I Know You Want To See Me Naked, But Why?

27 Aug 2014 2 Comments

by Love, Jimmie in Health, Philanthropy Tags: , ,

When I was in high school, I was asked repeatedly by all the boys “to please, pretty please, I’m begging you, please enter a wet t-shirt contest and let me be a judge.” I was breastacularly blessed, remember.

Then when I was in college I got myself and all my friends free admission into an all-male review by promising to enter the wet t-shirt contest they were holding before the show. Not only was our admission fee waived, but we all got free t-shirts. Somehow the one they gave me was a size too small. I’m sure that was an honest mistake on their part.

A few years later I had breast reduction surgery which took my hoots down from “don’t lie on your back for any length of time or you’ll expire from suffocation” to “still larger than normal but no longer a freak show.” I’ve been thrilled with that change ever since as I like air and not having a hunchback.

Now that I have reached the age of 42 and gravity has begun its work and my hoots are of a size that allow me to breathe regularly, we’ve cycled back to the “please post a video of yourself in public in a wet t-shirt, I’m begging you.” I don’t know why everyone wants to see that but it seems they do. Sort of.

I was nominated for the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. And like I’ve done every single, solitary time I’ve been asked (I lied to those people at the all-male review – I never entered the contest), I’m denying you your wet t-shirt.

I’ll give you instead $100 spread over five charities that can really use the money.

ALS – because they started the whole thing

Parkinson’s – Robin Williams, I’d take every laugh you ever gave me and give them all back to you if it would have made you happy inside

Ovarian Cancer Research Fund – for Erica, a woman I never met but one I called friend

MS Society – because my ex-Roomie who is also my still-Cousin is pedaling his ass off for this

San Diego Children’s Heart Institute – for Emily, Woney’s daughter, who died at age eight

I won’t challenge anyone for the ALS Ice Bucket but only because I want to challenge you for other things. Find something you are passionate about and give your time and money there. No matter what your story, you are better off than someone else. Prove it. Go give a donation. Go make someone’s day.

How I Take A Pill, By Jimmie

26 Aug 2014 2 Comments

by Love, Jimmie in In Which I Throw Myself Under The Bus Tags: ,

Step One: Notice prescription lying on bathroom counter.

Step Two: Notice lack of water glass with which to swallow pill.

Step Three: Walk into kitchen to retrieve water glass.

Step Four: Notice granola box sitting on kitchen counter.

Step Five: Remember that lunch needs to be packed for the next day.

Step Six: Realize that lunch bag was left in vehicle in the garage.

Step Seven: Retrieve lunch bag.

Step Eight: While filling tiny container with granola for next day’s snack, have discussion with roommate about painting class we want to take.

Step Nine: Realize that dishwasher needs emptying in order to have enough containers to transport next day’s lunch.

Step Ten: Unload dishwasher while continuing to chat with roommate.

Step Eleven: Sigh a frustrated sigh when realize that all glasses were put into the cabinets in cleaning frenzy, not leaving a single one out with which to take a pill.

Step Twelve: Retrieve glass.

Step Thirteen: Trip over Murphy (Murphy!).

Step Fourteen: Give kitty-varmints treats because Seamus looks so cute as he fake winds himself around my legs and because Murphy won’t shut it.

Step Fifteen: While putting treats away, realize that that the dining room table is disgraceful in its messiness.

Step Sixteen: Busily remove things from dining room table, leaving a pile of stuff for roommate to take upstairs when she goes.

Step Seventeen: Decide to run the stuff upstairs myself so I can retrieve painting from the last painting class I took and show it to roommate.

Step Eighteen: Roommate and I look over painting class offerings for the next few weeks.

Step Nineteen: Wind down conversation with roommate and make noises about hitting the sack for the night.

Step Twenty: Roommate and I retire to our respective bedrooms.

Step Twenty-One: Select book for the evening.

Step Twenty-Two: Fluff pillows and smooth sheets.

Step Twenty-Three: Crawl into bed and lie on fluffed pillows, comforter pulled up to the neck.

Step Twenty-Four: Adjust position in bed so that Murphy can hog an entire pillow.

Step Twenty-Five: Move to other side of bed when Murphy decides he wants entire left set of pillows to hog.

Step Twenty-Six: Read two chapters of selected reading.

Step Twenty-Seven: Read two chapters of the Gospel of John.

Step Twenty-Eight: Turn off light when eyelids get heavy.

Step Twenty-Nine: Snore.

Step Thirty: Wake up from a dead sleep, fling covers back disrupting Murphy from his sweet, sweet slumber as he hogs all six of my pillows, holler “You’ve GOT to be kidding me!”, stomp into the kitchen, retrieve glass from counter, stomp into the bathroom, retrieve water, retrieve pill, swallow pill with water, stomp back to bed in a huff, fling covers over self and curl up in angry ball because realize self is a moron who can do nothing in a linear fashion. Ever.

Thirty short steps to good physical health. Easy Peasy.

The end.

Mississippi Woney

21 Aug 2014 Leave a comment

by Love, Jimmie in I'm Going Somewhere, Outings Tags: ,

Woney used to live in California. Remember that? Remember that she used to work with her hottie hot hot trainer, Tony, who incidentally is no longer enlisted in the Navy? That means he no longer wears that hottie hot hot uniform and I no longer wish to speak about him. What a disappointment.

Anyway, Woney used to live in California and I used to visit her with some regularity. This is what a visit to California Woney looked like.

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Now Woney lives in Mississippi and I still visit her with some regularity. Mississippi is a far cry from California and now our visits look like this.

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The only non-blurry picture of Boo

The only non-blurry picture of Boo

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Accessorizing your home with a vehicle of matching paint is important.

Visits to Mississippi Woney also look like this – a much better representation of her new city.

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This is the Vicksburg Military Park. The Battle of Vicksburg was fought here, and that combined with the siege for the city served as a turning point for the Civil War. It was here that the Union Army gained control of the Mississippi River and the Confederate Army lost all communication with their Confederate forces. You can read all about that in any American history book but what you cannot experience is how it feels to walk on that land. Woney and I did that twice this visit, and I spent a lot of time afterwards feeling somber and heavy. A lot of lives were lost there. It wasn’t just sadness I was feeling – it was reverence, too. Those men – oh, it just makes my heart ache.

If you can take the oppressive heat and humidity, try going to visit Vicksburg on July 4th. It’s impressive what that city does to honor those lost lives. It will break your heart.

Because we forgot to take a Mississippi selfie on the battlefield or at the pool, here’s an old California selfie of Woney and me. We are the cutest.

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Stuff I’ve Read and Stories I’ve Heard – Snippets from Jimmie’s Life

07 Aug 2014 Leave a comment

by Love, Jimmie in Aack!, Home Improvement, This Will Probably Get Me In Trouble Tags: , , ,

A couple of weeks ago, I received a phone call from Thor.

“Jimmie, I was thinking it’s time to take better care of myself, and I remember someone saying that they cook once a week for the whole week. Is that you?”

“It is me,” I said, “and if you like I can tell you about it or you could just come over and cook with me one Sunday afternoon. I’ll send you home with lots of food.”

“That’d be great,” Thor said, and we made a plan.

A week later, Thor relegated a group of his friends with the story of how he recently melted his microwave.

“I had a pan of oil on the stove, see, and I had it pretty hot. I left the room for just a minute and when I wandered back into the kitchen I saw the fire in the pan. I panicked, of course, and vaguely remembered my mom telling me that grease fires need to be smothered. With flour.”

At this point in the story everyone in the room sucked in a collective horrified gasp.

“Yep,” he nodded, “exactly. Turns out flour is one of the most flammable materials out there, and I’ve since learned that the amount of flour I used to put out my fire is pretty much the equivalent to two sticks of dynamite. So I melted the microwave and had an entire weekend of grease fire/smoke clean up. Want to see the pictures?” And then he passed around his phone with the evidence of his handiwork.

For the record, Thor has been de-invited from my house for a mass cooking lesson, and you put out grease fires with baking soda.

A few days later, I went for a walk on my Greenway, and when I was going around the last bend, almost at the end of the path, I ran across a gigantic, enormous, humongous snake. I’m not one to freak out about a snake really, but this snake was hogging almost the whole path. That snake and I stared each other down for a while and I conceded by waiting for another person to step over the snake before I attempted it. Once I was across it, I congratulated myself. “At least it wasn’t a giant spider,” I said in a soothing manner to myself. “I can handle a snake, but no giant spiders.”

That night as I checked my social media, I ran across this post from one of my friends, Chelsea.

I think everybody has that moment in life when they see a spider so big that they’re in disbelief that they’re seeing it in real life and not in a picture or through a TV screen. I just had that moment. I doused it in bug spray. That didn’t work. It just kept standing still and waited as I sprayed it. Like, “Are you done?” . . . . and then started crawling again. This happened a few times. So finally I grabbed a wooden chair and did the inevitable . . . I went to work. After breaking the chair and a fingernail in the process . . . I believe it is finished. Unrecognizable by even its own mother. Sorry, dear arachnids. I guess I don’t love you.

I shrieked, threw my phone, then retrieved it to tentatively tap out a message to Chelsea telling her what a brave, brave soul she is.

And finally, I received this text from Roxanne yesterday:

I’ve been at work for two hours and JUST realized I’m wearing two different shoes.

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I seriously have like, the best friends.

The Cutest Boy In The Whole World: Or, Why You Should Lay Off The Water Consumption In Times Of Crisis

01 Aug 2014 Leave a comment

by Love, Jimmie in A Boy, I'm Such A Girl, In Which I Throw Myself Under The Bus Tags: ,

I had dinner with Daisy last night. She and I are on this shopping kick lately, which is weird because I love it but Daisy hates it. I figure that our shopping together should bring us to some happy medium wherein when we need stuff we don’t spend our entire paychecks at Ann Taylor Loft (my preference) but we aren’t going naked to our jobs either (not quite her preference but maybe preferred over shopping). After we shop we usually eat something because shopping really takes it out of you, dontcha know, and while I’m speaking about our kicks lately, I’m on a water one. I’ve not had a Diet Coke in such a long time that I don’t remember the last one and there’s only so much unsweetened tea you can drink without having Austin Powers teeth. Plus, we got this new ice machine at work that makes Sonic ice and I spend the better part of a day trotting up and down the hall to get cupfuls of ice water. Anyway, the whole point I’m trying to make in my meandering way is that last night I had dinner and with dinner I had a lot of water and after dinner I used the restroom facilities approximately eight times and then I went home.

On my way home I ran into a slight snafu in the form of a flat tire. I’ve never had that happen before but like every other major car hurdle I’ve encountered this year (four, not counting this one), I was prepared for it. As I am a self-reliant, empowered female, I whipped out my phone and dialed my trusty Verizon Roadside Assistance people. I ordered myself up a tire change and was promised that my wait would be a mere 65 minutes. With an audible sigh, I said thank you to Cheryl and disconnected. I then caught up with all my friends on Facebook, took a picture of a deer, and dug a book out of my back seat to settle in for a long read.

Deer

Deer

While I read and social media-ed, Daisy frantically texted me. “Should I drive out there? I can wait with you. Don’t open your door for strangers. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I assured her, and I was except I had this niggling feeling in my bladder that it might be a little too full from all the water. I ignored it because while I do like attention, I’m not particularly fond of the kind you get when blurred pictures of your naked behind appear on the 10:00 news with the headline, “Bank employee caught with her pants down after urinating on I-40 – story coming up next!” Plus I had been to the bathroom eight times already and as I reasoned with myself last night, that should have been plenty.

Seems that it wasn’t.

By the time my knight in shining steel arrived, I was about to bust a gut. “I hate water!” I moaned. “I’ll never drink it again! Stupid ice machine!” “Bring me a mayonnaise jar,” I texted to Daisy. “Open your car doors and squat down between them,” suggested my family. “Just find a bathroom already,” yelled my bladder. I am 42 years old. I should not be doing the pee pee dance on the side of the interstate, mere miles from my home. I should have outgrown that by age seven. Ridiculous.

When my RA guy came, he said with a grin, “You doing alright?”

“Sure,” I said, furiously digging around in my trunk for my spare tire in an effort to hurry him along. “I just have to pee in the worst way, naturally, and while in theory I know how to change a tire, I’ve never actually done it. Plus I’m in a dress and my nails are finally all the same length.” In the time it took me to say all that, Mike, the cutest boy in the whole world, already had my car jacked up and my spare tire at the ready, rendering all my futzing around useless and unnecessary.

Cutest Boy

Cutest Boy

“Is your parking brake on?” he asked.

“No, should it be?” I replied and when he said “Please,” I gingerly trotted around to the window to yank the brake on.

It took Mike three minutes to change my tire. Three minutes. That’s less time than it takes me to put on mascara every morning. That’s less time than it takes me to brush and floss my teeth. That’s less time than I spend on one bathroom break, of which I had already had eight and was desperately longing for another. He was frightfully efficient and very handy with a car jack and as I stated before, the cutest boy in the whole world.

Dead Tire

Dead Tire

It took two more minutes for me to sign the necessary paperwork, get his card, tell him I was going to write about him, explain my new love affair with water and the ice machine at work, explain how that water and ice were now affecting my life in dramatic and unwelcome ways, tell him that luffed him for ever and ever for saving me, and then beg his permission to leave for the bathroom.

“Yeah, I know, it adds insult to injury, doesn’t it, when you get stranded with no bathroom,” he grinned and then ambled back to his vehicle.

I leapt into my car, cranked the motor and squealed off with the parking brake still on. I threw my hand out the window as a thank you and a good-bye and only halfway home remembered to release the brake. I cannot imagine why my car has issues, can you?

As I arrived home I hollered to the animals as I wrenched open the door, “Get outcha way, get outcha way! I have to pee! Move, cats!” I tripped over Murphy (Murphy!) and nearly died but made it to the bathroom where I peed for three minutes. Longer than it took for Mike to change my tire. As I had plenty of time for reflection while I did my business, I thought back to my interaction with Mike. He was super friendly, incredibly efficient, gracious and kind. He made it to my rescue in 15 minutes, 50 minutes faster than the time I was promised. I barely remember what he looks like but I’m certain he was the cutest boy in the whole world, just really lovely.

Call these people if you often get stranded

Call these people if you often get stranded

Mike, if you ever read this, thank you. Thank you for being so nice and for not making fun of me to my face for my pee pee dance and for changing my tire like a boss. If we ever run across each other, you’ll have to reintroduce yourself to me, though, because while I am certain that I am 100% accurate in calling you the cutest boy in the whole world, I have no recollection of your face. It’s the water. I cannot help it.

Special thanks also to Cheryl at Verizon for being so nice to me, to the good Samaritan who backed his car half a mile down the interstate shoulder to check on me, and to my friend Casey who offered to rescue me. What fabulous people you are!