True story: when we watch Fringe, I spend most of the time talking about how dreamy Joshua Jackson is.

When I was a tween, one of my most serious hobbies was collecting BOP and Tiger Beat magazines. My friends and I would go to the drug store and sit in the magazine aisle, leaf through these bubblegum rags, and agonize over our purchases. My weekly allowance would only support my habit up to a point, so I had to be careful if I wanted to get my money’s worth. Sometimes the magazines had only so-so heartthrobs on the cover, but if there was a magazine with a full-size pullout poster of Jonathan Taylor Thomas (JTT!!!), well, obviously that was money well spent.

Some of my friends were already starting to go on dates around this time, even though most of us hadn’t even started our periods. I was shy and socially awkward around most people, and even more so around boys. I had no interest in them and didn’t anticipate ever wanting to have anything to do with them. I mean...I had books, I had my friends, I had my bike, honestly, what else did I need?

Maybe I wasn’t maturing as quickly as my friends, I don’t know, but I didn’t see the appeal of dating. Frankly, what little dating information I’d been able to gather (mostly from old episodes of Saved by the Bell) terrified me. My friends and I often discussed the perfect age to start dating. Most of my friends insisted that, at 12, we were the perfect age to date all we wanted, and you wouldn’t believe the heavy silence that fell when I suggested that maybe 18 was a better age.

I had no real interest in any of the boys in my life but was obsessed with collecting glossy pictures of my favorite teen actors. My room was plastered with the posters and pages I’d torn from teen magazines. I taped them on my bedroom walls like wallpaper. I lived in my head and my head was full of these Hollywood pretty boys. It was easier to pretend that if I should ever meet one of these actors, they’d fall deeply in love with me, and I’d never need to go through the painful dating process. I weaved intricate fantasies around these meetings, based on information gleaned from all the generic magazine articles I’d read about them. JTT liked ice cream. I liked ice cream! Joshua Jackson liked animals! I LOVED animals! Andrew Keegan liked to hike and, well, I liked to walk? Oh the fun we’d have, JTT, Andrew, Josh (yeah, I call him Josh) and I, eating our double-decker ice cream cones while we hiked through the woods and tried to catch wild animals WITH OUR BARE HANDS.

Obviously, these fantasies never became reality, and I (sort of) overcame my fear of boys and dipped my toe into the dating scene. I still spend most of my time in my head, but I eventually outgrew these magazine heartthrobs. Although, if I didn't think Joe would mind, I might still plaster the walls of our house with pictures of Joshua Jackson.

PACEY 4EVA!!1!!11!

Jennie Baxla and the Severe Tire Damage

Here is how last night was supposed to go: leave work, go to volunteering, go home, eat a nutritious dinner, read Harry Potter, go to sleep.

Here is how it happened instead: left work, ran into something hella crazy in the road, got a flat tire, called AAA, waiting in rainy parking lot, drove car to (closed) Tire Discounters, ate Donatos for dinner instead of healthy chicken, read Harry Potter, stayed up too late, went to sleep.

The tire damage part of it happened like this:



I had to draw a picture because I'm having trouble explaining to people exactly what happened. But I'll try. For what are we without words? Animals, I guess. Except some animals can talk. Like parrots. And gorillas. They talk with their hands sometimes. Anyway.

I was seriously five minutes away from volunteering and not late or anything, so I wasn't even speeding (for once). It was raining pretty hard and the road was all shiny. Not good shiny like in Firefly, but bad shiny as in POOR VISIBILITY. And I was driving through construction and the lane kept going all topsy turvy and different directions so sometimes I don't think I was even in a lane, and as I went through the intersection all of the sudden there was this cement curb island thing RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME and so I swerved but not enough and I totally ran over it AND THEN MY CAR FLIPPED OVER AND OVER BUT I LANDED RIGHT SIDE UP AND PULLED INTO AN ALLSTATE PARKING LOT OH YEAH FIRE FIRE EXPLOSION GRYFFINDOR! Oh wait, the Gryffindor thing...I will that explain later.

It all happened just like that except for the fire and explosion. I sat in the parking lot for a moment, all shaky, and then called the cavalry (Joe and AAA). In my heart, I hoped that AAA could fix the tire but in my head I knew it was effed. Sure enough, when the tow truck arrived and he took the tire off, the wheel was all bent and shit and apparently wheels are never, ever supposed to be bent and shit. So the AAA guy put my spare on and then put air in the spare because why wouldn't my spare be almost flat, too? What, like I'm suppose to be prepared? Eff that, you guys. Then the AAA guy told me how much money he'd made in six months and how he was excited for it to snow because it meant he'd make even more money and I was like, "Dude, I know your job depends on the misfortune of others but could you try not to sport so much wood when you talk about it? Especially next to my poor, poor car? She's already traumatized enough."

But. OK. So as I was waiting for AAA to get there, a van pulled into a parking spot near me. I spied on them (obviously) and they got out of the car to look at their front passenger side tire and I was like, "huh," but I stayed in my car because it was raining and cold outside. Then the tow truck got there and the Van Guy came over to my car and this happened:

Van Guy: Is there something wrong with your car?
Jennie's Brain: Um, there's a tow truck here, wtf do you think?
Jennie Out Loud: Yeah, I got a flat tire.
Van Guy: Did you run over that thing in the road back there by the gas station?
Jennie's Brain: HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT, ARE YOU FOLLOWING ME?
Jennie Out Loud: Yes! Did that happen to you, too?
Van Guy: Sure did.

Then he started talking to my tow truck driver and I was all, "THAT'S MY TOW TRUCK DRIVER! STOP BOGARTING MY TOW TRUCK GUY!" and then the tow truck driver told us that whatever we'd both hit had caused an accident last week. Way to go, Dayton. Anyway, around this time, I noticed that the Van Guy was wearing a Gryffindor shirt.

Jennie's Brain: OMG, he's wearing a Gryffindor shirt!
Jennie Out Loud: I like your shirt, guy.
Jennie's Brain: BETTER BE...GRYFFINDOR!

The end.

When Michael plays the hypothetical game, I always say yes.

I got scared about what this weekend was going to hold when A) the Dragons lost and B) the weather was total shit on Saturday. I should have known better, though. First of all, the Dragons losing is not that unusual. And SECOND OF ALL, the weather in Ohio is completely unpredictable AND NOW LET ME TELL YOU A STORY I'M SURE I'VE TOLD BEFORE but I don't care so shut up and listen. This one time? I was moving. And we packed up my old apartment on a Friday night AND IT SNOWED. But then the next day, it was like 65 and sunny and beautiful. This happened in April. True story.

Anyway. Joe and I went to Yellow Springs on Saturday to walk around the cute little shops, but it soon started raining and I got whiny so we left. But not before seeing Dave Chappelle. After Dave Chappelle ran away to Africa and quit show business or whatever, he moved back to Yellow Springs so he could spend the rest of his days getting high and walking around town so Ohioans could go visit Yellow Springs and later regale their friends with stories like, "OMG I SAW DAVE CHAPPELLE AND A PTERODACTYL*." True story.

We all watched The Reader Saturday night which . . . wow, depressing. I mean, I expected it to be depressing but WOW. Then yesterday I thought about watching Once, but I decided not to because I'm almost out of tissues. That's not true. I have lots of tissues, I just didn't want to sit inside all day BECAUSE . . .

in true Ohio fashion, the weather on Sunday turned BEAUTIFUL. So Joe and I went back to Yellow Springs but we didn't see Dave Chappelle this time. Then we went to dinner with Joe's parents and his mom hemmed some of my pants because I am The Short and all my pant legs drag on the ground. We eventually got home, after a short (unnecessary) trip to Target, and Tamara brought us delicious cupcakes. Then we talked about poop and farting. So, you know, good weekend.

*We also saw a pterodactyl. Joe thinks it was just a big hawk BUT I KNOW BETTER.

QUACK

It stormed so hard last night (this morning?) that the world ended for a few minutes, but don't worry. It was just for a few minutes, not even five minutes, and nothing really bad happens if the world only ends for a few minutes. True story. And by true I mean I don't have any idea what I'm talking about.

It DID storm so hard that the world ended for a couple of traffic lights this morning. What? You think traffic lights don't know they live in the world? You think they don't have feelings? Well, they do. They go red when they're angry, green when they're happy, and yellow when they're constipated. And YES constipated is a feeling. You think they turn colors for any other reason? You're wrong. Deal with it. There's something really disconcerting about a traffic light being completely dark. Mostly because I don't trust other people to not barrel through the intersection and kill me, kill me dead. No one did, though. But since there were two traffic lights that were out and I was on my way to work, I naturally assumed that my office building wouldn't have power when I got there. Because that's logical. Only not, because my office building totally had power and ALSO they expected me to work. PSHAW.

I wish it had been storming last night when Heidi and I decided to go running. But we had to run, for you see, we had Penn Station for dinner. That was the deal. We could have Penn Station, but we had to run. Right as we started, I was all, "didn't we decide not to run anymore after eating Penn Station because it makes us want to vomit?" and Heidi was all, "um, yeah, oops." Um, yeah, oops, indeed. I felt like vomiting after running about five steps, at which point I wanted to be done for the evening, but running five steps doesn't seem beneficial. Although, if I would just start with a five step run and add five steps to my run every day, that'd probably work better than my current running schedule, which is "run a couple miles four times a month and try not to pass out or throw up or die." Ah, well.

I don't think the run helped our stomachs OR our brains, because during our cool down lap around the pond, this happened:

Heidi: I've counted four tennis balls in the pond so far!
Me: Man, those people aren't very good tennis players.
Heidi: Seriously.
Me: Do you think our pink tennis ball is still down there?
Heidi: I hope so. I hope the ducks play with it.
Me: The ducks play tennis?
Heidi: Yeah, they use their bills as tennis rackets.
Me: Plus, they can fly, so that helps.
Heidi: Wanna know how they serve?
Me: YES.
Heidi: They put the ball in their mouth and just throw it.
Me: Wow. Do the ducks play doubles tennis?
Heidi: Totally. They play against the geese.
Me: The geese! I hope the ducks win, I hate the geese!
Heidi: Of course the ducks win. They're the Mighty Ducks.
Me: Awesome.
Heidi: Nine! I counted NINE tennis balls now!

And then were were all, "quack . . . quack . . . quack . . . QUACK . . . QUACK . . . QUACK QUACK QUACK QUACK," only not really, but I wish that'd happened. I mean, I don't think it's possible for our neighbors to think we're any weirder. After all, there was that time we threw a spoon in the pond and Heidi's underwear in a tree. Also, that time I got chased by a zombie.

you build the ark, I'll gather the animals

The weather the past two days has been extremely, and there's no other word for it, shitty. It rained all day yesterday, from the moment I walked out the door to go to work to when I got in my car at the end of the day to go to volunteering. The sky glared at me all, "WHAT? I'm RAINING! You don't like it? You think I care? WHATEVER, WHATEVER, I DO WHAT I WANT."

I was worried because last night was the final volunteering night before we go on hiatus for the summer, sort of like TV shows and my friend Nancy the Teacher. And on the last night of volunteering, the kids get to do a balloon launch. They write letters to their lost loved ones, tie them to balloons and let them fly, fly away. I'm trying to focus on how happy this makes the kids and not on the fact that once the balloon pops and falls to the Earth, some poor bird is probably going to choke and die on it. Focus on the happy, focus on the happy, look! look! something shiny!

The rain, though? The rain was threatening to KILL the balloon launch. So imagine my delight as I drove to the volunteering site and the sky became clearer and clearer. And as I sat in my car, waiting for someone else to get there and unlock the door (I'm always early), THE SUN CAME OUT. And it stayed out UNTIL WE WERE DONE WITH THE LAUNCH. It was a miracle. A balloon launch miracle. Poor birds.

Unfortunately, as I drove home from volunteering, the sky got angry again. When I got home, Heidi was making a nutritious dinner. I was hungry, too, so I made chips and salsa with M&Ms for dessert. As we sat down to eat, the tornado sirens started. "Le sigh," I thought, and looked longingly at my salsa. So spicy. So delicious. I turned on the news to see a furious, red blotch hovering over our town. Heidi was all, "is it bad?" and I was like, "no, no, it's just a tornado warning," and she said, "um . . . " and I answered, "oh, RIGHT, a tornado warning is the bad one." We don't really have a safe place to go in our apartment since we're on the second floor. Unless we go down to the first floor and cower in the coat closet, but cowering isn't really my thing, especially when I have chips and salsa in front of me. So we just sat on the sofa, ate our dinner, listened to the sirens, and watched the weatherman freak out all over the place.

It was fine. It stormed really badly for the rest of the night. The thunder was so loud that it woke me up (not a great accomplishment) but ALSO, it shook my entire room and made me hide under the covers. I didn't so much sleep as lie half-awake wondering if lightening could strike me through my window. I'm a little worried that this sleep-deprivation is causing hallucinations, because on the way to work I saw someone with an umbrella off in the distance and my first thought was not, "gee, it would suck to have to walk to work in this," it was, "OMG, it's Mary Poppins!"