Tag Archives: life

The Yellow Jacket Saga: Part 1

19 Nov

I’m fighting with the crossing guard outside my apartment.

There are several schools in my neighborhood and there are some lovely folks that have taken it upon themselves to don a neon yellow jacket and help coax cars into stopping and children into narrowly escaping with their lives.   I love that they do it; I’m sure if I had a child, I’d feel much better about knowing that someone would aid them on their journeys.

After all, children are often too stupid to effectively cross the road.

But I’d like to think that they’re only there for the children.  They should completely ignore anyone who approaches them and is of their same stature.  Let’s go with a general rule: if I’m as tall as you, I can handle crossing the road as well as you.

But the other day when I got to the end of my road, the bus was stopped and already  loading on the corporate oafs. I was running ever so slightly behind and though I had neither the assistance of the pedestrian walk signal or the help of the yellow jacketed lady friend, I chose to cross the road.  Just as I ran across to catch the bus before it closed its doors and carried on, she yelled at me to not cross and stay where I was.  I, on the other hand, acknowledged that her jacket does not imbue her with the power to make me late for work.  I acknowledged that I was just as tall as she and capable of making this decision on my own.  

And so I crossed.

I chose to cross because I looked both ways, saw I could get across, and I freaking needed to get to work.  I crossed because I’m an adult and if I make a decision to travel  30 feet from where I’m already standing, I feel confident that I have assessed the situation for safety and am carrying on with all my best interests accounted for.

This made Yellow Jacket incredibly upset.

Having run across with little regard for the words coming out of her face, I made it to the other side and she decided to take out the bulk of her wrath on the poor turtle-like girl that was behind me and trying to follow my lead.

She stayed where she was.  Because she was a poor turtle-like girl and had not the spine for confrontation.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the street, the bus had reached capacity and the driver closed the door before I could join the public transit party – leaving me on the sidewalk next to Yellow  Jacket.

In situations like this, I tend to just stare at the ground and craft a dialogue in my head for my own amusement.  If you don’t look at someone, they can’t give you the stink eye.  Yellow Jacket seemed like she could rock a nasty stink eye.  So I stood and stared as  Turtle Girl finally filed in behind me and together we waited, both feeling a bit like we’d been scolded on the playground.

I’m thinking about buying a yellow jacket and competing with Yellow Jacket for that intersection.  I don’t now how crossing guard assignments work, but I can only imagine it will be an enjoyable altercation to be had.  She can make people follow the rules of crossing the street and I can try to talk people into freedom and liberty.  You know, if they’re regular-sized.   Pint-sized people follow the proper procedures.    I should get a cool crossing guard name.

Suggestions are welcome.  ♣

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Tales from the Bus

18 Nov

Public transit is wearing me down.

As many of you know, the totaling of Dave’s and my car spewed us into the land of bipeds and buses until further notice.  That means that twice a day, every weekday, I am subjected to the anxieties and atrocities of the bus system.  I started out incredibly grateful for this mode of transportation, and I’m trying very, very hard to maintain that virginal appreciation.  But there are only so many times I can have someone else’s cell phone conversation blasted in my ear for the duration of my stay in the flying steel sardine can before I have to smack a ho.

Did I just say ‘smack a ho’?

I’m really sorry.  This whole bus system thing is just… It’s hard.  Okay?  It’s changing me.

I think the main problem is that I don’t like to be around people.  So putting me in a situation where my personal space is inevitably going to be violated well over fifteen times before I can get out of the situation is a recipe for disaster.  That, and I don’t like it when people’s leg fat smooshes up against mine.

You know? You know when you sit right beside someone on the bus or – worse, right in between two already-seated people- and your leg fat spreads out around your legs and touches that of those beside you?   I try to tense up my quadriceps to avoid it, but it’s a long way to work in the morning and you can’t expect someone who has leg fat to begin with to be able to maintain that kind of form.

Yesterday was particularly trying for me.  I intentionally waited until three buses went by after work so that I could get on a less

Absolute torture.

crowded one.   I got a totally awesome seat and let out a nice relaxing breath for my post-work commute only to be joined at the next stop by an enormous crowd of people who piled onto the bus for what I can only imagine was a just-announced carnival somewhere along the bus route.  Unfortunately the gentleman who settled to stand right in front of me smelled exactly like a portable toilet.

Exactly.  I could have bottled his skin dew and sold it to variety stores, it was so painfully accurate.

Just then, the woman somewhere to the back, left-hand side of me took a cell phone call that she felt absolutely no need to muffle her voice for.  I don’t mind when people talk on their phones on the bus so long as they’re as respectful as possible.  I like to assume that people would only make the choice to carry on a conversation if they really needed to or had a hard time getting in touch with that particular person.  But this lady was like, running a call center out of her bus seat.  She was putting people on hold, doing three way calls… she was tending to some incredibly important business regarding someone she lived with telling her how to run her life and her sentiments on that.

And the entire time I sat in my seat, trying to tune her out, trying to hold my breath from the toilet man, and telling myself: Don’t lose your shit, Jackie. Do not.  Lose.  Your shit.

I had to repeat this to myself under my breath as I stared at the stain-coated floor of the bus and dreamed of wide open spaces because it took everything in me to not give the call center lady a piece of my mind, the toilet man a power wash, and run rip-tearing through the swarm of people, throwing my sad slip of a ticket at the bus driver’s face, and pounding on the doors to please God let me out.

Man that was a long sentence.  Did you make it through all right?  You can go back and reread because I’m not going to fix it.  I refuse.

So anyway, I think I’ve reached my criminal limit.  That is, the amount of public transit I can stand before I do something criminal.  

I guess it’s a good thing the insurance check came this week. ♣

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The Premiere of My Face

17 Nov

I don’t know why I keep getting deeper and deeper into all of this social media hootinanny. I got my feet wet with twitter, went wading with a Facebook Page, and now I dove in both feet on YouTube.

Try not to get too excited.

Per usual, it took me a long time to figure out how this newfangled business works.  But I got it.  And so I present to you an announcement in the form of my first YouTube upload.

Also, the premiere of my face.

Follow me on Twitter, Like my Facebook Page (link on top right of sidebar), and hey – come see me on YouTube.  I’m slowly taking over the world.  Very slowly.  Almost not even noticeable really.

It’s the small victories folks. ♣

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The Times They Are a-Changin’

16 Nov

The blog is blue today.  Don’t freak out.

Are you okay? I don’t want you to get too worked up.  Take some time with it.  I know it’s shocking.

Today I have a pretty huge announcement.  Well, huge for me because I stay up until lets-not-kid-myself-I-didn’t-go-to-bed-at-all trying to figure out how in the hell to make a Facebook page.

I’m sorry to call upon the terms of Hades, but holy goodness it takes me a YouTube tutorial, written out instructions, and a few examples of other people’s pages just to get moving on the whole thing.  Not to mention I had to make an image in Microsoft Paint.  Let’s not forget how charming those are:

from "Plight of the Ginger Sperm"

From "Wrestling with a Poltergeist"

From "There Is No Jackie. There Is Only Mindee"

You get the point. 

Oh, I guess I kind of breezed over the whole “exciting news”. 

I have a Facebook Page! 

Like, a fan page.  Not just a Jackie page.  You see, when I wrote a post about giving up Facebook for good, I got a lot of grief from people who don’t want to subscribe but want to click on my posts through Facebook any time they please.  And since I think that’s kind of demanding and ridiculous and they think I should just take what I can get, I’ve decided to compromise by making a Facebook page just for The Jackie Blog.  Now my friends don’t have to get my blog tweets and posts and you don’t have to be my friend to get them. 

I like to think that everybody wins.

Except me, who was up all night fumbling through simplistic code and struggling with the reality that at the ripe age of 25, I’ve already passed the age of comprehension for new developments in technology.

They keep making my brain obsolete.  I have about 60 more years of that to look forward to.

Anyway, I’d be real tickled if you’d click that button on the top right of the sidebar and check out my Facebook page.  Heck, maybe you could even like it while you’re there.  I mean, if you’re feeling ambitious.  I’m not going to beg.

But there is a picture of a kitten.  And a cookie.   Listen, you should probably just go look.

At any rate, I’ve changed the background of the blog to something less… purple.  And I’m gearing up to change that header image soon.  Hopefully really soon.  You know, because I only have like… a month and a half to go before the whole gig is up.  If I’m going to give Yo Gabba Gabba the boot, I need to do it soon.

But it will be glorious, you’ll see.  And until I can make that happen, I’m just changing the background to blue and throwing a Facebook button up.  Because I want to ease you into change slowly and gently, like a compassionate lover.  I understand your struggles.  I have them too.

Which is why today I will be needing a massive vat of coffee. ♣  

P.S. If you don’t want to go all the way up there and click the button, you can just click here.  And if you’re a Twitterer, you can also follow my Twitterage here (also located in the sidebar for your convenience – remember – compassionate lover). Woot for the Interwebz.

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The Art of Mixology

15 Nov

Hey, it’s Tuesday.  It’s everyone’s favorite day of the week here on The Jackie Blog.  Because instead of droning on an on about my cats or my preference of bathroom sink water over kitchen sink water or my discontent with adult life, I talk about something new I’ve tried.

If you don’t know the drill, check out the link at the top of this page called “What’s Lollipop Tuesday?”

I’d like to think I have a constant influx of newbies here that need to be told what Lollipop Tuesdays are.  Let me dwell in my self-constructed reality.

Moving on. This past Sunday, I took the plunge and invested in an alcohol mixing class.  Yeah.  Mixing alcohol.  They have classes for that.  It’s called ‘mixology’. Isn’t that wild?

I had structured my entire day around this 3-hour long course, set at one of the hippest bars in the city.  Because I’m incredibly anal and tightly wound, I called the morning of to ensure that the details I had taken down for the day were all still correct.  I tried to talk myself out double checking everything, but sometimes the crazy really takes over and there’s no stopping me.  And hey, wouldn’t you know the location was changed and the time was pushed back by  half an hour and no one bothered to contact me to let me know?

Things like that do nothing to cease the crazy.

Anyway I showed up pretty livid and fully prepared to give the teacher a piece of my mind.  What right does he have to run a class, charge a fortune, and then fail to communicate changes to that class to the attendees? I booked it two months ago! But just as I was all fired up in a mind-driven hailstorm, I was taken aback by how totally cool the thing was.

The thing.  You know, the whole deal.  The setup.

The new choice of venue had a huge wraparound bar, which was preset with mats, a variety of glasses, and all the cool tools one would need to make a killer cocktail.  There were pretzels, chips, glasses of water, huge televisions to watch when you didn’t feel like listening to where the drink “zombie” originated or about the tiki trend of the 70’s.

So. Cool.

It. was. awesome.

We learned three drinks, which we made ourselves all at the same time.  We did things like light oranges on fire and put twelve different ingredients into one single beverage.  We used fresh fruit, we made our own whipped cream – it was glorious.  The teacher had a great story about being a cocktail chef in Atlanta and so on and so forth.  He had drinks that won awards, and he placed well in competitions. And while I was happy to know I didn’t just throw my money at any ol’ fella with a cooler full of liquor and a black shirt, I didn’t really care about all of that.  What I cared about was that he was the kind of guy would come try your drink and tell you how to adjust it.  He would come over and sneak a little extra rum into your glass if you like a stronger kick.  This guy brewed his own coffee and brought it in canisters to be chilled and used for a super fantastic drink that was some sort of divine espresso manna from heaven. He even gave out his cell number to everyone so that if we’re at a party or the bar or even at home and we misplace the recipes he emails us after the class, we can ask him a question on the fly.

It’s always awesome to watch someone who is wrapped up in their passion, and even more awesome when they share it with you. Even if you have to pay.  In fact, for such experiences I will very happily fork over my hard-earned American dollars.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I don’t think I’ll be repeating any of those drinks.  They were delicious and lovely, but it’s all I can muster to keep Frosted Flakes and milk  in the house at the same time.  I sincerely doubt I’m going to be able to keep cherries, pineapple, white rum, aged rum, brown sugar, whipped cream, and an armload of other ingredients stocked for when I feel like whipping up a cocktail.

But it’s still totally cool to know I can do it if I want. ♣

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Things My Cats Do to Upset Me, or, The Case for a Teacup Piglet

14 Nov

Don't let the cute curl-up-and-sleep pose fool you. Look closely: she has one eye open.

  1. Even if I pet them for an hour, they will still ram their heads against my various limbs, knocking cups, books, and handheld electronics to the floor in their fervor.
  2. They always nest on freshly cleaned clothes if I don’t put them away immediately.  
  3. They can’t handle it when I bring things from the outside world.  Each item gets sniffed, snuggled, and batted around. 
  4. I’ve bought a myriad of cat treat brands to finally find one that Cat A will eat and another that Cat B will eat.  Yesterday I went about my usual business and fed each their respective preferences only to find that Cat A cares for neither now and Cat B likes them both. They have no respect for me.
  5. It is impossible to have a basin of water in the house anywhere without one of my cats seeking it out immediately, dipping its grimy litter-laden paws inside, and scooping out little licks worth of water to lap up for fun.  When at the dinner table, great precautions must be taken.
  6. When I’m sleeping at night, I often awake to the gentle gnawing of a cat on a plastic bag and it makes me want to tear my skin off. 
  7. They continually barf up hairballs and clumps of food on things they know I need the following day, thereby forcing me to take immediate emergency cleaning action, which I despise.
  8. Sometimes they’ll lie in the bathroom sink and refuse to move so that I can wash my hands, forcing me to pick them up out of the wet basin, leaving them covered in toothpaste and my hands covered in wet fur.
  9. When I get comfortable at night, they come lie next to a bend in my body so that I have to monitor my movements throughout the night to avoid clobbering their soft bodies with my monstrous limbs.
  10. The way they dig at the plastic on the litter box instead of at the litter. For ten minutes. WHERE DO THEY THINK IT WILL TAKE THEM?
Sometimes when I look at all these things together, I realize I’m living in a prison of my own design.  I also begin to lust heavily for a teacup pig, who would commit none of the above offenses. 
Unfortunately, my cats would annihilate it while exercising habit number three. ♣

He knows he's a monster. Don't buy in to the face.

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>50 Posts: I’m the Little Engine That Could

13 Nov

For some reason, this image disturbs me.

I have less than 50 posts to write.

I’m pretty nervous about it.

Not nervous because I don’t know what to write.  I never really know what to write.  But about three months in, I had to have a long chat with myself about how I needed to relax and just write and not worry so much about the poo that came out when I did.

With 365 posts in a row no-excuses, there’s going to be some poo.

I’m actually just nervous that something will happen that will prevent me from posting one day.  I mean, I waited until pretty late tonight to post this.  What was I thinking?! I could have lost electricity.  My computer could have committed suicide.  My cats could have held me hostage.

I could have fallen into a spontaneous coma.

Every day, I’m threatened by a plethora of possibilities.  All of these things are threatening my almost-complete goal of posting once every day in 2011.

I don’t want to have to start all of this over again.  Can you imagine how awful that would be? Not that I don’t love you all and everything, but oh my good grief would that be just terrible.  I wake up in the middle of the night with my heart racing at the very idea.

What if I get in a car wreck and the nurse the hospital refuses to help me get in touch with someone who can bring me a laptop? What if she doesn’t believe I’m an Internet star and thinks I must have a concussion? What if I die?!

For the record, if I die before I complete these final posts, I don’t want this 2011 goal to be the basis of my funeral or my biography. I don’t want everything hinged on how I almost completed this one thing I set out to do.  

Then again, I can’t really think of any other solid goals I’ve made, so I’m not sure what else the biographer would write.

I’d like to think someone would write a biography.  Or do I have to pay someone to do that prehumous?  I’ll have to look into that.  Great.  There’s something else I have to take care of as this all winds down.

I might just lock myself in my apartment for the remainder of my self-imposed challenge.  That way I can severely reduce the risk of damage to my fingers or my brain.  That’s really all I need to keep going, here. I’m like the little engine that could.  The little nervous engine that could.  The little nervous engine that is huffing and puffing to the finish line.

Yeah.  That last one sounds about right. ♣

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Where Cats Come to Die

12 Nov

There was a dead cat in the front lawn of my apartment building the other day.

Its body kind of lined up directly with my window.  I think the power of my crazy cat lady aura has gotten so strong that cats have begun to drag themselves to my apartment to die.  It’s like they know I’ll take care of them.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do when I first saw it.  Mostly because it looked like it was just sleeping in the grass, except for the breathing and what-have-you.  But also because I was pretty certain that if it’d been hit, the side that I couldn’t see was probably going to scar me for life.  So I called the Bureau of Animal Care and Control but it was emergency hours only and they told me to call back in the morning.

I went back in my apartment, wrote a reminder for the AM, and went about my bumming around the place.  But I had my windows open and every time someone passed the cat on the front lawn, it was like a little piece of theater.  They were all such honest, genuine, and varied reactions.  I, like a crazy lady, peeked through the blinds in my living room to watch and to ensure that no one did anything odd to it. 

For some reason, people love to play with carcasses.

Almost everyone who went by it came back to do a double take, kept walking, came back out of guilt, picked up something nearby, and then poked it to see if it was dead.  After assessing that it was, they moved on with a furrowed brow realizing that they hadn’t really thought it through and didn’t know what to do now.

I figured that at the rate at which people pass by my apartment and the number of hours until the Bureau was open, that cat was going to get many more curious pokes than it would have liked (kinky). After all, it came to my apartment to die so that I could stop that sort of thing from happening.  I’m a cat lady; it trusted me.

So I scribbled up a maniacal note that said 

“Yes, unfortunately this cat has passed away.  The Bureau of Animal Care and Control has been called.  They will handle.  

Thank you for your concern.   – A Fellow Animal Lover”

After I stuck it into the soft ground with a pen as a stake, I went back in to watch the people pass and was glad that the scene had changed.  People stopped, felt badly, read the note, smiled crookedly, and moved on.  I had removed the curious poking part altogether.

When I woke in the morning, I called the Bureau and then looked outside to check the scene.

The cat was in a box.

I talked to Dave, who has been working some terribly odd hours lately, and he noted that when he came in during the wee hours of the AM, the cat was in the middle of the sidewalk.

So this is how the story went: someone wanted to play with a carcass, moved it to the sidewalk, played with it, and left it there.  At that point in time, my letter must have looked like an odd half-attempt at caring, since it was being featured beside a cat’s body that had clearly been tampered with. Then someone came along, saw the scene, and decided to put it in a box with some leaves over top so that when the Bureau came they still had a cat to remove but it wasn’t in the middle of the sidewalk all gutted and gross.

That made it look like I found a dead cat, put it in a box with some leaves on top, and then put a note to tell people the problem was being handled.

The next morning, the Bureau removed it. I can’t imagine what they must have assumed of my neighborhood, but I hope that at least the cat knew I tried my best to get it a proper taking care of.

Then again maybe it’s best that word doesn’t get out to the other cats that my front lawn is the place to croak.  Transitioning into a cat lady is bad enough.  Transitioning into a crazy cat lady that dead cats crawl to from near and far in order to get a proper burial?

That’s on a whole other level of nutty. ♣

For a cat in a box story that is much happier, check out Maru – one of the world’s coolest cats.

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Beyonce Makes Me Doubt My Womanhood

11 Nov

I feel like I would be more of a woman if I could gyrate like Beyonce.

We all feel this, right? It’s not just me.

I’ve been watching the Single Ladies video over and over again in awe.  I mean, I’ve seen it before – who hasn’t?  But I saw something or other for a recent video of hers, which inevitably led to Single Ladies sidebar suggestion, which inevitably led to me questioning my womanhood.

Take a moment.  Really, take a moment and just look at this madness.  Remind yourself of your inferiority.  Listen, you don’t have to watch the whole thing.  Watch from 0:51 – 0:58.   7 seconds is really all it takes to start doubting your femininity.  (If you’re a reader of the male equipping, you can just go ahead and enjoy it.)

Honestly, how does she even do that? I’ve seen women who can dance and then I’ve seen this detaching of the pelvis and whipping it around in circles.  It’s amazing.

Dave asked me last night why I was continually watching it and what exactly I was looking for.  Once I spotted the sequence, I shouted excitedly so he could come witness the magic.  He said, “what, the hip thing?”

“David.  That is so much more than ‘a hip thing’.”, I said.   “She’s swinging her pelvis around like it isn’t connected to anything else.  And then she just gets up and keeps whippin’ around.  It’s madness, I say.  MADNESS.”

Perhaps this is the reason he is with me.  He’s unaffected by the pelvic magic. The Beyonces of the world have no hold over him.  Which is a mighty good thing since I’m completely uninclined. In fact, I took a Modern Dance class my sophomore year in college just to challenge myself and smacked my head off the stage floor in the final.

There was an audience.  A fairly large one.

I got an A.  She noted in my final evaluation that I had great stage presence,  which is fantastic because I also had two left feet and an overwhelming inability to sense my surroundings.

I’ll admit that this past week I looked up a few YouTube videos with workouts that mirrored this sort of woman beastiness. I looked pathetic.  Also, the women in the videos are wearing very little so I also did a lot of feeling badly about myself while I jiggled.

So kudos to you, Beyonce – your hips have the power to make women doubt that they’re really women.  That’s a powerful quality indeed.   You keep on keepin’ on.  

I’ve got some weeping and jiggling to do. ♣

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The End of an Era

10 Nov

Last night, Joe Paterno was handed a letter saying he was fired fifteen minutes before a press conference where it was announced.

A man gives his entire life to an employer and is fired in a letter after he already opted to retire at the end of the season.

Whatever your opinion on the Sandusky Scandal at Penn State University is, make no mistake that this is a study in the power of the media, who put Paterno at the forefront (who it was agreed he did no legal wrongdoing) but allowed Curley to take administrative leave and Shultz to step down on his own, who both failed to take Paterno’s report to the next level and then lied to a grand jury about it.  Later, Curley chose to resign as well.  Why did everyone get an ultimatum from the Board but Paterno? They didn’t get letters; they got their legal fees covered by PSU.

By the way, McQueary, the man who saw Sandusky raping a child with his own eyes, still works there as well. 

I tried to write about other things today; honest.   But hey, instead of reading me today, read an article or two on this situation.  It’s a dynamic and dangerous monster.

Back to the regular business tomorrow, folks.  Thanks for letting me take a break from the typical topics to address something about which I feel very strongly. 

Feel free to discuss your thoughts on the situation, whatever they may be, so long as they’re addressed respectfully.♣

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