more Christmas cheer.

"Baby, what did you get me for Christmas?"

"I'm not tellin'. But your mom knows."

"Wha? Huh? When did you tell her?"

"Uh, we spent a couple days with them last week."

"I know but when did you tell her?"

"I don't know, sometime when you weren't around. I said, 'pssst... Bev...' and I told her what I'm getting you for Christmas and she said, 'Okay, well I'll check with Don.'"

"Wha? Huh? Why did she say that?"

"I'm not telling you."

"I'm calling my mom."

"That's fine, call her. She won't tell you anything. At least she won't if she knows what's good for her."

"Did you just threaten my mommy?"

"I hope it won't come to that."

just one of those days.

This morning as I lying in bed trying to wake up I listened to the rain slamming against the bedroom window. Yuck. It was still dark and that made it even worse.

When I left for class it wasn't raining that hard so I decided to leave my umbrella at home. My jacket is waterproof and I figured I'd be fine since it's only 3 blocks from the street I park on to the big building with the classrooms. I had my umbrella in my hand and actually set it back down. Half way to class it was raining so hard I could hardly see, even with the million layers of RainX on the windshield. Yeah. I got wet walking to class.

Last night I told Jesse I need to make an eye appointment soon because I would be putting the last pair of contacts into my eyes this morning. This morning I put the last pair of contacts in my eyes. As I was sitting in class my left eye started bugging me. I rearranged my contact a little bit and it helped for a minute. I figured I had an eyelash or something in my eye. After class I went to Meijer to get some groceries. As I was driving down the freeway in the pouring rain I realized that my left eye was all messed up and I really couldn't see very well. All of a sudden it dawned on me that my brand new last contact probably had a rip in it. After shopping at Meijer I sat in the car and took my brand new last contact out of my left eye and sure enough, right in the middle there was a tear. I put it back in because without something to correct some sort of vision I wouldn't have been able to see to get home. And of course since my vision was all messed up, I started to get sick to my stomach.

Now I'm home. I am wearing my glasses that are probably 3 or 4 prescriptions old and am trying to deal with the fact that tonight I'm going to have to go to one of those one-hour places to get contacts. Yuck. I would like to think I've learned my lesson and will not wait until I only have one pair of contacts left to even make a phone call to an eye doctor. But I'm sure it will happen again. Hopefully next time I'll have a good pair of glasses to fall back on.

Time to make lunch and since I can't see very well, maybe I'll take a nap. Rainy days are good for that.

holiday weekend

Did everyone have a nice Thanksgiving? It's been a busy weekend for us but lots of fun. Thursday we hung out with a bzillion of my family members (well, maybe not a bzillion, but there were about 40 of us there!) at Uncle Larry's and Aunt Nancy's house.

My favoritecousincori brought her friend, Andrea, to have Thanksgiving with us. About a week before Thanksgiving, aunt Nancy sent an email out to Cori, Cori's siblings, and Andrea. The email was about a 5K race on Thanksgiving morning to raise money for Grand Rapids Public Schools. When Andrea received the email, she assumed it was a family tradition and registered for the race right away. She is such a trooper because when she realized on Thanksgiving morning that she was the only one who registered for the race, she ran it anyway. And she wrote an amazing poem about our family. And before dinner, she read her amazing poem in front of everyone. It was several pages long and because she had requested a copy of the family tree, just about everyone was mentioned in the poem. Even Rose, my dead great uncle's girlfriend, got a shout out.

So we ate lots, drank even more, and just had fun.

Friday night was Comet Bar action. Always a good time but I'm a little concerned because it is being taken over by the young folk which means Sarge and Gayle don't get to sing much. Actually, I haven't even seen Sarge in a long time. Hope he's okay.

Yesterday we went shopping for bridesmaids dresses and actually found some! Yay! Joel's and Amanda's wedding is going to be so much fun.

Today I pulled out the dead tomato plants and lots of nasty rotted tomatoes in the "garden." Since I gave up on my "garden" in the middle of the summer, there was lots of grossness to clean up. And now there are snails and slugs. Gross. Hopefully they'll all die when it gets cold soon. Or do they just hibernate? Guess I need to do some research. Next summer I'll only grow a couple plants that I can keep up with. 10 tomato plants and 2 jalapeno plants and 2 green pepper plants were way too many for someone that just doesn't like to get dirty.

I can't believe Christmas isn't very far away. And my first official semester of grad school will be done soon.

Yay!

surprise!

Yesterday I decided to do a little online Christmas shopping for my husband. I found the perfect gift and was excited when the FedEx website said it would be delivered on Monday. Awesome because he will be at work and I usually get home before him and could snatch it up and pretend it was never on our little front porch. This afternoon I was laying in bed watching TV when I heard the doorbell. I couldn't answer the door because I had just taken a shower and was naked. I heard Jesse answer the door and in the back of my mind I thought, "hm. Hope that isn't the FedEx guy." and then I heard Jesse come up the stairs. He came in the room holding a little brown package and said, "What's this?" I oh so slyly grabbed it from his hands and said, "None of your damn business!" and pushed him out of the room. Normally I would be happy that a package I order online arrives the next day. In this case, not so happy. Luckily the package didn't give anything away to ruin the Christmas surprise.

thankful.

me: Are you sad you aren't with your family today?

him: No, I am with my family.

irony.

This morning in class we talked about how social workers teach their clients how to cope with stressful situations and crisis.

This afternoon I talked to my friend who has a mental illness and is in a psychiatric hospital and who I thought was doing really well but was only doing well because she had decided to kill herself but then decided not to because if she killed herself the world would go to war and then end.

How did I cope with this crisis?

I drank a bottle of wine.

Welcome to my first drunk post. Oh shit. Jesse is home.

yes, just ask.

I'm finally really understanding why everyone must have a camera cell phone.

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas.

Last night Jesse and I went downtown to see the lighting of the giant Christmas tree. Unfortunately it was very cold and we are very pussies and left before the tree was actually lit. It was really crowded, which is always nice to see in downtown Detroit. At one point we were just walking around and I looked up and Senator Carl Levin and a woman, I assume it was Mrs. Senator Carl Levin, were standing there. I said, "Look! It's Carl Levin!! I'd recognize that combover anywhere!!" A couple people were talking to them then the Senator and his wife (I didn't see a pearl necklace but I'm sure she had one under her winter coat) started walking away. I said to Jesse, "Let's stalk them!!" so we followed them. I think they are mall walkers because they walked very quickly. I was amazed that nobody else was following them. I had hoped to catch up to them to say something. Anything. But when we caught up to them I was very pussy and didn't say anything. And then the security dudes let them into a fenced in area that clearly wasn't for pussies like me.

When I was little my family went on a big road trip vacation every summer. One year we went to Washington, D.C. My parents arranged for us to go to Levin's office to meet with an aide and get a tour and all that good stuff. I don't remember anything but being incredibly bored and thinking he had the most retarded hair I had ever seen. Which is funny because I'm pretty sure my dad had a combover too. But I don't think my dad's combover was as um, pronounced, as Carl's.

So anyway, last night we came home and watched the tree lighting on TV. I think it would have been more exciting if we had been there.

duh.

Jesse and Jon were working on electrical stuff in the house last weekend and had turned off the power in the kitchen for a while. The clock on the oven has been wrong since then and today I decided to fix it. I did something wrong and got this message. I had no idea what '5A66ATH' meant and was freaking out because I figured I broke it.



Yeah. I'm a retard. I had accidentally set the 'sabbath' mode.

Whew.

long week.

Getting old sucks. This week I've been feeling like shit. Pukey. Shitty. Tired. I'm not sick. Just feeling gross. It doesn't help that yesterday I decided to not smoke any cigarettes. And then since I actually didn't smoke any cigarettes yesterday I decided to continue the trend today. And it just sucks. The A.D.D. makes me feel prickly a lot of the time. Not having any nicotine makes me prickly and want to kill someone. Like the guy in my class who says things like, "If I'm the only white guy that works in a company with all Japanese people and they racially discriminate against me can I call the NAACP or are they just going to racially discriminate against me too?"

Tomorrow is Friday. I don't have to go to stupid internship or stupid class. Hopefully I'll sit around at home and not smoke and get some reading for school done.

How many more days until baseball??

Veteran's Day

I believe I promised a Veteran's Day story. I have a feeling I'm about to lose the two readers I have because my story sucks. But here goes...

My dad worked for the State of MI for a long time. State employees get all the federal holidays off of work. He and my mom always used that day to go Christmas shopping. So I would sit in school all day with a big ass grin on my face dreaming of all the gifts they were buying for me. I am pretty sure I was the only kid excited about Veteran's Day for all the wrong reasons. Reason.

Apologies for the big buildup and letdown. What big holiday is next... Thanksgiving. I don't have any stories for that. None. Zero. Zip.

I'm getting A's in both of my classes right now.

I'm going to church in Kalamazoo tomorrow. It starts at 9:45 in the AM. Right now it is 11:15 in the PM and I am in Detroit.

On Wednesday I had to go to Ann Arbor to pick up my prescription for my schedule II drug and I stopped at the grocery store that sells my favorite bloody mary mix. They don't sell it anymore. Oh the horror. I looked at buying a case of it online but decided to wait. Today I was at Meijer in Roseville and found they now sell my second favorite bloody mary mix. Rejoice! I bought three bottles of it which was a good idea since after lunch there are only two bottles left. I shared with Jesse and my brother-in-law, Jon.

Thursday afternoon I witnessed a white man who looked to be in his late 30's or early 40's tapdancing in the office supply aisle at Costco. And then on my way home I had a migraine and had to pull my car over in the WalMart parking lot to puke. Take that, Walmart!!

Also on Thursday afternoon, the Comcast man stopped by to deliver the DVR we ordered. Because I had a migraine I had taken my "medicine" and I think he knew I was out of it. So embarrassing but whatever, he was probably jealous. I didn't share with him.

Good night.

election day.

I've started a really lame photo of the day project. Since I got a digital camera I take all these stupid photos and most people don't get to see them. So now I share them with you. It's your lucky day! Unless you are Dick DeVos. I think it is your very unlucky day. Sucka!!

I got to vote this afternoon. It was really rainy all day so I am a little worried that my fellow Detroiters stayed home. The lack of transportation in this city is a huge problem and if I didn't have a car or live a block away from my polling place, it would have been really hard for me to make it a priority.

Veterans Day is coming up. Don't worry, I have lots of good Veterans Day stories to tell. But I'll save them for Saturday.

happy halloween, pt. ii

Last night I couldn't fall asleep. I was exhausted but just couldn't relax enough to close my eyes and drift off. Instead I wrote about Halloween. In my sleepy state I completely forgot to mention the kick ass party that Jesse and I attended on Saturday night. CousinAdam and CousinChrissy planned this party for a looooong time. Jesse and I couldn't commit to going because we were hoping to be at World Series game 6. Obviously that did not happen. I was really tired on Saturday and wasn't sure I wanted to drive all the way to Lansing to get really drunk and then have to figure out a way to get home. We couldn't stay at my parents' house because they had a bunch of church camp kids staying at their house. They didn't have anymore room and it just would have been strange to show up all drunk and run into kids that were at church camp with me last summer. Ha! I looked online for a hotel room but couldn't find a decent room for a decent price. We finally decided to just suck it up and go to the party. We knew we'd have fun and would just figure out the rest later. Since we weren't planning on going, we didn't have costumes. We ran to the St. Vincent DePaul store because I thought it would be funny to wear a wedding dress. They were charging $50 for their dresses. Yeah. I don't think so. So as we were walking out the door to go to the party, I grabbed my pearl necklace and pearl earrings. That's right, I went as a senator's wife. Jesse grabbed a pirate eye patch and we were on our way.

CousinAdam and CousinChrissy bought a house in Lansing this summer and Saturday was the first time we visited. It is a kick ass house! I can't believe little CousinAdam and his wife own a house! Isn't Adam still little enough to hide in the pull-out couch in my parents' basement? That's a story for another day, I think.

Since nobody was expecting us to be there, they were all excited to see us. There is nothing like people screaming, "COUSINJENNY! COUSINJESSE!!" at you when you walk in the room. I don't think anyone really appreciated my senator's wife costume. But maybe if they knew me better they would realize that I am so not a pearl kind of girl. Is that dirty? Anyway, the other costumes were fabulous. CousinSethy and CousinGirlErin were the Spartan cheerleaders. Not MSU cheerleaders, THE Spartan cheerleaders. They even did the cheers! CousinAdam was an evil giant white bunny. CousinChrissy was a very funny Sonny Bono. Two of their friends grew mustaches just for their halloween costumes. One guy was Magnum, P.I. and the other guy was Captain Morgan. The best part about the guy that was Captain Morgan was that he totally looked like Ron Jeremy in a pirate costume. NotCousinTodd was Dick DeVos. He said he had to borrow a jacket and tie from a Republican for his costume.

One of the highlights of the evening was when we decided to go to Las Vegas on Sunday morning. NotCousinTodd agreed to pay for all 8 of us to go for the day. Unfortunately we were unable to get a flight out at a reasonable time. Oh, and NotCousinTodd was super drunk and I think we probably wouldn't have really let him pay for us to all go. Probably. Maybe.

happy halloween

A really old couple lived down the street from my house when I was growing up. They were really really old. My dad used to make us trick-or-treat at their house even though we didn't want to. I guess the old man got a kick out of it. We didn't get a kick out of the fact that he smoked cigars and would give us Little Debbie snacks that smelled so strongly of cigar smoke that the rest of our candy smelled like it. It got to the point where we would go to their house first, run home and throw the shit away, and then go to the rest of the houses. I don't remember if that was before or after the old woman started going all senile. We used to come home from school and she'd be walking down the street in her bathrobe. If we said "hello" she'd yell, "MIND YOUR OWN!!" at us. We'd go home and tell our mom that she was out again. My mom would get in the car and drive up to her. The old woman would say, "Mind your own. I'm walking my dog around the block." Of course "the block" in our neighborhood was about a 5 mile trip and their dog had died a million years earlier. My mom would offer to take she and her dog for a ride in the car and amazingly enough the old woman would get in. My mom would drive around the block and take 'them' home.

In other halloween memories, when we were done trick-or-treating my dad would spread our candy out on the kitchen table and check it for razor blades and stuff. Apparently there was no snopes.com to dispel urban myths back then. The best part about the ritual was that he would pretend like he loved all of the non-candy items we got and would take them off our hands. I don't think he pretended to love the cigar Little Debbie snackcakes though. But every year some asshole always handed out pennies or homemade popcorn balls or apples or some other stupid shit that we wanted no part of. Perhaps we were the ungrateful assholes? Oh well. We were kids. To us, halloween was about free candy, not pennies and health food.

The last time I went trick-or-treating I was with my sister's family. It was a really really cold night and my brother-in-law hooked me up with a 1/2 pint of HotDamn to keep me warm. Trick-or-treating hadn't been such fun since high school when I probably had a fifth of vodka to keep me warm. I wonder if someday my niece and/or nephew will tell stories about their Aunt JenJen getting drunk while trick-or-treating with them.

The kids tonight were lots of fun. Trick-or-treating in the city is different than trick-or-treating in the suburb. In the city there are lots of kids that can't afford costumes. It's not that they can't afford to spend money on storebought costumes and are too lazy to make one up from stuff they have at home. They don't have stuff to make costumes at home either. The kids tonight were super polite and just seemed to be having a blast. Jesse and I took turns handing out candy and I think we had a blast, too.