girlofwords.com

Life with My Sister (a recurring series) v. 7

2009-11-11T03:15:23Z

(received via e-mail)

Train barrels toward woman on tracks …

… LMFAO

Thank you, FamousDC!!

2009-11-10T19:20:01Z

I’d (again) like to thank my friends at FamousDC for featuring my post about a case of nostalgia with St. Elmo’s Fire in their Hyper Hill post today.

(Apparently, I’m dead to both Express’ BlogLog and DC Blogs, because even on my best days, I’m Susan Lucci at the Daytime Emmy awards.)

Thanks, guys! A pleasure and an honor as always.

i

2009-11-09T23:36:21Z

Today’s installment of “i <3 the '80s" was inspired by today's slideshow on the New York Daily News Web site.

Where Are They Now: St. Elmo’s Fire

Am I the only one who kind of wishes that St. Elmo’s really was in Georgetown? I know the structure’s there, but, I mean, it’s just not the same.

And I may get razzed for this, but I kind of feel like I could run through a brick wall after hearing this song. Rawr.

I also heard it on the radio on my way home from ~~Marietta~~ Paden City early, early that Sunday morning and I had no shame in turning the volume up to a totally unacceptable level and screaming the lyrics at the top of my lungs. The 1980s would have approved.

There doesn’t seem to be a handbook for this situation

2009-11-09T17:29:27Z

www.nataliedee.com

So, this morning, I log into Facebook, and mixed between the 15 Farmville requests and myriad events I won’t attend, I had a friend request.

From my Dad’s first wife.

Let that one sink in for a minute. I’m almost 31 years old. My parents have been married for 32 years. We’re talking about 34 or so years ago was the last time she had any remote connection to me.

This happened back in 2005, too, with MySpace. Remember MySpace? Back then, she’d sent me a message and told me she saw me on another person’s page, and she knew when she saw my face that I was definitely Dad’s kid. I look exactly like my father’s mother, so, sure, not out of the realm of possibility. We traded a couple of messages, “Yes, I’m well, my family’s well, thanks, I work in Charleston, etc.” and then, it all faded away. It was just a blip on the radar and I never thought about it again, really.

Until this morning.

I didn’t know my father had a first wife until I was 15 years old. My parents weren’t the people who told me about her. It was a sweet old lady named Irene who worked with me at the Sno-Biz, and I remember how this went down like it happened this morning.

“Are you Bob’s daughter?” she asked me while she was elbow deep in a sink full of hot water to clean our bottles.

“Yeah,” I said. “Do you know him?” (As an aside, at some point in my life, asking people “Do you know him?” was about as common a question as “Do you like to eat dinner?” and “You breathe, right?”)

“Oh, sure I do,” she said. “I worked with your Daddy when he was at Corning, but that was when he was married to his first wife.”

At this hot nugget of knowledge, I felt the vomit in my throat. What? My father’s first wife? As in someone before my Mom? Wha? Why didn’t I know this? Why was this some proprietary knowledge that didn’t make it my way?

“Oh, yeah!” I said, with probably a little too much joy and definitely too much syrup. “Gosh, that really was forever ago.”

I mean, let me be honest … I’m dying on the inside. Not so much at the revelation that my father had a first wife, because, really, a whole lot of people have first wives, but because I wasn’t prepared for the situation. At 15 years of age, I was very proud of my ability to think on my feet like a grownup, and here I was, just wanting to curl into a ball like a kid and hide.

I got through the rest of my shift without incident, and by the time 6 p.m. rolled around, I’d gone through the stages of it — the shock turned into disbelief, the disbelief turned into anger and then, well, I was stuck on anger. (Those who know and love me know I get stuck on ‘anger’ quite a bit.) I bounded into our house and slammed the door, and in true high-school-dramatics fashion yelled, “Was anybody planning on ever telling me that my father had a first wife?!”

Crickets.

Finally, my Mom yells from the kitchen, “There weren’t any kids, it was a short marriage and it wasn’t important.”

“Oh, OK.”

My Mom has a better perspective on most things than I do. Maybe that’s something you acquire with age, practice and teenager raising, but the woman’s pretty unflappable.

But here, 15 years later, I’m faced with this sticky situation of how to respond to this Facebook friend request. It’s not so much a dilemma in whether I should accept it, it’s the dilemma of wanting to ask, “Why?”

Why is there some kind of vested interest in me? I’m not your kid. I don’t have any siblings who are. I mean, I’m not a douche. I’ve accepted friend requests from people I don’t know and people I actually don’t like, but this one sticks with me. There doesn’t seem to be policy guidelines for this, other than, “Eh, if your conscience says no, just don’t do it.”

Me, though. It would happen to me.

the 2009 Weblog awards

2009-11-05T03:48:33Z

Thanks to two of my favorite bloggers and dear friends, I’ve been nominated in ~~two~~ three (!) categories for this year’s 2009 Weblog awards.

I’ve been nominated in the categories of “Best Individual Blogger” and “Best Humor Blog” and “Best Diarist.”

I’m putting this hot dose of shameless self-promotion out so you can help me make the finals.

If you visit any of these sites …

Best Individual Blogger

Best Humor Blog

Best Diarist

… You will see where I have been nominated. Here’s how you can help:

Rather than add a “me too” (i.e. multiple) nomination for a site in a category, please use the “+” icon to indicate your preference for nominees. The “+” ratings are one extra piece of information the finalist selection panel can use to help generate the finalist slates in each category.

While it’s an honor just to be nominated, I’d be ecstatic to actually make the finals, so please, if you have a minute, visit those links and give me a click. I don’t know how often you can vote for me, so if you wanna make like it’s Lincoln County or Chicago, I’m down with that.

Also, I’d be amiss to not direct you to the bloggers who nominated me, and who, in turn, are also up for 2009 Weblog awards.

The Pajama Pundit (who nominated me for Best Individual Blogger)

The Fury Blogger (who nominated me for Best Humor Blog)

Do me a favor. (I know, jeeez I’m needy today …) If you take the time to vote for me, please take the time to visit their sites and vote for them in their respective categories. They deserve a vote as much, if not more so, than I do.

Thanks, y’all. I very much appreciate all of you who read, and all of you who comment. It makes it fun.

It isn’t that I hate cash, it’s just …

2009-11-04T17:26:07Z

I remember a while back having a conversation with my Dad about how I never carry cash.

“Why should I carry around all that money, when every place you go takes cards?” I asked.

He nodded, but then asked what would happen if I was stuck somewhere that didn’t take cards. Or I was on the side of the road and the only way I could get towed is to give the guy $60 in cash.

“I have AAA,” I said, smugly. “It doesn’t cost me anything up front to call them.”

You know, sooner or later, I’m going to start listening to people like my Dad, because you know, they’re often much more wise about the world than me, a hapless soon-to-be-31-year-old with an unnaturally optimistic view of the world.

Today would have been one of those days.

It isn’t that I hate cash, it’s just that I hate carrying cash, especially here. It’s rare you have a Metro station or storefront downtown without someone waiting to pounce on you the second you emerge with your change. When I tell them I don’t have any cash, I’m not lying. They may not believe me, but I’m not lying.

Besides, last year, I emptied out my penny jar on my desk and put it in an envelope and handed it to the guy who would block my path every day asking for “quarters, dimes, nickels.” I handed him the six pounds of pennies and said, “They’re pennies, but they’ll spend just the same.” He’s never said a word to me since then.

Anyway, I got to the Metro today with a SmarTrip almost on empty and a debit card in hand to add money … annnnd denied.

Turns out Metro’s entire computer system was fried, but you know, they didn’t really tell us that at Greenbelt. I tried twice to get the friggin’ machine to take my debit card before the station manager finally stuck his head out of his glass-enclosed nerve center (thank you, WTOP) and yelled, “NO CREDIT! NO DEBIT! NO PROBLEM!” …

No, not really. The last part of that was “No SmartBenefits.”

I really wish it had been “No problem.” That would have been really, really cool.

Fortunately, I had enough on the card to get downtown. They don’t lock you in … if you have so much as a penny on the SmartTrip, it’ll let you in the system and you exit the system like Rich Uncle Pennybags on the Chance card with your pants pockets turned inside out.

Ah, Dad. The ‘what if’ finally came, and as you predicted, I was mostly hosed.

I think I’m going to have to enact the $20 minimum policy (not to be confused with D.C.’s bar cover charge policy, which is oddly named the same thing …) to avoid getting stuck somewhere, because I have a feeling with my luck, it won’t be as swank a place as Metro Center.

Worth 1,000: The Irony Edition

2009-11-03T20:40:26Z

I looked to my left today and noticed the juxtaposition of this pile and smiled to myself, knowing all was exactly as it should be in the world.

Caption Contest!!

2009-11-03T15:30:22Z

Sorry for the small size … I’m working with what I have.

(No, that’s not my entry …)

Fun with Google v. 21

2009-11-02T22:09:40Z

Dear iPhone surfer,

Ah, jeez. Do you have to call them Mexicans? I feel like I’ve been down this road before …

Love,

Jacque

Pass the Benadryl, please

2009-11-02T18:58:47Z

I’m not sure exactly when I acquired this malady, but it’s been at least 10 years.

Most people have “tells,” as the poker players call them. They blink rapidly, sometimes they get fidgety, maybe sweat.

When I get into a stressful situation, I break out into hives.

Big, patchy, red hives.

That itch.

That I scratch.

It’s been a Benadryl morning.

The fact that I get covered in hives from stressful situations has provided many humorous, and awkward, moments through the years. At my old job, it served as a Homeland Security-style warning system — if the side of my face was red and splotchy, I was mildly irritated. If the scratch marks had gone down to my neck, we were approaching a problem. If both arms were bright pink, bumpy and covered in scratches, I was on the verge of a meltdown.

Several years back, I was wandering through a Wal-Mart in Elizabethtown, Ky., with my then-husband and his parents. By the time 30 minutes had passed, I had bright red, scratched up arms and I couldn’t stop scratching my face.

“What’s wrong with Jacque?” my mother-in law asked.

“She gets hives when she gets stressed out,” my husband replied.

My tell … exposed. Busted. Now she knew. Now every time I’d been at a family gathering and became covered in red splotches, she knew the truth. I was screwed. From that point forward, any family gathering required doubling-up on a preventative dose of Benadryl.

But today, the attack has seemed to wrap itself up quickly. I’m only a little warm now. My face is really the only thing left that itches. (It took me about an hour to finish this post in between various tasks, so I’m sure that helped.) I’m more or less exhausted now. And I could use some onion rings or mango habanero-flavored boneless wings from Buffalo Wild Wings. Or a nap.