It has been quite some time since I’ve done any housecleaning or upkeep around here. Last year I was all “let’s add a custom header” and “yay widgets!” and this year I’m, well, lazy.
Enough of that. So I’m starting small with a shiny, new widget on the right hand side labeled “Down the Rabbit Hole”. There, you can click to go out to a random post somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain of yore. Don’t get too excited, but I might even add a picture there eventually.
Today, I shall encourage you to use it for your weekly fix.
And I’m still working out, by the way. In case you were curious, I have not yet suffocated under a pile of Ranch Doritos in front of my computer, scrolling the Health and Fitness category of Pinterest, wishing I could be doing the things in the picture instead of shoving my fat face.
I’ve picked up a few ducklings in the new year, so if you’re unfamiliar with Lollipop Tuesday shenanigans, you can read up on them here. Or if you’re too lazy (and I suspect like me, you are), I’ll just tell you that in essence, Lollipop Tuesdays are Tuesday posts in which I recount something new that I recently tried and very often end up sucking at, which is why I’ve dubbed the post for a sucker.
Lazy long time subscribers everywhere are going “oooooooh!”
You’re welcome.
And so allow me to regale you with my most recent foray into the unknown: fasting.
I’ve always been curious about fasting. It’s mentioned in church from time to time, I occasionally read about it in health-related articles online, and I specifically remember visiting my grandmother when I was young and discovering a book on fasting on her bookshelf, much to my surprise.
My grandmother is against everything except Jesus and gardening, so finding a book on what I presumed would be a controversial subject was surprising to me.
My run-ins with the subject have been intermittent but longstanding and so on January 1st of this year, I decided to commit to a 7-day water fast. My reasons were more spiritual than health-related. I’d been chewing on the idea for quite some time and realized that the majority of my struggles are tied to a lack of self-control. I bite my nails, I blab out whatever I feel like saying whenever I feel like saying it, I have a tendency to rage and cuss while driving, I can eat an entire pack of Oreos in ten minutes without batting an eye…the list goes on to my deep humiliation. I figured I had quite a bit to learn from the practice of abstaining.
So abstain I did.
Let me tell ya: if you want to see how much food you mindlessly put in your mouth, actively attempt to abstain from eating for a few days. I can’t even count the number of times I caught myself shoving little bits of nibbles in my face pouch over several days. While I was cooking dinner, while I was cleaning out the fridge, while I was unpacking groceries… that’s a lot of mindless gobbling. You know what else I noticed? That without food or drink, there is little to no reason to get together to see people you know. Or at least, people I know. It felt like every day someone was asking me to go get a drink, to come over for coffee, to go out to dinner – I swear to the Good Witch Glenda that Dave accidentally asked me out to dinner and ice cream every single night that week.
Since I didn’t really know what to do in social situations in which I could not busy myself with food, I just turned everyone down – which worked out pretty well for me since I kind of hate social situations to begin with. By the fifth day, it wasn’t really doable to go out anyway since every time I stood up I got dizzy. I admit that since everything I read said to be careful to watch for your “fainting point”, I nibbled a bite-sized piece of bread at that point and it was the most delicious thing I’ve ever put in my mouth in the history of putting things in my mouth.
Aside from dizziness, hunger pangs, and difficulty mustering the energy to get through an entire load of dishes, side effects included crankiness, lusting for taste, and constructing elaborate lunches and dinners for Dave. In fact, he thoroughly enjoyed my fasting week. It’s his theory that because I was food deprived and in a perpetual lust-state over the simplest of sustenance, I loaded his meals with uber deliciousness.
He’s right; I did. I stuffed his lunch sandwiches with all sorts of freakalicious things. I bought random gourmet concoctions at the supermarket. I pinned a record number of recipes on Pinterest. And I frequently asked Dave to breathe the hot stench of whatever he was masticating into my nostrils so that I could get off on the smell.
The first time he didn’t hear me, the second time he thought I was joking, and the third time (subject: movie theater hot dog, location: showing of The Hobbit) he whipped out his serious voice and told me I was grossing him out.
Now, I’m sure there will be a crowd of folk who fly off the handle about the dangers of fasting and whatnot. Everyone is certainly entitled to their opinions, but I’d like to note that I was carefully monitoring my health throughout and was sure to arm myself with as much information as possible so that I was well-prepared. As I see it, the most dangerous thing about fasting is that it feels bloody fantastic to see how quickly you lose weight. I lost a little over ten pounds in seven days and remember at one point thinking that I could understand a little better the mentality behind anorexia. Please, please note that I’m not saying I “understand” anorexia and that I fully acknowledge that folks who suffer from it are not fasting and are not well. I’m just saying that there was certainly a temptation once I’d become accustomed to the hunger pangs and the look of my body in the mirror to consider how this was the most effective dieting technique I could possibly imagine – and that was a little scary for me.
Naturally, you gain it all back afterward. Or at least most of it. I followed suggested guidelines by very slowly incorporating new foods back into my diet over the course of five days. Though I did this more for the spiritual benefits than the health, there were still some health-related perks to be mined from short-term starvation. For example, since before the fast I was accustomed to splooging the contents of Hershey chocolate syrup bottles directly into my mouth, these seven days were a great way to re-calibrate my taste buds. Bananas actually taste sweet again. I can savory the subtleties in flavor and nuances in dishes. Healthy food is actually pretty darn delicious when you’re actually hungry, and after realizing how scrumptious bites can be if they’re truly savored and appreciated, I’ve upped the ante on my healthy diet for the past several weeks and have thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve also slowed my eating way down, most likely as a result of needing to chew every single bite post-fast until it reached a safe liquid consistency. At first I was kind of grossed out by that, but then the fat girl in me realized that the longer the food is in my mouth, the longer I can savor the beauty of its delicious tastes.
I used to eat so fast I’d nip a finger here or there so this was a pretty relevatory moment for me.
It also turns out that getting a chance to see how much better I looked with ten less pounds of fat on me helped me visualize myself as, well, not so fat. That’s been a pretty great motivator in my newfound Fat Ass 365 Project wherein I imagine myself as a healthier, less jiggly version of myself that won’t suddenly disappear when I wake up and eat breakfast the next day.
Speaking of which, I need to go get my Jillian Michaels on. Two more days left of 30 Day Shred Level 2. And when I’m done I get to eat some food!
Man, I’m in a sour mood. Usually when I’m in a bad mood, I just eat something delicious. Works every time. Unfortunately, I’ve committed to a 365 Project where I work out for at least 20 minutes every day and as a result, I’m starting to kind of like not being fat and miserable and so I don’t have any junk food in the house anymore. The idea is that if I want junk food, I have to go to the store and get some, which isn’t going to happen because I’m innately lazy. I’ve outfoxed my fat self.
Even if I did want to solve my bad mood by going to get a pepperoni roll or a belgian waffle with ice cream or a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, it’s too darn cold outside. I don’t know about you folks in warm, happy climates but I’m here on the three rivers in Pittsburgh and yesterday my walk to the bus stop was so tear-inducing that I genuinely wondered why people haven’t made ski masks more fashionable by now. Because I bloody well need one. It is face-shattering cold.
This cold has accumulated on the outside of my rear bedroom in the form of a colony of man-sized icicles that are melting and refreezing and saturating my crappily-crafted walls with water. Thus, the wall is leaking. It’s crying large tears of cold sadness along with me. And though I called my landlord and two maintenance guys stopped by, I’ve been assured there’s nothing they can (read: wantto) do. Since the ceiling in my bathroom fell on my head two years ago for similar wall-crying-related reasons, I’m going to go ahead and guess that the bedroom ceiling will also fall on my head shortly.
Also, a commercial offering litigation for problems related to vaginal mesh transplants just came on television and I’m not really a fan of the terms “vaginal” and “mesh” squished beside each other like that. It’s uncomfortable.
So I’m a little grumpy. And I’d like to take a moment to share my grump with you in the hopes that it will suck the devil out of me like The Exorcist and I will no longer crave happiness or cake. You know, before the ceiling falls on my head and I die and I’ve missed my chance. I’d hate to be lying in my grave, thinking about how I could have died happy if I would have only publicly ranted about my case of the grumples.
Actually, I feel significantly better already. Maybe I should just start blogging when I want junk food.
On second thought, that would get real spammy real fast.
So I guess I’m due for an update on the 365 Project. As I’ve already mentioned in previous posts (and at the beginning of this one), I’m in the midst of a project I’ve lovingly dubbed Project Fat Ass 365, wherein I have resolved to do one health/exercise related activity every single day for at least twenty minutes. I’ve begun with the Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred and have already hit the 160’s.
To understand how monumental that is, you should know that I’ve only been in the 160’s two times in my life: when I was a vegetarian and when I had a terrible case of mono. Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to live my life without cheeseburgers or a balanced amount of white blood cells ever since and have been hovering in the 180’s forever.
Now, that’s not to say that I’ve gone from the 180’s to the 160’s since just the beginning of January. As long time jackieblog subscribers know, I began trying to get super cereal about my health back in October of 2011 when my vagina doctor told me I needed to lose weight. Apparently for the health of my vagina. That’s right: my BMI was so high that my lady bits doctor told me to lose weight. If that doesn’t get you moving, I don’t know what will. I’ve been working to slowly improve my diet and exercise habits ever since. So that 20 pounds has been a long and somewhat yo-yo-like journey. Luckily I’ve set myself for absolute success (or absolute embarrassment) this year by attempting this 365 and announcing that I’ll be running a 10K in the fall.
I only have to announce it, right? I don’t actually have to do it.
Sometimes when I’m cold and grumpy and don’t want to exercise, my cat (Hobbes) blatantly displays his comfortable state of fat in front of me. Like an asshole.
Just kidding. I’ve already invited my family to come heckle and loudly mock me from the sidelines to ensure I finish. And they shall. I was pretty tempted to invite my readers to form a team with me to help raise money for the dwindling populations of honeybees but as you all know by now, that’s a panic attack waiting to happen. I can’t handle meeting that many new people. I would stay in my apartment the morning of the race, perpetually projectile vomiting my anxiety into my toilet.
Which, on second thought, would probably help me shed as many pounds as a 10K.
At any rate, things are going quite well on the fat front, thanks for asking. It’s still not too late to join in on a 365 (you can start any time, y’all). All you have to do is think of the kind of person you would like to be in a year and then pick one thing related to that goal that you can do every single day that will get you closer to that person in a year. And then, you know, do it. Like I am. Listen: if I can blog instead of eating when I’m grumpy and if I can exercise for 20 minutes every day instead of cracking jokes about how I’m not the kind of person who can exercise every day, you can do whatever it is that you’re actively avoiding as well. And then in a year we can all celebrate our new, improved selves.
But not together in the same place, because that will make me projectile vomit.
All right, that’s my last plug for 365s. I’ll stop badgering you for a while. But only a while.
To our faces not cracking, our walls not weeping, and our fat mitts not reaching for cake.
That is, he believes he’s my friend, and I am most certain he is my enemy. Well, I suppose “it” is more appropriate than “he”.
…He’s a gnat. I named him Fievel.
Like most things that leak out of my brain and onto my computer keyboard, this is going to sound a little strange, but bear with me: I’m quite certain Fievel is following me.
It all started on my couch, when I noticed his faint black pencil-dot of a body swimming around my head. I fancy myself a fly-swatting monk so naturally I whipped out my skills, only to find that he evaded them. Again and again and again and again and again.
Since being a monk is all about patience and self-control, I took a deep breath and reminded myself that it was a simple gnat and it had only a few months to live and that if it chose to carry out its days by buzzing around my general vicinity then I should grant it that small pathetic desire. After all, he’s a gnat and I’m a human. I must be quite a startling thing to behold.
I was eventually able to tune him out of my sensory experience, though I knew full well that the black speck whizzing in front of me from time to time was Fievel the Frenemy. I didn’t think much of it until the next day when I sat at my very favorite spot on the couch again only to find him still buzzing and flitting around my skull.
In a moment of weakness several moments of weakness, I must admit that I attempted his murder again but failed. Apparently monk-like capabilities matter not when your monk-like fingers are awkward sausages with plenty of nooks for death-dodging.
An artistic rendering of the criminal. Since he doesn’t have wings I guess we’ll assume he can flap those arms real fast.
Fievel lived on
This repeated for a third and fourth day. I began to think that perhaps he was like the Who from Horton Hears a Who and that he had some sort of message to bring me, but I quieted everyone and everything around me only to remain unenlightened. Then I thought it possible that he was the culmination of some sort of curse or witchcraft and that if I could just figure out his name, his power over me would be released. But I found his name and his name was Fievel and it made no difference whatsoever to him or to the powers that be that I knew it.
I slowly started to become aware of my own teetering insanity and decided to think nothing particularly extraordinary about Fievel and simply wait for him to die. I thought the best remedy would be getting out of the house before the furniture started to speak to me, so I went to a gig with Dave this week to hear him play and as I sat, was greeted by none other than Mr. Fievel.
Son of a.
Friends and acquaintances who spoke with me throughout the evening made side comments about him as if he was just some nuisance at the bar, but I insisted he was my nuisance and that I brought him from home, which, in retrospect, is probably one of several reasons no one sat at my table and is a small piece of a very grand pie chart explaining why my social life is strained.
I again attempted his murder, they attempted his murder – it was the whole bar against Fievel and Fievel prevailed. He’s like the terminator of the gnat world.
Fastforward to yesterday, same couch, same situation. After his grand display at the bar the night before, I was feeling pretty aggressive and wanted him out of my life for good. It had been days of his whizzing and buzzing and flittering nonsense and I had enough it. So I proceeded to waste the next 15 minutes of my life trying once again to eradicate him. I had made up my mind to not stop until he was brought to justice. Fueled by anger and humiliation and the apparent slipping of my monk abilities, I swatted and clapped and made a mess of myself until red-faced and sweaty, I finally opened my hand to reveal little Fievel, hiding in a crevice between my sausage links.
Whereupon he swiftly flew up my left nostril.
I suppose it’s the ultimate win for him. I can’t very well harm him while he’s swirling around the gooey insides of my brain and he can live out his apparent dream to stay by my side until he dies. And when he does his tiny gnat corpse will get tangled up somewhere in the regions of my brain and get caught in the neurons and synapses and such. He will become part of me forevermore. At least I hope so. Because if instead he was actually on a mission from the land of the gnats to infiltrate a human and to take command of their brain, well, he’s succeeded. And I’ve just become the downfall of the human race.
Maybe they’ll make a movie about me. In case it’s posthumous and any of my readers survive, tell them I want Amy Adams to play me, okay?
Thanks. I knew I could count on you guys. You’re the swellest.
So I guess that’s that. Either I have a gnat corpse in my brain juices or my body will soon be a mere vessel for a bug, a la Men in Black.
Wait. That’s a movie. They’ve already made a movie about this. I’ve been commandeered by a gnat that will lead to the eventual downfall of the human race and I’m too late to even have a movie made about me.
Son of a. ♣
P.S. It has recently come to my attention that several of my readers mistook my announcement last week that I would be embarking on a 365 this year to mean that I would be blogging 365 days a week about said experience as well. This is a falsehood. I am committed to working out every single day and to running a 10K this year. Isn’t that enough for you people?! Just kidding. But seriously, I can see the confusion. And honestly, I could use the accountability. So if you’d like updates about my Project Fat Ass 365, as explained in last week’s post, go to the top right side of this page and click the big button to follow me on Twitter, where I will Tweet my way to a 10K. I think it a fine compromise. Feel free to follow and harass me.
Well, it appears that I’ve renewed my domain for another year, so here I am on the couch again on a Wednesday night wondering what I have in my head to share.
By now you all know the answer is absolutely nothing. And I appreciate you sticking around to listen to it.
It’s been exactly 2 years since I wrote myvery first post in my very first 365 Challenge: to fire up a blog I once adored and had let sit dormant for years. It was far more successful and fulfilling than I could have imagined and I’ve become an advocate for 365 Projects, much to the irritation of my friends and family.
So it’s a new year and I need a new 365. I didn’t do one last year; I think I was right to have taken a break. It was a big challenge and a big payoff. And I really missed that sense of satisfaction when the ball dropped of knowing I’d spent 365 days working on making one very specific thing about myself better. I mean, what a waste of a year, right?
Well not a waste, but you get what I’m going at here. Last year was good to me. I got out of a corporate job that was sucking the life from my body and replacing my blood with black sludge. Instead, I decided to go back to school to get a dual masters, not knowing how exactly that looked or how I would pull it off financially. I lost twenty pounds and put ten back on (I’m choosing to celebrate the net -10), and I spent more time with my family and friends than I have in a long time. All in all I’d say that’s a pretty darn good year.
But I’m a monster that can’t be satisfied with mere short-term human achievements. And let’s face it: if you’re going to force me to keep writing by continuing to read, I’m going to need some subject matter besides awkward elevator conversations, how upset I get when old ladies cut me off when I’m shopping for produce, and my soon-to-be-famous million dollar ideas (if you have money to waste and want to sponsor me, please reference Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit Cand then wire me the money directly so I can squander it on my inventions).
I was going to tell you something when this all started. Oh, right. I’m going to run a 10K.
Oh man I just wrote it. It’s right there staring at me, all big and 10Kish.
Well I thought about how it felt to finish a 365 the first time and I thought about what thing I could spend 365 days working to improve that would best-affect me in the future. And that answer is my fat ass. I shall dub it the Fat Ass 365. I will spend every single day of this year doing something fitness-related for at least 20 minutes and I will celebrate my success with a 10K. I already looked up the race. I have the race. It’s a go.
I thought I’d invite you all to join me and we could get jackie blog t-shirts and make a team and conquer world hunger or cancer or the dwindling population of honeybees together, but then I realized that if I did that you might actually come and I might have to deal with the anxiety of meeting several completely foreign people and that I might die of a panic attack before I even get to achieve my resolution.
So no, you can’t know which race. You might find me and inadvertently cause my death. That would be a shame.
This is somewhat about the 10K and much more about the fact that I need to seriously incorporate movement into my daily life. It is a simple fact that I am happiest when stuffing my face with junk food and watching television or playing video games. This will never change about me. I mean, I can do other things and try to replace it and even if I’m successful, I’m always going to wish deep down that I could just be in front of a screen stuffing my face and filling myself with disgusting self-deprecation that will breed in my mind and cause my own self-destruction over the course of several years. So this year, in order to help keep that natural adoration at bay, I’m enacting Operation Fat Ass 365.
I remember when I was just knee high to a grasshopper envisioning my 20’s. Specifically, my late 20’s. I pictured what most lower middle class kids picture: a family and a nice house and great holidays and a job I don’t hate. Of course then I grew up to be a member of the Boomerang Generation, a bunch of over-educated late bloomers with poor job prospects and an abnormally high sense of cynicism. So I can’t really have any of those things little Jackie envisioned for herself at the moment (Sorry, little Jackie, but someday you’ll grow up and realize being a kid is all about being stupid and wrong all the time. Deal with it).
There is, however, one thing I envisioned that I can absolutely do – and that’s be in the best shape of my life.
I mean it’s now or never, right? I turn 27 this year. That’s like, 3 years away from 30. I have to imagine that someday in the near future, kids, self-loathing, and hips twice my size are coming my way and before I give up all hope of ever being the kind of person who can run for 6+miles and/or fit into single-digit clothing, I’d like to give myself a fair shot by forcing myself to face my fat every single day for 365 days. And then of course running a 10K so I can be sure something tangible came out of it: a certificate and a t-shirt.
There’s no doubt in my mind I’m going to hate it. But that’s okay because I’ll have lots to write about. I love to write about things I hate. And eventually I’m going to get sick of running and I’m going to have to do things like take dance classes or go to Zumba (Lord, help me). And those, my friends, count as Lollipop Tuesdays.
I’m already in the midst of my next one. Tune in Tuesday for the goods.
So that’s what my 2013 looks like: sweaty and disgusting. I hope yours looks fantastic too. And in all sincerity I hope you consider a 365 Project (it’s not too late!) or at the very least, one single Lollipop Tuesday for yourself. That way when I cross the finish line we can both celebrate.
Happy New Year folks; thanks for reading – especially the seven of you who were with me from the start. You’re all puddings. Now tell me what your 2013 self challenge is.
Dave worked on the movie Jack Reacher so he got invited to the premiere and I got to be his plus one. It turns out that if you throw a dress on me and slap some spackle on my face, I can pass for a plus one.
By the way, if you go see Jack Reacher you can see what Dave looks like. He’s an extra in the bus stop scene on the right. Enjoy.
This premiere was a challenge for me. You see, I have somewhat of an overactive imagination (shut up). When I’m in a fancy store with china in it, I just imagine how awesome it would feel to bust everything – the fancy pitchers and the decorative plates and the wine glasses. My brain loves a good fantasy. That’s why when I got to see Mark Hamill a few years ago, all I could think about was asking him for some of his Jedi sperm so I could make a Jedi baby (detailshere). It’s also why when I saw Tom Cruise tonight I wanted to treat the premiere like a nerd convention and dress up like Lilifrom Legend.
Actually, Meg Mucklebones probably would have better gotten his attention.
For those of you who know Tom Cruise for his slew of box office hits and not for his contribution to cult classics with his work as Jack in Legend, allow me to regale you with its synopsis.
Legend is a beautiful British fantasty-adventure film from the 80s starring Tom Cruise as a child of the forest, Mia Sara as Lili, a princess he is romancing by teaching her the language of animals, and Tim Curry as the Lord of Darkness who is hoping to destroy a unicorn horn to hold the world in eternal cold and darkness.
Doesn’t it sound perfect? That’s because it is.
Anyway, as much as I wanted to dress up in costume and accost Tom and thank him for the work he did in the 80s, I owed it to Dave to seem like a well-adjusted citizen and opted instead for a little black dress and to sit politely in the second row while he addressed the audience.
When I do well in public, Dave gives me cookies. It’s an excellent and effective motivator for feigning normalcy.
Since I did get to see the premiere, perhaps you’re wondering what I thought of the movie. And I’m thinking what everyone thinks; Tom Cruise is not Jack Reacher. The posters all keep saying that, but let’s get real. I’m not even talking about the physical description, though Tom Cruise is probably the most opposite you could get from the Lee Child novel, which notes that Reacher is 6′ 5″ tall with a 50-inch chest, weighs between 210 and 250 pounds with ice-blue eyes and dirty blond hair.
But that’s not what bothers me, really. What bothers me is that Tom Cruise is not Jack Reacher in any way. In his defense, I found the script to be pretty terrible altogether, particularly in its characterizations and dialogue. But I’ve seen a lot of cheesy action movies and have still loved the actor in the lead because they sell the hell out of it (Demolition Man, anyone? Running Man? Other action movies that end in man?) I’d say the primary problem here is casting. At one point when Jack Reacher is, like, super duper serious, he says “I mean to beat you to death and drink your blood from a boot” and it’s really hard to see that as believable. Cause, you know, it’s Tom Cruise. And its a bloody rotten line.
They’re all rotten lines. I should give a tip of my hat to one Mr. Robert Duvall, who somehow manages to deliver his with a slight nod to the audience acknowledging the corniness. Like in this little gem:
Cruise: Can you take him out?
Duvall: To dinner, you mean?
Ugh.
So yeah I didn’t like the movie. You might. I’m kind of a jerk about lots of things. Maybe that boot bit really got you interested. If that’s true, you have my blessing. But now that my review portion is out of the way, I would like to note that someone brought a baby to this movie. I don’ t know if the baby was a plus one, or if the baby had worked on the movie or what the baby situation was entirely. I just know that it cried when Tom Cruise began to speak before the movie and cried again any time Jack Reacher began to speak once the movie started. I wanted to slap its parents silly. I also wanted to slap the guy to my right, who had two huge bags of popcorn and two drinks to himself and managed to text, crunch, and spill his way through 130 minutes of my pure, unadulterated rage.
I guess it’s comforting to know that people make terrible audience members even when Tom Cruise is there.
So I suppose I can add “attending a movie premiere” to my list of anti-hermit adventures. You can find it over on my “What’s Lollipop Tuesday?” page, along with a review of everything I’ve tried to date. Maybe next will be actually dressing up as Meg Mucklebones and actually accosting him.
Besides, if he has any forest magic left from the 80s, I could capture his sperm and use it to give birth to a forest child who will rise up to conquer the Lord of Darkness.
Guys, there’s a lot on all our plates right now. It’s the end of the year. It’s the week The Hobbit gets released. It’s right before the week when we may or may not see the world end again.
What I’m saying is, it’s a big time. A big deal. Feel the power.
Also, I just found this:
It’s a thing of beauty.
Is that a sweatshirt with a digital print of a cat wearing a crown and cloak as king of the galaxy, you ask? Why, yes it is. And it could be mine on eBay for about thirty American dollars. At a time when everyone is focused on hauling out their ugly Christmas sweaters for prizes, I must beg the question: shouldn’t we all be more concerned about locating an appropriate sweater for the end of the world? It may or may not be swiftly approaching.
Well anyway, I found mine.
I’m going to want to have this sweatshirt on so that if any part of me is preserved by future races, they believe it’s an artifact proving ancient Americans worshiped space cats. And if the world doesn’t end, I might want to consider going in to 2013 in style. After all, Stacy London was just co-host on Anderson Live, and she said cat sweaters are in.
No really, she did. Here is proof:
Those are cat sweaters on national television, people. They’re in.
So now I have to add this ‘to get the cat sweater or not to get the cat sweater’ to my list of to-do’s, which is already stacked to the brim with Christmas-related activities. And then once I finish the Christmas-related activities, it will be time to reflect on 2012 and figure out what I want to do in 2013.
Unless the world ends before Christmas, which would be great because then I wouldn’t have to pay my credit card bill. Or try to figure out if I’m destined to be a cat sweater owner in 2013.
Best of luck to all of you as we enter the Christmas home stretch/the beginning of a cat sweater fashion era/the end of the world.
May the holy royal space cats be with us.♣
Hey! I adopted another blog pet. It’s okay; you’ll always be my favorite. But this week I wrote my first article as a contributor over at the freshly made VStheUniverse, which is a group of folks who are dedicated to celebrating all that is nerdalicious. I argued for why everyone should go see The Hobbit in 48fps format instead of the standard 24fps. Hey, like I said – it’s nerdy. Go check it out here if you’d like. End transmission.
My apartment looks like I threw three elves in a blender and left the lid off.
Man, I love the holidays.
I’ve gone in depth about my Severe Holiday Disorder (SHDD) in the past when I opened up about my deep affection for using Excel spreadsheets to detail my Christmas gift giving (Christmas in Excel). That’s just the tip of the iceburg. I actually start that spreadsheet in August because I can’t possibly contain all the Christmas-related energy I start to muster once I feel the chill of Autumn. And I put all my energy into that spreadsheet from August until the day after Thanksgiving, when I’m officially allowed to barf holiday cheer from one decked hall to the other.
Dave has a rule that I can’t put my Christmas cheer on display in our dwelling place until after Thanksgiving has been officially sent off.
It’s a fair deal I suppose, but I know it just stems from his bah-humbugginess. It isn’t that he’s a Grinch so much as he’s just notably devoid of holiday cheer. You know that moment when you’re walking downtown and everything is lit up and everyone is wearing Christmas colors and it starts to snow and people are smiling at you instead of cursing at you and you feel like there could just be peace on earth if mankind would continue to sedate themselves with cookies and shopping for all eternity? He doesn’t get that feeling. He just, you know, exists. I usually have to pull him kicking and screaming down to storage to get out all the holiday-related things I’ve collected or stolen from my mother’s house. I always mark the weekend after Thanksgiving very clearly on our calendar so that he can see the entire day is reserved for PreChristmasing.
But not this year. This year, things were different.
You see, this year Dave is a mailman. And before Thanksgiving I received a cheery phone call from this modern-day Santa, who told me that he was delivering packages and saw all the lights on people’s houses and was feeling funny on his insides. I explained that was his heart growing three sizes bigger and he exclaimed that he wanted to string lights throughout all the house.
THROUGHOUT ALL THE HOUSE!
It was a Christmas miracle. And now the apartment has holiday cheer in every single corner. Except the toilet. I’ll admit I saw the appropriate toilet-covering decorations at the store and that I may have stopped briefly to examine their properties, but so help me sweet Baby Jesus I will not decorate my toilet. I have boundaries.
Even the babies. DECORATE THE BABIES.
Every other corner, however, is filled to the brim. I have totes full of things I use on a regular basis that had to be put into storage to make room for things that have no practical function whatsoever but to be glorious tidbits of holiday cheer. Dave was so excited he even went online to find a Christmas project and made a fantastical DIY Christmas tree in addition to our regular one.
We now have three trees. Three. Like a holy Christmas Trinity.
There is, of course, a bit of a downside. Dave started feeling all jolly back in mid-November, but since then the ten hour days of hauling parcels from one house to another in the icicle-booger-inducing-cold in the name of Christmas cheer has kind of gotten to him. I fear he’s had a somewhat premature Christmasgasm and now every time he comes home all he sees is work.
It’s hard to be Santa.
I’m trying to come up with solutions that help me with my Christmas fix while also allowing him a reprieve. My top two ideas are to cover everything in white sheets when he gets home or to take a note from his favorite holiday and do some sort of Christmas-Halloween blend.
Of course, Tim Burton already did that. I guess option two could just be to play Nightmare Before Christmas on repeat every night.
I do feel bad for the guy. Besides the fact that his job is naturally difficult year-round and that he’s part of a company that’s going publicly bankrupt, every holiday season when most other folks are complaining about going to too many awkward office holiday parties, he’s hauling enough sacks of mail and truckloads of parcels from Santa’s sleigh to make him want to assassinate the jolly bastard.
Before I do any of those things, though, I’m just going to go with my gut and spew my holiday cheer on him every day from sunrise to sunset in hopes that I can reach that part deep, deep inside of him where he once saw a few Christmas lights and felt warm and fuzzy. I figure it will drive him very severely in one direction or the other, and quite frankly if he’s going to assassinate Santa it’s better we know now so that we can set up a counter strike.
I hope all that holiday cheer spewing doesn’t mean I’ll run out of steam before the big day. My spreadsheet is only half complete. There’s so much more to do – I can’t possibly have a premature Christmasgasm too. I CAN’T.
I can do this. I can. I just downloaded the Andy Williams Christmas album this week. That’ll keep me going for at least another seven days, right? Right!? Wish me luck. I’m going in.
♫ ♪♪ ♫ ♫ It’s the moooost wonderful tiiiiiime of the year (ding! dong! ding! dong!)….♫♪ ♫ ♫ ♪ ♣
There are two times in the year that I am forced to reconcile with my own shortcomings and/or revel in my accomplishments. The first is my birthday. It falls in July so it’s a good middle-of-the-year human performance assessment. The second is the New Year. Right now.
When I woke up yesterday and realized December is about to punch us all in the face with its jolly, blustery fist, I realized I have one month to right whatever is still wrong from last year’s complaints. I believe I’ve taken care of everything on the list except “get a passport”, which is crucial to next year’s inevitable goal: “go somewhere”. In general, it’s a good system for helping me reflect on both my goals and my mistakes so that when I get hit by a truck one day, I have a minimal amount of reflection to do before my soul leaves my body.
It’s just good sense to plan ahead.
Of course, on occasion these little sessions don’t go as hoped and instead of reflecting on improvements for the oncoming year, I focus on how incredibly old I am.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know; statistically speaking, it’s likely that you’re older than me. I mean I’m old for myself but I’m not old if we consider actual old people. But even if you’re older than me, you have to admit that there is something that happens to you in your 20’s in which you transition from being young and fun and not responsible for anything to being not young, no fun, and so much responsibility that you wonder if you could just get hospitalized for a little bit to help get you out of a few things.
Except student loans. No one can stop the student loans.
So the other day I was all wrapped up in my old-ness partially because I’m in reflection mode with January approaching and partly because Dave pointed out that the people playing moms in the Kraft macaroni and cheese commercials are our age now. And he’s right: they are.
That’s a painful realization, my friends.
And that’s the humiliation of growing up I suppose – how it creeps up on you. The way that it just slowly invades all your sacred space until one day you wake up and you’re upset that so many young kids are moving in and making a ruckus in your apartment complex or that you actually really like Raisin Bran or that you can’t go join a hippie commune any time you want now because you have bills, man.
Perhaps I should add “come to terms with own age” to my list of to-dos for 2013. Hey, at least if I fail I can hop a flight to another country and ignore everything with my newly acquired passport.
How about you all? How are your resolutions and reflections faring with only one month to go?
Feel free to tell me that you also enjoy Raisin Bran. It would help me, you know, deal. ♣
Where on earth have I been? Actually, that’s a good question. An even better question: where on earth have you been? A hermit girl starts a blog to help herwy stop being a hermit, she stops going on adventures, stops posting, and you just go about your day!? I COULD HAVE DIED IN THERE.
“There” being the cocoon I just broke back out of. I could have died in the cocoon. I should have mentioned there was a cocoon. Speaking of cocoons, did it not occur to anyone that I recently posted that I was going to attend a UFO Convention for my next Lollipop Tuesday and then never returned to post about it? I could have been abducted.
Actually, I’m sure that would make for some pretty great material.
Anyway, I didn’t get abducted and I didn’t even go. Instead, I started the pathetic and classic Jackie downslide, wherein I stop doing constructive things (posting on blogs, trying new things) and instead do deconstructive things (playing a lot of Fat Princess, eating Cheez-Its). Anyway, I’m out of it now, no thanks to you. It’s just guilt that brings me back, not your scores of pleading. Just pure, unadulterated guilt. It started as a week I forgot, it went on as a week I intentionally skipped, and before I knew it, BAM – it’s National Blog Posting Month and I have yet to post on my blog. I haven’t participated in No Shave November either. No blog and no beard; I have failed you, November in America.
I thought about you all a lot. I really did. I thought about you lots of times. When it was my fourth day unshowered and I caught a whiff of my armpits while watching television, I thought of you. When I attempted to be constructive and try some craft pins on Pinterest and horribly, horribly failed, I thought of you. When I thought I was gay for Jennifer Lawrence and then didn’t because she said she liked Honey Boo Boo but then did again because she went on Ellen and was perfect, I thought of you.
look at what you let me become. LOOK AT IT.
So this Thanksgiving, friends, I’m thankful for you. Thanks for sticking around even when I didn’t bother to visit. Thanks for subscribing and following, and thanks for letting me come barf all my crazy on you. You’re the swellest.
Have a Happy Holiday and here’s to firing the blog back up. Now go eat so much you pass out with your pants unbuttoned. ♣
The Jackie Blog 
