It’s not unusual that the woman giving me a manicure asks if I also want them to clean up my eyebrows (I hope that happens to other people). Usually it feels like a harmless opportunity for them to sell more, but sometimes, like today, they look at me with such pleading. It’s as if they are really saying, “No, seriously, let me clean up your face. It hurts my eyes to see how unruly your eyebrows have become”.
Since I have recently committed myself to better self grooming, most notably, more vigilant eyebrow maintenance, the pleading works like a charm.
Well played, Hana Nails, well played.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how unpredictable and frankly, shitty, life can be sometimes. Bad things happen despite my best intentions and the pain that comes from emotional wounds is sometimes unbearable.
I’ve spent the majority of the last few months feeling low and struggling to remind myself that, while things didn’t turn out the way I wanted, I am still a very lucky person. When life takes a big poop on you, it can be hard to focus on the positive.
While the people in this video are far too attractive and happy for my taste, it’s a happy reminder. Life happens. It’s just a choice to see it as a good or a bad thing.
20 things I like:
Five months ago I had the following conversation with myself:
Jessie: “What is the most un-rut-like thing I can do to get rid of this stuck-in-a-rut feeling?”
Jessie: “How about find a new job and move across the country?”
Jessie: “Ok, I’ll make that happen without thinking it through much more.”
And I did.
Now the view from my balcony is no longer a cardboard cutout of a hand flipping me off but rather a palm tree that my mother, for unknown reasons, has nicknamed Mabel.
Things have begun to calm down and I have some sense of my new normal so I have revisited my life goals and have added/edited. Some are short term, some are longer term, and some are admittedly unlikely but when has that stopped me before?
Goals!
1 - Find the perfect affordable lampshade. I add in affordable because I found the perfect lampshades at anthropologie but I am not currently made of money.
2 - Be made of money.
3 - Get on an improv team that has a weekly show at Improv Olympic. I am about to finish the level 1 class and have about 6 more levels to go before I even get the chance to audition but it’s going to happen someday. You should come to the show!
4 - Learn to parallel park without having a panic attack or jumping out of my car and making my friend do it for me.
5 - Run 4 miles without stopping or dying. I promised Jereme we would run 4 miles in November and while I never explicitly promised I would not die during or directly after, I have a feeling it was implied.
6 - Read Infinite Jest. I know it has been on my list for a while but I am still young so it’s still likely to happen.
7 - Go one week without eating sugar. Health reasons be damned, I just want to prove to sugar that it doesn’t control me.
8 - Meet the President in the Oval Office. I also want to be there because I specifically was invited. I want the President expecting me.
9 - Create a product that becomes a socially accepted verb/noun. Google, tweet, facebooked, etc. If this one becomes a reality, I think goal #2 will be much easier to achieve.
On my birthday last year, I never expected that one year later I would be spending my birthday on the opposite coast, have a new job, own a car, be doing my laundry in my own apartment and have a driver’s license that rudely displays my weight. It’s funny how quickly life changes.
One of the things I am most proud of in myself is that while I love planning, organizing and nesting, I don’t turn down opportunities to completely change my life and dive head first into the unknown. It’s terrifying and hard (I have certainly sent a number of weepy “what did I just do!?!?!” texts) but also completely awesome.
Here’s hoping for many more crazy, unpredictable, and wonderful years ahead.
I am moving to LA in 2 weeks for a new job. Since I gave my notice, I have been in a sentimental craze about NYC, where I have lived for the last 9 years.
Things I am going to miss about NYC (I realize a good deal of the list is food.):
- First and foremost, my friends and family. It rips my heart out each time I have to say goodbye. I love you all.
- Bagels. I plan to eat an everything bagel toasted with cream cheese everyday until I leave.
- Not knowing the price of gas.
- Autumn.
- Being able to walk everywhere. I am terrified how enormous I am going to get between my general lazy disposition, my love of food, and never having to stand for longer than 15 minutes once I get to LA.
- Pizza.
- Carrot salad dressing from Dojo and Yaffa cafe.
- Not needing a designated driver. Although hopefully having to drive home will stop me from being such a lush.
- Motorino.
- My therapist. I am going to have to spend another 6 months training the next guy. Maybe I can get my current therapist to write me a note.
- My local bodega guys who have a sixth sense about what I am going to order.
- My improv group, Nearly Adequate.
- Going to the US Open.
- Stumptown.
- The cardboard cutout of a random woman that is in the window of an apartment across the street from mine. Super creepy but also hilarious.
- The Brooklyn Bridge.
- The dude who smokes on the stoop outside an apartment on my walk home from the subway. We have said only “hi” to each other almost everyday for the last 3 years. I once saw him on the L train and we ignored each other. It’s a nice, consistent relationship.
29 Days of Giving: Days 11-20
I have seen this Plan B commercial a few times and is anyone else outraged? The commercial gives all the wrong directions about how to handle a birth control failure!
Because my father reads my blog, I should tell you that I have no need for birth control, sex, what?, gross, ick, spit, boys have cooties.
However, should I have been asked to make a Plan B commercial, it would have been very different. Here’s how:
- The man would not leave. These girls let the guys leave and then slept peacefully and wake up with what does not resemble appropriate urgency?? Not a chance in hell that’s realistic.
- There would be no sleeping. Only panicking. Get thyself to a 24 hour pharmacy!! (The only exception is if the closest open pharmacy would take so long to drive to that it would be faster to wait until the local pharmacy opened in the morning. In that case, SET AN ALARM so you can be at the door as it unlocks!)
- There would be no wasting of time reading the instructions before you take the pill. The new Plan B is one pill (I assume, obviously), what is there to read about? Swallow the pill!
Hmph.
Based on my instinct to avoid discomfort and anything else unpleasant, it is nonsensical to me that I am in love with the show Man vs Wild. Bear Grylls and his crew get themselves into situations that would result in me curling up into a ball, crying, and then waiting for my body to eat itself to death (which, because exercise is another type of discomfort I avoid, would take much longer than I would like). However, I cannot stop watching or talking about the show.
Here are some of the things I have learned and am confident I would never have the presence of mind to remember if actually in a serious survival situation:
- Adding rubber from the sole of a boot or seal blubber to a fire produces a black smoke that is excellent for signal fires as the smoke appears unnatural and therefore will not be mistaken for a forrest fire.
- Fish eyeballs provide an excellent source of water.
- You should not eat a bat raw as they frequently carry rabies.
- You can eat an octopus raw but their suction cup arms remain strong even after the octopus is dead so they are difficult to eat as they will suction onto your mouth and throat (I vomit a little just thinking about it).
- After being submerged in freezing water, you have about 5 minutes to heat up your body before hypothermia sets in and you die. In that situation, it is best to remove all wet clothing and stand in front of a fire naked because your wet clothes will suck precious heat away from your body. Also, take special care to keep blood flowing to your fingers because many people will die, not because they didn’t know to light a fire, but because their hands stop working and they simply cannot manage to start a fire (sad!).
- If in places with extreme heat such as a the Sahara desert, you should pee onto your shirt and then when you put the shirt back on, the liquid will cool your torso. You can also ring out your shirt and squirt the pee into your mouth. Don’t drink it but it will wet your mouth.
- In the jungle, you should sleep off the ground to avoid killers such as snakes, scorpions, tigers, bears, jaguars, and a slew of other living things that have no problem eating you raw.
- To kill a snake, cut off the head. It’s also polite and good practice to bury the head in the ground as the venom in their mouths will remain potent for hours. Emily Post’s rule for jungle etiquette.
- You can eat pigeon eggs raw as long as they don’t smell funny. I wish Bear had taught me how to kill and eat a grown up pigeon so I would know exactly how to threaten the pigeons when they come back to my balcony in the spring.
Bear frequently mentions that survival is equal parts physical and mental. I can barely get through my 20 minute workout videos and my mental survival instinct is denial so what I really take from Man vs Wild is that it’s a miracle I have survived even my middle class existence this long.
Wednesdays at 9PM on the Discovery Channel! Enjoy!
29 Days of Giving: Days 1-10
