Tag Archives: 365 Project

The Great Pie War

27 Aug

Dave’s playing dirty.

If you follow my Lollipop Tuesday series, are a daily reader, or even if you just go click this right here, you’ll recall a story of a girl who, not too long ago, attempted recreate David’s grandmother’s homemade apple pie from only the loins of the earth for the blogosphere’s general amusement.

In a word, I failed.

The end product, though it looked like a pie, left much to be desired.  Like good taste, for example.  Or an apple filling that didn’t also have the apple skins.  Or a dough that was smooth, ever so gently crisp, and smooth with beautiful little slits in the center.

Mine had none of those things.  But it had a lot of heart.  It’s unfortunate that heart only counts in college sports, inspirational movies, and Captain Planet.

So Dave took one tiny little bite of my lackluster pie and decided it was so awful that he wasn’t going to eat any more.  Well, he didn’t put it exactly that way.  He’s much too wonderful to just come right out with it. Rather, I asked him if I left it out would he eat it, he said no, probably not, and I filled in the gaps.

I threw it in the trash and decided that I would blog and admit defeat, blame it on a generational misunderstanding of the concept of ‘recipes’, and I resolved to make a better pie someday.  Just one, so I could make one if I had to.

Sometimes people need pies.

But I need not bother.  For today, I walked into my home after work to the slightly spiced, warm air of apple pie wafting through hall.  My stomach jumped to my throat as I realized what was happening.  I looked to Dave to find a half smirk revealing his underhandedness.  I ran to the oven, threw open the door, and revealed THIS:

Look at it. Just LOOK at it.

That golden crust that isn’t overfloured and hasn’t been pinched together in desperation.  If you crack that sucker open you’ll find an apple filling so soft and sweet it makes you feel soft and sweet.   It’s well done, it’s delicious.

And a blatant declaration of war.

At first I was pretty upset.  Who watches someone try something new and then a mere 3 days later does it perfectly themselves to display their superiority?  Warmongers, that’s who.  But just as I was gearing up for an epic pie war, it occurred to me that there is another way to look at this situation.  Think about it:  if my overwhelming suck at something prompts Dave to do it and do it better, then I can start failing at all sorts of things!   Why do I need to learn how to make a pie if he can make a lovely one?   Our skill set is unified in nature – I do things he’s not good at, and he does things I’m not good at.  It’s a pretty awesome system and since he so willingly added “making pie” to his list, I can call on him for the pastry in a variety of pie-requiring events.  Family reunions, support for those in mourning, selling a house, and holidays of all varieties.  

Apple pie is incredibly versatile in its application.

I’m trying to think of other things I’d like Dave to do for us.  Now that I know his process, all I have to do is indicate a  few areas of weakness and he can pick up the slack! I can suck at lots of things: cleaning the oven, roasting a turkey, doing the laundry, wiping windows, cleaning out the car, scrubbing the tub – golly, there are loads of things I’m about to not do well.

Perhaps it’s war after all. ♣

Tags: , , , , , ,

Why I Stay Indoors, Reasons 130 and 131: Dogs at Bars and Touchers

26 Aug
Apparently, I’ve begun an infrequent series on my blog called “Why I Stay Indoors”.    The first in the series was about movie theaters, and though it was the first of its kind, I decided to label it Reason #129.  And so we’ll pick up here today with #130.  Because what’s a blog about a hermit without a reminder as to why she’s a hermit once in a while?

 

Last night someone put their arm around me while I was out.

I really hate it when people touch me.  I try to send as many please-don’t-touch-me-ever signals as I can, but sometimes when I’m not focusing hard enough, someone gets through.  I must have just really sucked at it yesterday because I got a hug, a close-talker, and an arm-putter-arounder.

People touching me is big deterrent to my experiencing the world outside the walls of my apartment.  But alas, last night I was forced out into the open and ended up right in the arms of an arm-putter-arounder.

Since Dave’ a musician and all, I tend to find myself in all sorts of strange places.  I usually just take my little pocket journal and try to think really, really hard until a blog post comes out.   Unfortunately, it doesn’t always end in a post.  But it rarely fails to keep people away from me and that’s really the underlying goal.

But last night at this bar, I was filing into the place and waited with Dave until he got a beer before snuggling into the masses.  And while I stood there, unenthused by my surroundings, I noticed a small poodle on the bar stool beside me.   It was well-groomed, uneasy, and wondering why it was in a bar, sitting on a stool.  A gentleman came up beside me, put his arm around me (cringe), and drunkenly stated that it was his dog.  He also said that it was “a princess” and that I “shouldn’t tell the dog he’s a boy because he thinks he’s a girl”.

I suspect that had a lot less to do with what the dog thought of itself and a lot more to do with what the gentleman thought of it.  It was, after all, a dog.  On a bar stool.  Against its own will.

The woman beside him excused herself to go to the restroom and after 60 complete seconds, he asked me where his girlfriend went.  I told him she went to the bathroom and he said she wasn’t really his girlfriend at all.  She was just a friend and he was actually gay.

I told him I figured that.

It was here that it seems I offended him.  He said: “what made you think that?! I’m not that drunk, am I?”

I would argue that if one must check with someone else for a confirmation on their level of drunkenness, they are indeed drunk.  I would also argue that how drunk one is has nothing to do with how gay one is, which is a link that this gentleman apparently just attempted to make.

But he was really in no state for me to point out to him that he had a dog that fit in his man purse and that he exclaimed so to the bar.  Or that the woman he was with didn’t seem at all interested in him and so I assumed they were not together.  Or that he openly stated that his dog is “a princess” when his dog is a boy and really, just an unhappy dog in a seedy bar that can meet none of its dog-like needs.

It can, however, meet its princess-like need to socialize in trendy venues.

Knee-deep in social discomfort, I decided it was time to pinch Dave in the side until he got the memo that I needed an out.  I’ve tried subtle things like ear tugs, winks, hair playing, and hand signs, but when I’m in the throes of close-talkers, arm-putter-arounders and superdrunks, those are a little too subtle for Dave to notice, all things considered.  So now I just cause him physical pain until he relieves me of mine.  I think it’s a pretty good arrangement.

Dave promptly put his arm around me, grabbed his beer, and escorted me to a table where I could write while we listened to the band.  I began to scribble down a few notes about dogs in bars before the lights were all turned off in favor of one lone spotlight on the lead band member and I was left to mull over my distaste for people and public places.

But hey – that will teach me. Going outside one’s home can lead them to unhappy dogs on bar stools, drunk arguments with a very loud gay man, and uncomfortable touching of all kinds.

Stay inside, Jackie.  Just stay inside.  It’s safe there.♣

Super creepy. Super.

Tags: , , , ,

My Doppelganger Dwells in California

25 Aug

I’ve been getting some unwanted emails lately.

As it turns out, out there in the world somewhere – Northern California to be exact – is another Jackie with an email address just one minuscule adjustment away from mine.  So minor, in fact, that the marketers, promoters, and event planners that are trying to send her materials she signed up for don’t notice the minor different and instead email me.

I know this because I once received an email that contained her correct email address in the body and the incorrect address (mine) in the recipient line.

It started out as just one or two emails here and there.  Lately, however, it’s been much more frequent.  It appears that the nice weather brought an onslaught of interest in California Jackie to go to sales, enter promotional contests, and run marathons.

Yes, that’s right: run marathons.

Apparently, California Jackie is a lean, mean, running machine.  She also happens to be an actress – or at least an aspiring one.   I know

this because in addition to her marathon registration confirmation emails, she also receives audition confirmation emails.

I find this interesting because my parents used to live in California.  In fact, they moved back to Pennsylvania right before they had me because they wanted to be closer to family.  My brothers both got to taste the West Coast air, but I was born and bred – and always will be – a country bumpkin.  

California Email Jackie is like a glimpse of what I could have been.  She’s an actress and a runner and involved in community events.  She’s probably got long, beautiful, California hair and a carefree attitude.  She’s probably city-chic and easy-breezy in conversation.  The emails that I get that are meant for her are like mockeries.   Big, fat, tongue-sticking-out mockeries – reminders of what I need to be better at.  A glimpse of what I could have been.

I tried to be a jolly goodfairy and forward her the emails and letting her know that I understand how important it is she receive the information or I wouldn’t attempt to directly email her.  I noted the reason for the mix-up on our email addresses and asked her to emphasize the difference when handing out her email.

I didn’t hear anything back.  Nothing! Just a never-ending slew of emails about races I could be running, trails I could be biking, and auditions I could be getting called back for.  No big deal – just some nagging reminders of where I’m failing in life.   Pudding-like country bumpkin Jackie is unamused by fit, California-chic Jackie.

A glimpse of what could have been. But alas, I can barely swim.

Naturally, I’ve been trying to devise ways to play with this ungrateful doppelganger, but I don’t want to spam her – I just want to find out what she’s falling short of in life and email her related items so she can begin to understand my pain and work harder to distinguish the difference between her email address and mine.   Maybe I can hire a private investigator.  Yeah: that’s the key.  I’ll hire a PI to document her fears, failures, and general shortcomings and then I’ll search the web for the genres that make her feel all desolate inside and slowly but surely get inside her brain. 

Then maybe she’ll see things from my East Coast perspective and send me an email saying she’s sorry and that she’ll change her email address altogether to avoid confusion.  

…Or maybe I should just go run a marathon so I don’t have to feel guilty anymore.

Nah.  The PI plan is far more practical. ♣

Tags: , , , ,

Tips for College Success, Lesson 1: Crosswalks

24 Aug

Figure One.

Yesterday  when I was out on my lunch break, Dave and I almost ran over a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, college student because instead of choosing to not cross in front of an oncoming car, she proceeded to slowly cross in front of the car, wincing while she walked.

Because wincing, as we all know, is the all-encompassing shield of protection.

Morons.  Walk when the walk sign is up.  That’s why it’s there.  You see, we should be intelligent enough to know when to cross the street but since we as a human collective fail at this, the government decided to guide us with an enormous, lit sign with a picture of someone walking to indicate when we’re supposed to walk.  It’s very straightforward.  Push button, see light, walk.

Otherwise, I’m allowed to hit you.  I’m allowed to.  Legally.

Actually I’m making that up, but it’s the argument I’m prepared to use in the event of a trial for vehicular manslaughter. Your walking around, staring at your cell phone and listening to your iPod while I’m trying to avoid you and your friends like a sick video game is giving me ulcers.

I wondered how anyone could be so mindless and then it hit me: it was move-in day for the college students.

There are seven universities in the immediate city area alone.  Move-in day is always a chaotic, hot mess. Meters are blocked off, carts are sloppily rolling up and down the sidewalks, parents are spinning in and out of the bookstores clinging to what scraps are left of their wallets while harboring a single, lone tear in the corners of their eyes.  Tables and booths and street vendors and temporary tents pop up overnight.   

Darn.  I was just starting to get excited about the whiff of autumn in the air but soon, I shall be confined to the walls of a prison cell for running over one of these poor, young lads or lasses. 

Come to think of it, I hope that if there’s some terrible accident, blogs aren’t admissible in court.  That would be an awful shame.

Listen: I have an important message.  If you are the parent of a college student, please take the time to teach them how to cross the street all over again.  I know you reviewed it once or twice in the early years, but once out of your grasp, children completely evacuate from their heads everything you’ve told them.  Please use flash cards if necessary.

If you happen to be one of these college students: you are in grave danger.  Every time you walk outside your dorm, apartment, or cardboard box (whichever your parents allowed you based on how terrible you were to them in high school), you are taking a terrible risk.  Please do not leave your place of residence until you call your parents and have them review with you the chapter titled “Standard Road Crossing Procedures” from your childhood.

And if you  happen to be neither of these and are instead find yourself swerving, wiping sweat from your brow, and nursing ulcers instigated by near-fatal experiences, please do everything you can to get this message out. 

Also, I’ll be forming a support group.  Details forthcoming.  ♣

Tags: , , , , , ,

A Recipe for Lackluster Pie

23 Aug

I think one of the most disappointing discoveries of my adult life is that pie-making is not a soothing experience.  If you do everything from scratch using merely the loins of the earth, it’s a little daunting for your average pie virgin.  And what makes it much, much more difficult is when you’re following a copy of a copy of a cryptic recipe that’s in a woman’s head almost 300 miles away.

Happy Lollipop Tuesday, girls and boys.

I’ve been getting pretty intense with my Lollipop Adventures as of late with all the pinball competing and the Battle of Manassas reenacting and the rapping in public.  So this week, I was more than happy to take Pezcita’s suggestion on my “What’s Lollipop Tuesday?“ page and take it easy, throw on my apron, and make a hot mess of my kitchen.    In order to be true to the wholesome, innocent, comforting nature of the patriotic pastry, I thought it only right that I use David’s grandmother’s recipe for apple pie.   David’s grandmother’s apple pie is so lusciously wonderful, in fact, that my tastebuds had abandoned an affection for pie altogether until I tasted hers and it restored their faith.

Indeed it is a fantastic pie.  …when she makes it.

I don’t know what it is about grandmothers that makes them think recipes are just ingredient lists and not step-by-step instructions for how to accomplish something, but I would kill for a grandmother who can take the time to write down their navigation of a process instead of carrying around all that precious knowledge in their heads like hoarders.   Not wanting to bother his grandmother at such a late hour last evening, I decided instead to call David’s mother for any suggestions she might have to add to what was nothing more than a list of ingredients, a temperature, and a time I got off an index card that was passed on to David – a cryptic family food jewel.

Call me stupid, but I can’t bake a pie with a list of ingredients for the crust followed by a list of ingredients for the filling.   

His mother was a wealth of information.  There were all sorts of lovely bits inside her brain that I needed to suck out, which she gleaned from her mother back in the good old days when kids used to cook in the kitchen with their mothers instead of playing iPad games where they cook in the kitchen with a cartoon chef.  She was hoarding information on what kind of apples, how thinly they should be sliced, what order things were done in, and that – get this – I should throw milk on the sucker before I threw it in the oven to keep the crust from burning.  

How on God’s green earth would I have figured that out on my own?  Because I’ll tell ya – throwing milk on a pie just doesn’t occur to me. Not in the slightest. 

I started out pretty hopeful.  After all, people make pies every day.  Surely I am smarter than your average bear and

Goodbye, paycheck.

surely merely average bears have conquered pies and so surely I could conquer a pie. 

I think the first indication of a problem was that I had absolutely none of the tools required for the job: no pie pan, no rolling pin, no pastry brush, and no kitchen timer.  Well, to be fair, I have a kitchen timer – but it keeps ticking past the “0” mark, thus negating its purpose.  It only has one job and it sucks terribly at it.

So after a costly trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond, I dumped out the newly bought implements of destruction onto the counter and hoped for the best.  I made a wild, mad mess of the kitchen and tried my hand at a homemade pie crust.  And failed.   And tried again – and made something that looked like crust and so I deemed it as such and laid it in the pan.   It took me almost half an hour just to get that far and then I realized I had to do it all over again for the top of the pie.  

My underwhelming second attempt. Apparently, I decided that everything could be fixed with flour. ...It can't.

It was here that I began to get discouraged.  

I remembered Dave’s mother’s words about how pies are hard and I should try not to get discouraged because everyone sucks horribly at them.  But I hate to suck horribly at anything that I’m genuinely attempting and so I was overcome with grumpiness.

A grumpy woman making a pie is a terrible thing.

It was in my sourpuss state that it became clear to me that pie-making is just meeting of the two kitchen skills I completely lack: rolling dough and cutting apples.   My apples were all shapes and sizes and my dough left, well, a lot to be desired.  Thick at one end, thin on the other, with pinched together, stuck-on pieces in between to patch up the holes along the way.   But when I let go of my visi0n of pie as a perfectly smooth and beautiful pastry with carefully-pinched edges and a light apple-scented steam venting from the symmetrical slits on the top and though of it more as a doughy bowl with apples in it, I started to expect far less of myself and lightened up.

Absolutely no idea if I'm doing this right. None.

In fact, once it was all baked I was pretty excited to eat it.  Of course, I wasn’t really sure when it was done because the “recipe” said “350 for about an hour”, which didn’t do much for my necessity of black and white in life.  So I just decided to pull the plug at 50 minutes, which is “about an hour” in my book.  

The end result wasn’t too terrible, though pulling up a piece of it revealed quite a bit of liquid hanging out on the bottom of the pan.  

Well, that and once I bit into a piece I realized I probably should have peeled the apples first.

Turns out apple skins don’t bake all that well.  The rest of the apple turns to mushy yumminess and the skin turns into this slightly less mushy alien-like strings, dragging behind your fork.

Hey: how was I supposed to know? Had the instruction “Peel apples” appeared anywhere, I would’ve been sure to make it happen for myself.  But like the milk, it just doesn’t occur to me to do these things.  Which is, you know, the entire point of a recipe.

End result?  A very sleepy Jackie with a smaller bank balance, a few shiny new kitchen utensils, a lackluster pie, and a serious hankering for a grandmother with a knack for detail. ♣

Mmm...lackluster pie.

 

Tags: , , , , , ,

Christmas in Excel

22 Aug

It begins.

Yesterday I officially started my Christmas list.

Not my Christmas list, but my Christmas list for others.   You see, as the Type A portion of my brain grows into an insatiable monster and begins to eat away at the only bits of Type B that remain in my brain squiggles, it has begun to pour over into every single area of my life.   I don’t really know when it all started.  I remember one time being incredibly Type B.  My room was constantly a mess, I never showered, I was always doing things last-minute and pulling all-nighters to complete tasks, and couldn’t ever find anything I needed.

And then somehow, one day, I began to change.  I got a dry-erase board and mapped out my months.  I started working up a loose idea of a budget every few weeks.  I started keeping little to-do lists on post-its.  And I began to track my Christmas gift ideas in an Excel spreadsheet.

No joke – straight up Excelin’ it like a nerdy nerd.

Last year, I made a table for each member of my family in Excel and color coded each.  I had a column for gift ideas, a column for ones I had secured already, and a running total of how much was spent out of how much I was willing to allot.    And while it was lovely and organized, and almost too-devised, apparently my Type A brain monster is growing this year and isn’t satisfied to simply have an Excel sheet, but wants me to start the game 5 months in advance.  5 months in advance! 

It seems to be a familial trait. My grandmother shops for Christmas gifts 11 months in advance and my mother has begun to do the same. Or maybe it’s just an old person trait.   Perhaps this is just another example of my rapidly advancing age.   

I’m a little frightened to know what the Type A monster will be like in even just five years.  If I graduated from Christmas Excel spreadsheets to buying 5 months in advance in only a year, it’s just a matter of time before I’m making my bed, regularly doing my laundry, and making something more than a bowl of Frosted Flakes for dinner. Maybe…I’m actually becoming an adult?

Gross. ♣

Tags: , , , , , ,

An Adult Snow Day and the Power of Wishful Thinking

21 Aug

On Friday, the most magical thing happened to me.  

Magical like unicorns.  Like leprechauns and Imaginationland and psychedelically-colored puppies.

It was epic and beautiful.

I was feeling strange Friday morning.   I didn’t feel like going to work, didn’t want to spend money on coffee to make it less bearable, and didn’t really want to do anything once I got there.

Let’s be clear: I never feel like going to work.  But most days I can just flick a switch in my brain that puts me on autopilot, which lets me skyrocket through my to-do list with such speed and strength that I entirely forget to take a lunch.  That usually lasts until about 4pm, when I realize I’m a human being, not a monster, and I have feelings and hopes and dreams and I shouldn’t be confined to a desk and walls and carpet and darkness.

But then I only have an hour to go before I’m liberated and an hour is quite palatable.

Friday, however, was an anomaly.   I showed up at work in the morning already completely uninterested.   By 9am I was working at a snail pace, by 10am I was annoyed by my list of to-do’s, and by 11am I went for lunch.  When I returned at 12, I mused online with a coworker over how I wished we could all just go home.  I talked of liberty – of  freedom – of glory.

By 12:15 I was back to staring at my to-do list, completely uninspired to-do any of them.  

As time dragged on, screeching to an almost-hault just before 1pm I honestly began to wonder if I would be a better use of company money by going outside and getting ice cream.  Because quite frankly, at least then I would’ve been doing something with a measurable outcome.  At almost 1:00 on the dot, a colleague popped in my office to let me know that due to the terrible storm we had earlier that day (I wouldn’t know – I’m held captive in a windowless cave), the building was flipping to the emergency generator and would have enough power for lights only.   Without a computer, I can do nothing.  Which meant I had to go home.

I singlehandedly was responsible for the shutdown of our building through the power of wishful thinking.

Well, that and thanks to Our Lord God and Savior, who obviously saw that I was on the verge of a stroke from stress and unhappiness and decided to make it overwhelmingly obvious to me that I needed to slow down and breathe.  Deeply.

And breathe deeply I did.  Because the power to the elevators was cut and I dwell on the top floor of a very tall building.  And because I was elated.  Absolutely, truly, elated.

Perhaps when I return on Monday, I shall scribble a few key words onto a post-it note to remind me of the experience and prominently display it on my monitor for times when I feel trapped in my windowless cave. ♣

Tags: , , , , ,

This Is Major Jackie to Ground Control

20 Aug

Okay now, everyone calm down.

I want you all to know that I love and cherish each of your squishy, loving, concerned brains and am thankful that you care enough to check in with me and make sure I’m alive and well.

Which indeed I am.

Yesterday’s post was meant to be lighthearted.  I really thought the whole “brushing my teeth with butt cream” would have driven that home, but it didn’t.  So allow me to reiterate that all is well.  I was a bit stressed at the time I wrote yesterday’s post and it seemed like a good time to sit down and write about how my brain just hasn’t been working lately and maybe it’s a sign of senility or an oncoming stroke.  And when I think of senility and strokes, I think of old people.  And when I think of old people, I think of death.

So you can see how it was just a natural progression for me.  Butt cream toothpaste = death.  It’s very clear to me, but apparently it didn’t land for all my readers.  Which is fine – I truly do appreciate your concern over whether or not I’m struggling with depression and it’s awesome to know that if I ever need a support system ya’ll are right there.  That’s pretty cool.

But I’m good.  Not ‘I’m good but I’m not really good and I’m in denial about my situation’ but ‘I’m good like I had no idea what you all were talking about and had to read it 10 times to try to understand how that was the takeaway people got’.

So know that I’m just holed up in my apartment as usual, trying my darndest to endure the stench of Lola’s fresh gift that she has unleashed from her buttocks and into the world to share with me this morning.  Seriously, I should get that cat checked because the amount of poo that escapes her is absolutely astounding. 

Sometimes I feel like if I squeeze her, some will come out.

Allow me once again to reiterate to you all that I am well.  Thank you for your loving support.  And  a thanks to “Big Al” (http://thecvillean.wordpress.com/), who coined the lovely eulogy below. 

Here lies Jackie
Taken from us early
She was only in her 20′s
So it sounds a little squirrely.

But she insisted it was true
So it must have been a hex
But to honor her request
We must all pay our respects

She’ll blog with us no more
Which will really be a shame
We’ll just read some other blogs
But they’ll never be the same.

I hope she’ll reconsider
And stay on a little while
We sure would miss her writing
And it’s captivating style

So if she’s still around
And happens on this rhyme
I hope she’ll spurn the reaper
Cause she still has lots of time.  ♣

Tags: , , , ,

My Death Is Fast Approaching

19 Aug

I think I’m going to die soon.

Listen, I’ve thought that I would die before I hit 26 since I was young.  Really.  I’ve heard lots of people think this, but I really genuinely think it might all be over soon for me.  And when it is, I want you all to publish this post as a big, fat warning. So that other people who say “you know, I really think I’m going to die young” can shut up and look at the signs.  Because here they are.

As a general observation, my brain is simply shutting down.  I think it’s just tired.   Tired of thinking, tired of learning new words and procedures and rules and things.  Tired of figuring stuff out and explaining it to other people, tired of having people figure things out and explain them to me.  It’s just done.  It’s off.  It’s actively rebelling.  Every day is a struggle against its stubbornness.  More and more often I’m doing things like putting cereal in the fridge.  Or squirting conditioner all over my loofah and washing with it.

The other day, I almost brushed my teeth with hemorrhoid cream.

Listen.  I know you won’t believe me, but it’s a great way to reduce eye puffiness.  It’s just not a good idea to keep it in your medicine cabinet.  Because you might find that when you’re about to die, your brain shuts down and you’re more prone to try to clean your teeth with butt cream.

I’ve also seriously started to rely on talking myself through situations.  When things just aren’t connecting for me, I talk myself through it.  Out loud.  I usually call myself names and say terrible things.  I’m not incredibly patient or optimistic when faced with my own moronicness.  And whereas I used to crank through it like a champ – now I have to talk aloud.  I have to walk myself through it verbally.  “Click this.  Put the paper down.  Remember your keys. Take the cereal back out of the fridge.”  Sometimes I have to just have a conversation with myself in the mirror.  “I’ll just go there, pick that up, run over there, grab that unless it closes early, and then I might be able to do such and such”.  

In these last moments of life, it’s important to do a little self-coaching.  Else, I might accomplish nothing whatsoever and my cupboards will be chock full of curdled milk.

I’ve also become completely incapable of dealing with stress.  I don’t know how I’ve done it my entire life up until now.  It’s like I’ve just completely forgotten how to let things go and relax.  Or how to handle 15 different things at once.   Now I just come home, eat things that will make me die sooner, and rock myself to sleep as my body tries very, very hard to not have a stroke.

My motor skills are almost entirely deteriorated.  My hands write and type things I don’t intend and I can’t even control them enough to delete or rewrite them correctly.  I knock things over, crack my limbs on things, and sometimes stare at an object for several seconds sending a message to my body to do something to it but nothing happens.  I  just stare.  Sometimes I’m in the middle of a conversation and I just stop.  I just completely stop.  As if someone has sucked every thought out of my brain I don’t know what I’m talking about, why I’m with the person in front of me, or what the last thing they said was.  And even if I stand there for thirty seconds, it won’t come to me.  I have to just accept defeat and walk away baffled and how failure is humanly possible on such a blatant, epic scale.

It’s time to face the facts: my time is coming to an end.  I hit the 20’s and fast-forwarded straight to senility.  It’s only a matter of time before I start involuntarily relieving myself and shouting at strangers.

Remember friends: these were the signs of a swift approaching death. ♣

My untimely demise, courtesy of http://www.sp-studio.de

Tags: , , , ,

Please Don’t Make Me Listen to You

18 Aug

What is it that compels people to tell the same story twice?

I don’t mean the people who forget they’ve told you before.    I mean the people who you tell they told you before and they still keep going.  Not even a general reminder of the story – just a straight up, detailed, almost verbatim retelling.  

It’s not even the annoyance anymore.  It’s just the fact that it’s a waste of my time.

I’m finding that in my older, more crotchety days, I’m placing a strong importance on whether or not something is worth my investment of time. This is a direct result of saying yes to everything and anything and subsequently balling myself up in the fetal position and crying until I pull myself up out of the puddle of stress I leak on the floor.  If I can cut out things in my life that stress me out, annoy me, and are superfluous, then I can make more time for sleep.  And happiness.

One thing I can definitely cut for time is story retellers.

I’m thinking of disengaging them entirely.  Perhaps it’s time to have a candid conversation with these offenders.  Something along the lines of “Hey, look.  I’m at a time in my life where I’m really trying to cut the metaphorical fat.  And while you are important to me, I don’t see any sense in rehearing something you’ve already told me and I’ve made an effort to remember.  As a result, if you have no new information to pass on, perhaps we should part ways for now.”

Too cold?

Far worse than the story retellers are the joke repeaters.  I can’t stand joke repeaters.  Not the folks who tell you a joke you’ve heard before; that’s basically unavoidable, though I would argue that one shouldn’t socialize with folks who “tell jokes”.   Instead, I’m referring to people who recall what they believe to be a funny story and regardless of whether or not people laugh, proceed to run through the same exact thing all over again. Example:

They  lay out the sequence of events, drag you through them again more slowly, and then recap when it’s over.  It’s like a bad episode of Dragonball Z. 

Too nerdy?

The worst cases repeat the tagline (see above) until they squeeze a chuckle out of someone.  Let’s be clear: repeating a bad joke but making it louder and laughing more at yourself does not make it funnier.

I thought we were all clear on this.

 Anyway I’m tired of it.  It’s a senseless waste of my time, not to mention I have absolutely no plan for avoiding the incredibly awkward space where someone tells the same joke over and over that I can’t even pretend to find funny.  I have no exit plan.  All I can do is make a strangely inhuman fake smile face.  Which, on my face, doesn’t come out as a fake smile face at all.  It just kind of looks like I have to go to the bathroom.

I can think of at least five people I know who do this.  I’m sure there are more.  And if I add up how many times I will listen to things I’ve already heard and don’t care to hear again over the course of the next year, (let’s say 5 offenses in a month at 5 minutes each times 12 months in a year), that’s 5 hours.  5 hours! That’s almost an entire day of sleep.  Or learning how to knit.  Or showering more frequently.

Any of them would be nice, really.

This is just the beginning.  I’m cutting the metaphorical fat, friends.  No more wasting time with obligations.  No more enduring double storytelling and repeated taglines.

After all, I’m being held back from being an excellent knitter. ♣

Tags: , , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started