Tag Archives: relationships

Love Letter from a Type A Millenial

5 Apr
No Para Innita

This image that I adore is by No Para Innita. If you like it too, check out their Flickr and MySpace

As I was poring over my blog drafts of Jacklyn Past to support my post-a-week throwdown, I unearthed a few old emails that I wrote long ago and inexplicably saved on my hard drive. ..Sometimes I write drafts of emails in Word before copying and pasting to Gmail because I’m a deeply awkward and burdened person in a variety of constantly shifting and exciting ways. While working my way through this thick brush of unnecessary digital recordkeeping, I found an old love letter to The Dave.  

Sometimes living as a Type A – that is, one type in a personality theory that is characterized by drive, competition, and a predisposition for stress and heart disease – is burdensome. I would very much like to go to restaurants and not notice the plague of spelling errors that descends upon their menus instead of focusing on the detailed descriptions of food. I would like to, sometimes, be able to just shut the hell up instead of coaching myself to breathe and stay calm when someone asks a question to a group that I know the answer to. I would like to, from time to time, not express my deep and unabashed love for my partner in strange and seemingly robotic ways: by compiling organized and tabbed binders of his important papers, by completing detailed agendas and itineraries in advance of our travel dates, or by writing love notes like this one:

Dear love,

When I opened Chrome and went to Gmail on my computer today, your inbox automatically loaded – supposedly you forgot to log out before your last session. I noticed that it was full of unread messages from the same several companies – urban outfitters, banana republic, and a variety of other stores who have captured your email as you’ve shopped – all newsletters that you clearly don’t read which just pile up in your inbox. Meanwhile, notices from the light company that I remember you were hunting last month were buried unread among them.

I imagine it must be daunting. So I went ahead and opened one of each of the generic emails from spammy companies and unsubscribed. I did not unsubscribe to anything that was not a big box store or that was from a group that only emailed you occasionally just in case you wanted to keep getting updates from those.

I then did a filtered search for all the items from those places from which I unsubscribed, and marked all of them as “read” so that your inbox doesn’t look full all the time with things you’ll never read and which aren’t truly tasks. I didn’t delete them; I just marked them as read.

I then reconfigured your inbox into three separate sections, so that the top is reserved solely for unread messages, the second portion is flagged messages, and the third is everything else. Now you can read an email, move on if you don’t care, respond if you do, or flag it if you don’t have time but want to keep it visible. 

I also enabled a coded flagging system so that you can mark a message with two different color stars (which can mean whatever you want), with an exclamation point (I demonstrated this by marking a few with it) or with a green check mark in case you want assurances that you completed something.

Anyway, I hope that you don’t find this invasive and that you’re relieved and this helps your workflow. You’ll see some old messages have moved to the top of your inbox now because once I got rid of all the spam or unread newsletters and marked it as read, it turned out you had very few emails of substance. 

It might be easier to stay on top of things now. If not, I’m truly sorry. Please let me know how you honestly feel about this. I closed out and logged into my email to send this message so my fiddling session is complete.

I love you.

Jackie

For reasons I cannot fully explain, The Dave and I just reached nine years together and are going strong in spite of moments like the one you just beheld. If you, like me, are a Type A, you can take comfort in this artifact and my recent anniversary celebration, knowing there is probably love for you somewhere. Someone out there will translate your sorting of their email inbox into what you intend (butterflies, romance, sparklemagic). Somewhere out there is a partner who will smile lovingly at your madness and try really hard to be grateful for the systems that you constantly force on them through your oddly-formed love language.

And if you’re not one of the burdened in our society and can’t find it in yourself to see the romance in their gestures, I urge you to at least exercise compassion for their painful existences. You’ll only have to do it for a short time; with the stress and heart disease and all, you’re almost certain to outlive us. ♣

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A Premature Christmasgasm

7 Dec

christmasgasm

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.

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!)….♫♪ ♫  ♫ ♪ ♣

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Before the Cylons Come

26 Sep

I think Dave is a Cylon.

I’m sorry; I shouldn’t come out and just say it like that.  I don’t want to start a witch hunt or anything.  But I do have some pretty serious concerns and I’m not sure where else I can safely entertain them except for the  protected confines of the magical Interwebz.   So don’t freak out or anything but I might be living with an intergalactic death robot.

Well that sounds racist.  He’s not necessarily a death robot.  He could be one of the human-liking ones.  But he could also be preprogrammed to carry out a set of orders related to someone’s (perhaps even my) death. And, well, I just can’t take that kind of risk.

Now, I’ll admit that while inundated with these concerns, I am concurrently rewatching the entire Battlestar Galactica series.  In fact, not even a week ago, I dreamt I was being chased by a murderous cylon.

Unfortunately for me, I rarely have positive dreams.  I’m not entirely sure why that is.  The only exceptions are one very strange piece of creation where I was underground playing Space Monopoly with my grandmother and a few grizzly bears, and one time that I was Mario in Mario 64.

But I digress; I need proof.  My first piece of evidence is the fact that he operates at superhuman levels of labor.  He wakes up at 6 in the morning, works a solid 9 hour day with little break, immediately commutes an hour to arrive at his first 3-hour rehearsal, after which he promptly commutes another hour to arrive to his second rehearsal, which lasts well over two.

Now, I’m accustomed to a portion of that schedule. Particularly at some points last year during postaday deathmatch 2011, I felt like I might die from exhaustion after working all day, going to rehearsal all night, and coming home to polish off a piece of junk from the recesses of my mind to offer up to the Interwebz gods.  But that was an office job, kids.  This robot in front of me is a letter carrier.  A letter carrier.  And if you think that “sounds like a great job”, you are mistaken.  Twenty years ago, being a letter carrier “sounded like a great job” but today, letter carriers are the marines of the service field.  They rarely get real breaks, they’re speedwalking for several hours straight with 80 pounds on their backs, dogs attack them, they have to endure ridiculous attacks of extreme hot and cold temperatures, and every single American citizen thinks that new mailmen should just “know” where their mailbox is as if there’s some sort of government list somewhere that says “42 Wallaby Way’s mailbox is on the back porch beside the terra cotta pig”.   

I know I get upset about the post office a lot.  But you don’t understand; it’s like The Postman out there and attention must be paid.

Do you know what it’s like to work at a place that is open during the entire span of regular business hours, 6 days a week?   I’ll tell you what it’s like.  It’s bloody frustrating.  Getting your hair cut or going to the bank or having a professional appointment is like a unicorn crossing your path and farting a rainbow cloud directly on your face: it’s rare.  Real rare.

Anyway my point is that he is fully functional on very little sleep and maintains this schedule with an alarmingly high rate of frequency; over and over again. Like a robot.

Also, sometimes he makes this super creepy face in the mirror while I’m brushing my teeth and I swear to you no real human could possibly look like that ever.

I suppose that’s really all the evidence I have but it’s also really all I need.  If I uploaded a picture of the face, you probably wouldn’t even need that little bit about the post office being the place where decent, America-loving people go to kill each other as Exhibit A.   So the question now that I’ve ascertained his cylon-ness is what to do about it.  I mean, I can’t go on living like this.  

As of now, my plan is to hold steady until mid-October, at which time my next Lollipop Tuesday will appear in the form of a UFO Convention.  A UFO CONVENTION.  If anyone can understand my predicament, it’s the UFO Convention demographic.   Maybe I can get some answers.

Here’s hoping I survive long enough to attend. ♣

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Everyone Please Stop Getting Married and Having Babies

1 Aug

I envisioned a lot of things for my twenties.  I pictured myself being a super cool adult.  I somehow thought that paying my own bills would be awesome.  I imagined I’d be in the best shape of my life.

These things haven’t exactly come to fruition.

You know what I hadn’t imagined?  Everyone I know getting married and having babies all at once.  …Or the invention of Facebook.  

I am constantly bombarded with announcements of love and adoration and procreation.   Which is lovely, in a way.  The Book of Faces has ensured that when I run into someone I haven’t seen since we shared Algebra class, my jaw doesn’t drop to the floor at the size of their stomach.  Or the train of munchkins behind them.  Or the size of their ring.  And since my face tends to immediately barf my thoughts, this has been a source of great salvation.

As happy as I am for all these folks and their hitch-getting and their baby-making, my wallet is getting seriously ravaged.  

Of course I’m glad for them.  Really, it’s a lovely milestone in their lives.  It’s just unfortunate that their milestones cost me so much of my hard-earned American dollars.  Do you realize how many days I have to sit at a desk typing to pay off just one friend’s marriage?! Too many, folks.  Far too many. 

I’ve gotta take off work.  I’ve gotta get a hotel.   I’ve gotta get an outfit.  I’ve gotta pay for gas.  I’ve gotta get a gift.  I’ve gotta hold my empty wallet in my hand as I cry in the hotel shower.

We need to get a handle on this.  My Facebook news feed is blowing up with pictures of fingers sporting rings and pictures of babies still in the womb (which is a post in itself,  mind you).  Every status update is a hit to my bank account and a day of my life spoken for.  We all hit the 20’s at the same time and we’re all racing to avoid a life of cat-filled spinsterdom. I get it.  I fully support it.  I just wish I didn’t have to pay for it. With the number of wedding gifts and baby shower sprinkles I’ve purchased, I could have backpacked through Europe by now.  

Maybe we should just all agree to not get each other anything.  I’m pretty sure we’re all just throwing the same money around and around anyway.  With so many invitations in a year, I can’t even attend them all.  And while that should mean that I save money, social etiquette dictates that if I opt not to attend, the pressure to purchase a gift is only heightened.  That doesn’t even make any sense.  

So I have a proposal of my own; let’s stop buying each other crap.  Let’s just save our money to buy ourselves the things on our registry instead of asking other people to buy those things.  Doesn’t that make lots of sense?  Then again, the gift is the cheapest portion of the wedding excursions.  Its the driving and the hotel-staying that does me in.  Maybe everyone can just get married in a closer proximity to me.  Or maybe everyone can get married at free camping grounds.  Or just revert to immediate family only. That’s probably best.  Let’s do that.

Except start after I get married – because I’ve already invested in folks and I want that money back y’all. ♣

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A Day in the Life of a Postal Worker’s Wife

18 Jul

You can find anything on the Interwebz. Even a chipmunk delivering mail to foreign lands. Also, if you have any knowledge pertaining to what the hell this says, please inform me.

Dave is a mailman.

Did we cover this? Have we covered this?  I think not.  This happened some time ago; once a week just isn’t enough.  Stay a while, have some tea.

So Dave is a mailman.  He delivers letters to people and is given a paycheck in return.  He’s a professional courier pigeon.  

Believe it or not, it makes complete and total sense that Dave should join the United States Postal Service because the USPS has haunted me for my entire life.  It’s true.  My father worked there, my brother worked there, and my mother is still an employee of 13 years.  She’s probably due to go postal soon.  I don’t think anyone actually retires in the post office; they just lose their minds, go to jail because they stole all the mail and buried it in their backyard, or both.  

I even worked there.  For a day.  Apparently my family is of good letter carrying stock.  Dave’s and my offspring will be mail marines with all that raging postal blood coursing through their veins.

Honestly, I don’t understand how it all happened.  All I really remember is that the application was just the most awful thing I can imagine doing.   Applications drive me insane in the first place but this monster is the ugliest there is.  It asks you where you’ve lived and who’s lived with you.  For your entire life. 

That’s particularly hard for me, not just because I hate applications, but because I’ve moved 13 times.  And I’ve cohabitated with a lot of people (in a non slutty way).   I have a tendency to exaggerate, but that one has been fact checked by the United States Postal Service, folks; that’s real.

So somehow I managed to not set the paper on fire before I completed it and I handed it in and I was hired.  I ordered my uniform.  I got all nervous for my first day.  And then they called me the morning I was supposed to go and told me that the position was actually no longer open and they didn’t need the extra help and thanked me for my time.

The Postal Service isn’t a very organized lot, despite having the most detailed map to our country.

It was a complete waste of two weeks of my life.   The t-shirt was all I had left.  I kept it, much to Dave’s dismay.  When I wear it casually, he has a visceral reaction.   I guess it’s like him buying a t-shirt that says “Hi Jackie! How was your boss today?!” … I can understand why it might upset him.

There are lots of things about Dave being a mailman that amuse me.  One is that he’s a particularly attractive man and he finds that he gets hit on by a lot of middle-aged ladies who are home waiting for the mail.  The other is that his entire world is now shaped by the mail service.   It’s impossible to perform a task for 10 hours a day and not have it fundamentally shape you as a person.  And though Dave tends to leave his work at work, there are still days he’ll come home with the mail in his hand and say “Honey, you’re failing your duties as a mail recipient”.  He gets worked up when I forget to get the mail.

And he’s for realsies.

Then he sees it’s all Presorted Standard mail and rips it up with raucous laughter. 

For those of you who don’t come from a long line of good postal stock, Presorted Standard is a class of mail that is basically reserved for paid advertising.  When you look to the upper right of an envelope you receive in the mail, if it says Presorted Standard, you can just throw it out.  That’s a piece of mail that a company has paid money to have the Postal Service send to you without you asking.  It’s how they make the bulk of their money so mailmen are stuck delivering these unwanted pieces of garbage to every single person on their routes, just to have them throw it directly in the trash.  

Of course, that’s a big monumental waste of time so Dave would much prefer to bury the Presorted Standard  mail in our front yard and be carted off to the loony bin.  But he comes from good stock, so he delivers it all.  And when he comes home to find that I’ve left a nugget of Presorted Standard beauty for him in the mailbox, ripping up his own junk mail is a welcome bit of catharsis. 

He’s also losing weight faster than any normal human being could possibly match.  Apparently carrying over 50 pounds on your back while you walk up and down stairs and hills for several hours a day in intense heat is quite the Ab Blast.  

Obviously, I’m cleaning up my diet to counterbalance.  I can’t let myself be the fat one.  I just can’t.

Anyway, that’s all.  You already know I quit my job (so I can live off my handsome mail carrier).  And hey, I’m not allowed to blog about work because I could be fired, but Dave’s job is fair game, right?

Maybe I’ll change my blog to be a day in the life of a postal worker’s wife.  

That sounds like a shot straight to the top of the famous farm. ♣

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I Can’t Love a Wrinkly Flesh Beast

4 Apr

Dave wants to shave our cat.

Technically it’s his cat. I had a cat when he met me, he acquired a cat when we were just starting out.  Thus, one is mine and one is his.  He wants to shave his.  Though both cats are, in theory, “ours”, the acquisition of the cats is important to keep in mind when sorting out who is responsible for clawed up furniture, broken possessions,  hairballs and bowel atrocities of all kinds.  Basically, we have joint custody until something needs cleaned up or one of them committed a crime.

Or until he wants to shave one of them.

I imagine it will be much the same when we have children.

It’s all my fault, I suppose.  I was jamming a needle full of Facebook status updates right into my artery when I noted that a mutual friend of ours was taking a poll on whether or not he should shave his cat for the summer.  It went something like “pros: cats not dying of heat in summer, no fur around the apartment.  cons: pissed off death rat staring me down while I sleep”.

When I passed along my amusement to Dave, I expected him to laugh along and perhaps weigh in on the poll.  Instead, he said it was a great idea and that he should shave Hobbes.

This is, of course, in retaliation to the Air Conditioning War of 2011, wherein the defendant, Jackie, refused to spend money on air conditioning to help carry the apartment through the sweltering hot summer.  The defendant cited the oncoming autumn, a pride in low electric bills and a general distaste for the unnatural as her exhibits.  The prosecutor solely cited the blistering heat and the insanity of the defendant.

We got through the summer without air conditioning, but not without throwing the cats in the refrigerator on occasion.   You know, just to make sure they survived the heat wave.

So it seems that Dave is gearing up for Summer War of 2012 and has pitted his threat to shave the cat against my unwillingness to invest in an air conditioner.  And honestly, it’s likely he’ll win.  I can’t live with a shaved cat.  I certainly can’t touch one.  Oh my good great grossness I can’t even imagine how I would drag my hand along its raw, stubbly feline exterior without instantly flinging it from my arms in disgust and fear.  How revolting.  I can’t love a hairless cat.  I can’t.

Remember the Friends episode where Rachel brings home a hairless cat and names it Mrs. Whiskerson?  She pays a grand for it because it reminds her of a cat from her childhood.  But Mrs. Whiskerson goes crazy and rips her to shreds and Rachel ends up giving it to Gunther.  

 

She had to wear oven mitts to hold it.  I don’t want to wear oven mitts to hold my cat.  

Sometimes my cats surprise me in the morning by staring at my face until I open my eyes and promise to feed them.  Right now it’s cute because they’re furry and adorable and they need my love and my kitty food.  When Dave shaves Hobbes, waking up to him staring me down will be so traumatic I’ll have to go to therapy to recover.  I can’t wake up to this:

*Shudder* I mean, I know it’s not its fault but look at that wrinkly gathering of flesh around its neck where a ball of fluffiness should be. I don’t think I could ever sleep again, knowing this beast is slinking about the place.  Just thinking of it brushing up against my leg gives me the heebie jeebies.  I would probably involuntarily kick it.  Like a fight or flight thing. Listen, I can’t be held accountable for what my body does when confronted with great disgustingness.

Of course, this is assuming Dave will be successful in his shaving adventure.  How does one even shave a cat?  Are you just supposed to lather it up and hope it holds still until you finish the job?  Do you give it a sedative, do the deed, place a bottle of liquor and a razor beside it and hope it wakes up and blames itself?  I mean, I’m an intelligent girl but I can’t think of a single sensible way to shave a cat.   In an effort to introduce sanity to the situation, I suggested that if he was going to get the cat shaved he should at least agree to take it to a groomer.   But then I remembered that the groomer returns our cats with enormous bows around their necks.  And being given a hairless cat with a bow around its neck seems more like a warning gift from the mob than a professional grooming service.  No; there’s no way to do this that isn’t nightmare inducing.

It looks like I’ve gotta give in on this one.

It’s only Spring and the Summer War of 2012 is already over.   The defendant is found guilty of withholding sweet, manmade cooling winds from the prosecutor and when faced with the threat of one hairless cat, settled out of court.

One air conditioner, coming right up. ♣

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Warning: Online Dating Profiles May Lead to Flirt Messages from Your Dad

7 Mar

Well, guys who are old enough to be your dad, anyway.

As it turns out, I’m the world’s most recent member of MarriageMindedPeopleMeet.com.

The site is exactly what it sounds like and no, I’m not a willing participant.  My doppelganger signed me up.  You know, the one from California? I wrote about her some time ago.  Her name is also Jackie and her email address is separated from mine thanks to only one tiny, almost-indistinguishable period between her first and middle name.  And every time her classmates, favorite stores, and organizations overlook that tiny, important dot, I get sucked into her world.

She’s basically everything I might be in another plane of existence.  She’s from California, where my parents used to live.  She likes to hike and bike and accomplish various outdoor feats, the majority of which have confirmation numbers associated with them and are sent to me.  I can’t tell if she teaches or is just in grad school; I just know that one time I was sent an email asking for that day’s class materials to be resent.  She’s a class-attending, surfing, active California girl – the opposite of my pale, Central Pennsylvanian roots.  We’re two diverging shoots from the same name seed…I’m also in a steady relationship and she clearly is not.

It started with the account confirmation email.  I threw it in my Spam folder thinking it was just another runaway email intended for her but the correspondences kept coming.  My profile had been successfully set up, my matches were ready for review, and then suddenly: I had a New Flirt Message.

This is how I feel when I see I have a New Flirt Message

Since I already know so much about my doppelganger, I figured I might as well take the opportunity before I unsubscribe to see the sort of preferences she had locked in for herself.  I opened the email to find the faces of men in their 50’s with salt and pepper hair staring back at me, looking for love.  Her/my username? “Beachgirl” with some numbers behind it.

Figures.

The entire experience has been rather traumatizing.  Not just because the unsubscribe link sent me to the fifth circle of hell where I had to log in before I was allowed to unsubscribe, but also because 50’s men with salt and pepper hair is a category my own (married) father falls into.  And every day I’ve been receiving Flirt Messages from a group of fellows who could pass for his inner circle.  Their little internet portraits are lined up in a row and they’re all staring at me with lonely, wanton eyes. 

Of course like most oddities that cross my path, I considered leveraging it for the blog.  There were a variety of inappropriate uses that I mulled over, including a sidebar widget with my most recent matches.  Or the option of allowing my readers to fill out my profile and choose my picture. 

But I have limits, people, and fake-flirting with men twice my age in order to entertain my reader base is apparently one of them. 

Of course, poor Jackie California is over on the West Coast trying desperately to connect with this group of square-faced beady-eyed men and wondering why no one is flirting back with her.  And while I’m kind of quietly satisfied at this because she has failed to change her email address or to indicate to her contacts that the dot in its middle is crucial to delivery success in spite of my notifying her of my email interceptions, I’m also hoping she’s not taking it to heart that no one is getting back to her.  After all, she works out.  And tans.  And lives the good life we see on t-shirts in verse form.   I’m sure she’s lovely-looking for a middle-aged stubborn woman.

So if you’re out there and listening, Jackie California, know that this has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me not being into my dad.  One day, I hope you’ll understand. 

Until then, let’s finally change that email address of yours, hmm?  I’m not really the Stranger Danger type and These Flirt Messages are starting to give me panic attacks. ♣

P.S.  The Lohan hosted SNL on Saturday.  She got the 2nd highest ratings of the current season but also got some of the worst feedback of the season.  Apparently, a lot of people tuned in to see her fail.  Lesson learned: when seeking fame, one should just as well abandoning attempts to be awesome and begin attempts to famously suck. 

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The Great Bunny Acquisition

1 Feb

Pog, running from me.

I’m trying to convince Dave to let me have a bunny.

A small, white, fluffy one named Pog.

He has some concerns, naturally.  First and foremost that this is one of a series of campaigns I’ve started on behalf of new and interesting apartment creatures.  For some reason I feel that I can avoid my obvious fate as a cat lady by instead acquiring a taste for a strange parades of animals.  I can.

So along came the Pog campaign, right on the heels of a teacup pig campaign and not all that far from my request for a manageably sized puppy.  They’ve been denied, all.

Second on his list of concerns is the idea of Pog getting put in the washing machine.  Apparently, Dave thinks that my would-be-Pog-bunny-bundle-of-adorableness would snuggle himself right up in the crook of a hoodie or the soft nesting of a pillow, and that in my bumbling hurry, I would toss out the Pog with the pillows.  It would be a watery, warbly, truly tragic passing.

Also, all those clothes would all need to be washed again.

Third on his list of concerns is that I plan to capture this bunny in the wild, so as to not encourage breeding of an animal that already overbreeds itself.  Thus, my acquisition of Pog would require me to sever him from his bunny habitat and thus rip him from the paws of his loving friends and family.  To this I argue that life is nothing but pain and separation and that by never knowing love, Pog can never know the lack of love.

I might also just surround him with stuffed animals.  I had a lot of bunny stuffed animals when I was young and I think I could do a great recreation of Pog’s natural habitat.

Fourth, final, and most damning of his arguments is that he would end up taking care of the bunny after I got tired of it.  I don’t know how I could possibly get tired of a bunny.  I can’t even imagine that a bunny needs a whole lot of attention, really. What can they possibly do for fun?  

Have tea parties with the bunny stuffed animals, that’s what.

Maybe I can try a new tactic with Dave.  Perhaps I can lay out a solid business plan on PowerPoint that involves our apartment being made into a petting zoo.  We’re surrounded by lots of students, who I’m sure could use some pet destressing around midterms and finals.  And unlike cat cafes in China, or groups of puppies brought in to schools, my destress petting zoo will feature a wide variety of creatures and folks can pick what they pet.

See? There’s money in your passion if only you pave the path for it….and can convince Dave.  

 Guess I need to get started on that PowerPoint. ♣

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2012: The Year I’m (Almost) Not Always Right.

11 Jan

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This past weekend marked the twentieth time I have locked myself out of my own vehicle.

Admittedly, that’s a rough estimate.  But it’s probably not all that rough.

I was going running (sixth week of Couch to 5K, by the way, thankyouverymuch), and decided that I would tuck the key to my car in a tiny zippered compartment right above my jiggly bum.  This tiny contraption is courtesy of the super awesome pants that Dave bought me for Christmas.    But since it’s so tiny and located directly above my rearend, I thought it best to cut down on bulk and take only the key to the ignition and not the little button pad that locks and unlocks the doors.

Mark: this was a conscious choice.

You know that fleeting moment when you wonder if something will pose a problem for you and that you might want to pursue it to ensure that you are wrong but you convince yourself that you’re being illogical and choose to ignore it?  I think it’s called laziness.  Or apathy.  At any rate, for a moment I wondered whether or not I needed the button thingamajig to get back in my car but told myself that was silly and that ignition keys always open doors as well.  I locked the button whats-it in my car, tucked the ignition key into the secret ass pocket, and took off. I ran, I succeeded, I got back to the car, and the key failed.

Failed hard.

It’s unfortunate because I was hot off the victory of my week 6 run and excited to get back in the car and go take a much-needed shower.  I’m not a natural-born exerciser.  You know, one of those dames who can fun 5 miles and have a soft, beautiful glisten? I was bred to sit on couches and play video games and eat potato chips.  When I perform a task any more strenuous than brushing my teeth, I immediately break out in a coating of sweat not unlike the look of a sloppily glazed donut. I needed that shower.  Instead, I was outside my car fumbling around at the keyholes in the cold.  I decided to conquer the situation with my mind.  I deemed it a logical impossibility that my ignition key would not also lock and unlock the doors, and prayed to sweet baby Jesus to please do some sort of automobile miracle for me on this 28 degree day.

That also failed.

I was visiting my hometown and only knew one person in the area that I still kept in touch with on a regular basis and was within walking distance.  Unfortunately, I hadn’t seen her in about a year and didn’t want her first impression of me to be fresh off a 2-mile, just-out-of-bed-and-now-a-glazed-human run. But I had no choice: I needed someone with AAA and someone in her house had to have it. I didn’t know that for a fact.  I just knew her family, and her family was chock full of folks who would really need something like AAA.

The sister was my winner.  In fact, I cashed in on her third and final lock out call of the year.  Score. 

I finally got in the car and got to my cell phone to call Dave and tell him about how incredibly stupid I am, which I am apt to do on an almost-weekly basis.  I like to remind him that I need him around because when without, I can’t really function easily like other human beings.  Without his assistance, I’d be wandering the streets of the city barefoot and coat-less with only a kittens and slices of leftover pizza in a knapsack to accompany me.

Actually, that doesn’t sound so bad.

As it turns out, David had told me only one month ago that my key pad was absolutely required to open the car and I said that was no problem and why would I ever not just use the key pad.  Though I pretended not to remember this conversation, I had a movie scene flashback to my exact location at the time of its happening.  I was flippant.  And I had just paid the price.

Sometimes I just don’t listen to Dave because I don’t feel like it.  I tell him I won’t take a coat outside because I don’t need it and then I ask to borrow his only a few hours after.  I tell him I don’t  need to wear sneakers because sneakers look stupid with my sweater and then I ask him to stop somewhere to buy flats because my feet look like they were attacked by badgers. 

And I also tell him to stop rambling on about using the key pad and then lock myself out of the car because I forget that I need it.

Therefore, I have deemed 2012 the year that Dave is always right.  I’m boldly going where no woman has gone before.  I’ve dedicated 2012 to blindly following wherever Dave will lead me.  I have a good feeling it will involve more jackets, better shoe choices, and fewer lockouts.  It’s a win-win.  Either I find he’s not right and I can carry on henceforth not heeding his advice, or I’ll find that he’s almost always right and become a more efficient, more put-together human being.

Here’s hoping the latter also means less lockouts. ♣

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The Holidays Make Me Want to Elope

28 Dec

 

Holiday vacation has convinced me of the need to elope.

I can’t tell you how many times in the past several days I have been asked the date, time, and specific logistics surrounding a marriage that has, in fact, not yet been discussed by Dave and I.  There were a slew of examples, but suffice it to say that the straw that broke the Jackie’s back was when my 12-year-old cousin was visiting us today and said “You’re the outsider.  Everyone is married and has a baby.  You aren’t even married yet.“

Emphasis hers.

As you may imagine, this came as the caboose on a very long train of marriage questions I endured throughout the holiday vacation.  In a rather comedic turn of events, I realized for the first time this past weekend that Dave has a slew of grandmothers.  His family believes that you divorce a person, not a family, and thus has continued to welcome all once-members with open arms in a rather unique display of love.  As a result, he has no less than six grandmothers.  In fact, when I asked him to confirm my count, he replied, “yeah, that sounds about right”, indicating that perhaps he has even lost track.

And those are just his.

Think about that.  Really think about what it would be like to repeat the conversation you have with your grandmother each holiday several different times with several different grandmothers of varying moods, characters, and sizes.  How two people can be dating for four years and still not tied the knot eludes most anyone over the age of 60 and it’s bound to come up eventually.  At one point following a substantial intake of wine, I recall having my entire wedding planned before my very eyes.  Something like two locations, two states, and a neighbor’s backyard.  I also recall the words “pig roast”.

I don’t even have a ring on my finger.

Not that I mind that my hand is sans shiny bauble – I rather enjoy living like Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn.  Dave and I tend to think of it as if we have our entire lives to be married and our entire lives to have a kid, but only right now to be dating.  And we rather like it at the moment.  Anything further isn’t really anyone’s business in my opinion.  But nonetheless, opinions come in the form of pig roasts.

And so I’ve decided that when the time comes, David and I might be better off eloping.  Brides have a hard enough time settling in to their wants for the day without catering to others in medium-sized families.  Can you imagine the tug-of-war to be had with a family large enough to have an indefinite number of grandmothers roaming the earth?  Besides, I’d say the cost of even a modest wedding would easily hit a price point over that of say, a trip to Barcelona. We could hop a plane, do the deed, hang around for the honeymoon, and come back to whatever backyard barbecues anyone pleases, so long as they’re the ones handling the stress and cost.

I think it sounds like a solid plan.  Of course, now I’ve gone and planned everything out without the shiny bauble to provoke it. 

It appears the grandmothers have won after all. ◊

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