The day kicked off early, try seven a.m. early, because I had to go to the doctor.  Not a big fan of going to the doctor normally, even less when it’s without insurance and I have to shell out eighty bucks.  Fun!  But it turns out my doctor is cooler then I ever realized all these years and he made up for the charge by handing me a purse full of sample drugs, enough to last me a few months.  Woo hoo, free pharmaceuticals!  That was the best Halloween treat.

I’ll perform my Halloween trick later, when I actually climb off the couch repeatedly to give our only chocolate stash to strangers begging at my door way, even though I already know none will be as cute as our Trick or Treaters.

Spiderman Zachary

The only chicken I’ll ever cuddle, Jorden

I saw a car with a sticker for Ocracoke Island this morning.  I’ve never seen a sticker for my favorite spot  along the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and I certainly didn’t expect to see it all the way out in Arizona!  I’ve only seen three OBX stickers west of the Mississippi, and one of them is mine!

It just reminded me of how much I miss that area, and the Atlantic.  We took a trek out to the Pacific recently, and I was surprised that I didn’t feel as relieved as I thought I would.  I just miss the Atlantic, and I can’t wait to see her again next month, even if it is going to be way down in Florida!  Why must I be such an ocean lover when I’m stuck in this landlocked state?

It’s too bad I can’t fill this space with cover letters, because I’ve been spending way too much time writing those lately!  Job hunting is the worst.  A guy told me tonight that I’m probably being too picky, which is funny because all my friends said I was being too picky when I didn’t want to date him.  Is there such a thing as too picky?

Whatever the case, I’m about to break down and take a job scrubbing cars with my toothbrush if something doesn’t turn up soon.  I am BORED.  And I am LOSING MY MIND.  I always thought I was cut out for the non-working lifestyle.  Turns out when you are broke and trapped in your house it feels like PRISON.  I can not take any more day time TV, seriously, I’ll hurt someone.

I’ve noticed a strange trend.  I’ve had a many different manicures over the last few weeks.  Go ahead, look at the original sizes of those on flickr.

I never paint my fingernails, they chip too easily and it’s time consuming having to wait for them to dry.  I guess I’m just that bored.  This is nothing but a literal translation of too much time on my hands.

Whenever John or Jeff is in the car with me the passenger gets control of the iPod.  John and I have been bonding over music for ten years now, I know just where to go if I want a reaction (Foo Fighter’s “Hey Johnny Park” for example) and he generally wants it loud.  He skips around and hits a lot of stuff from our early days, and tries to get me to fall in love with the last album he gave me to download.

Jeff and I haven’t been doing this as long.  We have standbys, a few local bands and anything loud and hard.  I skip around until he starts singing along and when he’s in charge he spends a few minutes digging through the rash of strange music I have on it and seemingly picks things at random.   I threw the Pod at him Thursday night and he surprised me with each and every selection.  We should have saved the playlist and named it “Songs to Snort To” as every choice made me laugh harder then the last.

We started off on a sour note when I accidentally hit play on MC Hammer as we left the first bar.  I have no idea why I have MC Hammer, so don’t ask.

The next twenty minutes, as we flew down the 60, were spent trying to make it through two Meatloaf songs.  Why are his songs so long?

I couldn’t name the next song (Megadeth.  Seriously, am I getting drunk and downloading music?  Where does this come from?), they made fun of me for having Michael Jackson, we rocked out to Rage Against the Machine, and then we settled into OK Go just long enough to scream along to “Get Over It” before getting to the next bar.

John spent three whole minutes in my car that night, all during the Pearl Jam phase.  Lucky for him, my opinion that Pearl Jam blows was unpopular, and it’s probably the first time John and I have listened to Pearl Jam together.

Next up was The Refreshments.  I hadn’t poured over their first album in years, but had plenty of time as I waited in the car while the boys scored pizza for the after bar snack, which is always my favorite meal.

We went back in time (Way back!) with Smashing Pumpkins, Spin Doctors’ “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” (Someday I’ll have to come up with some aliases and tell the story behind that song.), Beastie Boys, and Bad Religion.  We ended the night with Train, always a good way to wind down.

He continued the perfect soundtrack the next morning as we rocked out to Anberlin while getting dressed and left the house to that Verve Pipe song about freshman.

He struck gold with the Barenaked Ladies song “Pinch Me”.  Besides our ever present “I pinch” joke, the lyrics just suited the morning.  Our conversations lately have been focused on wondering what the hell we’re doing with our lives, wanting to move out of this state, and specifically that morning, trying to find a restaurant down the street because we were hungry people who’d like to eat.  Maybe I never listened to the lyrics that closely, serious topics but they’re cloaked in it’s perky tempo and avoidance techniques.

It always amazes me when a song I’ve heard a hundred times suddenly hits me in the chest.  Music is a strange combination of mood and time and place, and then suddenly a memory forms that I will remember every time I hear that song.  Lately I haven’t been forming many memories to music, what with my listening to the same albums for five months straight.  It’s fun to hand the music off to another person and see what they create.  Even if that song did bring up uncomfortable feelings I’ll always remember driving down Southern laughing and pinching.

In the end Jeff selected the entire Blink 182 folder and we let that run as he helped me navigate to the airport.  It’s really all you can do, keep it perky while you trudge along.

Apparently, based on the ribbing I received at the bar last night, it is incomprehensible that I have never seen The Goonies.  Trust me, I’ve never seen any movie you recommend, and if by chance I have, I don’t remember it.  God bless Netflix, fixing the gaps in my pop culture knowledge.

“How can you handle being alone in the house all this time?  I would be losing my mind.”
“I think that’s your answer.”

This is harder then I ever thought it would be.  I’m not finding very much amusing right now, and I don’t want to remember the crud that’s floating on the surface.

Alright my dears, it’s Day Two and I have nothing to say to you.  I’ve been in this spot once before, in my house alone all day long and realizing I’ve run out of things to say.  I’m falling into that trap where I trick myself into believing I don’t know how to talk to people, and that I don’t want to.  I find myself not wanting to call friends I haven’t talked to recently, and only speaking to the core group that won’t let me disappear.  But I know where that track leads, so I don’t let myself bury the phone whenever it rings, and I try to keep in contact with the outside world.

It blew up a little tonight when my best friend sent a stranger to my house!  The nerve.  I had to go through some preparations when I thought it was just John that was showing up.  The basics, ya know, bathing, staging the house to not look like I’m locked in here all day, actually eating something so I’m not too jittery.  Then he calls at the last minute because he is running late to work, so his band mate is going to stop by instead.

“Um, no.   No no no. NO.  No strangers.”
“He’s not a stranger Jen, you’ve met him.  You know his name.”
“No.  Can’t do it.  I’ve barely met him.”
“I have to go to work, he is going to call you in few minutes.  And you like his teeth.”

Yeah, now I have to talk on the phone to a stranger?  And he just had to remind me about the teeth, and the fact that I’m pretty sure he’s told this kid that I have a very strange adoration for his teeth.  (What, they’re nice.  I don’t even notice teeth normally.)  I was sure this was not going to go well.  Something about being alone 90% of the time has a way of convincing me that I have no social skills.  So, being that I was a bit worried about scaring this kid I called Lindsey and started screaming.  She was the reason I needed a band member to come by the house, after all, I was just expecting the band member that I KNEW!

Lucky for me, and the kid with the teeth, Lindsey was available to come and wait with me.  He was very polite and not scary at all, not that I expected any differently.  I don’t know why I get so worked up about these situations, I don’t have problems handling strangers on a normal basis.  I’m just loosing a grip on my own head.  Nothing is normal right now.

So, November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.  Every year the blogosphere takes a hit as writers turn their attention to pouring out a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.  Have no fear, I am not doing this.  I have no goals to write a novel, ever, and seriously, can you imagine the horror of me laying out that many words in such a small period of time?  It makes me shudder just thinking about it.  I haven’t even been writing on my own website lately, unless it’s a post about the fact that I’m not writing.  I know, I’m even annoying myself lately and I am dumbstruck that y’all keep coming back here every day.

I’ve thought about setting a goal for myself, X number of posts per week or month.  But really, that’s laughable.  I have a long history of being unaccountable to myself.  I can’t even manage to wash my face before I inevitably end up passing out face down on my couch at two a.m., there’s no chance I’m going to be able to con myself into writing.  That’s where Fussy comes in.  Mrs. Kennedy has come up with NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month.  One post per day for the month of November.  It sounded so manageable the way she said it that I immediately agreed to do it.

Of course, then I freaked out when I realized I was going to have to say something thirty days in a row.  The horror.  Then, just after I was put on the list of participants, I remembered that I am going out of town the day after Thanksgiving.  For a week.  With no internet access.  (I’m going to Orlando, which I’m sure has internet, but I will be running around Disney World and the beaches like a mad woman.  A mad and poor woman who has no laptop and therefore can not post from any where but this very chair.)  I’m a royal idiot.  In any case, I refuse to back down on my word to the lovely Mrs. Kennedy, and I desperately need something to trick me into writing again.  So I’m going to do it any way, just a little bit differently then everyone else.  I’m starting early, consider this Day One, so that I can still get in 30 consecutive days of posting.  And I’ll write out a post by hand each day that I’m on vacation, which I will post when I get back.  It may not be exactly what I signed up for, but the push is still there.  Make myself open that door in my head once a day for a month, and at the end of which I hope I remember that I know how to do this without the push.

Some folks have already mapped out a plan for the month, which I envy.  But that is simply not my style.  I can’t even tell you what I’m going to write about tomorrow, let alone 25 days from now.  There is so very much going on right now that I don’t know how to process, and I believe this is the primary reason I am not writing.  We’ll have to figure out a way around that.  I’m going to do this, and it’s going to be ugly.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

*****Housekeeping*****

So, do you think this sounds like a cool idea, but you have no blog (or masochistic need to write everyday)?  You can still participate by de-lurking and posting a comment on someone’s blog at least once a day.  I appreciate knowing who is peeking inside my head via this website, so open up!  Go check out the list of participants and encourage them towards this goal!

As a show of good faith I really am going to write the Month in Review for August.  It’s in the pipe, I swear.  I guess I also owe the one for September, and October’s is due in just a few days.  I think we just came up with three post topics, only 35 more to go.

When we were kids we were often sent to stay with my grandparents for a few days.  They lived in a small town in the mountains a couple hours from here and we always had a blast.  Grandma would feed us full of food, and the story goes that she also used to “trim” our bangs.  It drove my mom crazy when we’d come back to town with short ass bangs because it took Gram a few tries to get them straight.

A few years ago my sister was pretty serious with a boy who had three kids, two girls and a boy.  My mom and I would watch them every Saturday morning while my sister and her boyfriend took parenting classes.  Imagine my surprise when my own mom broke out the scissors one day to give the girls’ bangs a “little” trim!  She, luckily, had more restraint (or skill) then my Grandma and got their bangs straight when they were still long enough to look decent.  I just couldn’t believe that the woman who still brings up in conversation that my Grandma cut my hair without her permission would turn around and do the same thing!

Maybe I should have been less surprised then when I talked my nephew into sitting very, very still while I cut his hair Thursday night.  That may have been the strongest evidence yet that I am, in fact, turning into my mother.  It also shows that this gene improves as it’s passed down through each generation, because his mother hasn’t noticed yet!

Hold on just a second!  What the hell happened to September?  Where is this year going?  How am I so far behind on everything?  I’ve been unemployed for ten days, shouldn’t I at least be caught up on some things, the blog, pictures, my anal calendar?  Yeah, there was the requisite celebration of my liberation, three nights of steady partying, and I was still getting over the cold I caught at my favorite bar.  And then I went to California to see the beach.  I came home and developed a particularly lovely strain of bronchitis and I’ve spent the last four days laid up on my new couch in a codeine haze.  But still… over a month behind and jobless.  October is starting out with a bang.

And why have so many of my favorite writers given up their websites or gone on hiatus?  I’m sick, and I’m jobless, and I need your entertainment!  And then you look at this sad thing… am I doing the same and just not admitting it?  Seven posts in September.  Haven’t written a thing about the trip across the country, don’t plan to write a thing about my job situation, wouldn’t know where to start on my family/boy problems.  Am I out of things to say?  Is this going to turn into funny videos and pictures of other peoples kids? 

Don’t ask me, I just (barely) work here.