Tag Archives: life

Ode to 90 Days

2 Apr

It has just struck me that I have severely limited the amount of free time I have in my life.

I just wrapped up my first 90 days of blogging.  Every single day for the last 90 days, I’ve sat down in front of this computer, fought mercilessly with my cat to get off my chest/off the keyboard/out of my life, and proceeded to word vomit on your faces.     For the most part, I’ve done all right.  I have a pretty solid routine and though I can’t necessarily force myself to sit down and write something any time I want to, I’ve definitely mastered the “no excuses” attitude.  Mostly because I can’t bear the shame of not posting.

But yesterday I did something silly.  Without even realizing that it was my 1st quarter post-a-day celebration, I committed myself to completing P90X.  For some stupid reason, I even got the cojones to list in the P.S. at the bottom of my posts whether or not I’ve been successful that day.    So now I have to finish this post-a-day-2011 deal and I have to listen to a 45-year old motivational drill Sergeant whip my gelatin into a solid, jiggleless mold for 90 days.

I have managed to make the 2nd quarter of my blogging experience far more difficult and physically painful than the first.

Why? Why would I do that?  As if being forced into a new and scary social territory every Tuesday isn’t enough, I decided I’d also really like to try to be healthy and somewhat attractive.  And everyone knows that attractive girls can’t be funny.  It’s like I’m setting myself up for failure.

It’s this blog.  It’s  turning me into an absolute monster.  For some reason I think I can actually accomplish things that I put my mind to.  I’ve witnessed the power of dedicating myself to completing one small thing every day for an extended period of time and now I’m just going around all willy-nilly declaring that I will conquer pieces of my world I’ve left untouched until now.

To celebrate my 1st quarter success, I’d like to reflect on some of the things I’ve learned.

1.)    This blog has the power to make me do ridiculous and challenging things.

2.)    My posts always have more hits when I include a picture of a hot girl ( Exhibit A: I’m a Big Ol’ Lesbian, Exhibit B: Getting Hot Sucks).

3.)    Hits also increase when I give it a dirty title (Exhibit A: The Nude Hour, Exhibit B: My Pole Name is Jasper Highland, Exhibit C: Vagina Dentata).

4.)   Try as I might, I will seldom write a blog on Friday evening for a Saturday 9am post.  I will sleep in and post when I feel like it.  Exhibit A: today.

5.)   A lot of crazy cat ladies read my blog (Exhibit A: the comments on I’m Living with a Terrorist).

6.)   My real life friends will always apologize for not reading every day even when I don’t bring it up.  They will be perpetually guilt-    stricken for the next 9 months.

7.)   I will not go try new things unless pressured to.  I hope Lollipop Tuesdays eventually become something I naturally embrace.

8.)   It is possible to blog every day without negative comments about the workplace and without cussing.  Hard, but possible.

9.)   There is nothing I can do to stop people from asking “are you going to blog about this?” after something amusing happens to me.

10.)   My readers will constantly impress me with their wit and support.

All right- this reflection time has been fun but I’ve got a P90X DVD to play and 9 months more of posts to plan.

Giddy-up.

P90X Update: 2/90 complete, pain abounds.  Simple everyday tasks have become painful and challenging.  A brief discourse with friends who have completed it assure me that I will be in a constant state of pain from now until the finish.  Awesome.

Getting Hot Sucks

1 Apr

It’s update time.

Remember way back when I tried P90X for my Lollipop Tuesday?  It was a painful but sweet nectar and I actually toyed with the idea of trying it out.  Like, for realsies.

Last night I decided to take the plunge.

I have a problem with getting myself jacked up enough to want to kick my miserable fat ass for an hour and a half, so Dave and I struck a deal: we’re doing P90X together.  Every day he’ll do it early in the day and I’ll do it later, gathering my motivation from the fear of being heckled by him for having skipped out.

We’d do it in the same room at the same time but I refuse to work out in front of him because I don’t like the idea of him seeing all my fat pudding rolling around while I exercise.

So yesterday afternoon Dave did the 90 minute chest and back workout and then the 15 minute ab ripper X workout.  Which means that last night, I was expected to do the same.   Not even two hours later, I got a phone call and actually noticed the muscles I use to hold the phone.

I couldn’t believe I worked out so hard it was taxing to talk on the phone.  For a moment I actually considered explaining the situation to the other party and hanging up but then I realized how freaking pathetic that would make me.

So I carried on, feeling like a quivering pile of wuss.

Why does trying to get hot have to suck so much?  I mean I get that you have to work hard to look good, but why does it have to be so miserable?!   I’m not sure I’ve ever had a workout I’ve truly enjoyed.  I played volleyball back in the day and loved it, but I don’t really count sports played for pleasure.   I’m talking straight-up working out: lifting weights, running, miseries of all kinds.  I don’t think I’ve ever, ever enjoyed that process.

When I meet people that run for pleasure, I am utterly baffled.

They’ve got to be lying.  The whole lot of them.  They might like being hot – that’s a gimme.  But they totally don’t like running.  The act of it – the pounding of the pavement, the loud cries from their bodies to please stop the madness – I don’t buy that anyone enjoys that.

You know what I enjoy? Eating.  I really enjoy eating.  I can get through the most terrible day with the right foods.  Eating something when you’re truly in the mood for it is one of the absolute best things in the world.

Is that the difference between beautiful people and normal people? Maybe beautiful people love to run as much as I love to eat cheesecake.  Maybe they really do like it.

If that’s the case, I definitely got the short end of the stick.  

Cameron Diaz - without a single shred of evidence that she's ever eaten something delicious. Yowza. (Photo by Simon Emmett for go.com)

Pressure seems to work for me.  So you know what? I’m going to give a little P90X update in these little gray areas every day.  I’ll publicly display whether or not I was a fat turd or a lean, mean sex machine.   Yeah, I’ll stress myself into getting hot.  It’ll be awesome.

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Jackiemodo

31 Mar
Cartoon: Quasimodo (medium) by Roberto Mangosi tagged portrait

"Quasimodo" by Roberto Mangosi - Click the image to check him out at Toonpool.

I’m so tired of people asking me if I’m tired or sick.

It usually happens at work.  I don’t know what the deal is there, but I’m going to go ahead and blame it on the terrible lighting.  It must accentuate my under eye bags and pale, lusterless complexion.

I don’t really even know how to respond when asked.  Mostly because the inquirer is so stricken with grief and concern over my appearance that I am almost convinced there’s something truly sickly about me.

Is it possible to have facial features that indicate sickliness? Because if so, I’m pretty sure I’ve got them.  At least people give me the benefit of the doubt and ask if I’m feeling all right instead of just assuming I’m ugly.

That’s pretty nice of them.

The second most frequently asked question (but far more loathed) is “What’s wrong with your eye?”

Unfortunately, I have one eye that is significantly smaller than the other.  It’s most noticeable when I smile and unfortunately, I smile a lot.   And if I’m looking particularly tired one day (more than my normal, sickly self), it might actually cause someone to notice.  Except since they don’t notice that it’s a feature I was born with, they get highly concerned over whether I’ve contracted some sort of conjunctivitis.

I was once interrupted in the middle of singing during rehearsal because someone was concerned about my eye.

After running to the restroom to make sure everything was in order (while the entire cast waited for me, worried), I saw my very own, normal, sickly-looking, squinty-eyed self in the mirror.  I always take these moments for a semi-weekly affirmation.  “I am not a monster.  I am not a monster.  I am not a monster.”

The worst part is when I actually go check to see if I’m okay.  Because then I have to come back with a report to a gaggle of concerned friends/colleagues/whoever reported my mutation.  When I come back and report that everything is fine, they think I’m trying to pass it off as if it’s no big deal.  They actually think something is wrong and I’m trying to not deal with it.  When in reality, I’m trying to not have an entire room of people informed that one of my eyes is smaller than the other.  I’m trying to not have to announce that “I just look this way.”

But I always have to, and it’s always awkward for them.

As you may imagine, I don’t do so well in the “help people not feel awkward” realm.   I’m one of those folks who just vomit whatever comes to my mind until the air is so pregnant with angst and hesitation that one of us makes an excuse to leave.

I’m pretty worried about today.  I was out late last night.  In the middle of my long, irresponsible evening, I thought to myself “Oh man.  Tomorrow someone’s going to notice my eye.”

I’ve got an enormous coffee in front of me and a substantial amount of makeup on.  Today, we’re having a department meeting.

I give it 10 minutes before someone asks me the famous question.

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Follow the Brown Rabbit

30 Mar

Image is "Roland the Headless Chocolate Bunny" by ozyman666. Click the image to go to his flickr.

 

Last night I was a raw, unbridled beast.  I found myself in the deep angst of a chocolate craving.

It’s absurd and truly sad the being I am reduced to when in need of the blessed cacao bean.

When the craving hit, it almost instantly doubled in size upon the realization that I didn’t actually have any chocolate in the house.  Any. I kept trying to tell myself I could just eat things that tasted like chocolate but weren’t actually chocolate.  But without those either, I had to give up altogether and just eat everything with even a gram of sugar in my entire apartment.  That proved simultaneously fattening and unsatisfactory.

Suddenly, I remembered something Dave had mentioned about a chocolate bunny a friend had given him the other day.

I was having a similar test of gluttony the day that Dave was gifted that chocolate bunny and he off handedly remarked that if I wanted, I could have it.  Yes.  That was precisely what he said.  And since I was hungry for chocolate again and didn’t take him up on the offer the first time around, the deal was still on any time I wanted, right?

So I went rabbit hunting.

I searched this apartment high and low, like an eager, foul beast.  I immediately went to his book bag but found nothing except books.  I didn’t even accidentally see anything incriminating.  The whole bag was just hippie sentiments and books.

What a nerd.

Maddened, I went to his bedroom.  I looked on every surface, I picked up clothes from the floor, and would have done low, low deeds to have gotten a glimpse of that beautiful eared confection.

My search proving worthless, I decided to use logic.   Cupboards!  Dave’s a straightforward kind of guy.  He probably thinks chocolate bunnies are food and food goes in the kitchen.  Please think that, Dave.

I ran to the kitchen ravenous enough to upturn any edible rodents of any kind and claim them as my prize.  But there was no rabbit.

Suddenly, it hit me: think smaller!

I rushed back to the book bag and slid my hand in the small side pocket to reveal a crinkly candy wrapper encasing one beautiful, hollowed-out milk chocolate bunny made by…. Palmer?!?!?   You’ve gotta be kidding me.

I wanted Dove.  Godiva.  Cadbury. You know – something that tasted like chocolate.  But I was desperate.  I tore it open and bit into its unprotected, unsuspecting chocolate ear.   It was chalky and disappointing.  If I worked up enough spittle to blend with the chalkiness, for a brief moment I could pretend it was sweet, creamy chocolate goodness.

Unable to take the nastiness any longer, I went to throw it in the trash but was struck with a pang of guilt: I can’t throw it out! I sought it out and opened it without Dave being here to say it was okay.  I can’t waste it now!

I clicked my Grooveshark from Cat Stevens to “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac and swam in guilt, regret, and the soothing, wavery voice of Stevie Nicks.

And as I chomped reluctantly into the last foot of the chocolate easter bunny of disappointment, I was hit with another tragic epiphany:

Or wait.  Did he say I could split it with him? 

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I Didn’t See a Fat Lady

29 Mar

Get excited; it’s Lollipop Tuesday.

After last week’s Rock Climbing “Adventure”, I thought it appropriate to go a little more hands-off.  So this week, I went to my first opera.

I’m kind of surprised that I’ve been in theater for so long and never managed to encounter an opera.  Well, there was this one time when I was a teacher at a performing arts camp, but it was this absolutely terrible show about Ruth and Naomi and it was all sung poorly and in English.   And quite frankly, if there aren’t Viking hats or different languages, it just doesn’t qualify in my book.

So I ventured over to the theater having no idea what to expect.  I had kind of accepted that I would probably hate it.  I tend to make those decisions sometimes without really knowing anything about the subject.  But luckily thanks to this Lollipop Tuesday series, I’m slowly and painfully working on that flaw.  I’m finding that a lot of experiences are not at all what I make them out to be inside my head.

Reality is so much more badass. …And courtesy of the Pittsburgh Opera.

The opera was Puccini’s Turandot and as it turned out, there were no Vikings of any kind.  Just incredibly sweet sets, super awesome costumes, and subtitles.

I don’t know why, but for some reason I thought opera wouldn’t have subtitles.  I imagined something like the scene from Moonstruck where Cher and Nicolas Cage stare at the stage and just know what’s happening.  But I’m actually really glad there was a translation.  Reading the program guide can only explain so much when the lead begins a 15 minute long song, you’re staring at a cloak with 20 human heads hanging inside, and the whole village is weeping and gnashing teeth.

It was intense.

The thing that really surprised me was how extravagant the set was and how each costume was so intricate in detail and over-the-top in spectacle.   But I suppose that when you go see a show in a foreign language that has no upbeat dance numbers, you’ve gotta have something to look at.

I really need to get cast in theater companies with bigger budgets.

The only unfortunate part of the evening was the couple sitting to the far left of me, one row ahead.  Apparently they had a lot to say about, well, everything.  They didn’t even try to whisper, which is the real kicker.  And since I’ve been known to walk up to people who are rude in the theater and have civil, logical conversations with them about how they’re the reason people stay inside to watch movies, I was a little concerned about the little baby hellfire flame that was lit in the pit of my stomach when I heard them start to talk.

Luckily, their cacophony of disrespect was overshadowed by a woman who “snuck” in a bag of chips in her purse.  I’d argue that someone who isn’t a moron might try sneaking in something just slightly more discreet next time, but she seemed genuinely convinced that adjusting the packaging ever so slowly was an effective means of concealing her sin.

And she, like all others who make that assumption, was drowning in a thick, infested pool of denial between her loud crunches.

My thin, fickle patience aside, it was a lovely experience.  Dare I say I enjoyed it.

Man, I can’t believe I just said I enjoyed opera. 

Want to make a pilgrimage to higher culture yourself?  Check out the Pittsburgh Opera.

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Collectiphobia

28 Mar

It’s stinkbug time.

ew ew ew ew ew ew.

I hate stinkbugs.  I love the spring and look forward to it all year long until I remember that it comes with bugs.  Specifically, bugs that tend to cluster.

I can’t even describe to you in words how absolutely disgusted I am by swarms of anything.  If both my cats are in the same room at the same time, I make one of them clear out so it doesn’t look like I’m getting an infestation.  Even just the words “swarm” and “infestation” give me the willies.  The thought of attempting to find a picture to attach to this blog post absolutely scared the bejeezus out of me.

I’m not “afraid” of stinkbugs or lady bugs.  I’m afraid of the omen they bring.

When I was in college, I lived in a crappy 5-room house with a bundle of roommates.    Rent was low and bugs were rampant.    I could walk around the house and easily count into the double digits how many stinkbugs I saw hanging out along the way.  Everywhere I went, I felt in constant anxiety of my next sighting.

Ladybugs pull ahead in the attractiveness factor, but when I remember what it looks like to see them all huddled on top of each other in the corners and cracks of houses, I go flailing about the house like a frightened little girl.

I think my problem is a fear of collections in general.  I am incredibly careful to not make any mention that I “collect” something.   I know far too many family members who are buried and unable to move under the mounds of snowmen, angels, Santas, roses, or cat figurines.  All it takes is one careless mention or gesture and suddenly everyone who knows you gets you a variation of a penguin for Christmas.

Once, a couple of friends and I decided to decorate the bathroom in our place with an assortment of ridiculous plastic ducks.  It wasn’t so much that we cared for the ducks as it was a result of a free giveaway at school.    Unfortunately, I hadn’t realized that anyone visiting the house could look at the window ledge in the bathroom, see the variety, and insist upon us having a duck collection.

There are many things I would like to be thought of in this life, but a collector of ducks is not one of them.

I’m absolutely terrified of what this stinkbug means for the apartment.  Are there more? Are they lurking somewhere?  What if I see a ladybug too? Maybe I need to just make sure the cats are on their A-game so they can help with pest control.  Maybe I should get another cat.

…No… 2 cats is reasonable. 3 cats is a collection.

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Jackie vs. iPad 2

27 Mar

I’ve lost my boyfriend.

I didn’t even lose him to a woman.  I feel like if I did, I could maybe still have shot with him.  Maybe he could have just lost his way and we could have worked it out.

But unfortunately I’ve lost him to an iPad 2.  And as we all know, losing anyone to an iAnything is the end of that person as we know them.

The really strange thing for me is that Dave is such a hippie.  The man walks around in his bare feet whenever possible, dresses like an upper-class hobo, and is never spotted without his guitar.  Lately he’s been going with the “less is more” attitude and slowly trying to weed out and donate unnecessary possessions.   And while he’s always been computer-savvy, he’s never really been all that plugged in.  At one point he had something like a thousand unread messages in his email and he only briefly visited Facebook.   So to have had him on his iPad every moment since his parents gave it to him for his birthday has thrown me for a bit of a loop.

Even as I sit here, he stares lovingly into its cold, calculating screen while I sit on the couch alone – a warm, unimpressive bag of flesh.

The really hard-hitting part is that I don’t think I can call him a hippie anymore.  An iPad2 is so cutting edge right now.  And with its use, he’s linked into to the cutting edge crowd.   He’s supposed to be a woodsman – a vagabond- a walker of the earth.  So unless he only uses his newfound piece of technological beauty to order organic groceries, organize protests, and check out sweet guitar tabs, I’m not so sure he fits the stereotype anymore.

And since he just downloaded Angry Birds, I think it’s a done deal.

You know what? It’s okay.  His parents are leaving this afternoon and headed back home, which means we will no longer be going out to restaurants to eat.  Eventually, Dave will get hungry.  And eventually, he’ll have to communicate with me so that I produce food for him.  Because even though the iPad has well over 60,000 and counting,

there isn’t an app for that. 

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Rebecca Black & Spiderman the Musical: Is a Train Wreck an Instant Ticket to Fame?

26 Mar

We need to talk about Rebecca Black.

If you haven’t heard the most mediocre song in the world yet, join the millions who have.

You might need some time with it.   With hard-hitting, witty lyrics like “Yesterday was Thursday, Today is it Friday, Tomorrow is it Saturday, and Sunday comes after that”, I feel like I should give you time to digest.

I don’t want to talk about how much Rebecca Black does or does not suck or about whether or not people are being too hard on her.  She’s a 13-year old girl who showed up to an audition and had to choose between two songs that were already written and just needed a tween to represent them.  Do you understand that? She had the choice between two songs and she chose this one.

Imagine what the other song must have been.

She didn’t write the lyrics.  She didn’t say she was any good.  There were just some guys who thought they could throw autotune on that, stick her in front of America, and watch what happened..   We seem to be pretty all right with singers that sound like robots.

Don’t get me wrong – I hate the song with the firey rage of a thousand hellfire flames.   The video is a pathetic excuse for entertainment, and though she can certainly be blamed for the lack of enthusiasm and energy she shows in it, none of that is really relevant.   Because the point isn’t that it’s awful.  The point is that people are listening to it.

People are listening to her just because they think it sucks so much.  I’ll admit that the only reason I viewed it is because 20% of my friends’ Facebook statuses linked that video and something hilariously awful they had to say about it.

Her suckiness is viral gold.

Think about that.  Really stop and think about that.  Her video went from 4,000 to 70,000 views in one night.  The next morning, it had exploded into 200,000.   Now, it sits at 48 mill and climbing.  In spite of the fact that it has ~90,000 likes and ~766,000 dislikes it’s growing like a big, bad, mind-numbing monster.

Have you heard about Spiderman the musical?  It isn’t quite as high-profile as Rebecca Black given the nature of the medium, but suffice it to say it’s kinda in a similar boat.  After being plagued by severely injured actors, hiring a new writer, a new director, slashing ticket prices, pushing back opening dates, coming to a dead hault on final dress, and facing about 13 grand in OSHA violations, the musical is the costliest show to ever be produced on Broadway.  It will have to run 5 years at full capacity in order to make up the production cost alone.

That’s pretty sucky.

And you know what? People are going nuts over it.  When people spread news on Spiderman, it’s because they’re checking in on the next disaster.  High profile problems with the show keep people coming back to check for more.  The show is now running previews and is selling out.

That’s right; It’s selling out.

Whether or not it ends up being any good is irrelevant.  What put butts in the seats is people’s anticipation of disaster.  When polled during invited rehearsals, audience members claimed to have shown up because they heard what a mess it was and couldn’t wait to see it for themselves.

This just blows my mind.  And, quite frankly, scares the hell out of me.  Is this the future of entertainment? Is it possible that if you suck hard enough you can grab yourself a golden ticket to fame?

Rebecca Black could be just the beginning.  Imagine – an entire crop of tweens could take opportunity by the reigns.  Rich parents everywhere could throw money at producers and crank out an Auto-Tuned pieces of horror that will haunt our computers and social media.  And I, for one, am truly frightened.

Hey – this could be William Hung‘s big comeback. 

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The Reclaiming of My Pizazz

25 Mar

You know what? I’m going to start dressing ridiculously.

I want to wear daring things.  I want to express myself through my clothes, even if it’s not very well.  I want to make people wonder what the hell is going on.

When I was in the 8th grade, my favorite outfit was a pair of leopard pants an electric blue t-shirt with a bright yellow picture of Buddha on it.  I kid you not, my friends.  I wore it about once a week.

You know what the real beauty of that is?    You can’t just go around wearing easily recognizable pieces like that.  When you’ve got an article that makes a statement, you have to sprinkle it.  But I didn’t care.  I just simply did not care.

When I was in the 3rd grade, Reebok came out with this shoe line that was all one color.  The bottom, the laces, the tongue – everything was the same.  It came in red, orange, and bright green.   I thought the bright green ones were the coolest things I’d ever seen in my life (you can check out the 2011 version here).  I couldn’t imagine my life without them, so I got them and wore them every day until my mother made me get rid of them because my toes were wearing through.

I was also a little choir geek when I was in school (one step in the grave of theater into which I later fell) and my mom used to take me shopping for a new outfit for the annual choir concert.   I remember we were in Kmart – like the fine, classy white folk we were – and I found this bright purple silk (read: polyester blend) skirt with a crazy paisley design on it.    I was so in love with it that I left the store cradling it in my arms, dreaming of the perfect key lime blouse to go with it.   Mom and I raked the sands of every store in town until we found one.  She gently suggested other options – reasonable ones.  But I forged ahead telling her I had an artist’s eye like dad and if she could just see in her head what I saw in mine, it would be glorious.

God bless my mother.

I showed up to my choir concert in the most out-of-this-world outfit, lined up next to my friends in their charming, well-accessorized dresses.   And I felt like a million bucks.

I don’t know what made me stop.  I don’t think it’s that I started caring what people thought because well into twelfth grade, I was still glamming up my gym outfit with matching knee socks.   Maybe it was college.  Maybe I moved out for college and lost some of my pizazz.

Yeah.  I want my pizazz back.

I can’t recall a single truly daring thing I’ve worn since high school.  I’m not talking plunging necklines – I definitely did plenty of those in college.  I’m talkin’ straight up ridiculous.  I believe that doing so will reinstate whatever amount of pizazz I once had that has been beaten down and lost somewhere in the unspoken rules of society.

And so I shall.  Let it be effective immediately that I shall save a portion of my earnings each month to contribute to the Wacky Jackie fund.  And shall use the contributions therein to go on a shopping spree of daring and pizazz.

It will be most glorious.  

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The Decomposition of a Work Week

24 Mar

Yesterday I was so tired at work that I went to the bathroom just to lean up against the cold empty arms of the stall and sneak in 5 minutes of the sweet nectar of sleep.

That’s correct: Yesterday, I fell asleep on the toilet.

Night Jackie is starting to seriously foil the responsible attempts of hardworking, nose-to-the-grindstone Day Jackie.  Up until now it’s been a struggle I have easily balanced; bags under my eyes and unimpressive hair were showing up on Thursdays and it was an easy ride from there to the glorious embrace of Saturday morning sleep time.

But unfortunately, Night Jackie has been taking grip on Tuesday nights – which makes the ride to Saturday a very long and bumpy one.

Thus I found myself seeking slumber in a public restroom.

When I came to, it became obvious to me that this is a declaration of war by Night Jackie.   She is actively working againt my new requirements as a member of adulthood.    After a brief reflection, it is clear that I have slowly worked into a pattern of drowsiness and grumpery caused by her habits.

After some costly third-party analysis, I was able to pull together this breakdown:

The truly unfortunate part is that Night Jackie isn’t even doing anything cool. She’s not a super hero, a socialite or a stripper.  She’s just a regular gal, huddled in the comfort of her home and currently nursing a heavy addiction to Prison Break on Netflix.  What a lame-o.

…I have to go.  I think she heard me and I fear tomorrow’s consequences. 

 


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