Watching the TV series Heroes has brought up a sensitive subject in my life. It is a subject that upsets me so much that my husband flat out refuses to discuss it with me anymore. I have been reluctant to even write about it because I haven’t wanted to hear what other people think. Also I haven’t wanted to hear what other people think about what I think. And when I think about thinking about it or think about what other people are thinking, I have bad thoughts.

I think.

You know how when you type the same word over and over it starts to look weird? Like you’re not spelling it right? That just happened to me.

Anyway, I just really need someone to talk to about it. Someone who will read what I have to say and not interrupt me. Or laugh in my face. Someone who understands that we all have pain in this life and that we all need a soft place to fall. Someone who will continue on with me until the bitter end of this post, whether or not their children have been fed lunch.

That someone is you.
Yes. That’s right. I pick you.
You had me at hello.

So I’m going to put it all out there. Insecurities and low self-esteem and lack of self-confidence be damned. Here it is.

Time travel.

I just don’t. get. it.

How can a person (say, me) be living her life somewhere (say, in Tulsa, Oklahoma) and be taking care of her activities of daily living (say, messing around on the internet all day) and BAM! (or POOF! if you like) ANOTHER ME strolls up the sidewalk and rings my doorbell and hands me a free copy of Watchtower asking how certain I am what my fate will be on that glorious day when Jesus comes back to take us all home?

In what universe does that make sense?

I — am — me. I — have — only — one — body. How can a future me-body travel back in time and hang with a present me-body?

Does. not. compute.

And honestly y’all, I’m not asking these questions because I want you to try and explain it to me. So don’t wax all philosophical or metaphysical or metaphorical [or whatever is applicable] on me. You stand a better chance of explaining nuclear energy to my gray tabby cat than explaining time travel to me. So let’s don’t go there, want not to?

Alrighty, just needed to get that off my chest. Feel much better now. Rant over.

But don’t even think about wasting my precious comment space trying to tell me how it could work. Because I have The Power of Delete. And I will use it. mkaythnxbai

——————-

This entry originally published on jennyology.net on October 26, 2006.
Manually re-mastered on May 7, 2008.

Katelynn is sitting on my lap facing me. She has a sweet, jovial expression on her chubby two-year-old face as she examines my exhausted thirty-something one.

She studies me so intently that it makes me smile and giggle.

I say, “Who’s my precious?”

She instantly becomes very serious.
She slowly places first one, then the other, of her hands over my mouth.

“Ssshhhu-up Mommy,” she whispers.

My expression grows cross and [through her fingers] I sternly say,
“Do NOT tell Mommy to shut-up, Katelynn Grace.”

She slowly removes first one, then the other, of her hands from my mouth and begins gently caressing my left cheek with her right hand, her smile returning.

Which makes me smile and giggle again.

And all is forgiven.

——————

This entry originally published on jennyology.net on November 9, 2006.
Manually re-mastered on May 6, 2008.

For the past four or five days, the same woodpecker* has been making regular visits to a couple of our family room windows and banging his** beak ferociously against the glass in ten minute intervals. This happens multiple times over the course of the day mainly between the hours of asscrackofdawn-o’clock and waythehelltoolate-thirty.

I for one sort of enjoy watching the little bird expend so much energy on what I imagine (and hope) to be such utterly fruitless labor. True, the racket made is rather repetitive and annoying (which is a redundant description since noise + repetitive = annoying) but I figure any distraction from my usual daily routine of caffeine ingestion and internet surfing childcare and housework is a good thing. Keeps the ole brain alive.

Rob enjoys the birdwatching not so much.
As in Iamgonnablowthatgahdamnbird’sheadoff not so much.
And hence a Bird Death Mission has been set in motion.

I’ve tried and tried to appeal to Rob’s empathetic side saying “You CANNOT kill the woodpecker. He is obviously homeless and friendless and sees us in here interacting in our own little dysfunctional way and wants to be part of our family and besides the kids have fallen in LOVE with him.”

But to no avail.

And if only I could speak Avianese I would tell the little guy that his lifespan is about to be shortened to the approximate amount of time it takes Rob to remember to go by the Wal-Mart Supercenter for a tube of BB’s, so if I were a woodpecker I would knock that crap off because Rob already has the BB gun. But, alas, my high school only offered Spanish, French, and German and I already tried but he didn’t seem to understand my Francais.

Comment ca va?
Oui, ca va. Et toi?
Ca va, merci.

Anyway, gotta bolt. He’ll be back soon and I need to practice my Birdie Sign Language. And I hope to God that he gets it or else I really think it’s only a matter of time before I’m raking a pile of feathers out of the front flower bed.

And I hate doing yard work.

——————

* Rob emphatically denies that the bird in question is technically a woodpecker on the grounds that it isn’t blue and red and doesn’t make the requisite ha-ha-ha-HAA-ha! sound. Hard to argue with THAT sound logic.

** I’m taking license here to assume that the fowl in question is of the MALE persuasion because it is so very like a man to expend energy on utterly fruitless labor. Like trying to talk his wife into performing the occasional blow job. UTTERLY.FRUITLESS. Don’t waste your energy (Rob). ha-ha-ha-HAA-ha!

Katelynn is home from Mother’s Day Out today, courtesy of a one-hundred-and-two-degree fever and bright red (but strep-negative) set of tonsils.

I have lots to talk about and even started writing two different posts, but can’t focus long enough to string together any semblance of a coherent thought process. What with all the Spongebob laughter and toy-gun-clicking going on here.

I am, therefore, scrapping my attempts at anecdotal humor for the day and going to take pictures of some delicious additions to my Etsy shop. [/shameless plug]

But I leave you with this:

4-Handed Massage? SIGN. ME. UP.
Cause who doesn’t want to see THAT circus freak?

I was twittering* the other day and one of my homies mentioned the Wayback Machine website which was completely new to me. Basically it’s a site that indexes the archives of all the internets.

Kind of like a DeLorean Google.

So to test the Wayback Machine’s flux capacitor, I typed in my blog’s old domain, jennyology.net, and up popped the jennyology archives. I clicked on a couple of links and was pleasantly surprised to discover several entries that for any number of unknown reasons didn’t make it over to crashtestmommy.net when I moved my database.

Entries that I TOTALLY FORGOT OR BLOCKED OUT having written.

Because I wrote them a year and a half ago and I have slept since then and also am probably coming down with early-onset Alzheimer’s from all the deodorant I use and most likely also because I never take my Ginkgo Biloba since I can never remember to take it.

Anyway.

I have decided to pain-stakingly copy and paste each one of the Lost Jennyology Entries into thishereblog for posterity and your reading enjoyment and I will create a new category called coincidentally Lost Jennyology Entries and I will henceforth tag each entry as such when I bring them over. LOOK! there’s one now!

As you read those old entries and pee yourself from the hilarity that is my life — AND YOU WILL — be sure and say a prayer to thank the Sweet Baby Jesus that God and these people invented the Wayback Machine. Because that is what I’ll be doing at bedtime tonight.

After all, like my tagline says, it’s all evidence for my insanity plea.

And I WILL need it someday.

* If you don’t know what twitter is yet ch-check it out. It’s “a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” Kinda like Facebook meets IM. Or something.

I hope he at least did a little sorting while he was there.

While on our recent roadtrip, I engaged my mother in some titillating conversation regarding the Barbara Walters special, “Live to Be 150 … Can You Do It?”

Here’s how that went:

Me: “Did you hear about that Barbara Walters special on living to be one hundred and fifty years old?”

Mom: “Yeah! Can you imagine? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

Me: “Ummm, not really. I don’t want to know what I would look like at 150. Not to mention feel like. Why would you want to live to be that old?”

Mom: “Just to see everything that would happen in the future.”

Me: “Yeah, but even if you die tomorrow it’s not like you’re gonna know that you missed out on seeing that stuff and feel bad about it. It’s like when someone dies young and everyone is so sad saying ‘She never got to graduate college and get married and have children,’ and all that. Really, the sad part is that the people left behind never got to see the dead person do those things. It’s not like the dead person’s soul is somewhere feeling bitter about it.”

Mom: “I guess. But then how old do you think you would like to live to be?”

Me: “Well, if I could just live long enough to raise my kids to adulthood and take a few vacations with Rob to see some other parts of the world, that would make me happy. I don’t know, like around 60 or 65 years old.”

Mom (who will be 59 this year): “OHMYGOSHNO! That’s too young! Don’t you want to live long enough to see your children have children and spend time with your grandchildren?!”

Me (unfazed): “Nah. I don’t really like other people’s kids.”

(Except yours. I love your kids.)

My Dearest TiVo,

Hey baby.

Just a quick note to say that I’ve been thinking a lot about you lately and wanted you to know just how much happiness you have brought to my life.

A few years ago, before we met, I was in one of those one-sided, emotionally vacant relationships with the Digital Cable Box and I thought that because I was getting reminders when my favorite shows were getting ready to start, that my life was complete.

You turned that all upside down.

You showed me that there is so much more to TV viewing and that I shouldn’t be afraid to raise my expectations. Because I deserve more. Because I am worth it. Until you, I never believed.

I know we’ve had our share of misunderstandings. I said some things I really didn’t mean a few weeks ago when I thought you forgot to record the eviction-ceremony-episode of Big Brother. When I figured out that CBS had changed the name in the program guide from Big Brother: Til Death Do Us Part to Big Brother 9 and I apologized I know you said you forgave me, but I also know you were deeply hurt. You must have felt as if I had been just using you all this time. I can never say “I’m sorry” enough. And, I feel I have to tell you once more from my heart that no matter what I said, I never thought you were a WorthlessPieceofShit.

Shh. Don’t cry.
We’ll get past it honey.

You are one of the best parts of my life. With your Fast-Forward button, you have made it possible for me to skip commercials entirely, freeing up 27% more time to watch other shows. With your Delete, you have given me the freedom to pick and choose which pieces of Oprahganda to expose myself and my family to. With your Series Record Option, you have given me the ability to keep up with the Kardashians.

For all that, and SO MUCH MORE, I sincerely thank you.

Don’t ever change.

Yours til death or the next big thing comes along whichever’s first,
Jenny

Katelynn on . . .

. . . animal sounds: “The rooster goes cock-a-little-do.”

. . . long traffic lights: “COME ON GREEN LIGHT! YOU WANT A PIECE OF MEAT?”

. . . her big sister’s FOUL MOUTH: “MOM-EEEEEEE. Emma said a bad word. She said ‘Why don’t you mind your own BEESWAX?’”

. . . religion: “Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells you what to do.”

I suppose we could correct her, but really prefer just to laugh at her.

At 2:40 a.m. this morning, I was annoyed awake by a shrill and steady whine from outside my bedroom window. It took me probably two or three minutes to come out of my REM-sleep daze and realize that I was not actually hearing the squeals of a thousand piglets being boiled alive as I had been dreaming, but a TORNADO SIREN signaling “DANGER!DANGER! I RECOMMEND YOU AWAKEN YOUR FAMILY IMMEDIATELY AND MAKE!HASTE! TO YOUR CELLARS, BASEMENTS, AND/OR SAFE ROOMS LEST YOU SUFFER CERTAIN DEATH BY FUNNEL CLOUD. AND YES I AM TOTALLY SERIOUS. DO IT NOW, NOT LATER. PLEASE AND THANK YOU.”

(In our part of town the sirens are a bit bossy, but in a nice way. That’s why we live in the burbs.)

So, I did awaken my family and we made a fairly organized dash to our Safe Room (better known as The Closet Under the Stairs) and I tossed a card table, four folding chairs, and two wood TV trays out into the hall, threw in three pillows, two cell phones, and a blanket, and the five of us* hunkered down to wait for windy Armageddon.

Which, thank you Sweet Baby Jesus, never came.

We did, however, get torrential rain and piles of golfball-sized hail, but you won’t hear me complaining about that tradeoff.

Today is cloudy and calm. But rumor has it that more severe weather is on tap for our area this evening and overnight. They don’t call it Tornado Alley for nothing people.

* Rob missed out on this special bonding time due to the fact that he was very busy keeping the streets of Broken Arrow safe. Which I am not bitter about.