Tag Archives: life

Ode to the Nudist

9 Feb

File:RAAF 1943 swimming nude.jpeg

Every day, I should just thank the good Lord that I have successfully dressed myself.

Not in praise of clothes on my back or the ability of my body to physically accomplish it (which are valid and certainly deserving of thanks), but rather in praise that I have managed to pick out something that I have somehow convinced myself is clean, doesn’t hug my love handles, doesn’t show my back fat, doesn’t reveal my arm waddle, doesn’t have underwear lines, is something I haven’t worn too recently, doesn’t look too slutty, somehow suggests I might have fashion sense if I tried, and looks good with all the other things I have on that meet all those  same requirements.

To complicate matters even more, let us not forget that just because an article of clothing (or even an entire outfit) could be cleared for my departure from the house one day doesn’t mean that it will be cleared forevermore.  Every single day I have to consider these things all at once and quickly and yet somehow every single day, I leave my apartment fully clothed.

This is surely a miracle.

When I consider that I have managed to do this for at least most of my life without leaving the house even just ONE time naked, I’m overwhelmed by my genius.

I’ll repeat it; I’m not ashamed: “I’m overwhelmed by my genius”

Really think about it.  I give myself an ever-increasing limit to what I call “the absolute last minute I can leave the house” method every single morning.  Every morning, I wake up just a wee tiny bit later than I did the day before.  I will continue to toe this line until I am clearly late for work and then I will back up one minute and call it “the absolute last minute I can leave the house.”  I’ve done it with every job, ever.  This one is 8:12.  Last one was 6:35.  The one before, 7:46.

That means every day I only have a miniscule window of time to decide what to wear.  And yet I am continually successful.   That’s the work of a genius.

I mean, when I look at my clothing selection even just now while writing this, I think man….I really need to buy some new clothes.  I don’t have anything to wear!  Not a single thing! WHAT HAVE I BEEN WEARING ALL THIS TIME?!

I start to wonder how it is that I’ve managed to put together anything at all from the shabby options that all make me look fat, lopsided, are see-through, a bad color, has a hole, it really is amazing that I haven’t just given up and joined a nudist colony.

Then again, I hate to be nude.

I hate to be nude because I don’t like the feeling of skin that never has direct contact with furniture suddenly establishing that relationship.  It’s odd.  And sometimes you stick to it.

So here’s to you, Nudist.  For breaking free of society’s demand to wear clothes.   For being comfortable with that ripping sound you feel when you get up from sitting on leather.  And above all, for cutting a good 7 stress-filled minutes off your morning routine.

Cheers. ♣

Psst…Thanks for the rockin’ Lollipop Tuesday comments!  You still have until tomorrow at midnight to leave a suggestion on the “What’s Lollipop Tuesday” page for a chance to win a free jackieblog t-shirt!   Need more details? Read yesterday’s post.

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Jelly Belly

8 Feb

Ladies and Gentlemen, Happy Lollipop Tuesday.


Adventure first, rules for free t-shirt second.  Today’s adventure: A Sonogram!

That’s right : I’m going to new and interesting depths in my quest for new experiences.    And hey – if Obama’s gonna give me access to health care, I’m gonna step right through that beautiful, wide open door.

Actually, it’s that I appear to have some sort of rabid beast making nest in the right upper quadrant of my abdomen (note: not a baby) and it’s gotten rather uncomfortable.   Or an Alien, a la Alien.  Or! OR! I really am a superhero and this is just the initial stage of discomfort that precedes the turning-into-awesomeness.

Listen, if the doctor can’t tell me what it is without a fancy shmancy sonogram, then I’m free to take valid guesses as well.  I would argue that my conjectures are just as sound as hers given that neither of us seem to know what the heck is going on.  It’s just that her background is in medicine and mine happens to be in geek culture.

We’re both making the best guesses we can given the small amount of available information.

You may be thinking seriously? A Sonogram? But hey – if I’m going to have to go to the doctor once a week for this little organ-eating monster in my belly, I’m darn well going to use the experience for a Lollipop Tuesday.   I have to admit that before today, I actually wasn’t sure what to expect in a Sonogram.   I got the general idea that it was as simple as jelly+belly=picture, but thought I’d call my mom just to be sure there isn’t any funny business.  Mom usually lets me in on any funny business.

She comforted me and relieved my fears, affirming my jelly+belly assumption.  And then she said

“Well, that’s what it was 25 years ago, anyway.”

That’s what it was 25 years ago!? Oh, right.  I’m her last kid.   But what does that mean? Where has technology gone in 25 years? What if there’s no jelly anymore? What if there’s nudity or probing involved?  What if they’ve found some more efficient butt method? I really don’t want a butt method.

Turns out it’s pretty much the same as it was 25 years ago.  They do, however, refer to the instrument they rub your belly with as “the probe,” and between that and the warm, gelatinous liquid she splooged all over my stomach to get started, I really started to  wonder if there was a surprise happy ending.

Thankfully there wasn’t.

And now….*drum roll*

The Free T-Shirt Rules of Engagement

As you may or may not recall, last Tuesday I designed t-shirts for my Lollipop event and had everyone vote on their favorite.  The promise was that the winning shirt would be the first official t-shirt for the blog and would be given away for free to those who stopped by today and followed the instructions.   Here’s the winner (by a surprisingly close race):

Want one?  Ready, Set, Go.

It’s pretty simple, really.  All you have to do is click on “What’s Lollipop Tuesday?” at the top right side of this page.  Once you’re there, leave me an idea in the comments section for Lollipop Tuesday.   It doesn’t matter if you leave one or twenty, or if it’s a winner or a stinker – all that matters is that you leave a comment with an idea.  You have until midnight on Thursday, the 10th to leave a comment for consideration in the contest.

Disclaimer: Comments after Thursday at midnight are always welcome and highly encouraged, but will not  result in a t-shirt raffle.

On Friday, February 11th, I’ll put all the usernames into a hat and draw some winners (that right – there will be more than one.  Try not to pee with excitement).  I’ll contact the winners for their info and ship them a shirt.  Wham, Bam, Thank You Ma’am.

Happy thinking! ♣

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Why I Suck at Geography

6 Feb

I do.  I’ve been trying to hide it for years, but it’s the bold, dirty truth: I suck at Geography.   Of the United States, to be specific.

The thing is, I moved a lot when I was young.   In 1st grade I went to a local Christian school, where they taught Geography in 2nd grade.   But I moved to a school in the next town over for 2nd grade and there, they were going to teach geography in 3rd grade.   Just when I was ripe with anticipation for 3rd grade, I bopped back to a public school in the town I just came from… where unfortunately they had just taught Geography in 2nd grade. 

I know it must seem silly.  You must think that I have run into U.S. Geography plenty of times in my life and that this constant interaction should suffice for competency in the subject.   Well, I haven’t, and it doesn’t.

I did, however, study South American Geography in 8th grade.  I got the downlow on all those big bad countries and capitals – and meanwhile found out for the first time in a conversation in the same grade that Washington D.C. was not actually in Washington State.

Some time ago, Dave came home from the local art store with gifts in tow.   He came bearing a huge smirk and a placemat that sported a map of the United States.  He knew I was embarrassed about the situation and thought that if I ate off of a picture of it (because I eat so often) that I would eventually be a wizard at it. 

But that placemat, paired with the one listing the U.S. Presidents in chronological order (gotten for himself) made my dining room look like a preschool.  So I tucked it under the bar.

When I was in college, a friend (let’s call him Bart) was disgusted with my lack of competency in both geography and history that he sent me links to online games to help me learn the states and capitals.    Unfortunately, I was in the midst of my World of Warcraft addiction at the time and was much  more interested in the geography of Azeroth.

Now, I’m not a complete moron- I’m aware of states and capitals out of sheer frequency of encounter.  But I have to admit that if you handed me a map of the U.S. and asked me to fill in the names of states, I would probably jumble together the order of the ones between Pennsylvania and California.  Above and below those, I’m not too shabby.

I could have easily sat down and made a point to study them, and I have many times.  But honestly, I just get so bored and tend to wander onto web pages like “Most Frequently Misspelled Words” and “Most Common Grammatical Mistakes” instead. 

So I’m sorry, America, that I still tend to struggle with where exactly everything is inside you.   But sometimes when I think about it, the earth is all our land and borders are silly, manmade invisible lines as if drawn down the middle of two siblings’ sides of the bedroom.   So maybe I can just say that I’m not that into learning where the borders are because I choose to disregard the validity of their claims.  Is that hippie of me?  Or is that just an excuse for sucking? 

Perhaps a little of both. ♣

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The Simple Pleasures of Indoor Housecats

4 Feb

I envy my cats.

I truly do.  I’ve long-marinaded the thought of lounging around on various plush surfaces while another member of the household is off working.  And when they come home, they could play with my hair and feed me.

I’m not sure what’s so wrong about that.

Last night, Lola crept over to the coffee table to happily confront a bowl of Cocoa Puff Milk that had been sitting there since the day before.   For those who are unaware of what “Cocoa Puff Milk” is, it’s the slightly brown, slight Cocoa-Puff-y excess milk that remains when one has eaten all the puffs from a bowl of Cocoa Puff cereal.  I went to stop her but after seeing how much joy it brought to her life – as if she had discovered something sacred and beautiful – I just couldn’t bring myself to ruin her happiness.

The thing is, Lola never eats human food.   My parents have a cat who would gnaw on the leg of a live cow if he just had the chance, but my Lola turns her nose up at anything remotely non-cat.   Many a time, Dave and I have loathed the idea of forcing our cats to eat knobby, artificial, cardboard pieces under the guise of some clever marketing title like “Seafood Sensations” or “Meat Medley” or some other stupid alliteration.  Cats don’t care about alliteration.  It takes a keen eye to sort through the B.S. lurking in the cat food aisle.  But regardless of what newfangled delicacy we bring home, they both prefer crappy cardboard bits.  

So I let her drink it.  She could have stuck her paw in it and slathered it all over her pudding-like belly and lapped it back up again – I wouldn’t have cared.   Because Cocoa Puff Milk is probably the best thing that happened to her all day.

And I so envy that.

All the blog improvement advice I read tells me to keep my posts short and sweet.  They suggest somewhere around 250 words.  250 words! I wrote 300 up there and that was with a great deal of editing.  So tell me, loyal readers – is shorter better?  I’m truly curious. 

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I Think I Might Be a Drug Mule

2 Feb

I think there’s something in the tissue boxes at work.

Yes, I know – tissues.  But I mean something else.  Something…better.

The custodian on my floor – let’s call her Marge – always tiptoes into my office, looks behind her to make sure she isn’t being trailed, and slips me a new box of tissues, telling me to “put them in my drawer”, all wide-eyed and crazy haired, as if hot off a chase.  I keep trying to get out the words “no thank you I have plenty”, but  there is a secrecy to our exchange — a sort of hushed urgency that makes me feel as if I’m missing something.

Am I missing something?

Sitting at my desk in the carpeted cages of the corporate jungle, I simply think.  I think so hard and so long about tissues that I worry I might say something ridiculous and tissue-related if someone calls and I have to answer the phone.  And yet try as I might, I could come up with no logical reason for why Marge conducts routine restocking in such a manner.

Let’s consider some possible explanations:

1) Tissues are harder to come by in the corporate jungle than I had anticipated and I take for granted Marge’s love and consideration for me.

2) Marge doesn’t actually work for the company but prefers her self-constructed reality to that of her real life and risks discovery each and every day if not careful.

3)  There is a valuable item, such as drugs or diamonds, hidden in the tissue boxes and I am a pawn in Marge’s illegal activity.

4) Marge doesn’t care for me and is stealing one box of tissues every two days from the supply closet in order to build up my holdings with the intention of outing me in front of Corporate HR.

5) Marge suffers from short-term memory loss and doesn’t remember a tissue exchange happening.  Ever.

I would dig to the bottom of the box to find the source of secrecy, but I had a bad experience with a tissue box conjecture once.  I was unaware that Kleenex had developed a signal to consumers wherein the last few tissues were peach as a warning that the tissue box needed to be replaced.  As a result, I ran around work pulling out funny-colored tissues and exclaiming that I was going to write the company for the mixup and demand a refund.

So you can see how I’m wary of any hasty tissue-related assumptions.   If one public tirade about a tissue box didn’t tip off the coworkers that I’m slightly unstable, I’m certain that a second will.  But I’ve got a full drawer of tissue boxes and I’m going to have to start piling them up in the cabinet if she doesn’t knock it off soon.

Unless, of course, the boxes are full of little baby diamonds and Marge is using me as her mule.

Which would be awesome. ♣

 

Thanks for voting yesterday, guys! The poll is open until Tuesday, when I will reveal the winning design and announce how to get in the drawing for a free t-shirt to be sent directly to your hands.  I promise it’s painless.  

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