The snow approaches

I got tagged by both Fab AND Gwen, for the same meme.
I posted it over at Jantics (click here).
Bonus: it contains the word "nipples".

We're supposed to get a ton of snow tonight.
First I heard it was going to be freezing rain, but I guess now it's just snow.
The weather-guy is calling it "a major winter storm".
So it's possible I may be snowed in tomorrow.
No problem. We Michigan people LOVE this sort of thing.
Well, except for Morgen, and my mom, and Wayne, and.... ok, well, maybe I'm the only one.

Oh, and by the way, my front door was frozen shut again today.
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Thirteen Things To Do Today

I had something really important scheduled for today, but it got canceled.
Long story.
So now I have to find other ways to spend my time.
Here are thirteen possibilities:

1. Find fountain of youth (look in closet this time)

2. Point at random people and say "Wow, you're still alive!!"

3. Express gratitude for whoever invented pizza. (Until a specific name is revealed, just thank "The Italians")

4. Poke left boob a few times

5. Eat a sandwich

6. Explain to the cats what "non-renewable energy source" means

7. Find out what would happen if I ate 500 grams of fiber

8. Learn to speak Canadian, and become a translator for the U.N.

9. Go to nearest gas station and start dancing in circles around the pumps for no reason.

10. Make up a pretend country named "Tinkerflox" and compose its national anthem. Nominate several bloggers to serve as its parliament. Crown self as Queen, then complain about the dwindling power of the monarchy.

11. Poke right boob a few times

12. Create reclining chair with skis on the bottom, so I can be lazy and outdoorsy at the same time, drinking a refreshing beverage while plummeting down a snowy slope

13. Memorize names for all the bones in the body. Rename them as people. Examples:
Femur would now be called "Sue."
Clavicle is now "Orville."
Tailbone is now "Bradley."
Third rib on the right is "Ebenezer."
Maybe the humerus could be "Janna".

That would look really great on a resume.
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Michigan: the "Our Weather Has Multiple Personalities" state

There's a saying that if you don't like the weather in Michigan, just stick around for a few hours and it'll change.
That was certainly the case on Tuesday.
During the day, it was typical cold-gray-winter doldrums.
During band, we had thunder and lightning.
After band, during the drive to Jason's house, it was raining REALLY hard. Even with the wipers on high, it was hard to see.
And, while we were all eating dinner at Jason's, the rain froze, and the wind got much worse. On the way home, I had to drive through a blizzard that was so bad it completely blocked my view of the road numerous times. (I don't mean it was merely covering the road; I mean the snow was so thick in the air, blowing around, that I couldn't see ANYTHING in front of me.) This was especially dangerous because the high winds had knocked a lot of crap into the middle of the road. There were large tree branches and garbage cans I had to drive around. During the white-out conditions, I had to slow down to a crawl because I had no idea if I was about to run into something that had been blown into the middle of the road.
The bank thermometer said it was 13 degrees. Actually, that's not so bad, because last weekend it was below zero.
But apparently it was cold enough to freeze my front door shut.
Yeah, that's right. When I got home I couldn't open the front door. Frozen. Completely. I tried warming up the doorknob thingy, I tried bumping against it really hard, I shook it, I asked nicely, I cursed vehemently, but the door just was not cooperating. I couldn't get into my house.
There's a back door I hardly ever use, and as a last resort I went to try that instead. Luckily, I was able to get that one open. So I went inside and opened the front door to see if it was still stuck. Oddly, it opened easily from the inside.
Sure scared me for awhile there, though. This is NOT good weather to be "locked" out of your house. I'd have had to go back out to the car and sit there with the heater on, wondering what the heck to do.
I'm glad I'm indoors now.
I can STILL hear the awful winds out there. So strong, so ugly and angry sounding. Powerful stuff.
You all remember how I feel about winds like this, right?
If you're new to my blog, click here to read the story of how I once had a home that was destroyed by a windstorm.
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Ten Things You Might Say If You Were Here Right Now

1. Let me out. Please.
2. The leftovers in your fridge would like to negotiate a peace treaty.
3. Wow, you sure do pee a lot.
4. Why aren't there any clocks on your walls?
5. Ok. I get it. You're not a morning person. Please put down the hatchet.
6. Why doesn't your bathtub match the sink?
7. How can you stand to have it so COLD in here?
8. Ohhhh. So THAT'S what I smell.
9. What interesting books you own!
10. Tell me again why we BOTH have to be naked for this?
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The Flying Turtle (a cautionary tale)

Once upon a time, there was a turtle named Fred. Fred's only friends were a frog and a rabbit (Gene and Trina).
They all lived in a medium-sized forest with a lot of other woodland creatures.
One morning, Fred saw a plane flying overhead and wished he could fly.
"Why can't I fly?" He asked his two friends.
Gene and Trina looked at each other knowingly. "Well, you did score pretty low on all those aptitude tests."
"Well, that's just because I partied a little too hard the night before the test."
"We ALL partied," Gene reminded him. "But you were the only one who got so drunk you flipped over backward onto your shell and started singing 'Woops I Did It Again' at the top of your lungs until we all flipped you back over again."
"Well, um...."
"And you paid one of the slutty raccoons to spray paint 'Always Hard' on the back of your shell," Trina reminded him.
Fred stifled a chuckle. "Heh. Yeah. That WAS pretty cool. We totally made out later that night, too."
Trina rolled her eyes.
Gene patted Fred's shell in sympathy. "Look, man, just be happy with who you are. Turtles aren't supposed to fly. They're just supposed to.... I dunno, sit around and slowly do 'turtley' things."
"But I want to FLY! Please, just once, will the two of you throw me up into the sky so I can see what it's like?"
Gene and Trina started to protest until Fred reminded them that he could always just lay around and sing "Achy Breaky Heart" instead.
So they obliged him and threw him as far up into the air as they could, with the aid of a nearby branch which served as a catapult.
Up, up, UP he went.
"I'm flying! I'm FLYING!" he shouted.
The whole forest heard him shouting, even the slutty raccoon who had let him get to second base a few weeks ago.
"I'm flying!!" He repeated for the benefit of anyone who might not have heard. "I'M--"
BANG!!
A nearby hunter who was unfortunately nearsighted mistook him for a pheasant and blasted him to bits.
"What the hell?" Shouted the hunter.
"Aw, crap!!" Shouted Gene and Trina.
"Noooo!!!" Shouted the slutty raccoon. "I was going to let him go all the way tonight!"
"Finally," muttered the rest of the forest. "Now we don't have to listen to any more lousy singing."
"Mmmgghhhff, rwfff," said the hunter's dog, Zeke, who had found the turtle's remains and was trying to taste them.

Moral of the story #1: You might as well be happy with who you are, because you'll kill yourself trying to be anybody else.

Moral of the story #2: If you do things that annoy people around you, don't be surprised if they help hasten your demise, like whispering to a hunter "Look! A pheasant!"

P.S. The slutty raccoon was actually bisexual and was only using Fred to get into bed with Trina.
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Is anyone there?

Seems like I haven't gotten many visitors lately.
This is depressing in some ways, and liberating in others.
On one hand, nobody loves me, and I am one day closer to death.
But on the other hand, the pressure's off! I can do anything and only about four people will notice!
Stay tuned for my next post, where I will be copying names out of the phone book. Backwards. And naked.
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Another weird dream

I had another weird dream last night.
I went to visit Fab, only to find that instead of the building I was expecting, there was a big store. He had opened this business venture to cater to all his fans. It was maybe half the size of a Wal-Mart, and had about the same kinds of things.
But the best part was in the corridor just outside the store. There was a snack bar, and an ice cream shop, and an amusement park ride.
I decided to ride the ride. It cost, like, fifty cents or something.
It was a mix between a magic carpet and one of those log flume water park rides. There was only one magic carpet, about the size of a loveseat. And people rode it on this white-water-rapids stream which went out into the parking lot.
I ended up having to share the ride with two other ladies. It was clear they didn't want me there; they'd been hoping to have it all to themselves. They were friends with each other, and wouldn't speak to me the entire time. I tried being pleasant and making jokes, but they wouldn't even smile.
So I made sure to steer the carpet into lots of turbulence and waterfalls, getting us all soaked. Serves them right.
When the ride was over, I went to the ice cream shop and sat at one of the tables, trying to decide what I wanted to order.
Then the dream ended.
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To the best of my knowledge, there was no gravy involved

I had a weird dream Friday night.
And, because this is my blog, I'm going to tell you all about it.

It started out with this scene: A guy having a covert conversation with some other guys in a public restroom. I don't remember what they were saying, just that it had a very spy-like feel to it; this guy was meeting with "the enemy", spilling some information he was not supposed to spill.
Then, in the next scene, I was assisting with the investigation of that incident. The head of the investigation was some CSI-type chick who had analyzed all the evidence. The most damning piece of evidence was this: We had installed surveillance equipment in the walls during the time of this guy's illicit meeting, and although we couldn't make a definite voice match to him, we compared a printout of the "sound waves" of his voice, and the sound waves seemed to be an exact match.
Ms. Investigator chick and I went into the public bathroom together with this guy, for the "interrogation." The guy was "obviously" guilty in her eyes; she was saying stuff like "Nah, c'mon. We've gotcha. You know that. We've got the evidence right here." And she showed him a comparison of the two sound wave charts. They were projected onto the wall as if it was a slide show.
I looked at them (apparently for the first time), and was kinda surprised to see that the voice patterns DIDN'T really match up perfectly. They were similar, but not exact. "Hmmm," I thought quietly to myself.
The guy began claiming his innocence, giving all sorts of great reasons to why the "evidence" had been misinterpreted. As for the voice analysis, he turned to ME and said "You. Say something."
"What?" I said.
He turned to the investigator as if nearing the crux of his case. "See? It could have been anyone."
It seemed he was making the point that anyone's voice could have made the same imprint on the sound sensors. And, I thought to myself, that would explain why the vocal "fingerprints" didn't match up exactly....

Now the dream gets weird.

Apparently we lived in a society that used fake mashed potatoes a lot. We used them for insulation, and as an ingredient in milkshake-type beverages, and no doubt in many other ways as well. Throughout the course of the investigation, I had been sipping a "slush/shake" type of thing which seemed to be fake mashed potatoes mixed with a little Mello Yello. I remember it was Mello Yello, not Mountain Dew.
So it turned out that there was a real possibility the evidence had been planted there by another spy who had scooped out the mashed-potato insulation from inside the walls, hidden there, and found a way to spy on this guy's conversations in the bathroom. Somehow, perhaps this guy was not the criminal but a victim after all.
The guy left the room and was taken back into custody, leaving me and the investigator to mull over the evidence. I turned to her and said "Y'know, at first I was positive this guy was guilty, but now... well, now I'm just not sure."

And the dream ended there.

In retrospect, here's what gets me: The dream started out with proof that he really was guilty. I watched him do it! I was an omniscient observer. Yet the rest of the dream was devoted to "Well, gosh, maybe he's innocent..."

And it will definitely be awhile before I can eat mashed potatoes again.

Helpful advice

When in doubt, pretend to be comatose for a few weeks. After the pressure's off and everyone's sufficiently lowered their expectations, BLINK. Blink twice. It takes a minimum of effort, but by then it will really impress the hell out of everyone.
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Because frozen boogers are worth paying for

I'm here in the frozen state of Michigan, trying to invent a way to bottle all this coldness so I can save it for later. Imagine how wonderful it could be next summer if I had a shelf full of WINTER I could open whenever I wanted. Who needs air conditioning when you can just open up a big bottle of January?

I could sell it and make millions!

You know how wines have vintages, with plenty of connoisseurs to analyze the "good years"? Bottled winters could be the same way.
I could uncork a bottle, take a deep breath until my boogers froze, and sigh happily.

"Ahhhhh, December 2007. That was a good month."
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Sticky Goodness

Thirteen Sentences That Use The Word "STICK":

1, Now that I've covered myself in honey, it'll be easier for us to stick together

2. My million dollar idea is "tuna casserole on a stick."

3. Of course you can sue me, but the charges will never stick-- I'm only a figment of your imagination.

4. Sticks and stones may break my bones, so keep them the hell away from me.

5. There are a lot of things I'll consider doing if you stick a $50.00 bill in my bra.

6. Don't stick your tongue out at me unless you plan to use it.

7. Myrtle wanted to be an artist but all she could draw were stick figures.

8. Why do my feet stick to the floor when I walk past your room?

9. Stick around and I'll show you why they call me "That crazy hatchet-wielding freak."

10. Whatever you do, don't stick a pineapple in there-- it's just not worth it.

11. Oooh, look, a fried mozzarella stick! And another! And another! Where's the marinara sauce?

12. Ok, everybody stick to the plan! When the cops arrive, we swear we've never seen the bloody golf club OR the chainsaw.

13. Want a stick of gum? It's only been in my purse since 1998. I'll even brush the lint off for you.
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Ouch again

I was sick in bed for most of Wednesday.
It was a carbon copy of last Wednesday. All-day migraine, with plenty of barfing.
I hate these things.
It still hasn't gone away completely, but it's subsided enough for me to get online and check my e-mail, respond to comments, etc.
Since I hate it when migraines STICK AROUND for an entire day, my Thursday Thirteen list is going to be thirteen sentences that include the word "stick".
I'll post it in just a moment....
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Perfectly normal thoughts

Life inside a cloud would be fun if you lived above people you hated, because when you made rain you could pretend you were peeing on them.

I would like to apologize for the fact that I have never received a pet platypus in the mail, especially not one wearing a pink ballerina costume. I feel really bad about this. And yet, it's strangely liberating that I don't have to spend any money on platypus chow or ballet slippers.

I've never worn a toga, but if I ever did, I would like it to be black with white polka dots. No reason.

If I was invited to lunch with the person who invented gravity, it would be really funny if they accidentally spilled something.
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Things I've Never Seen

1) A squirrel dressed up as a chipmunk (Then again, how would I know? Maybe ALL chipmunks are just really skinny squirrels in drag)

2) A football game in which I actually gave a rat's ass who won or lost

3) A bottle of goat urine

4) A man in sandals wearing pink toenail polish

5) You, giving me a million dollars

My Imaginary Album

I got this idea from Heather.
Just follow these simple directions to come up with your own imaginary band's first album cover and title.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
This is a random article thing from Wikipedia. Click on it.
The article title you get is the NAME OF YOUR BAND.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
A page of random quotations.
Look at the bottom of the page... The last four words of the very last quote is the TITLE OF YOUR ALBUM.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
A page of pictures uploaded to Flickr in the past 7 days.
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your ALBUM COVER.

Now that you're a rock star, go to any graphics program and make a picture of the album!

Here's what mine ended up being:
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In case you were wondering, apparently "Hurka" is the name of a subway station in Prague.

And here was the entire quote I got:
"A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents."
-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

I have no idea what the picture is, but I really like it. It's artsy-fartsy and just a little bit strange. It fits me perfectly!
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Manic Monday: Date

In my previous post, I mentioned "Evil Alternate Universe Janna".
The idea intrigues me.
Here are some things I would love to do if I could spend a day with my evil alter-ego:
(Or, my GOOD alter-ego, if it does indeed turn out that I am the evil one)

1. Kidnap all the people who have left political campaigning messages on my answering machine and play a combination of opera and rap music (at the same time) until they agree to pay me $10,000 for each message left. (The price goes up $2,500.00 each day between now and the election).

2. Blackmail the CEO of Kellogg's into making "All-Bran" entirely out of chocolate. It would still have to be called "All-Bran" though, because... well, just because.

3. Double-date with Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom. (Can you say "foursome?")

4. Co-author a "page-a-day" calendar called "365 Fun Things To Do With Your Evil Alternate Reality Self". Deluxe version includes pictures of foursome from the aforementioned double-date.

5. Gather all the tofu on the entire planet and get rid of it by feeding it to all the pigs on the planet, then eat a LOT of ham and bacon and BBQ ribs.

6. Make chocolate-Prozac-chip cookies and send them to all my depressed friends, along with a coupon for the new improved version of "All-Bran" which will be coming out soon.
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Manic Monday on my other blogs:
Jantics: Dried, shriveled-up things that do NOT go into my mouth
Jantrails: Why datebooks are a waste of time for someone with no social life
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Unless I'M the evil one....

Five historical figures it might have been interesting to know personally:

1) Jack The Ripper
2) Emily Dickinson
3) Mozart
4) Vlad The Impaler
5) Evil Alternate Universe Janna
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Twigs and fish food... just add milk!

A few days ago, while I was still depressed about turning 38, I went out and bought the nastiest, most disgusting box of bran cereal I could find. Usually I get Shredded Wheat and Bran, because it tastes the same as regular shredded wheat, plus I enjoy deluding myself into believing that the added bran/fiber will help cancel out all the other not-so-healthy things I eat, like Little Debbie fudge rounds and brownies.

Shhhhh. Let me dream.

Anyway, I was sad about turning 38, so I went straight for the big guns. Kellogg's All-Bran. There were two different kinds. One looked like miniature twigs and branches. If I was a bird I would have gotten an urge to build a nest right there in the store. (Since I can't lay any eggs of my own I would have needed to borrow some from aisle five.)
The other type of All-Bran they had was these little round pellets that looked exactly like the fish food I used to use back when I kept large aquarium fish.
That's the kind I decided to buy. The pellets.
So I took them home.
And tried them.
And they taste like tree bark.
Tree bark in convenient pellet form!
Please don't ask me how I know what tree bark tastes like.
I'm happy to announce that I vastly prefer Fruity Pebbles and Lucky Charms.
Maybe if I eat them along with a bowl of Shredded Wheat and Bran, they will cancel each other out.
So THAT'S what people mean by a "balanced" breakfast....
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e-mail crap, part two

(Note: read previous post first)
I went to see my ISP today.
They are unbelievably dense about the problem.
The guy tried saying that they're upgrading the security on their server, so no one can get through with spam or spyware.
Fine, I said, I don't want spam or spyware either, but I would certainly like my friends to be able to e-mail me.
I explained that NO ONE had been able to get through; everyone's e-mails were bouncing back.
At first he tried explaining that as proof that the system was working, that this must mean there was something wrong with my friends' computers, they must be sending viruses or spam or something unsavory.
Um, NO.
Nice try.
No.
I showed him the stack of error messages that people had forwarded to my Gmail account, from everything that had bounced back.
He took a highlighter and marked their addresses, saying he'd have the boss enter them manually into the system as "safe" sometime on MONDAY.
Excusemewhat?
What about everyone else? What about the people who comment on my blog, who have their comments bounce back to them? I'm not going to have each and every one of their e-mail addresses entered into my ISP's system. Some of them may not even want me to HAVE their e-mail address. Besides, isn't that done through Blogger anyway? Even Blogger stuff was bouncing back. AND wordpress, too!
Still, the guy didn't get it. He just kept ranting the same schpiel about how they were cracking down on spam and spyware. "We won't allow it!" He kept saying, over and over.
He took my list of "acceptable" addresses and said he would ask the boss to mark them as "acceptable". Other than that, I really don't think anything was accomplished.
The guy said "Well, can't you get Yahoo mail or something?"
"Um, I DO have G-Mail," I said, pointing to the printouts of G-Mail I had just finished showing him. "But that's not the point. Part of what I pay you guys for is a functioning e-mail address, and right now I don't seem to be receiving that service."
I swear I wasn't bitchy about it, but dammit, this guy just wasn't GETTING THE POINT.
The way it stands, no "new" people can send me e-mail.
Here's why that's frightening: it has effectively killed my online graphics business. I can't receive any new orders from new people.
I suppose I could receive orders via g-mail, but I couldn't sent the actual graphics through that service. Yesterday I tried sending larger files through g-mail, and none of them would go through. I kept getting a "server error."
Plus, G-Mail is really slow, because I am on dial-up.
I really wish there were more ISP options available for people like me, out here in the middle of nowhere.
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E-Mail problems

I know people have had trouble e-mailing me lately. This is because my stupid ISP has made some changes to their server, and they've screwed something up. Whenever anyone tries e-mailing me now, it bounces back to them.
I'm on my way into town right now, to "talk" to the ISP people about this.
And, by "talk", I mean you should check the news for stories of a giant crater which has obliterated south central Michigan.
Don't worry. I'll get out of the way first.
In the meantime, if you need to e-mail me, send it to my gmail address, which is HERE.

From what I understand, even the blog comments are bouncing back to people. But don't worry, they're still showing here on the blog. They're just not getting e-mailed to me. So I can still read them and respond to them, I just have to do it by coming here and reading them directly from the site.
So don't be afraid to comment. :)

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to reload my AK-47 and make a trip downtown.
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It's not Thanksgiving, but what the heck

I wasn't online at all Wednesday because of a sixteen-hour migraine.
My entire day was spent hurting and barfing and trying to rest.
But hey, it's one in the morning now, and although a little bit of the pain is still there, the worst of it seems to finally be gone.

So I'm thankful for that.

Thirteen other things for which I am thankful:

1) Winter
2) Chocolate
3) Cats
4) Bottled water
5) Scented candles
6) Hot peppers
7) All of you who read my blog
8) The fact that I drove on an expired license for over a year (without even realizing it!) and didn't get caught
9) Taco Bell has brought back its "Cheesy Gordita Crunch" for a limited time only!
10) The colors blue and green
11) The fact that there are no wild alligators in Michigan.
12) Peace and quiet
13) Fountain pens
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Since I haven't been able to eat anything since Tuesday, #9 is starting to sound pretty darn good.
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Things I Have In Common With Squirrels

1. I am a mammal.
2. I think nuts are interesting, and sometimes I dream of hoarding them.
3. Hibernation sounds wonderful. *
4. People don't like it when I eat out of their bird feeders.
5. Some parts of my body qualify as "bushy".

*I researched to make sure squirrels actually hibernate. Here's the answer: Ground squirrels DO hibernate, but tree squirrels don't. So there ya go. Consider yourself educated.

Ok, try to follow along....

Today I went to the Secretary Of State office to get my driver's license renewed.
And I'm happy to say that everything went well.
I didn't even have to take a test. I just paid my money, got my picture taken for the new license, got my temporary license until the new one arrives in the mail, and that was it.
Quick and painless.

Then, once I got out to the car, I looked in my wallet to make sure I had registration and proof of insurance.
I found registration, but not proof of insurance.
"Crap," I said. "I'm gonna have to go to the insurance office and get a copy printed out."

So I went to the insurance office.... only to find that it wasn't there anymore. I mean the building was there, but it was no longer an insurance office. I discovered, to my dismay, that my insurance guy had retired and left all his clients to this OTHER guy whose office was further away in the town of Reading, Michigan. Reading is just barely north of the Ohio border.
So, I called the new guy and told him I'd be stopping by for a copy of my proof of insurance.
I drove all the way down there, and when I got to Reading I pulled over for a moment. I went through my wallet one more time just to search though my papers yet again....
And found that I DID have proof of insurance after all.
So I'd driven all the way down there for nothing.
But, since I was already there, I went in the insurance office and got the copy I'd requested. They were really cool and had it right there waiting for me. They also gave me a 2008 calendar, which I was probably far more excited about than I should have been.

Anyway, to summarize, I finally am comforted by the fact that I know I have valid registration, license, and proof of insurance. Not that I want to get stopped by a cop, but at least now if I do, I won't get busted for that. I can get busted for other things, like all the pot and black tar heroin in my trunk.
Just kidding! Just kidding!

One other totally unrelated thing, just so I can keep rambling awhile longer: Remember awhile back, when I said I broke my right thumbnail way down into the quick and it bled? Well, that's all healed now, but today I broke the OTHER thumbnail really bad, and it bled the same way. I've got a band-aid on it now. This time I broke it by rolling down the window in my car. I hate the fact that my car has "crank-down" windows instead of automatic windows. I've broken a lot of nails trying to turn that stupid thing.

That was also the post where my fortune cookie said I would soon witness a miracle.
I think, in retrospect, the miracle was that I drove for over A YEAR on an expired license and didn't get in trouble for it!
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memes and strange things

You all know I'm strange, right?
Go on over to Jantics where I've posted a list of seven strange things about myself.
Confession is good for the soul.
Well, that and the fact that I got tagged.

I have mixed feelings about memes. On one hand, it's fun to feel included, it's comforting to know that your fellow bloggers are thinking about you, and it can be fun being creative while writing the post.
On the other hand, there's still that sense of "uh-oh".... that foreboding sense of dread when I see I've been tagged. It's hard to explain, but hopefully you know what I mean.
Because I love all of you and usually want to spare you that foreboding sense of dread, I usually break the rules by NOT tagging anyone when I complete a meme.

You're welcome.
Let's hug.
Feel the love.
(Is that a wrench in your pocket??)

But lately, I've felt like starting a meme of my own and tagging a bunch of people with it. I'm not sure if it's due to a sense of "Let's all have some fun!" or "Everyone must begin the year with a load of suffering."

So, be forewarned.
And try to stay on my good side. :)
LOL.
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For Manic Monday today...

Instead of a theme word, Morgen has decided to run a "Carnival" type deal where we all feature our favorite Manic Monday posts of 2007.
If I had to choose a favorite, I guess I'd pick my "Carol" themed post, where I photoshopped Dick Cheney together with Carol Channing.
Click HERE to refresh your memory about that. :)
For everyone else's favorites, click below....

Woops!!!!

I went out to dinner with some friends today, and while one of them was getting her money out of her wallet, I noticed her driver's license.
"Hmmm," I thought to myself, "I wonder when my license expires."
So, just for fun, I took my driver's license out of my wallet...

And saw that it had expired on my birthday...

Back in 2007.

Woops!
Kinda missed that, didn't I?
So, um, first thing Monday morning, I'm going over to get it renewed.

Please don't tell the cops.
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Snippets of life

Thursday I was in a restaurant and there was a TV up on the wall which was reporting the news that Sir Edmund Hilary had died.
I heard the people at the table next to me:
"Sir Edmund Hilary? Who's THAT?"
"I dunno, but he sounds important!"

What's ironic is that if they had just kept listening to the broadcast, it fully explained who he was. All their questions would have been answered, but they ignored it, choosing instead to talk about how clueless they were.

I fought the urge to lean over and explain things to them, but somehow I doubted that my input would have been welcome. That whole "eavesdropping" thing is generally frowned upon, I suppose.

And I didn't want to get my ass kicked.

Instead I mentally filed away the moral of the story: You can usually learn a lot more by listening than by talking.

I guess another moral could be "Don't talk when Janna is trying to listen to the news." But that wouldn't look nearly as good on a fortune cookie.
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Behold the older Janna

It's finally happened.
I'm 38.
My hands are still wrinkly, and I noticed a couple more gray hairs on my head. But it's ok, because I've discovered a wonderful thing called denial!!
Denial!
Hahahahaha!
Denial is my friend! I'm NOT old! I'm young! I'm a pretty sixteen-year-old cheerleader with a perfect figure and beautiful blue eyes. Johnny Depp fantasizes about ME! I understand the theory of relativity, chaos theory, AND Google's PR algorithm. People love me! I speak fluent Japanese and can easily translate it into hieroglyphics. I am confident that the planet will never be decimated by a crippling deadly super-virus from outer space!
Denial! Denial! Denial!
La la la la la la!!!!
See? This isn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be!

Now, who wants cake?
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Thirteen things I won't be able to do after I turn 38 tomorrow

1) Travel to Saturn
2) Breathe fire and acid upon my enemies
3) Travel backward in time
4) Speak Icelandic
5) Change urine into liquid gold
6) Breathe while immersed in Italian dressing
7) Paint a replica of the Sistine Chapel ceiling on my driveway
8) Cure leprosy
9) Explain trigonometry
10) Read the Encyclopedia Britannica in 30 minutes or less
11) Magically transport myself to Florida by closing my eyes really tight and saying "Go Gators!"
12) Enjoy the smell of sauerkraut
13) Date a leprechaun
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I take some small comfort in realizing that I couldn't do any of these things before I turned 38 either.
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The Impossible Handful

A few nights ago I had dinner at McDonalds.
I like lots of ketchup on my fries, so usually I ask for a "handful" of ketchup. The window person usually says "sure, no problem," and drops a fistful of ketchup packets in the bag.
But that night there was this other guy, and his response was a little different.

"Can I get a handful of ketchup with that?" I asked.

"How many?"

"Just a handful is fine."

"No, I need a specific number," he insisted. "You have to give me a number. Four? Five?"

"Six," I blurted out, just because it was the first number that came to mind.

Satisfied with the utterance of an actual number, he started counting out packets.

"Is that, uh, some new policy?" I wondered aloud.

"No, we've always done that," he lied. "We can't ever give a handful, because...." he leaned in, "... because MY hand might be bigger than YOURS."

"Oh, ok," I nodded, pretending to agree with his bizarre logic.

Scary.
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Things to say when you've suddenly realized you're not wearing any pants

1) There seems to be a slight chill today.
2) I think I left them at Burger King.
3) Now we can go watch cartoons!
4) Oh, I'm wearing them; they're just invisible.
5) I'm changing my name to Michael Jackson
6) Wanna try some finger painting? Oh, wait, that's not your finger...
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Manic Monday: One

If there was only ONE chicken left on the entire planet, I would name her Madeline, and we would have lots of fun. We would watch movies, drive around the countryside, and listen to the radio.
I would make sure to tell Madeline "thank you" at least once before I ate her that evening in a delicious platter of chicken fettucine alfredo.
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Manic Monday on my other blogs:
Jantrails: I have one dollar left....
Jantics: I have less than one week left....
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Thank you

I'd like to start by thanking those of you who've written to me these past few days with messages of encouragement and support.
I heard from people I barely knew, who were wonderfully candid and forthcoming with tales of their own. I leaned that I'm not the only one who's had such a severe "freak-out" reaction to a specific birthday. Other people have too. I heard from people who freaked out at 24, 30, 35, 38, 40, and even 60.

There were also people I was SURE I would hear from, who ended up not sending me any messages at all. So that was kind of sad.

But overall, I think I will be ok.

Make no mistake about it, I'm still freaking out, but I'm reasonably confident that I can freak out AND blog at the same time.
Just call me Janna The Multitasker.
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I am still here

It's barely been two days since I left the blogosphere.
Feels more like a month.
Clearly I am an addict.
I suspect I will be resuming my previous posting regularity soon.

[insert age-joke about regularity]

In the meantime, feel free to read about cucumber Pepsi.
Click here and here for articles which discuss this lovely garden-fresh flavor.

Bonus: the second article also mentions aloe vera flavored sausages.
Finally, a sausage you can put on burns.
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I don't know how to say this

Today won't be very funny, and I apologize in advance for that.
I also apologize for how long this will be.

My mother once told me that 30 was the only birthday that ever made her cry.
She cried because she remembered how HER mother (my grandmother) looked when she was thirty. Gramma had three kids then and was strapped into a hard life with a lot of work. Mom remembers how "old" she looked, tired and worn out, both physically and emotionally. And now she was the same age as that. Even though her life had been less difficult, and she only had ONE kid (not counting a few miscarriages), she was still "that old". By many definitions, thirty is young, but what I'm referring to here is the terrible psychological impact of it. It was an awful, foreboding, crushing feeling for her. And she cried.
I know how she feels now, because the same thing is happening to me. Thirty didn't really bother me all that much, but for some reason the magic number here has turned out to be 38.
I am going to turn 38 on January 11th. The very thought makes me cry.
I remember what my mom's hands looked like when I was growing up. I suppose they were typical hands for a woman approaching her forties, but they looked so OLD compared to my younger hands.
And, for the past few days, I've been looking at my OWN hands.
I have "those" hands now.
OLD hands.
I've been debating for a few days whether to blog about this, and which blog I should put it on if I did. I have secondary blogs which I'd purposely set aside for non-funny topics like this, yet the Jannaverse is my "home," and this is intensely personal, so somehow it belonged here.
I also dreaded the reactions I'd be likely to get from some people.
I feared there would be junk like "You're only as old as you feel," or "Hey, I'M a lot older than you, so quit complaining," or "You need to get over yourself," or "Stop being such a drama queen," or something else that implies I'm just overreacting. Those reactions would only make me angry, which is why I seriously considered whether I wanted to blog about this at all.
Worst of all would be if you decided "Janna's not funny anymore, so I guess I'll stop reading her stuff."
I don't need or want ANY of those reactions.
Thirty seems young to me now, yet I completely understand and respect my mother's need to mourn herself becoming that age.
Maybe to some of you, thirty-eight seems equally young. I ask for the same respect and understanding.
A lot of it is my hands... I look at my hands a lot lately and I SEE all kinds of wrinkles and imperfections and lines that just weren't there before. My hands look very OLD to me. I look at them and I cry. I'm crying right now, just TYPING about them.
Another part of it is that 38 is dangerously close to 40. I know, I know, I know life continues after 40. I have friends who are over 40. To the best of my knowledge, they still breathe once in awhile and laugh and smile and have semi-regular bowel movements.
I gave a manicure to an 86-year-old lady today. I know there are hands older-looking than mine. I know. I know. I know!!
But somehow I never thought that I would be 40. Or 38, for that matter.
When I was younger, I had some strange premonition that I wouldn't live to see age 30. It's hard to explain, but somehow I just "knew" I wouldn't live that long. Thirty was an age I simply would not reach. It was a strange knowledge to have, and even stranger was the fact that I was totally ok with it. I knew that my life would end before 30 and that was fine. Even at six years old, I felt this way.
But, somehow it didn't end. I kept living.
Never did I believe I would make it to forty, and I still haven't, but holy crap, I am dangerously close.
I never thought I would be as old as I am now.
The past few days, I've been getting more and more depressed. I look at my hands and I cry. I sit and think about what I've just typed, and I cry.
Another sad thing is that I'm 38 and single. I'm all alone. Never been married. I know it's possible to be single and happy, just like it's possible to be married and miserable. Believe me, I understand that. I'm just tired of being alone. Once a woman reaches my age, the odds are very slim that she will get married. It's not completely impossible, but unlikely.
I know 38 seems young to a lot of you, and a lot of you probably just don't understand what I mean. Please, please don't laugh at me or roll your eyes. Please.
Even though I hotly despise the phrase "You're only as old as you feel", for most of my life it worked in my favor. Mentally, I usually felt about 19-20. Physically, I felt closer to about 90, due to health issues (which I still have and will probably always have). I used to joke that if you averaged the numbers together, it came out to roughly the age I actually was.
(Though now I just realized that 20 and 90 averages out to 55.)
I'm rambling now.
I realize that.
I don't know how to end this.
I just don't want a bunch of reactions like the ones I typed earlier. It won't help.
Nothing can help.
I'm turning the comments off for this post. I just don't want a whole comment section full of "those" reactions, since it will feel like everyone is ganging up on me, with everyone else able to read it all. I'd be embarrassed and upset.
If you want to e-mail me privately with a loving note of support, you can do so by clicking here.
I feel very sad, and am unsure when I'll be able to post again.
Please forgive me.
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Snow vs. Car

As you know from my previous post, I was snowed in for a few hours today. I finally got the car out of its frozen white prison. It wasn't easy.
Here are a couple pictures I took so you can see how deep everything was covered. See how high the snow comes up on the tires? See how much more snow there is, compared to the pictures in the previous post?

You know you're hooked on blogging when your car is covered in all this snow, you can't leave the house until it's all cleared away, and one of your first thoughts is "I gotta BLOG about this!"
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Come shovel me out!!!

The following pictures were taken on New Years' Day (yesterday).
Since then, we've gotten MORE snow, and I, uh, I can't get out.
I'm snowed in.
Stuck like a rat in a trap.
Or at the very least, my CAR is stuck. I can't get it out.





I know, I know, it looks tame here, but I'm telling you, it snowed more since I took these pictures yesterday.
I hate being unable to go anywhere.
But y'know, as bad as I hate this, it's STILL not as bad as summer.

UPDATE: I got out!! I'm not stuck anymore! Lemme tell ya, there is a lotta snow out there. But I finally dislodged my car. Now I just need to wait for the guy to come plow my driveway....
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One down, 365 to go!

(I almost said 364, until I realized that 2008 is a leap year).

Well, I survived January first. It's after midnight, which means technically it's tomorrow now.

I stayed home in my bathrobe all day, alone, gradually ripening into... well, into something that's going to have a shower in just a few minutes.

Then, after I am squeaky clean, I'm going to curl up in bed and read something interesting, while warm furry cats purr happily next to me.

Then I will fall asleep and have strange dreams which involve a box of crackers, a chainsaw, Drew Carey, an asteroid, and YOU.

I may also dream about mercilessly killing some of the idiots who inundate my e-mail with countless spam messages. For the last time, you people, I don't have any penis to enlarge! If you'd like to SEND me one via snail-mail, I'll try planting it in a little flower pot and see how well I can fertilize it each day.

I think, if I planted a little penis in a flower pot, the best way to get it to grow would be to flash my boobs at it every day.
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Things I did on New Year's Eve

1) Ate tacos and looked forward to the first farts of 2008.

2) Watched a Harry Potter movie... I think it was The Order Of The Phoenix, but honestly I don't remember. It was the newest one, whatever that is. I liked it. I haven't read any of the HP books, and have only seen about two of the movies (Maybe three). I like what I've seen so far. My favorite character is Snape. Gotta love Alan Rickman.

3) Watched The Simpsons movie. Eh. It was ok. Somehow I'd hoped it would be better. It did have a moment of full frontal nudity, though, so there's a bonus.

4) Watched a few episodes of The Twilight Zone marathon on the Sci-Fi channel. I like The Twilight Zone because it's just as bizarre as I want my blog to be.

5) Attempted to mentally switch from December to January, which always freaks me out every year because it feels like such a huge LEAP.

6) Drank diet redpop, which I realize makes me a wuss. But I redeemed myself by belching loudly enough for Canada and Cuba to hear me. Excuse me, by the way.

7) Drove home at one in the morning, in a terrible snowstorm which had already dumped a dangerous amount of snow on the roads. Nothing had been plowed yet, and travel was definitely hazardous. I shudder to think of people who will try driving drunk on those roads tonight. There will undoubtedly be a ton of accidents.

8) Ate a peanut butter granola bar. Don't worry; it's the kind that's dipped in chocolate, so any potential nutrition is stopped dead in its tracks.


I hope you are all safe and sound, and I wish you all a good year.
Happy 2008.
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