What Would Jen Do

Archive for April, 2008

We had another scorpion in the house the other night. Thanks to Voo and his obsessive need for dessert, me getting up to get him a cookie was the only reason we found it. FYI don’t cut off a scorpions tail. That pisses them off real good and sends them running straight for you.

Then last night Mojo AKA Killa, brought in and severely wounded a bird. Thank god she usually does this shit when i’m not home or asleep. Once again, thanks to Voo, Icey was alerted to the mostly dead bird in the house, but his attempts at getting Killa to remove the bird were unsuccessful so he ended up having to do it himself. Today I had to vacuum up the leftovers. Which thankfully were minimal.

The past two days I’ve been on my way to the gym and then ended up not going. I think i’ve just had a poopy couple of days, i think mostly work related, and my hearts not in it. Today someone cut me off on the freeway and I practically burst into tears so I went and bought pants instead. I must be having a skinny day because the clothes even looked good at home and that rarely happens. I bought Icey a shirt just to even it all out.

We have some family in town this week, I get to meet an Icey aunt I haven’t met yet and then I think I’ve probably met every aunt he’s got. There’s a 100th birthday party this weekend so tons of people are coming in for it. By tons, I mean like 7.

I’ve also stopped eating sugar 4.5 days per week because I like to do stupid things like that to torture myself. I was eating way too much sugar in any given day and thought a huge cut in my sugar consumption would obviously force me to drop ten pounds and that i’d feel better in general. not true. no change. except now i find i really don’t miss sugar at all, except for saturdays when i eat half a box of ice cream sandwiches. i also don’t miss diet coke. so really what do i have left to give up? life is no fun anymore. I even gave up the sleeping pills.

I also need a vacation like you would not believe! But I’ll settle for just taking a few days off of work. We haven’t been anywhere since we went to Disneyland in September (oh and one night in vegas in Dec), I tried to talk Icey into going back there this Sept, but he countered with Mexico. hmmmm. we’ll see. beaches and booze, i think mexico wins.

speaking of mexico…………….. cinco de mojo is coming up. except now it’s more like siete de mojo and that’s not so much a fun joke anymore.

a blogger I read has cancer for ther 3rd time and there is a good possibility that this time she won’t make it.   She realized there are things she wants to do before she dies, and then asked us what we wanted to do.

 I usually go out and get what I want or do what I want to do but there are some things you can’t do just because you feel like it.    Like take out the biggest personal loan possible and then quit your job.   Well I guess I could go ahead and do that, but it’s very irresponsible.   And then there are things you are just too afraid to do.

I’d spend two weeks on the beach in St. Lucia and get a tan.   I would order the most expensive champagne and mix it with OJ.  I would eat as much fast food as I wanted.   I would dye my hair brown and cut it.   I would wear a bathing suit in front of people.   I would go on all the roller coasters at magic mountain.    And I would go in that zero gravity thing Icey showed me once.   I’m going to parasail, kayak and charter a boat.  Then when all that’s done, I’ll come home and spend the rest of my days with my dogs and mom and Icey.    And I’m probably going to get a cat. 

Odds are, most of those things will be done before I die anyway.   And it’s not a huge list because life has been good to me.   But if i needed to,  I’d do that all in a month.  

I found one of my cousins on myspace.   I’d been stalking her for a while and then decided i’d just request to be her friend.  I haven’t seen any of my cousins or spoken to them in about 30 years.   There’s no family strife, i keep in touch with my grandma, it’s just easier to not keep in touch with people you don’t know who live 1,000′s of miles away.   We’ve never been a close knit family, therefore I’ve never really been part of a family unit.  Only child, single parent, rest of the family very far away.   I don’t understand the concept of wanting to be around people you are related to BECAUSE you are related to them and of family loyalty.   blood thicker than water???? 

After looking at her pictures, i finally understand why it distresses my grandmother so much that she ‘can’t figure out who i look like’.  my cousin looks more like my mothers child than I do.    I apparently got nothing from my mother other than eye color and these skinny little fingers. oh and small boobs.(hooray) Everyone else born to someone on that side of the family looks like they were all cast from the same mold and just given different names.  i must look just like my father.

after writing this all out and re-reading it, it sounds like i came from a dysfunctional family.   I actually had a great childhood and wouldn’t have changed a thing. especially the part about not having brothers or sisters.   who needs ‘em?  Except I’d probably be good having a dad.   But if i did, i wouldn’t be right here, right now, so who knows.  everything happens for a reason. 

on a lighter note; if i ever get the urge to spoil myself again, it’s probably going to be on one of these things:

fancy makeup

shoesies

Today is our 4 year no smokaversary.    I always have a hard time believing that we quit smoking in the first place.  We were both hard core smokers with about 12-13 years of smoking each, I even smoked thru bronchitis.  I may have not smoked a lot in quantity (half a pack a day unless drinking) but i was a consistent smoker and not a day would go by that I wouldn’t smoke.  No matter how sick I was.   Everything I did revolved around smoking.  

What I also didn’t realize at the time was that not only was smoking more than likely going to kill me later, it was affecting me in the present.   I got sick ALL THE TIME, I got bronchitis so bad at least twice a year that i was immobile in bed for a week.  (not immobile enough to not smoke) I had extra dark circles under my eyes, wrinkles forming around my mouth and eyes and I was always clearing my throat.    And then after I quit, I stopped getting sick I haven’t taken a real sick day from work in 4 years,  my wrinkles went away and now i can run a mile.  

I don’t know if it helped that we both quit on the same day……..after weeks of pushing the quit date off for one reason or another.    It ended up being a lot easier for me to give it up than I had expected and a week later I wasn’t even using the patch, I was just done.  I’m far too stubborn to give up on something like that.    And then Icey did a great job as well, even tho he had a little help a little bit longer than me.  He went from double-triple what I was smoking, to nothing.

As a result I’m not sympathetic to people who try to quit smoking and don’t quite make it.    So you might not want to come to me for help or advice unless what you want is tough love.   I find it much easier to not light up a cigarette than to put forth the effort of getting one out, finding your lighter, going outside and lighting up.  

Everyone needs an incentive to quit, don’t bother trying to quit until the time is 100% right.   if it’s not time, you won’t be successful.   I never tried to quit before, I knew i wasn’t ready.   

Our incentive was grandpa joe, who was the closest thing I had to a grandfather in decades.   I’m just glad I got to be around him for as long as i did.    And I am VERY glad I listened to the little voice in my head that made me leave my house  extra early one morning to go see him. 

Last night on the way home I ran over a snake.  I’m 99% sure it was a snake.  I saw something I thought was a shadow going across the road, like the shadow of a bird.  Apparently a really long slithery bird.   And then by the time i got closer and realized it wasn’t a shadow or trash, it was too late.   And I think every one around me in their cars KNEW those were snakes (i’m sure there were two) because they’d all been stopped at the red light and that light turned green before i got to it, so i never had to stop.   I killed a snake in a crosswalk. 

Icey thinks maybe it was a hose, more than likely he’s saying that to make me feel better.  But i’m sure of it.  I killed a green snake the size of a hose (width) in the crosswalk. 

And then it’s like, where the heck do i live that i’m running over snakes???  At least snakes that big don’t wind up in my house. 

btw, Fred = swim here spazz out.  swim there spazz out.   swim that way spazz out.

I’m trying new work hours starting tomorrow.   I’m not sure if I can make it here at 6am, but it’s only half an hour earlier so  I think I can manage.  I’m just tired of getting home around 6pm.  And leaving work a half an hour earlier can quite possibly save me 20 min of drive time.  So the early start time and the shorter drive time can quite possibly get me home nearly 45-60 min earlier.  I’ll take it.  My poor dogs miss their momma. 

I want to go here like you would not believe, but my boyfriend thinks I’m retarded.   At heart, I am a 1950′s housewife.  

Mrs. Bojangles (who was really a boy) died a few weeks ago.  I knew it was coming, he hadn’t eaten for a whole week.    So I decided to bring Icey’s fish to work.    Fred wasn’t very happy with his current home, he was supposed to go to work with Icey but never made it there.  Instead he was stuck in Icey’s dark office at home and was a depressed little fish.     So the minute i bring him to work with me and put him down at my desk, the fish flips the eff out.  He’s severely OCD.

the first few days he swam around the bowl.   over and over and over and over.  all. day. long.  but not like a fish would normally swim around in a bowl.  Fred likes to swim in vertical circles.  that’s the best way i can describe it.    And he likes to contain himself to one side of the bowl.   After two days of that I thought i was going to kill myself.   The whole point of having a fish at work is to soothe me, not piss me off.  

by now people are stopping by to see the OCD fish and they all think it’s funny and it is, if you aren’t sitting here with him for 7.75 hours a day.   If anyone is going to be OCD at my desk, it’s me.  

he moved from swimming in his circles to randomly spazzing out.  swim here, spazz out.  swim there, spazz out.  swim over there,  spazz out.  which was a 100x preferable to the circles. 

and then just when i was ready to bring him home and replace him with a much calmer fish, Fred decides to give it a rest.  Now he’s back to being a lazy betta.   thank god.  

I took today off of work because I was mad (at work) and Icey said something to the effect of, wouldn’t a day off sound fun.  I am very impressionable to basically anything he says.   Which bodes well for him.  Except I am so tired and worn out that I can’t do anything but sit here on the couch.   I was going to meet Icey for lunch and go shopping and clean things and bake today.   And my brain is still ready to go do all that stuff, but the minute i get up, i can’t seem to keep going.  It’s just nearly physically impossible to get up.
We had our first scorpion of the year last night.   It was crawling around on the wall over the TV.  I’d definitely rather have them up on the walls than lurking around on my floor.  Especially since they blend in so well with my carpet.