with personal insults directed at the marketing manager and left on his desk for discovery later in the day. In my personal life, however, I’m finding it more difficult to exact vindication.

I have to do everything I can to stop myself from morphing into a crotchety old hermit, and while I’ve put certain safeguards in place to help prevent this (Lollipop Tuesdays, not working from home, my mother calling me at least every 3 days to make sure I’m not playing World of Warcraft again), I’m going to need to wear myself down on the proofreading mania. People will always make mistakes. Lots and lots of eye-burning mistakes.

I’m thinking of conditioning. I can collect menus, mass mailings, and other printed publications that offend me and go through them like flashcards each morning until I’m so numb to typos and spelling errors that I feel nothing. It’s going to be a long, hard journey but in the end, I’ll be able to eat at a slew of ma and pa restaurants I’ve always wanted to try but couldn’t bear the risk of error-ridden menus.

The key to every goal is a food-related motivator; I just have to find it.

Feel free to start my conditioning by writing error-ridden comments.  I know you’re going to anyway because you’re all so clever.

No, but really please don’t. I can’t bear it. I’m not ready. I’M NOT READY.

Heaven help me. Here I come, crotchety. ♣

crotchety

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Pressed and Pegged and Oh-So-Flattahed

19 Jun

Hello ducklings old and new, and Happy Wednesday. It’s time for a post.

The coveted badge. notice Peg's fantastic skills in the application, "Paint". It's part of her appeal.

The coveted badge. notice Peg’s fantastic skills in the application, “Paint”. It’s part of her appeal.

There are a few honors in the blogging world that are super exciting for writers. Like when you get a batch of new subscribers or get a spike in hits or, you know, anything that reminds you that actual human beings can hear you talking to yourself online.

My first blog-related pants pee was the first time I was Freshly Pressed. For those of you unawares, Freshly Pressed is when WordPress wizards, the people who happen to host my blog, round up some of what they consider to be good material and promote them on their homepage. It brings in a lot of traffic, and back in the day when featured posts lingered several days before turning over (now it’s several hours), it meant the holy blog gates had been opened and traffic would rush to your doorstep.

My first time Freshly Pressed was a stroke of luck, really. I wrote about Regis Philbin and he just happened to announce his retirement the next day. I wrote about how memorizing trivia in case I get the chance to get on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire minimized my mental storage capacity for the rest of my life.

Since then I’ve received the honor a few more times and have discovered a slew of great writers by reading other featured posts. One such writer is Peg over at pegoleg.com. She’s been Freshly Pressed a bajillion times, like for this one and this one and this one, to name a few. Now a seasoned Freshly Pressed Expert, Peg has started her own curating process and dubbed it Freshly Pegged. She invites hand-picked bloggers to select a post that should have been Freshly Pressed but was not. She refers to herself as a digital superhero, handing out honors to posts that have been robbed of their rightful glory.

She recently trudged through the muck and mire of my brain bits to ask me to shake the dust off of a former post and slap a Freshly Pegged badge on it and so I am oh so very flattahed to be featured today. Check it out here.

I highly recommend latching on to Peg’s musings of the mind featured above – particularly her condemnation of her sister for ruining the economy by deciding to diet at Christmas.

Thank you all for reading. I think you’re just the bestest. Here’s a picture of a unicorn.

by LadyAlora - click to visit her at Deviant Art

by LadyAlora – click to visit her at Deviant Art

♣

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My Struggle with Dance

4 Jun

napoleon dance

I wasn’t born a dancer.

I have the long, gangly limbs of an awkward schoolgirl married with the anxieties of a shut-in. Though I’m often mistaken for the kind of person who will get up and dance, it’s one of the pastimes I prefer our culture had never actually developed so that I could never live to be pressured into the misery of participating in it.

I danced once in middle school. I had developed a deep-seated complex about having to shower naked in the open with other girls and so to distract everyone’s attention from my conscientious objection, I stood on one of the benches in the locker room and performed a rousing rendition of “Father Abraham”, which I learned in Christian School.

Father Abraham had many sons, and many sons had Faaaaather Abraham. I am one of them, and so are you. So let’s all praise The Lord! (Right Arm!) Father Abraham… had many sons….

It went on in this hokey-pokey like fashion until all my body parts were involved. It was the dancing highlight of my first decade.

About five years later, I took a real stab at it in college. It was a pact between a friend and me– we were both ungifted with grace and thought taking Modern Dance would be an excellent way to help gain control over our gangly limbs. I remember it taking me several weeks simply to memorize the warmup routine. I also remember slamming my head off the stage during the final performance. Mostly.

A few years after that, I made one final and last-ditch effort to fall in line with society’s demand that I dance. After knocking out my gen eds, I transferred to a performing arts conservatory  with a nationally-lauded dance program. I was in the acting track and thought it would be prudent to dip my toes in the dance water to help not embarrass myself in future auditions that require rudimentary movement.  I signed up for “Dancing for Actors” – a class specifically tailored to actors who want to avoid humiliation. We learned basic steps and combinations and had to choreograph a piece and teach it to the class.

I struggled. There was a lot of stepping on toes and attempting to lead, which apparently isn’t permitted by humans with hoo-has. For my final piece, I choreographed “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and featured a freestyle section where everyone was commanded to channel their inner jungle animal and move through the space. It was beautiful.  It’s the only assignment on which I got an A.

And also the only assignment for which I didn’t dance.

My least favorite part of being a non-dancing human is weddings. People will always try to get me to dance at weddings. Somewhere along the way, someone told society that if you’re in an environment where other people are dancing and you’re not, you must not be having fun. The reality of the situation is that I’m highly skilled in self-entertainment (as a child I spent a lot of hours sitting in the car alone while my mom ran errands). But because society has been taught that dancing is fun and non-dancers are miserable, it becomes everyone’s personal mission to make non-dancers dance at weddings.

As if it’s not humiliating enough to have to scramble for a bouquet of flowers in front of everyone.

I have made two attempts at dancing in the past several months (a new record). The first was at a wedding where my friends pulled me onto the dance floor against my will and gang-danced me into a circular cage until I had to either move or ruin everyone’s fun. The second was last week.

I was at the wedding of a lovely and fantastic couple and feeling quite safe about the experience because Dave has been very vocal about his distaste for dancing. I remembered that quality being one of the things I checked off my “ideal man” list that I keep in my pocket at all times for cross-referencing. However, at this particular wedding, he was dancing.

This was an entirely new kind of pressure. Dave is a very attractive man, and weddings typically feature moderately attractive women. So added to the weight of ruining a wedding with my sourpuss non-dancing and the pressure of my friends egging me to do so publicly, I now had to consider that if I didn’t get out there and dance with him, some other boobed lady beast would.  So I did what any self-respecting woman would do: I asked the DJ to play “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” by The Darkness and threw caution to the wind. He followed it up with “Brick House” and two things occurred to me: 1) I don’t mind dancing if it’s to amusing music and 2) I don’t mind dancing as much now that I’m not so fat.

That last part is a big one.

For those of you following along at home, I’m halfway through a venture I’ve dubbed Project Fatass 365, wherein I must work out every day all year. There on that dance floor I realized that there was much less jiggle in my jiggy and that I wasn’t nearly as concerned with people’s eyes being on me as I used to. Not just because there is less of me and because I can better control what I have, but because I just care a lot less about what people think. Now that I’ve shed some of the megagut I was using to store my food for winter all year long, I have more energy to be my middle-school self.

I’m still not a dancer. I will probably never be one. I’m living proof that slides, be they of the cha-cha or the electric variety, are not universally demonstrated. But that’s okay because I do one hell of a Father Abraham.

So here’s to a new Jackie – a Jackie who dances not because she’s egged on or pressured or gang-danced to humiliation, but because she hears Brick House and wants to get funky and doesn’t really care what it looks like to everyone else. It’s a shame that I ever lost that spark that got me on the locker room bench in the first place.

But you still can’t make me shower in public.

Father Abraham had many sons, and many sons had Faaaather Abraham. I am one of them, and so are you. So let’s all praise the Lord (LEFT ARM!) Father Abraham….♣

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Can’t Work; Gone Camping

29 May

I’m approaching my foretold destiny as a child of the forest.

By “foretold”, I’m referring to my having told you before. Though, I’ve also told you I’m a well-ripening cat lady so it appears I’ve laid out before you two possible Jackies: forest child hippie commune Jackie and shut-in cat lady Jackie.

I know no other futures.

The thing is, this year has been doing funny things to me. Ever since I committed to a 365 Fitness challenge, (I believe it’s formally dubbed “Project Fat Ass 365“), I’ve been getting out more often. I mean, I kind of have to. I was doing Jillian Michaels for a while there (and still do when I have need to crush a can with my butt cheeks) but working out is a lot better if I keep my options open. Lately, that has meant biking a lot.

A really cool thing happened in Pittsburgh recently- a bike trail that runs the length of here to D.C. called The Great Allegheny Passage was completed. Well, technically it will be complete in two weeks when everyone plans to celebrate it. Anyway, it’s just a few miles from my place, runs along the water, features several pedestrian bridges and even serves as home to a Bald Eagle. I discovered it after volunteering for Bike Pittsburgh a few weeks ago and am having a hard time getting things in life done because I’d rather be riding the trail. Oh yes, that’s right – you heard me: I’m having a hard time being a responsible adult because I’d rather be biking.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner. Biking is the perfect activity for a hermit. You move quickly through the space so no one can notice your fat jiggle while you exercise or see your face long enough to recognize you. It’s acceptable to practice biking alone and since everyone you pass gives you a nice smile and a flick of a nod, you kind of feel like you’re being social. Well, you kind of feel like if you do it once in a while, your skin won’t be so pasty and your eyes look so terrified all the time.

Part of the grand allure of The Great Allegheny Passage is that it makes a nice substitute for hiking The Appalachian Trail. I’ve often told myself I should just put my stuff in storage, select a good trail name, and make like a nomad until I understand all the mysteries of life and/or get eaten by a bear. Of course, my parents are terrified that I’m more likely to be bear food than to be enlightened and when I consider the requirements of the situation, such as buying a bunch of hiking gear, leaving my job for about a year, and somehow managing to pay for all my junk in the meantime, well, I go back in my apartment and play Fat Princess some more.

 

This gem was done by TheGrossUncle, who has a pretty groovy collection of work over at thegrossuncle.com.

This gem was done by TheGrossUncle, who has a pretty groovy collection of work over at thegrossuncle.com.

But this bike trail would just require that I take a vacation, a few hundred dollars, and head into the woods with all the bike equipment I already own. Plus, Dave said today that he’s getting the itch to get rid of a few things and go buy a bike. And since we all know that Dave is the king of the forest, his doing so would mean that I can bike and hike and camp to my heart’s delight and while I’m busy getting all enlightened, he can tend to the bear fighting.

That’s where he’d rather be anyway. I could strip him of everything but his underwear and drop him off in the woods only to come back three days later and discover him the king of some man tribe, complete with forts, trolleys, and a fully-fledged hunter-gatherer society.

When presented with these fantastic possibilities, I find it difficult to focus on daily tasks like work and hobbies taking showers. 

So for now, there are two potential Jackies: forest hippie child and shut-in cat lady. Maybe my life is about being the latter and constantly seeking the former. I have been hexed with the struggle. This is my burden and I share it now with you.

Quickly: to the forest! ♣

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Strumpets in the Summertime: Part Deux

22 May

I was all geared up to write you a poem about the oncoming summer. It was something to do with the good Lord protecting us from the inevitable onslaught of boobly boobs and private unmentionables coming our way with the heat. Spring has been hot and muggy, and while prefer it to the bitter cold I am never quite prepared for how bare-ass naked other human beings can be in the wide open public with complete and total comfort.

But as it turns out, I’ve already done that one. It was called Strumpets in the Summertime and was one of my 365 musings in the 2011th year of our Lord. So here I am, getting all old and cranky with the same, repetitive complaints about humanity. I guess that sums up my life experience to date: I was simply born a cranky, old woman. I like to think I just matured at a terrifyingly rapid pace.

I should note that Dave caught me checking a girl out the other day (boobs are magnetic, I don’t care who you are) and said it’s a frequent observation he makes about me. So I guess I’m the one needing protection from The Almighty this hot, muggy spring. 

May He be with us all.

Strumpets in the Summertime

 Is it just me or are clothes being made smaller and sluttier?

That has to be the only reason it’s acceptable for all these body parts to be out on display.  It’s not even summer and all the gals in the city are free-flying with their anatomy out in the sunlight for all to see.  Tiny little short shorts, dresses with dangerously high hems, and low, low, low cut blouses.

How, exactly, am I supposed to compete with that?

I don’t really have any good ideas.  I mean, I’ll put on a dress but I’m not about to approach looking like a lady of the night when I do it.  Quite frankly, I was raised a tomboy and the fact that I’m willing to wear dresses or skirts of any kind should have everyone’s mouths agape.  When I reach for a makeup brush, people should have near-heart attacks.

Or at least they would be if there weren’t five girls within a 50 foot radius at all times with their legs and arms and boobly-boobs on display.

It’s not really a matter of competition.  After all, I’ve got a handsome guy by my side and I don’t really have any interest in attracting anyone’s attention but his.  But holy cow if I were him I’d have a hard time paying attention to me.

Since I’m unwilling to go the way of sluttery, I’m going to have to think of something else.  Maybe I could always smell like something nice.  Not flowers or musk – I need something that competes with tittery.  What’s a good scent to get a man’s attention? Bacon? 

I don’t know that would help my cause to be associated with cooked pig.

Why isn’t there already some sort of scent out there to assist in these situations?  Perhaps I should bottle something myself and label it as strumpet defense.   The commercial could feature a bunch of strumpets (naturally) all dressed up in their strumpet clothes (of course) and a decent-looking-but-not-blow-your-socks-off woman in the midst of them with an aura of light around her and a man staring at her with rapt attention.   And then some clever slogan. 

I’m going to have to work on that.   In the meantime, I’ll just have to keep making delicious food and being charmingly dorky.  Because those are really my only two redeeming qualities and I’m not sure the last one even counts.  I’m just trying to slip that in so I can make ‘redeeming qualities’ plural.

Maybe the bacon perfume isn’t such a bad idea after all.  It might remind him of pig, but that will remind him of food and that will remind him of me.  We can go from boob-gazing to food-grazing in 3 seconds flat and I can pull him out of the outside world of strumpetry and into our apartment where it’s safe and where I feed him and make him forget that there are attractive, young women absolutely everywhere.

Oh man- it’s only spring!  I’m gonna need one helluva plan when summer hits. ♣

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