They're heeeeeeeeere...

Perhaps writing about my dog’s stomach issues the other day made my own stomach jealous that it didn’t get to participate in all the gastrotechnics, I don’t know for sure, but what I do know is that my body is rebelling against me and I’m not OK with it.

I’m feeling much better today than I have the past two days, which is good, because I’m not sure I could have taken another day of sitting uncomfortably on the sofa while watching Roseanne reruns and Marriage Boot Camp: Bridezillas WHICH IS A THING I HAVE NOW SEEN PLEASE BURN MY EYEBALLS.

Yesterday I managed to put in a DVD, which was a major improvement on the day before but that could have just been my choice of DVD which was Casper. As in the friendly ghost. As in the movie that introduced the star of my teenage dreams, Devon Sawa.

Devon Sawa’s picture, torn carefully from the pages of BOP magazine, held valuable real estate on my wall when I was a tween. I didn’t love him as much as I loved JTT but WHO COULD COMPARE I MEAN REALLY.

Pretty sure I had this exact picture on my wall.

By the time Idle Hands and Final Destination rolled around, I was all, “stop trying to make Devon Sawa happen, he’s not going to happen,” but the mid-90s were the Devon Sawa sweet spot (ew). Now & Then and Casper came out in 1995 and I was fairly obsessed with both of them, mostly because of Devon Sawa. Sawa. Saaaawaaaaa. I really wanted to watch Now & Then yesterday but Netflix took it away and for some reason I don't own it on DVD. WHO AM I?

Luckily, Joe and I were at Target a few weekends ago and when saw Casper in the $5 spot I picked it up without even quite knowing what I was doing. Anyway, my point is, here is my Casper recap:

The movie begins with two young boys breaking into Whipstaff Manor, a creepy ass mansion that’s supposedly haunted, because all creepy ass mansions are haunted. Are these our heroes, who will bravely lead us through a tale of ghouls and restless spirits?

No. We won’t ever see them again, which is a shame, because one of them is Squints from The Sandlot.

Anyway, a ghost shows up and offers to take their picture. Very polite ghost! But the boys are still scared so they run away screaming.

Cut to...Carrigan Crittendon. Carrigan is the terrible human being who has inherited Whipstaff and she is NOT pleased to find out that it’s haunted. She and her assistant, Eric Idle (what are you doing, Eric Idle) call in various people to do some ghostbusting, including an actual Ghostbuster, but none of them can get rid of the ghosts.

That night Casper is watching TV (sure) and sees a story about a ghost psychologist, Professor Harvey, and his daughter, Kat, on Inside Edition. He falls in love with Kat through MOVIE MAGIC so he manipulates Carrigan into calling the ghost psychologist and I can’t believe I just typed “ghost psychologist” twice in the same paragraph. Three times. Whatever.

This is fucking creepy, Casper.

Professor Harvey and Kat are soon on their way to Maine. Kat doesn’t want to go because TEENAGE ENNUI. We learned earlier through EXPOSITION that Harvey’s wife died unexpectedly, and that’s why he has such a hard on for ghosts. LITERALLY (probably). But Kat doesn't believe in ghosts, not even the ghost of her dead mom.

They arrive at Whipstaff and soon find out that, this time, the ghosts are really, really real, specifically Casper and his uncles, Stinky, Stretch, and Fatso. Yes, really. Harvey battles the uncles that night and, even though he sucks them up into a vacuum cleaner, they eventually come to a sort of peace later on because Casper is super nice and the uncles are disgusting and dangerous, sure, but also mostly just rascals. Rascals, I say!

The next day, Kat meets the requisite cute boy at school, who is attached to the requisite bitchy girl who hates Kat for pretty much no reason. STANDARD. When Kat’s class finds out she lives at Whipstaff, they decide to have the school Halloween dance there because SURE. This makes the bitchy girl hate Kat even MORE because now everyone likes Kat.

Meanwhile, Harvey is obsessed with getting Stinky, Stretch, and Fatso to “move on” so the house will be clear and he can get paid, but the uncles would rather fart and burp and mess with Harvey and can you blame them? Eventually, though, they realize they like Harvey and, thinking he needs to have some fun, they take him out to get drunk with the intention of killing him so he can be a ghost, too. OK SURE. They change their mind but wait OH NO he dies anyway. Don’t worry, it’ll be OK. I SAID DON’T WORRY THIS IS A MOVIE ABOUT A CARTOON GHOST.

A REALLY CREEPY CARTOON GHOST.

While this is all happening, Kat is helping Casper remember who he is because I guess when you die, you forget everything about your life? Bummer. He remembers that his dad had a secret underground laboratory that can only be reached by chair-roller-coaster, which I was super jealous of when I watched this as a kid.

They find the Lazarus Machine in the lab which, you guessed it, brings the dead back to life but there’s only enough life-juice (not semen) left for one person. There’s a lot of convoluted stuff about Carrigan trying to kill Eric Idle so he can become a ghost and fly through a vault door in order to get some treasure, but she dies instead and steals the life-juice. Casper and Kat trick her into crossing over, leaving the life-juice for Casper, yay! But no, then Kat’s dead dad shows up and Casper gives HIM the potion because Casper is such a good guy. Kat's really grateful, so maybe this is part of Casper's master plan?

While all of THIS was happening, Kat’s classmates arrived for the dance. Kat goes to join the party and Casper goes to his room to pout, where he is visited by the ghost of Kat’s dead mom, Judge Amy. Judge Amy gives him a “Cinderella deal” and turns him into Devon Sawa, but only until 10 o’clock. He uses this time to ask Kat to dance and then make out (OK just kiss) with her on the dance floor, before turning back into a ghost and scaring the party away. UGH I’M EXHAUSTED.

I know this is a kid’s movie but the plot really started zooming out of control right around the time Casper remembers who he is. Kat’s dad dies super suddenly and I don’t remember being as horrified by this as a child as I was yesterday because poor kid SEES HER DAD AS A GHOST AND HE DOESN’T REMEMBER HER. That's some Arya Stark level trauma right there. Also, why does Judge Amy only give Casper, like, 10 minutes as a real boy? What a bitch. Also also, are Kat and Casper going to have a relationship now? I have a lot of questions about where this whole thing is going. Do you think there’s Casper fanfic? OMG THERE IS CASPER FANFIC. STOP. YOU STOP IT RIGHT NOW, INTERNET, YOU ARE TOO BEAUTIFUL.

Ahem.

This movie was the most romantic shit I'd ever seen when I was but a sweet, innocent tweenager. Come on! A poor dead boy falls in love with a lovely live girl and because he is pure of heart, he gets to become alive again for one special night while the cheesiest song ever plays in the background. I’m pretty sure if I’d recapped this when I was 13, it would read: Haunted house, ghosts, Bill Paxton Pullman, a lot of boring shit happens, DEVON SAWA KISSING.

Seriously, you guys. I can’t even with this:

[this is gross]

A couple of weekends ago, Maxenwald Baxenwald (credit: Heather Anne Hogan) scared the shit out of us.

(WARNING: This will not be the last time I reference shit. This might be too gross for those of you with weak stomachs but I'm not sure there are any of you around here anyway so never mind.)

I woke up around 7:30 that sunny, Saturday morning, got up to go to the bathroom (thinking I'd go right back to bed) and was greeted by a frantic Max whining to go outside. On my way to let him out, I glanced down the stairs to the basement and noticed that he'd pooped on the floor. OH JOY, I thought, WHAT A PLEASANT SATURDAY MORNING ACTIVITY IT WILL BE TO CLEAN UP DOG FECES.

Such is the life of a dog owner, however, so I let Max out and went downstairs to inspect the damage. That's when I saw everything else. Not only had he pooped just...all over, but he'd peed and thrown up twice. I was worried, obviously, but the real gut-punch was when I noticed the blood.

I gasped (like, LITERALLY GASPED) and rushed upstairs to wake Joe. My first impulse was to run into the room and scream, "WAKE UP SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH MAX OH MY GOD WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP," but I didn't want Joe to have a heart attack on top of whatever was happening with Max, so I took a deep breath, gently shook Joe's shoulder, and calmly said, "hey, something's wrong with Max, he has blood in his poop," which is still probably not the best way to wake up but seemed better at the time than my first plan. Joe jumped up and went outside to make sure Max was OK while I called the vet to make an emergency appointment. I had to give Joe the phone, though, because I couldn't stop crying long enough to make the call.

Situations like this really highlight that the whole marriage thing (or couplehood thing or partner thing or WHATEVER THING) is a partnership, a delicate balance of strengths and weaknesses. I was hysterical, worried that something was terribly wrong with Max, while Joe remained calm and tried to calm me down. Considering I don't show emotion if I can help it (unless the emotion is, I don't know, sarcasm?), my breakdown took both of us by surprise.

Joe offered to clean up the mess in the basement, which was very chivalrous, but after I heard him dry heave a few times, I sent him upstairs so we wouldn't have to clean up human puke on top of everything else.

(I suppose this means that if our kids ever do something disgusting with bodily fluids, which I think is a given, I'll be in charge of clean up. Looks like kids are off the table!)

You guys, it was really, really disgusting. I'm pretty OK about stuff like this, blood and puke and snot (oh my!), both from my years of baby-sitting and from having cleaned up Phoebe's barf for years. Hell, once a kid threw up into a bucket while sitting on my lap and I was fine. But the smell...it rivaled the time the basement in my college apartment flooded with sewage and the stench seeped its way into every bit of space available, so there were a few moments where I had to stop and try to think about happier smells. Lilacs and freshly baked pies. Laundry! Sweet, sweet laundry!

Joe and I talked about it later, as we sat in the vet's office, like we were sharing war stories. I explained to Joe how I'd packaged the samples for the vet (they always want poop, what's up with that?) and how I was surprised I'd managed to be so methodical about it (poo in bag in container in another bag PLUS PAPER TOWELS EVERYWHERE), since I'd been sobbing quietly to myself the entire time.

"Well," he said. "You were upset, sure, but you're still a Baxla."

Baxlas are a very logical species, you see. We are methodical in everything we do, whether it's making sandwiches or paying bills or apparently collecting poop for the vet. This logic overpowers even extreme pet-worry-related hysteria and, I can only assume, other emergencies as yet unforeseen, which I think makes us a bunch of Spocks?

Spock loves animals, too.

Max is fine now, of course. He did not enjoy his vet visit (I mean, would you enjoy it if some stranger stuck his finger up your butt*?) but I think he enjoyed recuperating since we fawned all over him even more than usual.

Loving animals makes us fucking stupid. We adopt these pets, bring them into our homes, spend almost as much time with them as we do our significant others, and we do this with the knowledge that this unconditional love is only temporary. If we're lucky, we get our pets for 15 years. If we're very lucky, our pets are healthy for most of those 15 years. And if we're very, very lucky, those 15 years don't fly by at the speed of the Millennium Falcon, which, as you know, made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. So, you know. Make of that what you will. 

*please don't tell me if you would

I don't even know, you guys.

I have this really important project going on right now, which is partly why I haven't written in a while (lies) and that project is: rewatching all the TV shows I loved in high school. So far this project includes: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (DONE), Alias (in progress), Six Feet Under (in progress), and my first love, the TV show that sparked my obsession for so many other shows, The X-Files.

Solid project.

I'm almost through the end of Season 7 and I'm a bit worried that I'll stall out in Season 8, otherwise known as "the season David Duchovny gave up on aliens." My recollections of Seasons 8 and 9 are fuzzy at best, since I think by that point I was only tuning in to fast-forward to any parts where Scully got angsty about Mulder being gone, or any episodes that I knew Mulder would be in which, if I'm remembering correctly, were not very many?

I had even forgotten a lot of stuff about Season 7, which, for someone who used to keep an X-Files scrapbook of every X-Files-related article or picture she found in a magazine/TV Guide/printed-from-the-early-days-of-the-internets, is a big deal. I still have most episode titles memorized. I can still spout all manner of trivia about the series, the factoids plucked from deep recesses of my brain even after I thought I'd forgotten everything. And I still remember almost everything about Seasons 1 - 5, probably because those were the episodes I watched over and over, having taped them all and carefully labeled each VHS before storing them (in order) in a huge plastic bin under my bed. I can't believe how easy watching TV is now. AllI have to do is click a button! Back then you really had to work for it. There was no pausing the show if you had to pee really bad or if you wanted a snack, you had to wait for a commercial. If you taped something and it got messed up, you had to scour the TV Guide to see when it was going to be on again and sometimes you had to wait MONTHS. THINGS ARE SO MAGICAL NOW, YOU GUYS, LET'S CELEBRATE BY WATCHING TV ALL WEEKEND!

My favorite part about rewatching The X-Files is how different my perspective is as an adult ("adult"). Back when I first watched the show, I was obsessed with proving that Mulder and Scully were in love and wanted to have a million babies with each other. OBSESSED. There was this whole other internet world at the time, a world housed in AOL chatrooms and message boards, a world of Shippers and NoRoMos (no romance), where it was very, very important to choose a side and defend that side until you, I don't know, DIED. No, wait, actually that internet doesn't sound much different than today's internet.

Upon rewatch, though, it just doesn't seem as important. Not because I don't care or anything, PERISH THE THOUGHT. But maybe because I already know they end up together (um, spoiler alert?) or maybe because, DUH, it's so obvious that they're in love.

Nature cuddling.

Anyway, that's not what I came here to talk about. No, this is much more important. I was watching a late Season 7 episode last night, Hollywood A.D., which some of you (one of you?) may remember was written and directed by David Duchovny. He also wrote and directed The Unnatural, which starred Jesse L. Martin (DREAMY) as an alien who just wanted to play baseball. This was also the episode where David Duchovny firmly placed himself in the Shipper Camp.

Just normal coworker stuff.

I found myself wondering about the timing of Hollywood A.D., as there is a 16 month timejump at one point, and how it fit into the timeline of all things, the episode that aired two weeks before Hollywood A.D., an episode written and directed by Gillian Anderson in which it's heavily implied that Mulder and Scully finally do sex. (Oh, hey, also? If you want to start a war between Shippers and NoRoMos on AOL X-Files message boards, just heavily imply something like that.)

Anyway again, that's not what I came here to talk about. As I was watching Hollywood A.D., there is a bit where Scully is with the para-scientist (or something), and they're trying to hear music/sounds from a really old bowl (doesn't matter, just go with it). At one point, Scully tells him something that BLOWS HIS MIND and he says, "bazinga." He totally does. I KNOW.

Now, I don't watch The Big Bang Theory, though I don't harbor the animosity toward it that others (JOE) do, but it's a popular enough show that I'm familiar with the catchphrase "bazinga." I did some Googling (obviously) and I'm not the first to have noticed this, but as far as I can tell, no one from TBBT has addressed the connection. I didn't dig too deep, really, because...well...I don't care that much, but I do like the idea of Sheldon getting it from The X-Files because he's an X-Phile (BAM). Kind of like Xander from Buffy exclaiming, "Shpadoinkle!" (it happened at the end of Season 5, I just can't find video) because apparently he's a big Matt Stone and Trey Parker fan.

So anyway, clearly I watch too much TV. Next time we can talk about Six Feet Under and Can't Hardly Wait, which are more connected than one might think. GET EXCITED.

"Society teaches us that having feelings and crying is bad and wrong. Well, that's baloney, because grief isn't wrong. There's such a thing as good grief. Just ask Charlie Brown."

I don't know if you guys have heard, but The Office is ending tonight. I haven’t seen anything on the internet about it, so I wanted to make sure you all knew.

I have mixed feelings about the show ending. I'm having feelings all over the place, really, as I sit here eating lunch at my sad desk in my drab office (womp womp). Part of me is happy that the show is being put out of its misery, though this past season has been pretty damn fun, Pam and Jim drama aside because THAT SHIT WAS STRESSFUL. But most of me is like, "NO MY FRIENDS WHERE ARE YOU GOING I'M GOING TO MISS YOU SO MUCH NOOOOOOOOO."

It is a truth universally acknowledged (on this blog) that I get far too attached to fictional characters. So when my favorite TV shows end, I tend to feel things a little too much. Sometimes I think I feel more deeply for fictional happenings than I do for most things that happen in my actual life but that is a (far longer) post for a different day. Long story short (heh), I'm Abed, basically, only not as skinny or Y-chromosomey.



Anyway. Long-time readers may remember my fascination obsession with The Office. It began as so many love affairs do. There was a chance meeting on a random Thursday night and our instant connection turned into a deep affection that lasted years. I was in love from Season 1. I bought it on DVD and made Heidi watch it so I'd have someone else to talk about it with, not having yet found anyone IRL who loved the show as much as I did.

The most important part of the show at that time, for my perpetually-single (or-embroiled-in-unrequited-love) self was the relationship between Pam and Jim. I, like so many others, was deeply invested in whether Pam and Jim would ever end up together. So when they did, it gave me hope, it really did, that things would eventually work out for me, too. (I told you I put far too much investment in fictional relationships.)

I mentioned on Tumblr that last week's episode of The Office, especially that moment when Jim gave Pam the letter he'd written her so many years ago, gave me a lot of feelings. Sometimes it feels like I grew up with Jim and Pam. Not the growing up you do when you, like, go through puberty or whatever, but the growing up you’re forced into when you leave home, get your first job, and have to learn how to do things like pay bills on time and navigate the complicated relationships that come with adulthood . When the show started, I had just moved out of my parents' house, I was working at my first "real" job, but I was still a kid. I don't always feel like an adult now but, like Pam and Jim, I've grown up a lot (sometimes more than I'd like).

When Pam and Jim got married, Joe and I had been together for a little over a year. We watched that episode separately, as we weren't yet living together, but talked on the phone immediately after. We were both emotional, having, I suppose, both identified with Jim and/or Pam at more than one point in our lives. We weren't engaged yet (though we would be two months later) but I knew at some point Joe and I would get married. I’d known for a while. Jim and Pam were just paving the way for us.



We haven't yet followed Pam and Jim to Kid-Land (that place is terrifying) but who knows what the future holds? Pam and Jim made marriage less scary (until this season, geez) so maybe they can do the same for having kids. Only time will tell, I suppose.

Though I lost interest the last couple of seasons, I never really stopped caring about The Office. I kept up with it, even after at least two episodes that should have ended the series (Pam and Jim getting married and Michael Scott leaving). Though the quality went downhill, and I wished more than once for the show's demise, I'm sad to see it go. I'm going to miss my standing Thursday night date with my friends at Dunder-Mifflin and I'm glad I stuck around for Jim and Pam’s journey, even through random Baby #2 (what is that kid’s name?) and Brian the Book Mike Guy. I guess what I’m saying is, I'd follow Jim and Pam anywhere, even if it's to say good-bye. And it's going to be really, really hard.

Also, Joe doesn't believe me, but "khaleesi" is really fun to say. Khaleesi khaleesi khaleesi.

Every morning, I get to work and make myself a To Do list for the day. Or I make it the night before. Or I have stuff leftover from the previous day and THAT'S my To Do list. IT DOESN'T MATTER, my point is, I always have a To Do list of stuff. Just always.

After spending the morning doing everything BUT things actually on my list, I looked at my sad little uncrossed-off list and started adding things I'd already done just so I could cross stuff off. I wish I could tell you that this doesn't happen often but I'm trying not to be such a liar because Joe doesn't like it when I tell him stuff like, I don't know, that I speak Urdu, which is the lie I told him BEFORE WE EVEN MET because Natalie Portman taught me that lying is adorable.

I guess my point is that I don't have one, I just haven't written anything in YEARS and so this is me. Writing stuff. And throwing it all over the internet. Hi, Internet!

So here's something you may not know about, I don't know, LIFE. It turns out that if you spend all of Sunday watching Game of Thrones, the weekend goes really, really quickly. Also, here is some advice. If you're at the store because you tried to rent movies but you've A) seen all the good ones or B) don't feel like delving into the insanity that is Tree of Life on a Saturday night, and you decide instead that what you'd really rather watch is Game of Thrones so you stop getting spoiled about everything and finally figure out what the deal is with this Joffrey puke, but the library never has Game of Thrones in because everyone else wants to watch it, too, and the video store (Sidebar: Why do you call it the video store when they no longer have videos? Discuss.) never has it either or they have every disc BUT THE FIRST ONE so, yeah, obviously your only option is to buy it but when you get to the store, they only have the blu-ray version which is way more expensive (probably?), so you decide to be responsible and only get the first season instead of seasons one AND two, and I'm just here to tell you, go ahead and buy the second season while you're there, screw responsible, because what's going to happen is you'll spend Saturday night and Sunday morning watching the first season and then you'll realize you're going to run out of show before you run out of Sunday, so your husband is going to have to go out and buy the second season while you sit and fret about whether the store will still have it and so, to make yourself feel better, you sing the song you made up about Game of Thrones that goes (to the tune of the Lord of the Rings music): Game. Of. Thrones. It's the game, it's the game, it's the game, it's the game. It's the Game. Of. Thrones.

Which is a TERRIBLE song, way worse than the Doctor Who song you made up that just goes: Doctor Whoooooooooooooooo, Doctor Whoooooooooooooo, Doctor Who, Doctor Who... and so on.

So I guess my point is, now we're watching Game of Thrones, which is really cutting into my rewatching The X-Files project, but I will make that sacrifice because KHALEESI'S GOT DRAGONS Y'ALL!

why I volunteer

Yesterday, I took a different way home from work and drove past Oak Tree Corner. Oak Tree Corner is housed in a yellow Cape Cod, situated on a busy corner in Oakwood, the yard full of happy little trees and bright flowers. There’s a sign on the side that reads, “a place for grieving children.” This is my sixth year of volunteering there.

Oak Tree Corner was founded in 1996 as a place for grieving children and families to find some sort of comfort. Volunteers, or group facilitators, gather twice a month and lead groups of children in activities designed to facilitate discussion about their grief. I work with the youngest group, the Littles, usually aged 4-6, though there are also two other groups, the Middles and Teens. The parents meet in a separate group, led by another volunteer. All volunteers go through an extensive and, at times, emotionally exhausting training before leading these groups.

Whenever new volunteers start at Oak Tree Corner, they just observe on their first night. It can be overwhelming. Sure, there’s the training, but there’s always some anxiety, especially just starting out, when faced with a group of grieving children. “Will I say the wrong thing?” (Probably not, especially if you let the kids do most of the talking, which is what you’re supposed to do anyway.) “What if someone cries?” (Surprisingly, this hardly ever happens.) “I can’t do this.” (Yes. You can.)

After group, the volunteers gather to share their experiences from the night. On nights when we have new volunteers, the old volunteers take turns sharing why they decided to volunteer with Oak Tree Corner. I always say some variation of the same thing. I heard about Oak Tree Corner from a co-worker. I’d been looking for a place to volunteer where I wouldn’t be relegated to answering phones or stuffing envelopes, ideally working kids, and this seemed perfect. I was a bit nervous that I would be dealing with children in the midst of the grieving process, but it’s been life changing. It really has.

As I drove by Oak Tree Corner yesterday, I really thought about my answer to that question. How rote it’s become and how it’s the real answer, sure, but, since I’m emotionally closed-off with near strangers, it’s not the real real answer. It’s not the cheesy, gooey-center-of-my-heart answer.

I like my job but, most days, I don’t usually feel like I’m really making the world a better place. On the best days, I get to offer someone a job. That’s a good feeling. But, for the most part, I’m not changing lives.

Yesterday, some asshole blew up the Boston Marathon. I, like most people, followed along in horror, on Twitter, on Facebook, on the everlasting suck-cycle that is our news media, my stomach sinking as each new piece of information came in. Yet, in the aftermath of this terror, Patton Oswalt posted the following on Facebook:

Boston. Fucking horrible.

I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, "Well, I've had it with humanity."

But I was wrong. I don't know what's going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.

But here's what I DO know. If it's one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness.

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago.

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, "The good outnumber you, and we always will."

And I thought...THAT is why I volunteer. I want to be a part of Oswalt’s vast majority. I want to make the world a better place, in my own tiny way, even if it’s only by volunteering two days a month. It’s often difficult to measure our successes at Oak Tree Corner. It’ll most likely be years or, you know, NEVER before we know if anything we say or do benefits the children we work with. But I have to believe it does. I have to believe in trying to make the world a little brighter, in doing my part to tip the scales to Good. I have to believe that Oak Tree Corner, this small shining light, is really just one of many, a million stars brightening the night sky.

We should BUY A BAR.

Lately, I’ve been trying this new thing where I write a post and then let it sit for a day (or at least half a day) and revise it later. It’s much different than how I used to post things to my blog. I would just open Blogger, spew my word vomit into a draft, MAYBE read it a couple of times, and then hit publish.

So now I write something and try to forget about it for a bit. Which is nice. But it also leads to a new problem. I now catch myself just writing any old thing, really letting the stream of consciousness thing get away from me, and thinking, “oh, don’t worry about what you’re writing right now, Future!Jennie can fix it,” which is great and all, at the time, but I eventually turn into Future!Jennie and wish I hadn’t left a mess of words on my hands.

I guess, if nothing else, Future!Jennie is at least a day or two smarter than me, so that’s something.

This is a common occurrence, really, and not just with writing. I pretty much live my life by a code and that code is, “I’ll worry about it later.” AND BOY DO I. Here are some things I’ve worried about in the last 24 hours:

1. Whether Max sleeps too much.

2. What Phoebe's meows mean. Is she in pain? Hungry? Lonely?

3. Where Joe was, because he wasn’t home yet and OMG WHAT IF HE GOT IN A CAR ACCIDENT AND DIDN’T HAVE HIS PHONE OR WALLET AND THEY HAD NO IDEA WHO HE WAS.

4. Whether pulling a muscle in my neck while doing NOTHING means that I have a debilitating illness of some kind.

5. The stray(ish) cats that live in our neighborhood, namely one gray cat with giant balls (important detail) that used to hang out in our yard who I haven’t seen since the beginning of the winter. :(

6. That the deer who came back to our street are too cold at night. I wanted to put out some blankets but Joe wouldn’t let me. HE THINKS THEY LIVE IN A CAVE.

7. That I’ll bite into a carrot wrong and chip a tooth.

8. That if I can’t log into our bank accounts, it means someone has hacked us and stolen our identities, not that I typed my password wrong.

9. That River Song is going to show back up on Doctor Who. 

10. Life, The Universe, and Everything, obviously.

Aren’t you glad you’re not me right now? One might think, that if someone was prone to worrying about everything in the world, she might be more responsible about planning ahead and not procrastinating on everything in her life, but you’d be wrong. It’s the procrastination that leads to excessive worrying but if I didn’t have all this stuff to worry about, how would I spend my time? Productively? Perish that thought!

Last night, on my way to volunteering, I was complaining to my mom about how my day was so busy and I had to use my lunch break to put together my volunteering activity. She very wisely pointed out that the only reason I’d had to use my lunch break was because I’d procrastinated. I could have very easily come up with an activity over the weekend or last week or FREAKING WHENEVER, but did I? (No, obviously. Weren’t you listening just now?)

I’ve always been this way. In elementary school, I used to put off doing my homework each night until the last possible minute, and sometimes that minute was after bedtime, when I’d then sneak into the bathroom next to my bedroom and do my homework in the light of the bathroom nightlight. I can remember standing in line at school in the morning, waiting behind the other kids, to hand in my spelling book or whatever, and quickly finishing the assignment WHILE IN THE LINE. WTF?

I guess it’s comforting to know I’ve always been this way and will probably always be this way and it’s OK, because it’s who I am and I’d probably be even worse at being someone else. So I’ll just continue to let Future!Jennie worry about everything and deal with the consequences later. It’s probably not healthy but at least I’m not alone.