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I Fought the Law and the Law Didn’t Win

6 Mar

Happy Lollipop Tuesday, my dearest dearies. I so adore you all that I’ve decided to go to a gig with Dave, whip open my laptop, and tell you about a time that scared me out of my wits instead of socializing with humanity. Because right now I’m having trouble with a big girl decision I recently made. I decided to try to do something very difficult and it’s scary and adult and since those sort of things make me want to curl up in a ball with a block of cheese and a bucket of hot fudge, I thought I’d instead open up this laptop and be reminded that I am the creator of Lollipop Tuesdays and I shall not be daunted by the great open plain of adulthood. After all, I have gone to a pole-dancing class and reenacted The Battle of Manassas and competed in the World Pinball Championship. I shall remind myself that even though I’m scared to death to go outside every single day, I do it because by golly, my resume reads like an adventurous person and I do therefore I am, dammit.

So let’s talk about the time I decided to represent myself in court.

Oh! Happy Lollipop Tuesday ladies and gentlemen.

Once upon a time I worked at a fudge factory. I know that sounds ridiculous but it’s true. I was the office manager and I signed sheets for people that read “fudge packer” because that was literally their job and I tried every day to be mature about the whole thing. But then they kind of lost some money and had to lay people off and I was one of them. So I claimed unemployment for 5 weeks and then began working for the woman who wears fashion capes to work and I felt like Anne Hathaway before she quit to pursue a writing career.

That’s where you all come in. Right there with that Jackie who is an executive assistant and blogs about being the Jane Goodall of the corporate jungle.

Anyway, here I am three years later being all zen with my recent decision to go to grad school for two masters degrees at the same time, and unemployment sends me a random piece of paper in the mail that states that I was not laid off three years ago, that they were taking the money back they gave me from insurance, and that if I didn’t agree with the charges of fraud, I had the right to hire an attorney.

Let me tell you, that’s some seriously adult stuff right there. I miss being a kid when I get a letter like that in the mail.

pigs in space

This is what my friend drew at the bar while I sat on my laptop and wrote a blog post instead of talking to her. Let”s call her Navi. All hail Navi.

As it turns out, I couldn’t afford a lawyer and hiring one would have been the same amount that they were going to take away from me so no matter what I was screwed unless I could 1) represent myself and 2) win. But I was scared and the paperwork was confusing and I wanted to play video games instead. So I told myself to make it a Lollipop Tuesday, told everyone I was going to do it so I couldn’t back out, and did the dang thing.

Let me tell you: it wasn’t fun. There’s a lot of really complicatedly simple and stupid paperwork to do and then you have to ask people who know you to go to court and be like “yeah, she was laid off. we all were” and then go to court and swear to tell the truth and sit in a tiny room in a tiny place with a tiny man who is very stern and records you and asks you the same questions over and over and then decides if you’re lying and mails you a letter to tell you so.

I put myself on autopilot so I can’t remember much except when I was waiting in the lobby to review my file (that’s a real thing. It’s pretty much like it is on the movies, don’t worry. You just act like you’re demi moore in a few good men). There were a bunch of lawyers there with briefcases looking very serious and I realized that all I was doing was staring around the enormous room like an idiot so I tried to look busy and got out my phone and contorted my face very seriously and played Hay Day.

It’s like Farmville. I’m embarrassed that I play it but I do. I’m sorry. I’m trying to quit.

So I planted digital corn and milked digital cows very seriously and when I was let in with my witness, we told him all about the day I was laid off 3 years ago and he was all stiff and grumpy and we finally made it through to the end. He tells us we’ll get a letter in the mail and ends the recording and hits the gavel and we’re done.

And then something amazing happened; he began to tell us his life story.

I kid you not – the moment that gavel landed, he suddenly lit up, and began to tell us about the first time he went to court and about how it’s a procedure people used to know and now no one does anymore and how he got his pilot license and how one day he got pulled over by the police for speeding and got out of the ticket and a bunch of other things I really couldn’t hear because I was thinking about the cost for parking in the garage next door while I listened.

But I listened. Because this guy was about to send me a piece of paper in the mail telling me if he liked me or not and I didn’t know what else to do.

And then two weeks later I got a piece of paper that said he believed I did get laid off from and I could go about my life in peace.

I fought the law and the law didn’t win.

That’s the moral of the story I suppose: I can do anything. Anyone can do anything. We just tell ourselves that we can’t and if there are people out there who can climb Mt. Everest and stand up for social injustice and be social workers and make products that change the entire world, I can suck it up and go to court.

So tomorrow I will embark on my new journey. Because it’s an incredibly small thing to do in comparison to all the things people are doing everywhere else. And someday I think that’s how you become one of those people: by being bold.

Please excuse the sincerity of this post. And the fact that I’m ending it with a quote. Just pretend it didn’t happen and go read one about how I can’t stand being trapped in an elevator.

Every day I’m hustlin’. ♣

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Sometimes I Like to Drink Naked in My Lobster Suit

27 Feb

Well, I can no longer take all the fat on my stomach and smoosh it together with my hands to create an enormous pouch of jelly.

So that’s nice.

For those of you unacquainted with my fatness, allow me to introduce you to Project Fat Ass 365, wherein yours truly has committed to work out every single day of 2013 for at least 20 minutes. For someone who just posted last week about how all her dreams could come true if she were allowed to make money to lie in bed and do nothing while NASA pokes and prods her for the betterment of society, working out is kind of epic.

So I’m two months in and I have a bit of a confession: I skipped a day.  For one entire day I didn’t do anything workout related. I tried to make up for it by doing two Jillian Michaels workouts back to back the next day and then going for a jog.  If you know anything about Jillian Michaels workouts, I hope you see that this was a worthy punishment.  At any rate it made me feel terrible enough to never want to have to do it again.

I’m glad I got that off my chest.  I hope we’re still Interwebz friends.

I’m starting to finally notice some pretty nice byproducts of exercise, primarily the aforementioned lack of a kangaroo pouch full of lard.  I also went to an interview recently only to find that my smallest tool costume ( AKA office clothes) don’t stay on my hips, which is both exciting and annoying because I’m currently riding a steady wave of poverty. 

It would be more cost effective to buy 4 bags of Doritos and keep the pants I have than to invest in smaller pants. Fact.

But alas, I made a pact with myself and made it public, so I shall trudge on. Let us not forget that it’s been four years since I’ve been in a body of water at summertime for fear of my own spectacularly thunderous thighs.  I wore cardigans all summer long because I’d rather sweat than vex others with the sight of my flappalicious arms. If I sat on furniture, I would reach for the nearest pillow and place it over my stomach so that others couldn’t see the pile of pudge that would shift forward to rest on my lap like a lard kitten. It would be really nice to not have to do those things anymore.  If I keep trucking ahead and let Jillian Michaels yell at me for just twenty minutes a day, I might actually throw on some arm floaties and jump in the deep end this summer.

Not to mention run that 10K that’s looming over me in September. That’s a killer. Why did I say I’d do that?

A typical day in my apartment with my fatness. And my cat. And my lobster suit.

A typical day in my apartment with my fatness. And my cat. And my lobster suit.

For those following along at home, I frequently tweet about my hatred of Jillian and all things pudgy on myself, so you can click the fancy button on the right to follow me on Twitter.  Occasionally I will check in with progress in my weekly posts, but for the most part I would rather spend this time focusing on the nuances of human behavior and society that make me want to board myself up in my apartment and never leave.

That’s been the tradition around here, anyway.

I’ve been courting the idea of a contest here on the bloggity blog.  It’s been quite some time since I’ve raffled a t-shirt or offered a gift card for various input. Except this time, I wouldn’t ask for Lollipop Tuesday ideas or macaroni and cheese recipes; I would challenge you to attempt a Lollipop Tuesday yourself or to do something every single day for one month to compete for a prize.

I’m not sure if this is a way to motivate you to go outside your comfort zone or a way to motivate me to keep doing what I’m doing.  Either way, we all win – yes? 

But before I put all that effort into things, let’s do a little market research. Let me know if you’d be interested in participating by answering the two snazzy surveys at the bottom of this post, and if you have any thoughts, ideas, or objections, feel free to spam the comment section – especially if you have a suggestion for a prize that would motivate you.  Be reasonable; suggestions for iPads will be scoffed at.  As you know by now, I love and adore each and every one of your squishy little brains and never let a comment go unreplied to.  

So take the survey, leave a comment, and/or follow me on Twitter to harass me with tweets like “run fatty, run!”  It’s not mean; it’s motivation.

Sprinkles and Puppies,

Jackie ♣

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My Contribution to Humanity

20 Feb

Guys, this is the moment we’ve been waiting for.  Well, me.  I’ve been waiting for.  But I know that deep down all along you’ve been rooting for me and so this will mean almost as much to you as it does to me.

Guys. NASA  hires people to stay in bed all day and let them study the effect it has on your body. They pay a lot, too.  Like $5,000 a month for three months.

THREE MONTHS.  That’s $15,000.  That’s a down payment on a house or a car or the best vacation of my life or helping 15 of my friends do something amazing or a wedding or any link to the next step in my life I want it to be.  And all just to sit in a bed.

So hear me out.  NASA needs subjects.  They’re willing to pay them handsomely for their participation.  The first two weeks is prep, the 60 days in the middle are all in bed, and the last two weeks are recovery. That’s 60 days of performing all bodily functions in bed, including using the restroom and bathing.  You have access to television, movies, and video game consoles. I’m serious.  Here’s proof.  And more proof. AND MORE PROOF.

Do you know what this means? Do you!? This means that I could get paid to play World of Warcraft.

As many longtime readers know, I have spent the last several years as a recovering WoW player.  At the lowest point in my journey, I could eat an entire pizza and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and go unshowered for five days before it started to bother me. I was so holed up in my addiction that in order to spend time with me, a friend in college carried his desktop computer from his dorm to my apartment so that he could plug it in and play computer games at the same time as me. It was the only way  I would entertain notions of social engagement.

Of course, a part of my soul was truly happy there in Azeroth, but I was a smelly pile of zombie-brained raid-driven flesh accomplishing nothing and spending all my money on pizza I hid under my bed instead of putting in the fridge downstairs.  So I can’t really say it was a positive life choice.

For those of you unacquainted, it wasn’t unlike this:

from South Park "Make Love, Not Warcraft". Check it out here: http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s10e08-make-love-not-warcraft

from South Park’s “Make Love, Not Warcraft”. Full episode here: http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s10e08-make-love-not-warcraft

I quit cold turkey twice.  The second time I was actually successful, mostly because I had uninstalled it from everything I owned and gotten rid of the only computer I had capable of handling the graphics.

I have existed WoW-free all these years mostly because I cannot make the argument that it is helping me achieve my goals in life, that it doesn’t pay the bills, and that I get to dangerous levels of hermit-like social interaction when under its power.  But then NASA announced that they want to pay me to stay in bed and play Warcraft all day for 60 days straight and that when I’m done they would hand me enough cash to do something big and adult-like in my life, thereby propelling the timeline of my adulthood forward and making family and relatives more comfortable about my life choices.

I need to play WoW to serve my country. People want to go to Mars and stuff.

Of course, in order to qualify for patriotic astronaut testing duty, I have to pass a fitness test.  So it’s a good thing I’ve been doing my Project Fatass 365, because I might actually be able to now.

It’s like this opportunity was meant solely for me.

All right, I’m off to do my last session of hateshredding with Jillian Michaels before I step it up and find a program that will make me suitable for a space mission.  Well, a space mission in bed. With Cheetos.

God Bless America. ♣

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The Best Baby Shower Ever

13 Feb

Man, I hate baby showers.

I pretty much hate all showers that don’t include water. It mostly has to do with the idea of so much estrogen stuffed into a room together, and a little to do with the fact that it’s a social engagement and requires me to leave me apartment.

So I was forced into the light of day this past weekend to celebrate the inevitable arrival of my next nephew, already dubbed David. This presents an awkward problem for me, since my David is named…David. I feel very strange calling a very small human who is related to me by blood the same thing I call a very large human who I find attractive.  I’m trying to come up with a nickname for the squirt, but I also call my form of the human David both “Davey” and “Dave”, so those are out as alternatives. Someone suggested “Li’l D” but that’s  too mediocre-white-rapper for my taste. I could go by his middle name, but the middle name is a tribute to my brother, so that’s another hot mess.

Anyway I was at a baby shower celebrating the almost fully baked muffin and was the only female in the room who had not had a child. Or snagged a husband.

For those of you unawares, when you’ve been with someone for five years and/or you’re closing in on 30, it’s virtually impossible to attend adult social engagements without being badgered about when the big day is.  And now that America is all willy-nilly about the importance of getting married before having babies, I’m not even asked when I’m getting married anymore; they just hop right to “so when do you think you’ll have kids?!”

For the record, both of these questions are rude.  And annoying. Please stop it.

But that’s just the surface of why baby showers are so awful.  The real reason is that when you’re trapped in a room with a bunch of moms who haven’t had a chance to get out in a while and connect with other moms, they want to talk about mom stuff.  In my case, pretty much everyone was a relatively new mom and were the proud owners of wobbly toddlers. With the topic of the day being an impending birth, it was only a matter of time before conversation veered toward the inevitable: the miracle of  childbirth also known as the disgusting process of labor.

I have a lot of questions about labor that I don’t really want to know the answer to.  They didn’t cover the details in my health class. All I remember is a video that had absolutely no warning attached to it showing me things I never dreamed I would be shown against my will.  I try to avoid discussion surrounding labor because I’m afraid that when it’s confirmed that you really do poop yourself in the process, I’m never going to allow myself to have children.

At a baby shower, labor-related discussions are inevitable.  Because just when you’re ready to hunker down with a meatball sub and some cake, everyone starts talking about the pain of pushing a watermelon-sized human out their hoo-has like it’s no big deal.

It’s not their fault, really.  It’s just that they’re moms; the things they’ve seen in the process of caring for a creature that is unable to eat, clean, or poop on its own has turned them into unflinching warriors of bodily functions.  I admire it, really.  There’s something to be said for someone who can discover a human turd on the floor and clean it up without protest or surprise. That’s the kind of warrior moms are. I’m just not there yet.  I don’t know if I’ll ever be there. I find turds to be quite alarming.

In the spirit of inclusion, I should note that dads are capable of turd removal as well, but they are not emphasized in this post because I’ve never been to a baby shower that includes men.  And I’ve never known one who has gone through labor and lived to talk about it.

So for lots of reasons, I would prefer to not have to attend showers ever again.  Unless, that is, the nature of the shower changes. Perhaps instead of playing baby-related games and showering someone with presents, we could all go play paintball together.  The expectant mother could hole up in a fort with snacks and her friends could divide up into two teams and play Capture the Expectant Mother. Or everyone could go play laser tag together and to make it fair for the soon-to-be-mom, everyone could wear fake bellies.

Capture the unborn child.

Capture the unborn child.

I’m not really sure why these haven’t already become social sensations.

So I guess I’ll throw it out there.  The next shower I attend should employ these simple suggestions or something in the same spirit. 

Even if I have to wait ’til my own. ♣

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Ooooh, Shiny.

6 Feb

It has been quite some time since I’ve done any housecleaning or upkeep around here.  Last year I was all “let’s add a custom header” and “yay widgets!” and this year I’m, well, lazy.

Enough of that.  So I’m starting small with a shiny, new widget on the right hand side labeled “Down the Rabbit Hole”.  There, you can click to go out to a random post somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain of yore.  Don’t get too excited, but I might even add a picture there eventually.

Today, I shall encourage you to use it for your weekly fix. 

And I’m still working out, by the way. In case you were curious, I have not yet suffocated under a pile of Ranch Doritos in front of my computer, scrolling the Health and Fitness category of Pinterest, wishing I could be doing the things in the picture instead of shoving my fat face.

Operation Fat Ass 365 is still a go. 

Fat Ass, out. ♣

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Some Observations on Water Fasting

29 Jan
true story.

true story.

Zomg it’s a Lollipop Tuesday.

I’ve picked up a few ducklings in the new year, so if you’re unfamiliar with Lollipop Tuesday shenanigans, you can read up on them here.  Or if you’re too lazy (and I suspect like me, you are), I’ll just tell you that in essence, Lollipop Tuesdays are Tuesday posts in which I recount something new that I recently tried and very often end up sucking at, which is why I’ve dubbed the post for a sucker.

Lazy long time subscribers everywhere are going “oooooooh!”

You’re welcome.

And so allow me to regale you with my most recent foray into the unknown: fasting.

I’ve always been curious about fasting.  It’s mentioned in church from time to time, I occasionally read about it in health-related articles online, and I specifically remember visiting my grandmother when I was young and discovering a book on fasting on her bookshelf, much to my surprise.

My grandmother is against everything except Jesus and  gardening, so finding a book on what I presumed would be a controversial subject was surprising to me.

My run-ins with the subject have been intermittent but longstanding and so on January 1st of this year, I decided to commit to a 7-day water fast. My reasons were more spiritual than health-related. I’d been chewing on the idea for quite some time and realized that the majority of my struggles are tied to a lack of self-control. I bite my nails, I blab out whatever I feel like saying whenever I feel like saying it, I have a tendency to rage and cuss while driving, I can eat an entire pack of Oreos in ten minutes without batting an eye…the list goes on to my deep humiliation.  I figured I had quite a bit to learn from the practice of abstaining.

So abstain I did.

Let me tell ya: if you want to see how much food you mindlessly put in your mouth, actively attempt to abstain from eating for a few days. I can’t even count the number of times I caught myself shoving little bits of nibbles in my face pouch over several days. While I was cooking dinner, while I was cleaning out the fridge, while I was unpacking groceries… that’s a lot of mindless gobbling. You know what else I noticed? That without food or drink, there is little to no reason to get together to see people you know. Or at least, people I know. It felt like every day someone was asking me to go get a drink, to come over for coffee, to go out to dinner – I swear to the Good Witch Glenda that Dave accidentally asked me out to dinner and ice cream every single night that week. 

Since I didn’t really know what to do in social situations in which I could not busy myself with food, I just turned everyone down – which worked out pretty well for me since I kind of hate social situations to begin with. By the fifth day, it wasn’t really doable to go out anyway since every time I stood up I got dizzy. I admit that since everything I read said to be careful to watch for your “fainting point”, I nibbled a bite-sized piece of bread at that point and it was the most delicious thing I’ve ever put in my mouth in the history of putting things in my mouth.

Aside from dizziness, hunger pangs, and difficulty mustering the energy to get through an entire load of dishes, side effects included crankiness, lusting for taste, and constructing elaborate lunches and dinners for Dave.  In fact, he thoroughly enjoyed my fasting week.  It’s his theory that because I was food deprived and in a perpetual lust-state over the simplest of sustenance, I loaded his meals with uber deliciousness.

He’s right; I did. I stuffed his lunch sandwiches with all sorts of freakalicious things. I bought random gourmet concoctions at the supermarket.  I pinned a record number of recipes on Pinterest.  And I frequently asked Dave to breathe the hot stench of whatever he was masticating into my nostrils so that I could get off on the smell.

The first time he didn’t hear me, the second time he thought I was joking, and the third time (subject: movie theater hot dog, location: showing of The Hobbit) he whipped out his serious voice and told me I was grossing him out.

Now, I’m sure there will be a crowd of folk who fly off the handle about the dangers of fasting and whatnot. Everyone is certainly entitled to their opinions, but I’d like to note that I was carefully monitoring my health throughout and was sure to arm myself with as much information as possible so that I was well-prepared.  As I see it, the most dangerous thing about fasting is that it feels bloody fantastic to see how quickly you lose weight. I lost a little over ten pounds in seven days and remember at one point thinking that I could understand a little better the mentality behind anorexia.  Please, please note that I’m not saying I “understand” anorexia and that I fully acknowledge that folks who suffer from it are not fasting and are not well. I’m just saying that there was certainly a temptation once I’d become accustomed to the hunger pangs and the look of my body in the mirror to consider how this was the most effective dieting technique I could possibly imagine – and that was a little scary for me.

Naturally, you gain it all back afterward. Or at least most of it.  I followed suggested guidelines by very slowly incorporating new foods back into my diet over the course of five days.  Though I did this more for the spiritual benefits than the health, there were still some health-related perks to be mined from short-term starvation. For example, since before the fast I was accustomed to splooging the contents of Hershey chocolate syrup bottles directly into my mouth, these seven days were a great way to re-calibrate my taste buds.  Bananas actually taste sweet again.  I can savory the subtleties in flavor and nuances in dishes.  Healthy food is actually pretty darn delicious when you’re actually hungry, and after realizing how scrumptious bites can be if they’re truly savored and appreciated, I’ve upped the ante on my healthy diet for the past several weeks and have thoroughly enjoyed it.  I’ve also slowed my eating way down, most likely as a result of needing to chew every single bite post-fast until it reached a safe liquid consistency. At first I was kind of grossed out by that, but then the fat girl in me realized that the longer the food is in my mouth, the longer I can savor the beauty of its delicious tastes. 

I used to eat so fast I’d nip a finger here or there so this was a pretty relevatory moment for me.

It also turns out that getting a chance to see how much better I looked with ten less pounds of fat on me helped me visualize myself as, well, not so fat.  That’s been a pretty great motivator in my newfound Fat Ass 365 Project wherein I imagine myself as a healthier, less jiggly version of myself that won’t suddenly disappear when I wake up and eat breakfast the next day.

Speaking of which, I need to go get my Jillian Michaels on. Two more days left of 30 Day Shred Level 2. And when I’m done I get to eat some food!

Giddy up, porky. ♣

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My Cat’s an Asshole

23 Jan

Man, I’m in a sour mood.  Usually when I’m in a bad mood, I just eat something delicious.  Works every time.  Unfortunately, I’ve committed to a 365 Project where I work out for at least 20 minutes every day and as a result, I’m starting to kind of like not being fat and miserable and so I don’t have any junk food in the house anymore.  The idea is that if I want junk food, I have to go to the store and get some, which isn’t going to happen because I’m innately lazy.  I’ve outfoxed my fat self.

Even if I did want to solve my bad mood by going to get a pepperoni roll or a belgian waffle with ice cream or a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, it’s too darn cold outside.  I don’t know about you folks in warm, happy climates but I’m here on the three rivers in Pittsburgh and yesterday my walk to the bus stop was so tear-inducing that I genuinely wondered why people haven’t made ski masks more fashionable by now. Because I bloody well need one. It is face-shattering cold.

This cold has accumulated on the outside of my rear bedroom in the form of a colony of man-sized icicles that are melting and refreezing and saturating my crappily-crafted walls with water.  Thus, the wall is leaking.  It’s crying large tears of cold sadness along with me.  And though I called my landlord and two maintenance guys stopped by, I’ve been assured there’s nothing they can (read: want to) do. Since the ceiling in my bathroom fell on my head two years ago for similar wall-crying-related reasons, I’m going to go ahead and guess that the bedroom ceiling will also fall on my head shortly.

Also, a commercial offering litigation for problems related to vaginal mesh transplants just came on television and I’m not really a fan of the terms “vaginal” and “mesh” squished beside each other like that.  It’s uncomfortable.

So I’m a little grumpy.  And I’d like to take a moment to share my grump with you in the hopes that it will suck the devil out of me like The Exorcist and I will no longer crave happiness or cake.  You know, before the ceiling falls on my head and I die and I’ve missed my chance.  I’d hate to be lying in my grave, thinking about how I could have died happy if I would have only publicly ranted about my case of the grumples.

Actually, I feel significantly better already. Maybe I should just start blogging when I want junk food.

On second thought, that would get real spammy real fast.

So I guess I’m due for an update on the 365 Project.  As I’ve already mentioned in previous posts (and at the beginning of this one), I’m in the midst of a project I’ve lovingly dubbed Project Fat Ass 365, wherein I have resolved to do one health/exercise related activity every single day for at least twenty minutes.  I’ve begun with the Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred and have already hit the 160’s.

To understand how monumental that is, you should know that I’ve only been in the 160’s two times in my life: when I was a vegetarian and when I had a terrible case of mono. Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to live my life without cheeseburgers or a balanced amount of white blood cells ever since and have been hovering in the 180’s forever.

Now, that’s not to say that I’ve gone from the 180’s to the 160’s since just the beginning of January.  As long time jackieblog subscribers know, I began trying to get super cereal about my health back in October of 2011 when my vagina doctor told me I needed to lose weight.  Apparently for the health of my vagina.  That’s right: my BMI was so high that my lady bits doctor told me to lose weight.  If that doesn’t get you moving, I don’t know what will.   I’ve been working to slowly improve my diet and exercise habits ever since.  So that 20 pounds has been a long and somewhat yo-yo-like journey. Luckily I’ve set myself for absolute success (or absolute embarrassment) this year by attempting this 365 and announcing that I’ll be running a 10K in the fall.

I only have to announce it, right?  I don’t actually have to do it.

Sometimes when I'm cold and grumpy and don't want to exercise, my cat (Hobbes) blatantly displays his comfortable state of fat in front of me. Like an asshole.

Sometimes when I’m cold and grumpy and don’t want to exercise, my cat (Hobbes) blatantly displays his comfortable state of fat in front of me. Like an asshole.

Just kidding. I’ve already invited my family to come heckle and loudly mock me from the sidelines to ensure I finish.  And they shall.  I was pretty tempted to invite my readers to form a team with me to help raise money for the dwindling populations of honeybees but as you all know by now, that’s a panic attack waiting to happen.  I can’t handle meeting that many new people.  I would stay in my apartment the morning of the race, perpetually projectile vomiting my anxiety into my toilet.

Which, on second thought, would probably help me shed as many pounds as a 10K.

At any rate, things are going quite well on the fat front, thanks for asking.  It’s still not too late to join in on a 365 (you can start any time, y’all).  All you have to do is think of the kind of person you would like to be in a year and then pick one thing related to that goal that you can do every single day that will get you closer to that person in a year. And then, you know, do it. Like I am.  Listen: if I can blog instead of eating when I’m grumpy and if I can exercise for 20 minutes every day instead of cracking jokes about how I’m not the kind of person who can exercise every day, you can do whatever it is that you’re actively avoiding as well.  And then in a year we can all celebrate our new, improved selves.

But not together in the same place, because that will make me projectile vomit.

All right, that’s my last plug for 365s.  I’ll stop badgering you for a while.  But only a while.

To our faces not cracking, our walls not weeping, and our fat mitts not reaching for cake. 

Puppies and Sprinkles,

Jackie ♣

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Fievel Goes North

9 Jan

 

I made a frenemy. 

That is, he believes he’s my friend, and I am most certain he is my enemy.  Well, I suppose “it” is more appropriate than “he”. 

…He’s a gnat.  I named him Fievel.

Like most things that leak out of my brain and onto my computer keyboard, this is going to sound a little strange, but bear with me: I’m quite certain Fievel is following me.

It all started on my couch, when I noticed his faint black pencil-dot of a body swimming around my head.  I fancy myself a fly-swatting monk so naturally I whipped out my skills, only to find that he evaded them.  Again and again and again and again and again.

Since being a monk is all about patience and self-control, I took a deep breath and reminded myself that it was a simple gnat and it had only a few months to live and that if it chose to carry out its days by buzzing around my general vicinity then I should grant it that small pathetic desire. After all, he’s a gnat and I’m a human.  I must be quite a startling thing to behold.

I was eventually able to tune him out of my sensory experience, though I knew full well that the black speck whizzing in front of me from time to time was Fievel the Frenemy. I didn’t think much of it until the next day when I sat at my very favorite spot on the couch again only to find him still buzzing and flitting around my skull.

In a moment of weakness several moments of weakness, I must admit that I attempted his murder again but failed. Apparently monk-like capabilities matter not when your monk-like fingers are awkward sausages with plenty of nooks for death-dodging.

Image

An artistic rendering of the criminal. Since he doesn’t have wings I guess we’ll assume he can flap those arms real fast.

Fievel lived on

This repeated for a third and fourth day. I began to think that perhaps he was like the Who from Horton Hears a Who and that he had some sort of message to bring me, but I quieted everyone and everything around me only to remain unenlightened.  Then I thought it possible that he was the culmination of some sort of curse or witchcraft and that if I could just figure out his name, his power over me would be released.  But I found his name and his name was Fievel and it made no difference whatsoever to him or to the powers that be that I knew it.

I slowly started to become aware of my own teetering insanity and decided to think nothing  particularly extraordinary about Fievel and simply wait for him to die.  I thought the best remedy would be getting out of the house before the furniture started to speak to me, so I went to a gig with Dave this week to hear him play and as I sat, was greeted by none other than Mr. Fievel.  

Son of a.

Friends and acquaintances who spoke with me throughout the evening made side comments about him as if he was just some nuisance at the bar, but I insisted he was my nuisance and that I brought him from home, which, in retrospect, is probably one of several reasons no one sat at my table and is a small piece of a very grand pie chart explaining why my social life is strained.

I again attempted his murder, they attempted his murder – it was the whole bar against Fievel and Fievel prevailed.  He’s like the terminator of the gnat world. 

Fastforward to yesterday, same couch, same situation.  After his grand display at the bar the night before, I was feeling pretty aggressive and wanted him out of my life for good.  It had been days of his whizzing and buzzing and flittering nonsense and I had enough it.  So I proceeded to waste the next 15 minutes of my life trying once again to eradicate him.  I had made up my mind to not stop until he was brought to justice. Fueled by anger and humiliation and the apparent slipping of my monk abilities, I swatted and clapped and made a mess of myself until red-faced and sweaty, I finally opened my hand to reveal little Fievel, hiding in a crevice between my sausage links.

Whereupon he swiftly flew up my left nostril.

I suppose it’s the ultimate win for him.  I can’t very well harm him while he’s swirling around the gooey insides of my brain and he can live out his apparent dream to stay by my side until he dies.  And when he does his tiny gnat corpse will get tangled up somewhere in the regions of my brain and get caught in the neurons and synapses and such.  He will become part of me forevermore. At least I hope so.  Because if instead he was actually on a mission from the land of the gnats to infiltrate a human and to take command of their brain, well, he’s succeeded.  And I’ve just become the downfall of the human race.

Maybe they’ll make a movie about me. In case it’s posthumous and any of my readers survive, tell them I want Amy Adams to play me, okay?

Thanks.  I knew I could count on you guys.  You’re the swellest.

So I guess that’s that.  Either I have a gnat corpse in my brain juices or my body will soon be a mere vessel for a bug, a la Men in Black.

Wait.  That’s a movie.  They’ve already made a movie about this.  I’ve been commandeered by a gnat that will lead to the eventual downfall of the human race and I’m too late to even have a movie made about  me.

Son of a. ♣

P.S. It has recently come to my attention that several of my readers mistook my announcement last week that I would be embarking on a 365 this year to mean that I would be blogging 365 days a week about said experience as well.  This is a falsehood. I am committed to working out every single day and to running a 10K this year.  Isn’t that enough for you people?! Just kidding.  But seriously, I can see the confusion. And honestly, I could use the accountability.  So if you’d like updates about my Project Fat Ass 365, as explained in last week’s post, go to the top right side of this page and click the big button to follow me on Twitter, where I will Tweet my way to a 10K. I think it a fine compromise. Feel free to follow and harass me.

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Project 365, Round Two

2 Jan

Well, it appears that I’ve renewed my domain for another year, so here I am on the couch again on a Wednesday night wondering what I have in my head to share.

By now you all know the answer is absolutely nothing.  And I appreciate you sticking around to listen to it.

It’s been exactly 2 years since I wrote my very first post in my very first 365 Challenge: to fire up a blog I once adored and had let sit dormant for years. It was far more successful and fulfilling than I could have imagined and I’ve become an advocate for 365 Projects, much to the irritation of my friends and family.

So it’s a new year and I need a new 365.  I didn’t do one last year; I think I was right to have taken a break.  It was a big challenge and a big payoff.  And I really missed that sense of satisfaction when the ball dropped of knowing I’d spent 365 days working on making one very specific thing about myself better.  I mean, what a waste of a year, right? 

Well not a waste, but you get what I’m going at here.  Last year was good to me.  I got out of a corporate job that was sucking the life from my body and replacing my blood with black sludge.  Instead, I decided to go back to school to get a dual masters, not knowing how exactly that looked or how I would pull it off financially.  I lost twenty pounds and put ten back on (I’m choosing to celebrate the net -10), and I spent more time with my family and friends than I have in a long time.  All in all I’d say that’s a pretty darn good year.

But I’m a monster that can’t be satisfied with mere short-term human achievements.  And let’s face it: if you’re going to force me to keep writing by continuing to read, I’m going to need some subject matter besides awkward elevator conversations, how upset I get when old ladies cut me off when I’m shopping for produce, and my soon-to-be-famous million dollar ideas (if you have money to waste and want to sponsor me, please reference Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C and then wire me the money directly so I can squander it on my inventions).

I was going to tell you something when this all started.  Oh, right.  I’m going to run a 10K.

Oh man I just wrote it.  It’s right there staring at me, all big and 10Kish.

Well I thought about how it felt to finish a 365 the first time and I thought about what thing I could spend 365 days working to improve that would best-affect me in the future.  And that answer is my fat ass.  I shall dub it the Fat Ass 365.  I will spend every single day of this year doing something fitness-related for at least 20 minutes and I will celebrate my success with a 10K.  I already looked up the race.  I have the race.  It’s a go.

I thought I’d invite you all to join me and we could get jackie blog t-shirts and make a team and conquer world hunger or cancer or the dwindling population of honeybees together, but then I realized that if I did that you might actually come and I might have to deal with the anxiety of meeting several completely foreign people and that I might die of a panic attack before I even get to achieve my resolution.

So no, you can’t know which race. You might find me and inadvertently cause my death. That would be a shame.

This is somewhat about the 10K and much more about the fact that I need to seriously incorporate movement into my daily life.  It is a simple fact that I am happiest when stuffing my face with junk food and watching television or playing video games.  This will never change about me.  I mean, I can do other things and try to replace it and even if I’m successful, I’m always going to wish deep down that I could just be in front of a screen stuffing my face and filling myself with disgusting self-deprecation that will breed in my mind and cause my own self-destruction over the course of several years. So this year, in order to help keep that natural adoration at bay, I’m enacting Operation Fat Ass 365.

I remember when I was just knee high to a grasshopper envisioning my 20’s.  Specifically, my late 20’s. I pictured what most lower middle class kids picture: a family and a nice house and great holidays and a job I don’t hate.  Of course then I grew up to be a member of the Boomerang Generation, a bunch of over-educated late bloomers with poor job prospects and an abnormally high sense of cynicism.  So I can’t really have any of those things little Jackie envisioned for herself at the moment (Sorry, little Jackie, but someday you’ll grow up and realize being a kid is all about being stupid and wrong all the time. Deal with it). 

There is, however, one thing I envisioned that I can absolutely do – and that’s be in the best shape of my life.

I mean it’s now or never, right?  I turn 27 this year.  That’s like, 3 years away from 30.  I have to imagine that someday in the near future, kids, self-loathing, and hips twice my size are coming my way and before I give up all hope of ever being the kind of person who can run for 6+miles and/or fit into single-digit clothing, I’d like to give myself a fair shot by forcing myself to face my fat every single day for 365 days.  And then of course running a 10K so I can be sure something tangible came out of it: a certificate and a t-shirt.

There’s no doubt in my mind I’m going to hate it.  But that’s okay because I’ll have lots to write about.  I love to write about things I hate. And eventually I’m going to get sick of running and I’m going to have to do things like take dance classes or go to Zumba (Lord, help me).  And those, my friends, count as Lollipop Tuesdays.

I’m already in the midst of my next one. Tune in Tuesday for the goods.

So that’s what my 2013 looks like: sweaty and disgusting. I hope yours looks fantastic too.  And in all sincerity I hope you consider a 365 Project (it’s not too late!) or at the very least, one single Lollipop Tuesday for yourself.  That way when I cross the finish line we can both celebrate.  

Happy New Year folks; thanks for reading – especially the seven of you who were with me from the start.  You’re all puddings.  Now tell me what your 2013 self challenge is. 

By The Power of Grayskull. ♣

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I’m Going to Have Tom Cruise’s Magical Forest Babies

20 Dec

I saw Tom Cruise tonight.

For realsies.  I have proof:

Maverick in the flesh

Maverick in the flesh

Dave worked on the movie Jack Reacher so he got invited to the premiere and I got to be his plus one.  It turns out that if you throw a dress on me and slap some spackle on my face, I can pass for a plus one.

By the way, if you go see Jack Reacher you can see what Dave looks like.  He’s an extra in the bus stop scene on the right.  Enjoy.

This premiere was a challenge for me.  You see, I have somewhat of an overactive imagination (shut up).  When I’m in a fancy store with china in it, I just imagine how awesome it would feel to bust everything – the fancy pitchers and the decorative plates and the wine glasses. My brain loves a good fantasy.  That’s why when I got to see Mark Hamill a few years ago, all I could think about was asking him for some of his Jedi sperm so I could make a Jedi baby (details here).  It’s also why when I saw Tom Cruise tonight I wanted to treat the premiere like a nerd convention and dress up like Lili from Legend.

Actually, Meg Mucklebones probably would have better gotten his attention.

For those of you who know Tom Cruise for his slew of box office hits and not for his contribution to cult classics with his work as Jack in Legend, allow me to regale you with its synopsis.

Legend is a beautiful British fantasty-adventure film  from the 80s starring Tom Cruise as a child of the forest, Mia Sara as Lili, a princess he is romancing by teaching her the language of animals, and Tim Curry as the Lord of Darkness who is hoping to destroy a unicorn horn to hold the world in eternal cold and darkness.

Doesn’t it sound perfect?  That’s because it is.

Anyway, as much as I wanted to dress up in costume and accost Tom and thank him for the work he did in the 80s, I owed it to Dave to seem like a well-adjusted citizen and opted instead for a little black dress and to sit politely in the second row while he addressed the audience.  

When I do well in public, Dave gives me cookies.  It’s an excellent and effective motivator for feigning normalcy.

Since I did get to see the premiere, perhaps you’re wondering what I thought of the movie.  And I’m thinking what everyone thinks; Tom Cruise is not Jack Reacher.  The posters all keep saying that, but let’s get real.  I’m not even talking about the physical description, though Tom Cruise is probably the most opposite you could get from the Lee Child novel, which notes that Reacher is 6′ 5″ tall with a 50-inch chest, weighs between 210 and 250 pounds with ice-blue eyes and dirty blond hair.  

But that’s not what bothers me, really.  What bothers me is that Tom Cruise is not Jack Reacher in any way.  In his defense, I found the script to be pretty terrible altogether, particularly in its characterizations and dialogue.  But I’ve seen a lot of cheesy action movies and have still loved the actor in the lead because they sell the hell out of it (Demolition Man, anyone? Running Man? Other action movies that end in man?)  I’d say the primary problem here is casting.   At one point when Jack Reacher is, like, super duper serious, he says “I mean to beat you to death and drink your blood from a boot” and it’s really hard to see that as believable.  Cause, you know, it’s Tom Cruise.  And its a bloody rotten line. 

They’re all rotten lines.  I should give a tip of my hat to one Mr. Robert Duvall, who somehow manages to deliver his with a slight nod to the audience acknowledging the corniness.  Like in this little gem:

Cruise: Can you take him out?

Duvall: To dinner, you mean?

Ugh.

So yeah I didn’t like the movie.  You might.  I’m kind of a jerk about lots of things.  Maybe that boot bit really got you interested.  If that’s true, you have my blessing. But now that my review portion is out of the way, I would like to note that someone brought a baby to this movie.  I don’ t know if the baby was a plus one, or if the baby had worked on the movie or what the baby situation was entirely.  I just know that it cried when Tom Cruise began to speak before the movie and cried again any time Jack Reacher began to speak once the movie started.  I wanted to slap its parents silly.  I also wanted to slap the guy to my right, who had two huge bags of popcorn and two drinks to himself and managed to text, crunch, and spill his way through 130 minutes of my pure, unadulterated rage.  

I guess it’s comforting to know that people make terrible audience members even when Tom Cruise is there.

So I suppose I can add “attending a movie premiere” to my list of anti-hermit adventures. You can find it over on my “What’s Lollipop Tuesday?” page, along with a review of everything I’ve tried to date.  Maybe next will be actually dressing up as Meg Mucklebones and actually accosting him. 

Besides, if he has any forest magic left from the 80s, I could capture his sperm and use it to give birth to a forest child who will rise up to conquer the Lord of Darkness.

…And drink blood from boots. ♣

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