Monday, September 27, 2010

The Time I Stress Ate Cupcakes

This is a simple story. One with a beginning, middle and an end. It does not have many characters or plot twists. But it makes me laugh. It all started when I woke up and realized I'd left my computer charger in Buena, NJ...

I had spent the night at a friend's house in Buena, NJ, about an hour and 15 minute drive from my house in Bryn Mawr, PA. I immediately decided I had to drive there and pick up the charger. It's my only one. And I am kind of connected to this computer like mothers are connected to their unborn children. So naturally, since my digital umbilical cord was stretched 60 miles across 2 states, I needed to go retrieve the laptop charger.

On the 6% of battery I had left, I looked up directions and transcribed them into a tiny notebook I had handy. My roommate and her Mom had baked about 48 cupcakes to test several recipes for vanilla cake, so I decided to bring some to my friend's family, since I was going there anyway. I grabbed a plate, stacked a few on it (7 to be exact) and bid my roommate a fond farewell, taking her car keys, my tiny notebook, my phone and the plate of cupcakes.

About 15 minutes into my drive, I hadn't even made it into Philadelphia yet, and my friend Susan called me. We began chatting. Not just chit chat about friends, but real serious chats about eating disorders (OH IF WE ONLY KNEW WHAT WAS TO COME), body image, love and life. We kept chatting as I merged onto the highway that goes through Center City Philadelphia and as I drove over the bridge. I am not sure if it is illegal to talk on the phone in Pennsylvania while driving, but I was doing it with gusto. I didn't really feel hampered until I had crossed the bridge into New Jersey at 45 mph and saw about 13 signs, all with different arrows.

Staying on the phone with Susan, but getting very worked up about where I was going, I piloted the car onto the left-most road. I think it said something about Atlantic City. I knew Buena was on the way to AC. This felt safe. My directions then said the road I was on would turn into Route 42. I drove, while talking to Susan, and drove some more...but no Route 42. I began to get increasingly anxious.

I told Susan I needed to go. She bid me good luck.

I screeched the tires right off the highway at the nearest exit and tried to navigate back to the opposite side of the road. I made it, but was hoping on a wing and a prayer that it would take me back to the bridge. It was then I felt I needed a cupcake.

I wasn't hungry. I wasn't light-headed. I wasn't actually in the mood to eat at all fifteen minutes prior. There was just something about getting lost that directly translated in my head to:

PUT A CUPCAKE IN YOUR MOUTH AND SWALLOW.

So I did. I ate a cupcake in about 2 bites. AND THEN I ATE ANOTHER ONE.

I partially blame the ease of eating two cupcakes in one minute on their lack of wrappers. Had they had wrappers, I wouldn't have so easily been able to pop them in my mouth. But I did. And I won't lie, they were very tasty cupcakes.

But I then had to call my best friend Bob and tell him that under the gun of getting lost, I ate two cupcakes for no reason other than being anxious. He told me to get the hell off the phone, concentrate on driving and not to eat any more cupcakes. I obliged.

I ended up making it to Buena. I got my cord with no problem. I even had a plate of 5 cupcakes to give my friend's family. AND THEY NEVER KNEW THERE WERE SEVEN TO BEGIN WITH.

Only you know that. You, me, the internet, and Bob. And those poor, poor cupcakes. Who were meant to live a life of giftdom and instead died a fiery death of stress-induced-eating. But I think they served their purpose.

Maybe without eating two cupcakes, I would have clawed my eyes out or punched a hole in the window. Who KNOWS what other forms stress can take if not through eating? The next time you stand at the counter, shoving pretzels into your mouth at the end of a stressful day, be glad you're not kicking your dog. Or ripping off your screen door. We're saving lives here, people. Don't ever forget it.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

How Killing Spiders is (95% of the Time) Not as Scary as You Think It Will Be

You know that feeling. Or maybe you don't. Maybe you're brave and calm and lethal. Maybe you're a quiet pacifist and also brave and calm. Maybe the feelings of dread and terror have never enveloped your soul and threatened to completely evict said soul from your chest cavity (because that's where souls live). This dread and terror, often accompanied by a HUGE dose of adrenaline, physical pain, loud shrieks, swear words and/or gibberish and a exceptionally large amount of second-guessing my next move ALWAYS comes upon me when I see a spider in my home or somewhere indoors. Sometimes, even when I see a spider outside.

Let me explain.

Dread and terror. This comes from the feeling that the spider I see is going to do one of two things. Hurt me or disappear somewhere quickly where it will hide so it can later come back when I am least suspecting it and...hurt me. These feelings are always proportional to the size of the spider and the thickness of its legs and body.

Adrenaline. The adrenaline is a by-product of the fear and terror. It's not always there. But mostly it is. When I pulled out the cat litter bag last weekend to fill the boxes up, a giant spider fell between my feet. I saw it and immediately lept off of the edge of the toilet where I'd been perched to across the bathroom and half out the door...IN ONE SWIFT MOTION. I'm not that coordinated when I'm not terrified. It has to be adrenaline. In fact, were I to ever run a marathon, it might help to have spiders along the way, leering at me from perches above me. So I'll run a marathon in the Amazon! Done and done.

Physical pain. This is a little more rare than the adrenaline. It is usually caused by a swift motion performed immediately upon seeing the spider OR during the catching and killing phase, when the spider unexpectedly drops, moves, falls, jumps, etc. It's not that I always bump my head or punch myself in the throat or any of those things (which it sometimes is), but more like an internal compression of all things important, so as to try to become smaller, tougher, more condensed and thus less prone to spider-related injuries.

Loud shrieks. And swearing/gibberish. These kind of go hand in hand. They are often one loud string like: noise-word-noise-kind-of-a-word-noise-louder-noise. I am not, nor have I ever been, a particularly quiet girl. This especially goes for times when I am surprised. It's not the being scared part that makes me yell. I have been scared plenty of times where I have kept quiet. Times as scary as spinning down I-87 in a blizzard! Or, you know, while making my way through a really sketchy part of Brooklyn at 4AM. I am abundantly good at being quiet while scared. But when something jumps out at me and I become surprised + scared? Well, then, my brain doesn't even enter into it. My eyes are connected to my mouth at that point and they cause me to pronounce the most helpful and logical thing that would accompany what just surprised me. Which, the last time I saw a giant spider was, (approx.) "AGHHHJESUS HELP ME HELP ME WAHHHHHHHTHEF*CK JESUS!" So you can see, I've definitely got a system for effectively communicating my needs and concerns to those around me in times of peril.

Second-guessing my next move. I would like to say that I am confident in most everything I do. And that holds true for most things. But when faced with something which, as I mentioned before, could either hurt me OR RUN/JUMP/FLEE to a location where it will remain until it decides to come out and hurt me even worse, I find that no course of action seems strong enough to rid my life of this destructive and terrifying creature IMMEDIATELY. I usually grab tissues first or toilet paper or a paper towel, then think- No! Wait! If I go to grab it, it could bite me through the paper with its spider fangs! So then I go for something larger. A shoe. A book. Something hard and solid. But then I think - No! Wait! What if it jumps just as I go to hit it! I'll miss it and make it angry! So then...I double up. I get tissues and a book and then I'm just uncoordinated and trying to double team the spider and end up squishing it into a corner and it's legs are flailing around and I'm screaming at the top of my lungs and the poor thing gets the worst last vision of all: Me, wild-eyed and confused by the mess I've made, stabbing repeatedly at it with a tissue, screaming for Mother Mary.

As I mentioned before, size and weight of the spider are huge factors in my fear. The tiny "whisper spiders" as I call them (those ones who look like nothing but cobwebs til you get up REAL CLOSE and see - oh yup! That is a spider), I have nothing against. I even let them live sometimes! In my home! I figure they can do all the good spider work, while their larger, beefier counterparts who probably are the ACTUAL ones eating the beetles and mosquitoes and flies, can die by my hand. Or my roommate's hand.

Like the time I beckoned her down to the basement. There was a massive black spider hidden among some old lint pieces from the dryer. It made sense to me that the spider would reside in the lint, as that seems comfortable and a nice place to transition from web to ground. (I think about how spiders think sometimes. It doesn't get me very far, but it does get me anxious.) She came down, obligingly, with a roll of paper towels. Two for squishage, and the remainder for clean up, since I did stress how GIANT this spider was. As she walked closer, I was truly impressed by her bravery. She wasn't even wielding a paper towel yet! She leaned down to the floor, leaned in slightly closer, stood back up and turned around.

Jess: "Yup."

Amanda: (terrified) "WHAT? WHAT IS IT? IS IT ALREADY DEAD??!"

Jess: "Yeah. Because it was never alive."

Amanda: "How did it grow to that size then!!! I've never! I don't want to! Agh!"

Jess: "No, dipstick. It's a spider ring from Halloween."

Needless to say, I was embarrassed and a little shocked that my brain couldn't tell that there was a) a ring attached to this spider and b) it was made of crude, poorly shaped plastic. But the mind sees what it wants. And apparently, my mind wants to be terrified at every opportunity.

Now to the title of this post. I said that killing a spider is not as scary as you think it will be, 95% of the time. That is because most of the time, either my tissue or book or shoe plan does work just fine...either immediately or eventually. There may be some blood and tears, but the job gets done. And there I'm left, one fearsome creature dead, one more tiny eight-legged soul on my conscious.

But occasionally, and I made that a number - 5% of the time - things don't go as planned. The spider does jump. Or flee. OR FALL IN YOUR HAIR. And there you are, wearing nothing but '70s running shorts and a bra, screaming for mercy at 3AM in your parents' guest room until your bleary eyed dad comes in and you make him groom you like a monkey for the next ten minutes to make sure that there truly is NOTHING in your hair. And then you start to wonder...if not in my hair, then where? In my bed? My suitcase? My MAKE-UP CASE?! Where is he lurking? Waiting to creep out at the right time...or lunge at me...or travel back to Philadelphia and get ever stronger and more powerful, breeding with other spiders and creating a spider army to avenge my attempt on ending his life!!!

Or maybe, he's on the end of the broom like I had intended, and it was all for naught.

You know, either one.

Spiders are creepy, yes, but I believe my fear truly lies in their capacity for intelligent thought and most of all, vengeance. So please, as winter slowly rolls in this year, and the bugs venture indoors, be careful. Be mindful of your implements. Be confident in your killing choices. And for god sakes, clean up after Halloween. You're going to give someone a heart attack with those spider rings.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Hey everyone! I want to blog again!

I have a new found reason to blog. It's called following the crowd. I have recently been taken in by Miss Allie Brosh's wonderful masterpiece Hyperbole and a Half. She has inspired me to blog more about my own experiences, not because they're deep or meaningful or intensely amazing...but because they're mine! And they're funny! My life is often funny. And here I am, denying all six of my readers the chance to read about my hilarious life.

It's like I'm staring into the face of fun and saying, "No, fun. No. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not for 7 months, will I give these people anything resembling fun on my blog." And I'm pretty sure it's been even longer than that since I have posted anything resembling actual fun.

So I thought for tonight, since it's almost 2AM and I have to get up in...oh, 6.5 hours, that I would just post a list of funny things to come that I could pull upon to write about. This way, you get a preview of coming attractions and I get no excuse to say, "I can't think of anything to write about!" So here goes:

1) How Killing Spiders is (95% of the Time) Not as Scary as You Think It Will Be
2) Something Other than How I Got Called a Floozy
3) The Time I Stress Ate Cupcakes
4) The Best Word I've Ever Made Up
5) How to Motivate Yourself to Do More: Spreadsheets, Charts, Timelines and Graphs!
6) Why I Think I Make a Great Banana Bread
7) Ways to Make Yourself Believe You're Safe When You're Not!
8) Things I Have Woken Up Doing (It's not dirty, don't worry)
9) My Escalator Fantasy
10) That Time When I Forced Myself to Read Anna Karenina (AKA Unemployment)

That's about all I can come up with for tonight. But I am going to try to post at least once a week from now on. If not something funny, at least something human. Because that's what I was doing here to begin with.