jennsylvania

Looking For A Last Minute Way To Give This Season?

Then please consider this.

I've done an awful lot of volunteering this year in the hope that the efforts would give me one of those "A-ha!" moments.  I've worked with children, the elderly, the homless, and the incarcerated.  I planned to base a book on these experiences until I came to the realization that my thesis statement was "I suspect we'd all be happier if I just wrote you a check." 

Somehow that doesn't seem so uplifting.

Yet these experiences have changed my relationship with giving and now I'm always looking for ways I can help.

I traveled to Hawaii when I was seventeen and all I've wanted to do since then was go back.  So I've spent my entire professional life hoarding my American Airlines advantage miles, resisting the temptation to cash them in for a lesser trip and always buying extra miles when I had the chance. 

Eleven years after beginning to bank my miles and many extra dollars spent, I finally had enough for two first-class, round-trip tickets to Hawaii. 

Or Europe. 

Or wherever else in the world I might like to travel.

Then I read about Operation Hero and I realized I also had enough miles to send an entire family to visit their loved one who'd been injured in Iraq or Afghanistan.

My AAdvantage balance is back to zero now and for the first time I understand exactly what it feels like to give until it hurts.

A-ha.

Beached

I'm back from my roadtrip and I've got the ear infection to prove it.

(How's that for a stellar opening line?  You're drawn in, yes?  "Please, Jen, tell us all about your owie.  We've waited an entire week to read about your minor medical malady.")

Anyway, a few weeks ago I found out I had meetings at the same bat-time and bat-place where my friends were gathering for a girls weekend, so I cashed in some miles and packed my bag.

I didn't have any business until Saturday so we headed to the beach as soon as I arrived on Friday.  I was so psyched to get in the water - given the opportunity, I would wallow every minute from Memorial to Labor Day.  Plus, I hadn't been to the ocean for a good ten years and was delighted for the opportunity to see it again.  (I assumed it hadn't changed, but really, who knew for sure?)  And yeah, I'd been in Lake Michigan a lot but it's not the same and don't let any Midwest-ophiles try to tell you differently.  Nothing compares to a shoreline full of beach roses, boardwalks, and salty air. 

I grew up going to beaches all along the New England coast.  I figured swimming in the Atlantic is like riding a bike - you never forget.  Sure, maybe I'd have to re-perfect my wave-diving and body-surfing skills, but that would only take a minute. 

So, imagine my surprise when what looked like a gentle tide grabbed me by the shins, pulled me under, gave me a ten billion gallon swirlie, and then threw me onto a bed of jagged rocks and broken shells so forcefully that I skidded almost all the way back to my beach chair.

Huh, I thought.  Perhaps all those Bloody Marys on the plane made me a bit wobbly.  I should try again.

I waded to about ankle-deep when another teeny wave suddenly turned white and not only knocked me ass-over-teakettle but also wedged buckets of sand in every orifice.  And I mean EVERY.  (Please only concern yourself with my ear, since that's what got infected.)

Oh, ocean, I mused, I'll best you yet.  I'm just out of practice.

This time I dashed into the water full force, mouth wide open in Braveheart victory-cry.  Which is exactly how I ended up swallowing a hogshead full of briny water, seaweed, and possibly one dead jellyfish.

Sixteen increasingly unsuccessful tries later, I hauled myself back to my group, battered, bloody, and wearing what felt like a diaper full of sand, whispering only, "Ocean - monumental fail," before collapsing into my beach chair to suck down every bottle of Dasani we'd packed.

Moments after my egress, the lifeguard put up two huge red flags on either side of the exact places I'd been attempting to swim.  He must have been sitting in his tall chair the whole time, thinking, "The big, sturdy one keeps getting knocked over.  Hey... I wonder if there aren't some rip tides out there?"

I'm home again and the ear infection is a bit of a blessing.  Every time I tilt my head, I get dizzy, so I've been spending a lot of time sitting in my chair in front of the computer.  Which is good, considering I have to stop getting on planes and start writing this damn book.

Anyway, posting will be fairly light around here for the next month while I finish Pretty in Plaid.  I figure you guys won't mind because given the choice between a couple of extra blogs and a whole new book, you'd choose book, right?

As for me?  I'd choose beach.

Photo by Blackbird, body by Hostess.

 

"You've Found A Kindred Spirit In Crap Music"*

I've been off the grid lately.  Between real vacation, accidental vacation, deadlines, and living in a house that has suddenly gone from three baths to one, the blog's gotten lost in the shuffle. 

Plus, I didn't think I had anything to write about but apparently each of the above topics could stand to be addressed, so here goes.

Part One, Real Vacation

It was, in a word, lovely  (if for no reason other than not having to share a bathroom with Fletch.  More on that in Part Four.)  Our hotel was all resort-y and they did stuff like bring personal pitchers of iced lemon water the second anyone sat down by the pool.  And the staff would come by and spritz guests with Evian water and every hour or so they'd distribute Popsicles or Dippin' Dots or frozen fruit or chilled washcloths. 

We had a giant dish of little-bitty wrapped Italian candies on the coffee table in our room.  I told Fletch that if he thought I wasn't going to turn into my grandmother and dump every last one of them into my purse before we left, he was sadly mistaken.  (Then he mentioned possibly discovering 500 $1 line-item charges on our room bill and I thought better of it.)

One of the highlights was getting to hang out with my friend Amy in person.  We've known each other ever since the early days of my "All About Jen" website but we've never met.  We drank vats of wine and ate seafood I've never heard of before (scorpion fish? mullet fish?) and generally had a fantastic time.  The bonus is she let me have a CD one of her friends made when they took a girls-only road trip to Sedona because she'd already burned it onto her iPod.  I listened to her CD all the way up to my accidental vacation (Part Two) and it was like unwrapping nineteen separate Easter eggs.

The CD is a perfect blend of cheese and sing-out-loud stuff.  It's called Three AGDs and a DG (the road trip participants respective sororities) and contains the following:

Gwen Stefani - The Sweet Escape

Rihanna - Pon De Replay

J Lo - Jenny from the Block

Stacey Q - Two of Hearts (remember her??)

Justin Timberlake - Sexy Back

Nelly Furtado - Promiscuous Girl

Rihanna - SOS (Rescue Me)

Coolio - Gangster's Paradise

Natasha Bedingfield - Unwritten

Fergie - Fergalicious

Britney Spears - Hit Me Baby One More Time

Beyonce - Irreplaceable

Shannon - Let the Music Play

LL Cool J - Going Back to Cali

Lisa Love - I Wonder If I Take You Home

Gwen Stefani - Hollaback Girl

Beyonce - Crazy in Love

Pink - Get the Party Started

Nelly Furtado - Say It Right

Enjoy!

*Fletch's quote when I told him what was on the play list

The first night in Vegas (after my traditional Fourth of July pool-wallow) I started getting ready to go to dinner.  I took a bath and was drying my hair when I felt a huge knot form in my throat.  While I put on my makeup and got dressed, I noticed my palms were sweating and my pulse raced.  I couldn't figure out why I was anxious until I realized I was going through all the exact same motions of being in a hotel room, getting ready for a book event.  As much as I enjoyed my tour, it was nice to just be able to put on a dress without the added pressure of having to give a speech. 

(I also recognize if it weren't for you guys, I wouldn't have been on my first vacation in six years, so THANK YOU ALL!)

* * *

Part Two, Accidental Vacation

We were only in Vegas for three days, but that's all it took to ruin me for regular life.  I'm all, "I'm hot!  Spritz me!" but no one does.  Remember those old cruise line commercials?  They featured a bunch of people wandering around their dank gray offices, drinking crappy coffee and fighting with janky mini-blinds.  The actors kept referencing their magnificent trip, saying stuff like, "I was a king and my butler knew just how I liked my tea," and "Every day my room was filled with fresh flowers."  For me?  That commercial finally makes sense.

At the moment, my life is filled with non-functional toilets in odd places and missing walls and a thick coating of drywall dust that just won't go away with vigorous dusting.  So when my friend Stacey invited me to visit her at her family's vacation place, I grabbed a beach bag and ran to my car. 

I'm on my way and I'm happily tooling along at both a safe distance from other cars and a sensible speed (nerd alert) when I notice a box fly off the pickup truck fifty yards ahead of me.  I was far enough back that it didn't come crashing through my windshield, thank God, but there was so much traffic in the right lane that I had no where to go but forward.  I ended up hitting the box which contained a very heavy piece of furniture.

You guys? 

I got into a head-on collision with an Adirondack chair.

The pickup driver and I both pulled over.  And when the driver got out of the other car, I was gearing up to yell like I've never yelled before when he introduced himself as Reverend So-and-so. 

Perhaps you all can shout at God's emissary, but I can't.  So while he went back to his car to call the police, I was stuck muttering to myself about Reverend TossyBox from the Church of the Flying Lawn Furniture.  I was already shaken up by the time I got to Stacey's house and when the biblical-type big storm hit that evening, the only rational choice was to stay over. 

Perhaps it wasn't as big a treat to her, as I mentioned, "I hit a box of chair," at least 900 times.  Also, while we were in her pool (which is on the lip of some deep woods) I got to say one of the greatest sentences of all time:

"Dude, there's a mini-frog on your neck."

* * *

Part Three, Deadlines

Deadlines still suck.  And they're keeping me from posting blogs more frequently.  But I figure I can do a bunch of half-assed blogs, or concentrate on a whole-ass book.

I choose whole-ass.

* * *

Part Four, The Bathroom Situation

A leaking shower pan has led to the utter destruction of almost every place to relieve oneself in this house.  We've lost a bunch of walls and ceilings and there's studs and plywood everywhere.  We're now down two bathrooms and I'm all, "Hey, why not take out the third, too?  I can just whiz in a pail."

In Bitter (I think) I talk about looking at apartments and telling leasing agents that we need at least two baths or else I will get divorced. 

Apparently I wasn't kidding.

Don't get me wrong; Fletch is an excellent roommate and he's quite tidy in the bathroom.  He never does stuff like leaving a sink full of whiskers and always wipes off the counter when he's done.  He's actually neater than me.  My bathroom is in no way suffering from his presence and yet I HATE having him in there because I'm ridiculously territorial.  He's none too thrilled with me, either, especially every time I suggest he'd be happier using the washroom at Target or the mop sink in the basement.

So he doesn't divorce me - or possibly beat me with one of many flanges laying around here - he's taken to staying home from work until the contractor arrives.  I'd been in charge of making Important Renovation Decisions but it turns out I don't speak Contractor and the guy doing all the work thinks I'm a dingbat when I say stuff like, "you know, those drip-ity things." 

The good news is ever since Fletch took over managing communication, the work has been going swimmingly (get it?  water pun) and I hope to have him out of my bath within the week.

* * *

Now I've sufficiently screwed around enough that I have no choice but to get back to my manuscript, thus I do not have time to come up with an ending that would have neatly tied all these unrelated topics together.  'Tis a pity. 

And because it can't be said enough:

"Dude, there's a mini-frog on your neck."