Tag Archives: life

I’m the Prettiest Girl at the Ball

22 May

I had everything planned so well for today.

I was going to get up real early, eat an awesome breakfast, put on a face mask and paint my nails, and then casually wander over to the hair salon to get my hair did.  Since I always attempt to do something awesome to my hair and I always fail miserably, I was pretty sure this fail-proof plan would ensure that I would be absolutely ravishing for the wedding I am to attend in 3 hours.

I did actually wake up at 7, but I didn’t have breakfast.  I just decided to move from the couch to the bed.   How I ended up on the couch, I don’t really remember.  It was a wild night.

When I woke again, it was 11:00am.  I suddenly realized that I had not purchased a wedding gift, made a hair appointment, shaved my legs, eaten breakfast, or written a blog post.  I have 3 hours to make all of these things happen, and there is some sort of Orthodox Jew parade right outside my apartment that’s blocking access to anything in the world until noon.  I’ve lived in the thick of the Jewish community  in my city for two years now and I’ve yet to see a parade.  Naturally, they would start today.  

So I’m down to two hours.  Two hours I will have to accomplish all of these things. 

I’m going to have to forgo the hair appointment.  And perhaps shaving my legs.  Nothing’s worse than sitting through a long wedding ceremony with pantyhose creeping up my bum.  No, I’m going to have to shave the legs.  Definitely.

So maybe no breakfast and no hair appointment.  That should give me enough time to shave. I’ll throw on some really awesome face paint so that everyone is distracted from my terrible hair.

I keep thinking about how weddings are supposed to be so romantic and that Dave will look over to me during the ceremony and imagine something in the foreseeable future.  But then I think about how I should have gotten up at 7 today and made that happen for myself.  Because when he looks over to me, he’s going to get an eye full of this:

Nothing begs ‘Always and Forever’ like unshaven legs and quiet desperation. ♣

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I Think I’m Gonna Gag

21 May

Image is a genuine replica of the box laying before me. Courtesy of Da Yoopers Catalog - click the image to go buy your very own Lollipop Tuesday challenge.

Right now as I sit here, there is a box of crickets sitting on my coffee table, staring me in the face.

 Sour Cream and Onion, to be specific.

It’s there because Dave loves me and when he recently took a trip to Nashville just for the heck of it, he saw them and thought he’d do me a favor for a Lollipop Tuesday.   He was in Nashville.  He could have brought back boots, a country music CD, a butt cheek with a the smeared, faded signature of a country starlet, or a shirt that said “My boyfriend went to Nashville and all I got was this lousy t-shirt”.   But he remembered that I’ve been hunting for something repulsive to eat for one of my Lollipop Tuesdays (suggested by some of my not-so-easily-pleased readers), and lugged back a box of crickets.   That’s love.

I am petrified with fear.

I can just imagine their crunchy back legs rolling around in my mouth as I masticate them.  I can imagine their once-upon-a-time summer song.  The late nights I stayed in bed, happy to hear them causing a ruckus in my backyard.  I don’t know if I can do this.

Unfortunately, I think I’m going to have to.  I already have one Lollipop Tuesday I’m putting off until I “feel up to it”, which is the lovely poll I took a few weeks ago on whether or not I had to repeat my open mic session due to light attendance that particular evening. And because 51.16% of you are cold and heartless, you voted a do-over.    So that’s still on the to-do list.

The last thing I need in addition to my overwhelming guilt and fear to do another open mic is a box of crickets staring me in the face.

Dave says they’re like chips.  “Just think of them as little chips”, he says.  But they’re not chips.  They’re insects.  And I can see their eyes.

They’ll be staring into my soul while I sleep at night. ♣

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I’m an Official Urban Biker Warrior

20 May
Bike lane placement

Photo by Richard Masoner. Click to scoot on over to his photostream.

Yesterday, I officially became an urban biker.

You see, although this summer will mark my first full year as a bike-owner, there are a number of things one must do in order to be officially canonized into the urban biking community.  Besides getting a cool bike, good gear, hauling a huge bag full of personal wipes, a change of clothes, and a real pair of sneakers, it also really helps your street cred if you get hit by a truck.

Yesterday, I got myself some street cred.

I’ve only had two accidents in my life in which I’ve been the driver.  The first time, I was in a car and was sideswiped by an oversized black truck.  The second time was yesterday, when I was sideswiped by an oversized red truck.  I seem to have a blind spot on my left side that’s only affected by oversized trucks of both color and non-color.   Apparently, they’re my commuting Kryptonite.   I wish my Kryptonite was something less massive.  And less painful.

I’m sure my story mimics those of several urban bikers – I was minding my own business on the far right side of the road, with enough room for someone to pass me carefully on my left.   But since most people are on the phone, eating food, and reading a magazine while they drive these days, they often tend to miss bikers.  And since I was pretty focused on how wet my underwear was getting from the rain splashing up to my bike seat and working its way into my butt, only something like a truck slam could pull me out of my concern for not having packed an extra pair of underwear that morning.

Unfortunately, I’m pretty darn sure this guy did see me and just tried to squeeze past by pushing me off the road.  But since there wasn’t anywhere for me to go, I instead got hit by his sideview mirror and the back of his truck bed.  Luckily, I maintained my balance enough after the hit that instead of falling into the steady traffic coming from behind, I popped up onto the curb and nursed my wounds.

But the dude didn’t stop.

That’s the truly annoying part.  I’m lugging around an enormous bag of gear and will pedal up a storm to get to work on time so that I can wipe down in the bathroom and transform from a dirty street rat into a presentable office worker.  I’m attempting to buy less gas, save roadkill, and slowly whittle off the enormous gelatinous donut of fat that currently insulates my middle section.  I’m really trying to do a few good things here that are actually rather inconvenient and difficult and you can’t even be bothered to pull over and see whether or not you’ve maimed me.

But hey –  I’m just fine.  And I’m pretty stoked to have had my first run-in with traffic be one in which I’m not severely harmed.  How often can one be officially inducted into the Urban Biker Society with a vehicle collision that doesn’t involve a ridiculously painful and unsightly road rash?  I mean, I almost feel like I can’t really be canonized unless I’ve got unsightly sores and aches that trouble me for months.  But I’ll take the street cred. After all, I survived a truck.  A truck!

I am an urban bike warrior; hear me roar. ♣

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Not the Momma

19 May

Photo by "pinprick". Click to go to their photostream.

Pretty much everyone I know is married, pregnant, or gearing up to become one of those.

I’m starting to feel like a fish pulling away from the school.  Even the hottest of the hot popular girls are settling down into low, protruding bellies and one-woman men (or so we hope).  I figure I’ll wait around a while.  Besides, when else in my life am I going to watch all the people who were gorgeous and skinny my entire life get all big and motherly?  The idea that somewhere right now, half the members of the prom court are wearing stretchy pants and pushing strollers is a dose of awesome I’ll drink down a few more times, thankyouverymuch.

Not because there’s anything wrong with that, but because it’s nice to know they’re human.

There is also something very strange about watching it all happen on Facebook.    As if the pressures of the mid-twenties (don’t laugh) aren’t difficult enough without the phenomenon of social networking making it possible to track every other person’s life in relation to yours.   My Facebook mini-feed is getting flooded with tales of motherhood, questions on pregnancy, complaints about pain in places I didn’t know could throb, and pictures of it all to boot.

I’m beginning to think leaving Facebook might be a good life decision right now.

You know it’s funny – I’ve always been kind of resolved to be a housewife and pop out babies and live like a little family nestled in a big, open house with a dog.  The dog is important.    But here I am at a time where everyone else is settling into homes, popping out little dependents, and swooning over their newlywed status and I’m in my apartment eating a grilled cheese at 9:00pm, playing video games and browsing the web next to my cats.

I also happen to be wearing stretchy pants but that’s neither here nor there.

Should I still choose to go the way of the baby/husband deal, I am more than happy to take my time.  After all, once you’ve got either of them, you’ve got them for life.  So what’s the hurry?   I’m not Amish and I’m not from the 50’s, so I think it’s a pretty good time for me to mess around in corporate America, enjoy my noisy apartment, and spend my time fantasizing about hiking the Appalachian Trail or going out every week to see what sort of nonsense I can get into so that I can blog about it.

The only hard part will be all my friends that are new moms telling me how incredibly rewarding it is and how I can’t really know selflessness until I’ve looked into the eyes of my child and all that business.  I’m sure it’s all lovely and true, but I’m not about to be pressured into being responsible for another human being.  I just got out of credit card debt for the first time in 5 years.  I’m not exactly gearing up to start investing in baby formula and tuition savings accounts.

And when I want to play with a baby, I can just call up either of my brothers.  Because in three months, I will be an aunt twice over.  

Aunt.  That sounds much better than mom. ♣

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Jackie and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

18 May

 

Original illustration of 'Alexander and the Terrible...' by Ray Cruz. Click my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad highly-altered photo to see his work.

If I could go back and relive  yesterday, I would just suggest that the Lord smack me in the forehead with a mighty, divine hammer at the exact moment I attempted to get out of bed.

My entire yesterday was just one big ball of grumplepuss.  It was one of those days in which nothing particularly insurmountable crosses your path, but every step is a minor, annoying obstacle, and at the end of it all you just want to scream and run into a cave to hibernate, ashamed.  

The thing about my job is that 80% of it is fake.  Part of being a good assistant is faking happiness if it doesn’t come naturally to you.  And let’s face it: when you’re an assistant, cheery is not your default setting.  When people call, they like to hear a chipper, pleasant voice on the line.  They don’t want to hear mine.  And the problem is that sometimes I forget that my boss doesn’t realize that my job heavily relies on my Acting degree.

So on a day like yesterday, when I woke up after another mere 4 hours of sleep, went unshowered, biked to work in the rain, showed up late, needed a coffee break at 9am instead of 11am, and realized that I had set my blog to automatically post at 9:0o am on the wrong day entirely, I had just a few annoyances on my mind.  I wasn’t on my A-game when the boss called and I accidentally slipped into my regular, dry tone of voice.

I’m sure you all have a pretty good idea by now of what that might sound like.

She instantly recognized the perklessness and began an investigation into my state of mental health. One of my biggest peeves is someone trying to convince me that I feel a way that I don’t really feel and then acting like my denial is just a first step of the process of acceptance.

I’m not grieving. I just forgot to be perky.

By noon, work was such a mess of small inconveniences that I just couldn’t fathom how I’d survive five more hours.   I’d been asked to do things I didn’t feel like doing, realized I didn’t do things I thought I had, got asked questions I didn’t know the answers to and got more phone calls in one day than I had the entire week before added together. I’d also managed to suck so badly at my 80% acting that I was asked by 3 more people how my day was going and if I was all right.  So at noon, I figured I’d take a walk around the block to hit the reset button.

I was greeted by rain and promptly went back to my desk to mourn.

By 5pm, I was ready to bust a move out of there. I found my stinky attitude embarrassing and exhausting.  I had precisely 1 hour to grab something to eat and bike over to my editor so that I could kick out some decent work our short film.  I used the entire hour, hoping to outlast the rain but it continued to fall, mocking me.   Annoyed and cold but full of mesquite turkey and hope for a decent evening, I pedaled out into the torrential downpour to face the wrath of rush hour bike-haters on my way to my editor’s.  My butt got wet, my underwear was a goner, and the dirty water that got splashed on my shins and flicked up into my face had become so repetitive that I gave up entirely and pedaled faster through the muck.

Note to self: get fenders.

I showed up to my editor’s place at 6:15 and called him to let me in but he didn’t pick up.  I was proud of the fact that I biked there in the rain like a real trooper.  I was absolutely soaking wet and miserable, but I was there.  I stood in the rain, knocking on his door and was greeted by his roomies – most of whom I didn’t know but let me in and showed me a lovely cup of tea while I waited.  

At 6:30 I got a call back from my editor, who was surprised to find out I was at his place seeing as how we didn’t have a meeting scheduled that night.

…What?

I schedule.  Scheduling is what I do.  I get paid to make and remember meetings.  How did I completely fail at my own agenda? I even fed the cats extra food to make sure they’d have enough to make it through dinner.  And I packed enough food and extra gear on my back to get me through the long day.  And…and…I rode there in a torrential downpour!

Turns out I had my weeks mixed up and was completely wrong.  So after I finished my tea I promptly got back on my bike and rode home, quads burning, soaked with dirty water, and hauling 5 pounds of extra gear that I never needed to pack in the first place.  I was burping up mesquite turkey and shame.  I had big plans to go home and feed my desire to regenerate from my ball of grumplepuss.

Instead I got home and realized it was already 7pm and I hadn’t accomplished anything whatsoever.  My cats were so excited to see me that they walked directly in front of my paths as I went through my apartment and I accidentally kicked one of them in the face. Feeling incredibly guilty and defeated, I coaxed her out of her concussive state and went to the bathroom to take a shower and cry like a little girly girl.   

Afterward, I curled up to watch a good government conspiracy movie because apparently that’s my idea of a good time in my old age.  In the middle of it, my brother called and I was excited that at 9:00pm I had finally found the turning point in my day.  Unfortunately my call with him led to a call to my parents in which unpleasantries were discussed and I somehow managed hanging up the phone feeling like a sad and foolish piece of human flesh.

In a last attempt to fight the grumps, I got out a brand new bottle of bright orange nail polish and gave myself a neon pedicure.  Turns out the seal had already been broken and the color was runny and weak.  But I was stubborn and hell-bent on neon, so I painted the roses red regardless. 

Finally in the wee hours of the morning, I’d resigned all attempts to make my evening any better and trudged to bed with my unimpressive toenails, my wet, dirty street clothes strewn about the house, and a box of Girl Scout Cookies half-eaten and kicked under the couch in a last-ditch effort at redemption.  And finally, when my head hit the pillow, I found the silver lining to my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day:

At least I didn’t have to scrounge up a blog topic. ♣

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Mama Needs a New Pair of Shoes!

17 May

There are some weeks that Lollipop Tuesdays sneak up on me like the Hamburglar.   And it’s usually those weeks that I find myself doing something ridiculously late and in a ridiculous location, which is why last night at midnight you could find me playing the slots at the casino.

Happy Lollipop Tuesday, friends.

I have to admit that when I thought I’d mosey on over to the casino, I had a few concerns.  Well, really just one concern: addiction.  I read all the tips and I had a good game plan.  I took a hundred bucks and split it off into five 20’s.  I would play a 20 at each game, and if I got a big win on it I would immediately cash out, pocket the ticket with the winnings, and moved on to the next 20.   It was a good plan and I felt confident it would do me well.  

Until I remembered the World of Warcraft addiction of ’06.  

Not so long ago in a land not too far away, I was huddled up on my desk chair, 3-days-unshowered, with pizza boxes piling up on my bed, running around the land of Azeroth as a Night Elf  Hunter, raiding over and over again until the epic shoulder pads I needed would drop in the dungeon. I wasn’t sure how big the difference was between gambling and WoW, but last night I was a little concerned for my well-being.

I have to admit that when I first walked in, I was pretty disappointed.  Well, actually I was shocked that casinos are open 24/7, was baffled by the variety of machines, and I was pretty darn overwhelmed by the size of the place.  But then I was disappointed.   Pretty much everything I know about casinos is based off movies that feature casinos.  You know, like Sister Act, Ocean’s 11, Rounders…  I was expecting people to have cards at the table and levers for the slots.  

As it turns out, it’s all digital.

Call me crazy, but if I’m going to stick a twenty in a machine and lose it all in 10 minutes, I’d really like to be pulling a lever.  Clicking a button 100 times per bill is incredibly lame.  And even if I could have afforded a buy-in at a table, I wouldn’t have done it.  Because there’s something so unsatisfying about watching a bunch of cards flip up on a screen instead of holding them in my hands.  Illogical, perhaps, but true.  So I stuck to the slots for the evening.  At least there I could click more times.

Apparently people must find slots to be very straightforward and in no need of explanation because aside from a few cryptic images above the machine, there was never any indication as to what you were hoping for when you clicked the button.  I, for one, could have used a bit of help.  Because half the time I didn’t know whether to get excited or whether to sit there clicking until my eyes glazed over.  There were two times that my screen said “Big Win!” and had a bunch of coin and cash images on the screen, but I didn’t know what my “big win” was relative to.  I mean, when we’re on penny slots, big wins could be 10 bucks.

And as it turned out, they were.

For the most part, I found them uninspiring and wished I could go over and lay down my black jack prowess. I hated not having any control whatsoever on whether I won.  That was, until I found the Wizard of Oz slots.

There were only 5 of them and they were tucked over near the bathrooms, but there were folks filling every single seat.   I had a friend that was willing to come along with my for the night and she suggested that they were the best because “there was actually a chance of winning something.”   That was really all I had to hear to wait around awkwardly mouth-breathing behind folks as I waited for one of them to rip their sweaty backs of the seats.  

I got myself a seat and finally found the magic fun of the slot machines.  It probably had a lot to do with winning a big bonus where a bunch of flying monkeys came and ripped my images off to reveal wild cards.  Then something about a “big win” came up on the screen, my machine got real loud, everyone grumpily stared at me, and I sat there for 2 minutes while my winnings piled up.  I made 40 bucks.  Not bad.

I pocketed the ticket and stuck in my next 20, waiting to see what the Emerald City had in store for me next.  

I think the real appeal of the game was that the seats had speakers built right into them.  The biggest wins came from matching three bonuses across the board, and every time one came up in the right place, a huge drum sound would rattle the bejeezus out of your seat and make you pee yourself with anticipation.

Or maybe that was just me.

At any rate, I spent the rest of the evening on the Oz slots, hoping that Glenda the Good Witch would pay me a random visit and switch my rows to wild cards, or that I would link three bonuses together and get some flying monkeys to come give me a big win.

But alas, I stuck to my plan.  And though I went through the hundred I put aside for the evening, I had pocketed 70 bucks of winnings.  It  may sound like a lose-lose situation, but believe me – if I didn’t have a plan beforehand, there would have been no tickets in my pocket and I would have walked out at 100 in the hole instead of just 30.

All in all, it was an enjoyable evening.  You know, in comparison to someone just coming up and mugging me for 30 bucks.  If I were a baller, I could have sat down and used some of my card-playing skills to see what I could rake in.  Because let’s face it: the slots are a total ripoff.  Unfortunately, the lowest buy-in at a table game was 10 smackos.  And since I only came with 100 to gamble, that didn’t seem like a wise way to spend my evening.  

Apparently, clicking a button 100 times and waiting for flying monkeys to descend upon me was. ♣

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The Mystery of Apartment #19

16 May

I have developed a bit of an awkward relationship with the folks beneath our apartment.

I make them sound like bridge trolls when I say it that way.  I mean the people who live in the apartment below ours.  

It all started on a night when Dave was playing music rather loudly and we heard a loud thumping, as if someone was pounding something on the ceiling.  Worried that he was probably playing too loud, too late at night, Dave immediately stopped and wondered if the pounding was an indication of anger from the neighbors.  I encouraged him to go discuss it with them and ask if it really was them doing the pounding.  If so, perhaps we could work out a time that they’d like us to consider the cut-off for Dave’s rehearsals.  

He went downstairs, was charming as ever, and came back to report that it wasn’t them and that we must have misheard something.  Then something about girls and dog and so on.  I don’t take much interest in neighbors.

We didn’t have any other excuses to connect with them until I started noticing a distinct heavy tobacco smell in the bathroom.  It turns out there’s a vent that runs up from theirs to ours, and it was my assumption that they were smoking inside.  Though it’s against the rules of the lease, I didn’t really care.  They’re adults, can do as they please, and can happily pay whatever smell it leaves out of their security deposit.  Unfortunately, I didn’t want to sign up for the same thing and the smell was really quite overwhelming at times.  

So Dave went downstairs, was charming as ever, and came back to report that it was them and they would turn on a fan/blow it out a window/stop smoking in the bathroom. 

All was quiet on the home front until one night when one of them came rapping at my door. 

I make it sound like they’re rappers when I saw it that way.   I mean they knocked on our door,  Edgar Allen Poe style.

I don’t answer the door.  I should just say that outrightly.  I never, ever answer the door.  I don’t like to be confronted by the unknown that stands behind it.  I don’t like the idea of dealing with whatever it is, and more importantly, I don’t like to deal with people.  My assumption is that if it’s knocking, it’s probably a human.  And if it’s a human, I’m not interested.

I’m pretty serious about my commitment.  On the night of topic, I sat on my couch browsing the magical Interwebz as they knocked three different times.  I’m sure they saw the light on inside, but for all they know I could have been pooping.  They can’t expect me to answer the door when I’m pooping.

The next morning, I left for work and upon opening the door found two boxes of Girl Scout Cookies and a note written in bubble letters.  Bubble letters are the kind of letters girls write in third grade when they pass notes to each other.  It said something or other about her sister being a girl scout and something or other about thinking “I” would enjoy them.   And then something about considering it a welcome-to-the-building gift.

The note was obviously meant for charming Dave, who was the only one with whom they’d had contact.   He, however, was away visiting his family and I was left to my own devices for quite a few days. I promptly ate the thin mints, put the box of berry crunch whatevers on the fridge to never be touched, and drafted a thank you note.  It was something to the effect of thanking them for the cookies because I’d had a rough day, and then saying we’ve been in the building for two years so I’m not sure if they were intended for us but I sure hope so because they had already been half-eaten.  I was sure to write it in my best impression of bubble letters so that they would get the idea there was a human of the female persuasion upstairs with the charming Dave.

Today I was in the restroom and smelled the overwhelming stench of tobacco coming up through my vent.   The two situations may not be related, but since I’m a hermit with too much time on her hands, I’m gonna go ahead and say they are.  If Dave appears available, they’ll stop smoking in the bathroom and give him cookies.  If he doesn’t, they’ll smoke us out.   Seeing as how I don’t have anything better to do with my life, this presents an opportunity for amusement. 

The challenge, however, is to come up with an idea that doesn’t involve whoring out Dave’s charm.

This next move might take some time to consider. ♣

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Next Stop: Appalachian Trail?

15 May

File:Appalachian Trail.jpg

Something big is in the works.

For a while I’ve had the nagging feeling that I should be doing something bigger.  I’m not sure what bigger means, but I seem to associate it with important, relevant, and life-changing.   You know, no pressure on myself or anything. 

It could be that I’m itching to get outside my comfort zone again.  I have knack for getting my life shaken up every couple of years in a big way and I’m about due.  The mind races with possibilities, but almost all of them involve travel.  I’m not quite sure what that means either.  I’ve longed to go to Europe forever.  I have a change jar that I tell myself with be the key to my escape, even if it won’t be fat enough to do so until I’m 70.    But I suppose I’m going to need something a little more immediate.  

I’ve considered RVing across America.  Because hey – I’m pretty sure selling all my junk and moving from RV park to RV park selling kooky little wares and putting Dave’s music on display would be a pretty sweet way to spend a summer.  But when I consider the price of gas, that’s not so doable these days.  We’d make it to Ohio and have to turn around.  And then where am I supposed to put the RV when my plans to drive westward have been socked in the face?

But then I saw a documentary that chronicled the Appalachian Trail.  It talked about the history, the technique, and the people who come to conquer it each year.   And though I’m not a hiker by any stretch of the imagination, I fell in love with the idea of walking through the woods for 9 months straight.  After all, I’m sliding down a slippery slope of allegiance to corporate America and I could use a shock to my system.

Think about all the awesome things that will come out of this.   First, I’ll be able to say I hiked the Appalachian Trail.   That’s a pretty cool one.  Second, I’ll be super fit by the end.  Awesome.  Third, I’ll reconnect with nature, quiet my mind, and see what happens when I’m left to my own devices to hike 2100 miles.

Of course, there are downsides to consider.  Like how I’m going to maintain a decent underarm shave method for 9 months.  And ticks.  And getting mauled by bears.  And I guess the hiking 2100 miles thing.  That’s a doozy.

I don’t know.  I should probably take some time to consider this.  I successfully grew my nails out not long ago, which is a feat I’ve tried to accomplish since birth, and ever since the huge win I’ve felt like I can do anything.  Apparently the next natural step is hiking the Appalachian Trial.

So, when I lay out what my life accomplishments will be in the next few years, it looks something like this:

2011: Updated every single day on thejackieblog.com, which became instantly famous and had such a swollen subscriber base that freelance writing offers were hurled at me from top publishers (still working on a few of all those details.)  Also, sported a nice manicure.

2012: Hiked the Appalachian Trail

2013: ….

Well I guess I can just stop at 2012 because the world will come to an end and things.  Which makes hiking the trail the last major accomplishment of my life.

Unless my change jar tops off soon. ♣

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The No-Sleep Cycle

14 May

Okay, so some of you seem to be concerned about my lack of sleep.

It’s going to be all right.   Again finding myself in a “stare at the screen” situation last night, I decided to read through some old posts.  And when I say old, I mean old.  Like, back when I was hosted on Blogger.   A lot of those posts are back from my early college days, when I was managing a ridiculous schedule.   Absolutely ridiculous.  I was a full-time honors student with a 4.0 GPA, worked part-time, put in 10 hours a week in volunteer hours, and had a lead role every semester.  My posts from these days have titles like  “How to Manage Time You Don’t Have“, and “Hell.  Pure, firey, raging hell flames.”  They chronicle the ridiculously large amounts of work I was doing and the very few hours of sleep I was getting.   I powered myself through work nights on Ben and Jerry’s, cheese steaks, and pizza and pumped out papers of all shapes and sizes, back in the day when I was an English major.

Needless to say, my early college career was a fat one.

In one such gem, I detail the amount of work I finished in one evening:

…At 8pm I had a Philosophy paper (2-3pgs.) on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave as it related to my college experience, 3 English journals (1-2pgs each) on Lysistrata and two plays in the Orestia, a Media Paper for Adolescent Development, and (get this) a 10 page research paper on Theatre in India and China, for which I hadn’t even the slightest formation of a thesis yet. You’d think the walls should have caved in on me, or the universe might have come to a gigantic collision in my bedroom. Instead, I wrote them all on the brink of insanity (and aided with the proper motivation tools) and got A’s on them all. …

Look at that! I was a champ.  I pounded out to-do’s like a pro.  At least back then when I stayed up all night I was doing productive things, like comparisons between Chinese and Indian Theater.   Now I just glaze over on websites.    

I should be embracing this new phase in my life.  Instead of lying awake in bed for hours and not being able to sleep, or taking pills (two words: Heath Ledger) I should just accept the situation and resolve to do productive things while awake at night.   I’ll live my life as a zombie for a short while but when I return to my healthy habits, I will praise the knowledge I gleaned during my no-sleep period. 

Actually, that’s probably the worst idea I’ve ever had.  Ending post, getting sleep. ♣

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Only You Can Save This Blog.

13 May

I have gone to bed so late, so many weeks in a row that I might just start skipping sleep altogether in order to avoid the awful process of waking up.  I keep telling myself I’m going to go to bed early on a weeknight or sleep in late on a weekday to hit the reset button but I never do.  I tried it a few nights ago but couldn’t get to sleep (very unfunny) and I ended up wasting 3 hours of my night just lying awake in bed.

So I just stay up doing frivolous things, trying to make my day last longer so that I feel like I work and have a life.  I don’t – it’s a facade.    I don’t stay up doing anything important; I just stay up.  I eat peanut butter toast and watch entire seasons of shows on Netflix and spend an hour on StumbleUpon and read people’s Facebook updates.  I’m so lame that it’s becoming painful.  

I have gone so many weeks on four hours of sleep a night that I have to peel myself out of bed in the morning.  There has never been a better display of man’s willpower than my waking up each day.  I set three alarms – each 15 minute apart from each other.  The first is the time that I would like to wake up.  It’s my ideal.  If I get out of bed at the first ring, I’ll be 5 minutes early for work, freshly showered,  have eaten breakfast, will have an outfit I’m not miserable in, and will be sporting a fine face of work-appropriate makeup. If I get out of bed at the second alarm, I will have to choose 3 out of 5 of those options.   If I get out of bed at the third, I will have to forfeit all but one.  

But lately I’ve been so tired and miserable that when the third alarm goes off, I snooze it for another 15 minutes.   When I wake I will accomplish none of the above tasks, but the jump start I get from knowing I will be late for work if I don’t wake up immediately and bolt out the door in 10 minutes or less is the only thing that will get me up.

I’ve been doing this over and over again.  Yesterday it got so bad that I couldn’t possibly leave for work unshowered again so I still slept in and resolved to be late.

This has to stop.

I’m a good worker.  I really am.  I usually work right through my lunch break and stay late and break lots of labor laws and things.  But lately I’ve been so absolutely zombie-like that I can’t bring myself to get up and at ’em in a timely manner.  I recall having to peel my eyes apart and splash my face with freezing cold water a few days ago just so that I could see straight enough to put my clothes on.   Once I get there I only make it to 11:30 before I need to go order the the tallest, tastiest, non-coffee but coffee-like drink I can stomach in order to get myself to have enough energy to type an email.

I look like death.

When I go outside, I’m as a member of the underworld visiting the surface for the first time.  The light disgusts me, the bird chirping echoes through my weak, soggy brain, and my limbs are all worn and jagged from being jolted into performance from a dead sleep.   I suddenly find myself absolutely incapable of effective communication.   If I attempt to string more than two sentences together, my brain goes into a total meltdown and my eyes travel up and to the left, where they sift through the soft, gooey, deteriorating pockets of my mind for the right word.

It’s usually a simple one.  Like “pants”.

I only have two options from here.  I can either find a way to restore sleep to my body by effectively going to sleep earlier, sleeping in later, or just giving in to my urge to conk out at my desk instead of guzzling caffeine.   Or I can keep going on as I am and become a fully-fledged, certifiable whack job.  Unable to find the words for anything at all, my sentences will deconstruct themselves into incoherent babblings.  My eyelids will sink down to allow only a sliver of light into my eyes.  My face will become pasty, droopy, and inspire fear.  No longer able to force my body to function without allowing it to recharge, I will ooze from place to place on the floor like a slug.

A decomposing, incoherent zombie slug.

I will be unable to keep my promise to write a blog every day because I will no longer be able to comprehend language.  Already, I find myself staring at my screen wondering what to write.   Not because I have no idea, but because I cannot navigate the idea.  I compose entire paragraphs that seem to be written by a 3rd grader who speaks English as a second language, delete them, and upgrade them to that of a 6th grader who speaks English as a second language.  I stare at commonplace words for several minutes, suddenly questioning if they’re really words at all.

My lack of sleep is threatening thejackieblog.

If I don’t post tomorrow, come to Pittsburgh and search the streets.  You’ll find me there, oozing my way through the masses and hissing at daylight.

If you spot me, stick me with a bear tranquilizer, put me on a park bench, and force the regeneration to begin. ♣

The High Hurdles in Slug World

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