Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Margaret. I’m Totally Lying. My Name Is Jackie.

Well, except for this fucking heartburn. Twice in two weeks, after a million years of never having it. After having it for five months non-stop when pregnant, 17 years ago. BUT! Listen to all of these other good things that cancel out heartburn:

• My gas gauge works. Guess what? Driving like an old man makes you use less gas. A lot less gas. Like, I think my 12 yr old, V8-engined car is getting 22 mpg in-town, with stop and go driving, with the AC on. Fucking awesome.
• I’m going to go get new glasses tomorrow. Well, I’ll try, anyway. LensCrafters is having a buy the ’spensive frames, get the lenses free sale. Which is awesome, because the only pair of frames that I will like and will look half-decent on me will definitely be the most expensive ones in the store anyway, so I might as well get my expensive-ass lenses for free. It takes me forever to pick out frames. Part of the problem is that I can’t see what I look like when trying on new glasses because I need my glasses on to see. Quite a conundrum. So tomorrow I take a 16 yr old with me to find some new glasses. He’s got decent taste, and he’s brutally honest. I was telling another friend today (who lives out of state) that I wish he still lived here, because he has good taste and is tactfully honest. It would be much nicer shopping with him than with Mr. Brutal Honesty who will say things like, “You look dumb in those.” He will be right, but still. He is also right when he says, “You have to get rid of those stupid glasses with the SuperGlue.” They really are SuperGlued together. It’s pretty bad. The lenses are all foggy looking, too. I forget about how embarrassing they are sometimes.
• I got a free $25 Target gift card in the mail today! And! It’s made from a naturally renewable corn-based material that is biodegradable in your backyard compost! Yayyyyyyy! I don’t care! I’m going to buy some paper towels and Magic Erasers!

My 4 yr old invariably wakes up far earlier than I would like, and on such occasions, I turn to PBS Kids. I should probably use an alarm clock (well, I do when I absolutely have to be somewhere at a set time), but I generally count on my 4 yr old to wake me up some time between Clifford the Implausibly Big Red Dog and Super Why. Sometimes she will (tragically) wake up during Body Electric, which is some kind of show for crazy people who like to gently exercise and stretch at 6 a.m. Then I have to sit in a daze and wait for Curious George before I can curl up on the couch and grab another 30 minutes of twilight sleep before 4 yr old puts her face two inches away from mine and stage whispers, “I’M HUNGRY,” thereby scaring the fucking hell out of me. Then I get up and make her breakfast and sit on the couch in a fog and curse the fact that I am an incurable night owl.

Sometimes (like this morning) 4 yr old sleeps in until Arthur, which is Not Good. I don’t have a set time I have to be at work, but I generally like to be there before 10 a.m.. If 4 yr old sleeps ’til Arthur, that means I’m not out of the house until at least halfway through Sesame Street.

A couple times a year PBS Kids changes their lineup and it completely fucks up my schedule. I wake up in a panic during WordWorld, check the clock, realize I have another half hour to sleep, and curse PBS.

I should probably start using an alarm clock instead of a 4 yr old and a television network. Or magically become one of those early to bed, early to rise people.

I finally, finally watched the rest of the final season of Queer as Folk, which has been hogging space on my computer for months. I think maybe they should have stopped with Season 3. The last season of QAF was a bit tortuous for viewers (and I know it wasn’t just me who had issues with it), and viewing involved a lot of heavy eye-rolling and muttering, “What the fuck ever.”

Most plot lines could best be classified as either mildly annoying, eye-roll-worthy, or gagtastic:

Mildly Annoying

• Lindsay moving out. And then in. And then out. And then in. It may not have happened that many times, but it felt like it.
• Deb. The whole season. The whole Deb Is Feisty And Curses Like A Sailor bit was exhausted by Season 2. And someone needed to suspend her shopping privileges at Spencer’s Gifts. I couldn’t take another one of her witty t-shirts.
• Speaking of Deb, the whole Rosie O’Donnell as waitress plot arc was annoying.
• The whole Emmet’s Gay Jock thing.
• The whole Emmet meets a hometown gay and they go back to his room to boink within thirty seconds of reuniting. Presumably resulting in True Love.
• Hunter runs away and gets a job as a dwarf at Disneyland, then comes home and, inspired by Gay Jock, returns to school. And writes, “Today Michael and Whatshisface asked to adopt me. I said ‘yes’” in his monogrammed journal. Might have to upgrade this one to Gagtastic.

Eye-roll-worthy

• Ted’s midlife crisis and ensuing plastic surgery. And then his manwhore-turned-loveseeking status, tidily wrapped up in the last episode when that druggie guy who looks like he’s in junior high reappears.
• The whole Say No to Prop 14 campaign, and the incessant pro-marriage, pro-gay rights preachiness. QAF can safely assume that viewers that have stuck with them alllll the way through Season 5 are pro-gay rights; we don’t have to be spoon-fed a lot of poorly-acted righteous indignation. The civil rights of gays and lesbians are endangered. WE GET IT.
• Bombing Babylon may have been jumping the shark, too.

Gagtastic

• Mel and Linds moving to Canada, where they can be freeeeeee! Hopefully, this means that Mel will stop making references to the Holocaust when discussing the U.S. political and social climate regarding gays and lesbians.
• Brian being completely changed by love. Free-spirited Brian, a wild filly broken by the power of love! The love of a large-headed blonde boy with a head full of styling product. Love made Brian buy a country estate! Love made him propose marriage! Love meant letting go of his oversized-craniumed artist! Love made him recite a lot of badly-written lines!

QAF characters I would still fuck, despite the Dancing Montage at the end of the finale

• Brian Kinney.

“Thirty Sugars” Sean - w4m - 22 (Starbucks at Broadway and Campbell)

Date: 2008-07-16, 4:11PM MST

Sean, it’s the baristas from your Starbucks drive-through. After a general concensus, we realized you hadn’t been in… that was months ago! We know you went through a bout of health problems, so we’re hoping you’re okay. Considering we used to see you every day, it’s strange that you’re no longer coming in! Let us know how you’re doing…!

Is that not nice? You should go look at the Missed Connections page on your Craigslist and report back with the best one. Or not.

Either

1. My gas gauge has broken, or

2. I have driven 50 miles and not used a drop of gas.

Good thing I reset the odometer when I filled up the other day.

I’m 34 and this is only the second car I’ve owned. I get emotionally attached to my cars. All two of them. I got a little sniffly when my ‘89 Plymouth Horizon ate its third transmission and I watched the American Kidney Association (or whatever) tow it away. Bye, Tiny White Tank! (Seriously, I was once rear-ended by a huge pickup, and it didn’t do a thing to my car, but fucked up the front of that Chevy.) As much as my car is a gas-guzzling twelve year old beast that has lots of quirks (read: things that don’t work) and is slowly falling apart, I’ll be sad when it dies. And it seems that it probably will in the next year. I was going to get myself a new (or new to me) car and give The Beast to my 16 yr old, but I philosophically object to teenagers having V8 engines. I think they should only have 4 cylinders at most. Maybe just a Flintstones car with floorboard cut-outs for his feet. So I’ll probably just drive this one into the ground a la the Tiny White Tank and leave my son to spend his summer job money on that used BMW he wants. Used BMWs are surprisingly cheap, I’ve discovered. Until you need them repaired.

My mom just bought a new Toyota RAV4. I have no idea what it’s like to own a new car; must be kind of awesome. Except for the car payment, and the depressing knowledge that it lost thousands of dollars in value the second it was driven off the lot.

This morning I was having a dream that Jack Black was wooing me. He wasn’t an actor in my dream– we were on-site for some secret government job. I think we worked for different departments or branches. We were on some ugly concrete bunker-type thing on top of a mountain with a bunch of other people. At first he was a lot of fun, but then he started saying weird things that I didn’t understand and had to try to decipher, and when he went on some manic spree of inventing new, bizarre meals to feed me, I’d had enough. In my dream, I felt like the weirdo meals and bizarre food were things he kept doing to showcase his “adorable wackiness,” and he wasn’t noticing or didn’t care that I didn’t like eating his culinary creations. The first time was cute, but then I noticed that it was clearly all about him.

Before he went all manic, though, I do remember watching an incredible sunset with him. It was pink and orange and blue, and I could see it almost panoramically for hundreds of miles, being on top of a mountain.

My 16 yr old has Crohn’s Disease. It’s (they think) an autoimmune disorder that blah blah blah look it up on Wikipedia. Left untreated, it makes him crazy sick. After a lot of trial and error (and one horrifyingly bad pediatric gastroenterologist), we found one treatment that’s covered by our insurance, and also works well. It’s an infusion that takes a few hours to drip into his veins, and he gets it every six weeks.

For the last two years he’s been receiving his infusion at the hospital’s pediatric oncology clinic, right along with the chemo kids. There is nothing like being in a pediatric cancer clinic to make you appreciate the fact that while your kid has an incurable, debilitating illness, your kid will survive his illness (though one of the potential side effects of the medication is… Really Bad Cancer). He tended to be older than most of the other patients, so he got some extra attention from the nurses, who wanted to know what he was doing in band and if he and his girlfriend were still together. What crazy TV shows/music he was into. Stuff like that.

They changed it all up, and the Crohn’s kids are now persona non grata at the pediatric oncology clinic. I mean, if we showed up to say hi and brought a box of Dunkin’ Donuts, they’d be thrilled to have us visit, but if we showed up asking for an IV pump and $3,500 worth of drugs, we’d be shown the door. So today we went to the adult rheumatology clinic for the infusion, where my 16 yr old received a lot of attention from the nurses for being the youngest person there. Most people receiving the medication my son takes have severe rheumatoid arthritis. My son was the only one in the room under the age of 45. It was like working all the way up to eighth grade to be king of junior high, and then being bitchslapped back into babyhood during freshman year of high school.

After waking up late (don’t ask) and consuming one bottle of Frappuccino this morning(ish), I was ready to get down to the business of doing some Serious Cleaning (as opposed to Microcleaning). I need to clean off my stove, my kitchen table (someone spilled a glass of water and now there’s two magazines and numerous pieces of junk mail stuck to the table because no one bothered to 1. inform me of said spillage, or 2. clean said spillage before it dried), the inside of my refrigerator, and the Other Counter. Also, I have a standing display shelf in my kitchen with some excellent vintage kitchenware, and the shelf and everything on it is covered in a thick layer of dust. That has to be dealt with. I’m kind of looking for less clutter in my kitchen/life, so I might store some of my neato stuff, just to simplify my cleaning life and kitchen aesthetic. Which means reorganizing the already-stuffed “storage” cabinets in my kitchen.

I also have, in the living room, a huge pile of clean laundry on the couch (at least it’s clean!) that needs to be put away, and I need to shampoo half of the living room carpet. When I bought myself a new carpet shampooer last February, I was determined to shampoo the carpets The Right Way– by moving furniture, which meant doing half the living room at a time. I moved half of the living room to the other half (no small chore), shampooed, and waited for it to be completely dry. Big mistake– While waiting for complete dryage I got lazy, and the living room furniture sat squished in half the living room for an entire week. Fun to navigate that to get to the kitchen. We finally put the furniture back where it should be, but I never did shampoo the other side of the living room. You can see a line of demarcation in the living room between clean and dirty. And truthfully, at this point, the “clean” half isn’t all that clean anymore.

What the hell was I saying? Yes, that I was all ready to start in on some of these projects. Which leads to the TV. I can clean one of two ways: with music playing, or with TV playing. Because my 16 yr old is gone, I don’t know how to hook up my computer (repository of my music) to the speakers or amp. I supposed I could put a CD (what? a CD?!?) in the DVD player, but, ewww, iPodness has spoiled me. Could I even listen to one band playing for twelve songs in a row? Not anymore, I can’t. I’m used to the “shuffle” feature now.

That leaves me with the TV. I checked Zap2it (my online TV Guide-like page) to see WTF was on, and it being Sunday afternoon, it’s all golf, Tour de France, volleyball, paid programming, blah blah blah. In short, TOTAL CRAP. Not even some horrible movie like Short Circuit II! I can’t clean like this! You know what I need? CABLE. Or satellite TV.

I consider this at least once a week. There’s a couple reasons why I’ve never gone through with it.

1. I’m cheap. I don’t want to have to spend $80+ a month on something that will probably turn all of us into TV zombies.

2. I’m embarrassed to have the cable/satellite guy see my TVs.

I have two TVs. One is a ginormous 32″, and it’s at least 10 years old. It was pretty nice back in 1990-something, but now it’s old, and most notably, HUGE. I mean, it’s ridunkulous. Good luck picking it up by yourself. Needless to say, this is one of the ones that needs one of those converter boxes next year. I am not buying a converter box. I want this monstrosity out of my house. I want a flat panel, skinny-as-a-Saltine TV. I want a TV that doesn’t require an “entertainment center.”

I should have put something next to it, for scale.

Just look at that profile. Embarrassing.

Gratuitous (blurry) shot of 4 yr old, because god forbid the camera be out and not taking pictures of her. We’re totally running around in our underwear today. It’s too hot and muggy for much else.

The other TV is a 13″ tiny white TV. It was bought expressly for me, for the kitchen. So I would clean in the kitchen. Most people do not think of the kitchen as a room for a TV, but I do. Do you want clean dishes? Then you will keep a TV in my kitchen. This TV was also purchased in 1990-something, and is as clunky as a 13″ TV can get. I purposely got the white one so it would “blend in” better, but there’s no “blending in” something as chunky as this baby. This TV too will require a converter box, and I’m thinking that both TVs are just going to have to leave us. I’m toying with the idea of never replacing either TV, but I’m pretty sure that’s just a silly pipe dream.

Anyhoo, it would be embarrassing to have the cable or satellite guy see either TV. And yes, I would totally have cable or satellite TV on my 13″ kitchen TV. That would also be embarrassing. Not as embarrassing as having a TV in a bathroom, but still.

And then I went to find the camera to take pictures of my embarrassing TVs, and when it was not where I left it, I immediately went to my 16 yr old’s room, and it (and the USB cord, and the battery charger) was there, of course, which means that my 16 yr old has been taking pictures of himself for his MySpace page, and I should go check and see what new funny Stereotypical MySpace Poses he’s been up to.

This is a classic MySpace pose. Sure, this pic of my son is from when he was 14, but MySpace poses never change. There are only so many ways one can take a pic of one’s self.

My 16 yr old has recently become ardently re-interested in The Smiths. I plagued him with The Smiths in junior high, because I’d been such a huge fan at ages 14 and 15. It didn’t quite “take” until this year. Now it’s non-stop Smiths looped up in this hizzay, and I’ve come to realize that The Smiths (and Morrissey) have held up well with age (unlike some of the other bands I loved in my youth). Anyway, there’s lots of Smiths and Morrissey playing lately, which is a blessing, considering the alternatives (that hideous techno crap he likes).

That’s why I’m unsurprised to find I have Suedehead Earworm Syndrome.

Because of that crock pot I left on. As many times as I’ve left the flattening iron on and never burned down the house, I think I’m okay.

I really wanted to try making a homemade clam sauce for dinner tonight, but last night I decided that I was not going to feel like going to the store the next day (it’s nice when you know yourself well enough to anticipate your own laziness twenty hours in advance), so I threw a whole chicken in a crock pot. All I have to do when I get home is drain and debone that chicken, and throw some rice and carrots and celery into the steamer. Even though I know the 4 yr old will only eat the chicken. Parenting guidelines maintain that I must at least offer several food groups.

My boss hasn’t shown up to work yet. Good, because if he was here, I’d be tempted to smoke one of his cigarettes. Bad, because I tore through all my work yesterday like a demon on meth and now I have nothing to do. Need some direction. Surely I have not called everyone’s mother. There must be some mother left to call.

I don’t think I’ve worn make-up in a week. Too hot. Slides right off.

To discover that the Rocky Road ice cream purchased by thine own hand is “reduced fat, no sugar added.” How hath thou betrayed me, mine own eyes? Didst thou not even read the package, or was your gluttony such that you never got past the picture?

Hear me, bloggers, when I say: Do not blog while watching The Tudors! And read ice cream labels before placing ice cream in ye olde shopping cart!*

*The characters in The Tudors do not speak as ridiculously I have, but for as wildly historically inaccurate as The Tudors is, they might as well. But there’s a lot of Hot Tudor Action and lovely costumes, so watch it anyway.

Of cold-calling potential witnesses.

I have talked to everyone and their mother in the last few days. And I really do mean their mother– I think I’ve talked to at least three witness’ mothers so far today.

No one has told me to fuck off and die yet.

My boss says it will happen eventually.

Did I mention that I’m not a big fan of the phone in the first place?

From watching Band of Brothers.

Seriously. I totally need to go back to the states, get married, live in the suburbs, and have the rest of my life seem like a watercolor dream in comparison. Sometimes I may wake up screaming in the middle of the night, but otherwise I’ll be fine.

There’s a local rag here called The Tucson Weekly, and near the back, along with the ads for escorts and pay-per-minute sex chats, there are the personal ads. In grad school, I used to read a section called “I Saw You.” It was the place where people tried to find other people that they’d seen maybe once– ads read something like, “I saw you at the Fry’s on Grant/Swan. You had blonde hair, green eyes, and orange shorts. I was the guy buying asparagus. I thought we had a moment. Can I take you out for coffee?” 90% of me was charmed by how sweet it was that someone would take the time and effort to find someone they’d felt a momentary connection to– and the other 10% of me hoped that I would be mentioned.

Every week I’d grab a copy of the Weekly. I’d sit down next to Ryan in Civil Procedure, flip to “I Saw You,” scan the ads, sigh, shake my head sadly, and say, “Looks like it’s another week of being single, Ryan.” Ryan thought this was pretty funny, so I said it every week. Every week he laughed. Ryan was really good for my comedic ego.

I don’t read the Weekly anymore, but sometimes I go to the “Missed Connections” postings on Craigslist. In theory, this is a place for the type of ads seen in the “I Saw You” section. In practice, what you generally get are three different kinds of postings:

• The Sweet “I Saw You” Post: “You’re the beautiful redheaded barista at the Starbuck’s. I buy coffee from you every morning even though I hate coffee. Every day I try to work up the nerve to ask you out, but I don’t know what to say.”

Awww! Sweet! This guy is clearly going to worship the ground that a certain redheaded barista walks upon. I love to read these. It gives me a warm fuzzy to think that people are still so hopelessly romantic and fearless. Well, not fearless, but look at him with all his hope!

• The Weirdly Demanding “I Saw You” Post: “I saw you in the freezer section of Safeway. You’re beautiful. Email me and tell me something I was buying.”

You would be surprised at how many men do this. He notices her, and then demands she email him with proof that it’s really her. Surely there’s a better, less obnoxious way? Did this guy ever consider that she didn’t notice him? And really, like she’s going to remember that he had a bottle of Ajax and a box of frozen blueberry waffles in his basket? I just think it’s an odd pairing of sweet and obnoxious.

• The Creepy “I Saw You” Post: “You were the blonde girl with huge tits at Cactus Moon last night. Wanna hook up?”

Um, yeah. Not the level of romance most women are looking for.

I kind of miss the relative purity of the “I Saw You” section. The all-hope, no-huge-tits version of human connection-seeking. But I’ll keep reading Missed Connections, hoping that Starbucks Boy finally gets his Redheaded Barista. It’s good to know there’s still hope out there, that people are still looking and hoping and pining and whatnot, and that I am not the only quasi-romantic fool.

And, listen, I spared you quotes from A Portrait of a Lady, Washington Square, The Ambassadors, and The Great Gatsby, so I think it’s only fair that you suck up some Tender is the Night. It’s been a long, arduous day for The Jackie, and she swears that after she is done torturing you with literary passages that she knows you will not read, she will cease and desist and go to bed.

“The others helped him carry lamps up– who would not be pleased at carrying lamps helpfully through the darkness?”

A fundamental pleasure: feeling as though one is illuminating the darkness for another.

(Rosemary’s mother, to Rosemary)

“‘You were brought up to work– not especially to marry. now you’ve found your first nut to crack and it’s a good nut– go ahead and put whatever happens down to experience. Wound yourself or him– whatever happens it can’t spoil you because economically you’re a boy, not a girl.’”

I wish I’d had a mother who’d recognized this truth about me at age 18. And then, you know, told me. Like I would have really understood anyway…

“Like most women she liked to be told how she should feel, and she liked Dick telling her which things were ludicrous and which things were sad.”

F. Scott, I hoped Zelda whacked you upside the head with your typewriter for that one.

“‘Most people think everyone feels about them much more violently than they actually do– they think other people’s opinions of them swing through great arcs of approval or disapproval.’”

It is both a great relief and a little disheartening to realize that it is true that people think far less often and intensely of us than we believe. But mostly it’s a great relief.

“They were still in the happier stage of love. They were full of brave illusions about each other, tremulous illusions, so that the communication of self with self seemed to be on a plane where no other human relations mattered.”

I haven’t felt like this since… 1994, 1995? I am long overdue for some of this.

“Often a man can play the helpless child in front of a woman, but he can almost never bring it off when he feels most like a helpless child.”

I think Fitzgerald should leave all the wild gender-related generalizations to qualified persons, such as myself.