In Yo’ FACE, Insomnia!

Insomnia totally and completely sucks.  I am one of the millions afflicted with this possibly hereditary disease. I say possibly, because though I would LOVE to blame this on my mother, she can sleep anywhere, dropping off in the middle of movies, books, conversations, you name it. She sleeps like a narcoleptic, but not quite as often.

I have come to find that there are certain things I can do to create my “optimum sleeping environment.” I can create a space that will, if everything goes perfectly and the planets are aligned, allow me to fall asleep in the fastest possible timeframe. This leads me to describing what I call 'my crypt.'

That’s right. In order for me to have the highest likelihood of falling asleep quickly, I need my room to be these 3 things: dark, silent, and cold. If any one of these things isn’t there, I am quickly lead into a spiral of sadness, awake-ness, and annoyance. However, of the 3, being cold is the MOST important. I cannot sleep at all if I am hot, but I can wear earplugs and squish my face into the pillow more for the others, if absolutely necessary.

One cool thing is that I fall asleep and wake up in the same position. I actually will kind of wake up, roll over, and fall back asleep, if I turn over at all. I’m telling you, I am a weirdo.

In regards to sleeping, I always fall asleep the same way. On my stomach, one arm under my pillow, right underneath my face, the other arm tucked right into my chest, and one leg kind of bent towards whichever direction I am facing.

In addition to all of that completely exciting and necessary information above, I have drawn (via sharpie) the following. I understand the comic below illustrates a certain level of crazy, but I happen to think many people will see it and know what I mean. 
(Click on any picture to make it bigger and to be able to read some of the writing. Sorry 'bout that.)

***Zoomed in shot, so you can read the writing on the pillow:

Aaaaaand last frame!

And there you have it. My slice of illustrated crazy, and my sharpie-comic debut! :)

In Preparation Of The Greatest Holiday of the Year!

It is that time of year again. It is September, and I am officially getting a late start on thinking about Halloween costumes. I am usually thinking about this in July! In fact, I gave it some thought off and on over the last month or so, but not really, and I haven’t made any firm decisions.

The boyfriend said my penguin/james bond idea was dumb. WELL! I’ll have you know that penguins are adorable and always in their formalwear, and Bond is always in a tux…perfect combo! But he’s right in that if I am that costume, then it would be difficult for everyone else to see both. They’ll see one or the other, most likely penguin, because I like to waddle around and make squeaky penguin-y sounds. And then people will just get confused when they see the gun.

“Are you a homicidal penguin?”

“Noooo…..but I guess that’s one option.”

So, I have this theory about Halloween and fireworks. They may seem unrelated…just give me a second, you’ll see where I’m going with this.

These are the only times that some adults really allow themselves to let loose and enjoy, like they did when they were kids. Next time you are watching a fireworks show, take a second and look around. Everyone, from little kids to really-super-old people, is looking up, openmouthed in wonder and enjoyment.

As for Halloween, my favorite holiday, it is the perfect excuse for those same people to let loose, and dress up and act silly and be someone else for a day. It is the one day a year that this is more than acceptable, it’s encouraged! You can be anyone, evil or good, villain or hero, real or imaginary, inanimate or a character. It doesn’t matter, everyone is doing it! In fact, you would look weird and out of place if you DIDN’T dress up and act silly.

And though it pains me to know that there are a lot of people out there that care so much about what strangers think that they actually restrict themselves while going through normal daily life, I understand how and why it happens.

I am not one of those people. I love to be silly! And as for Halloween, I use it for fun. It is not an excuse to be half-dressed as some “sexy bumblebee” or “sexy Astroturf Installer.” No, I would almost always rather be funny than sexy. Besides, I think making someone laugh IS sexy! So there!

Last year, I was a sumo wrestler. IT WAS AWESOME.

It was a fully self-contained self-inflating costume, that ran on a battery pack in my pocket. How do I add pictures to this thing? I have a picture of me in the sumo costume! [edit: I googled how to add pictures! Way easier than I thought...] Trust me, there is nothing sexy about a woman in a suit of a 600 pound man in a thong (the thong on my costume was red).

The year before that, I was a whoopee cushion. And not just ANY whoopee cushion, a working one. I had gotten a real self-inflating whoopee cushion, and belted it to my stomach underneath the costume, so when people walked by, I could press it and make the fart sound! It was a huge hit at the office…

Now for costume ideas for this year. So far, I’ve only come up with a few.

-Penguin/James Bond

-Thomas the Tank Engine

-The Sun (self-made out of Styrofoam and felt, and maybe find someone to be the moon. And then we can align and shout “TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART”)

-Pac-Man (this also includes other people, as I would need people to dress up as ghosts, perhaps on rollerskates, and then we’d chase each other around)

-Use the actual mat from Twister to make a dress/toga and then use board as a hat.

And that’s all I have so far. I usually have more ideas by now, though. Oh well, luckily there is still time. Feel free to leave suggestions, though! What were your greatest Halloween costumes?

A Poem That Starts Out By Discussing Waking Up In The Morning For School

School day,
Late night,
Morning comes rapidly,
Though I put up a valiant fight.

That damn alarm
Ringing persistently
Ruins dreams, and
Garners glares from me.

On weekends,
Waking up feels
Natural and pure.

On weekdays,
Waking up feels
Painfully like torture.

Why, Gods, do you hate me?
Oh, Karma, why are you kicking my ass?
Is it because I stayed up super-late
In the hopes I'd sleep through class?

Prof, your lectures are quite stimulating,
I’m sure others would agree, and
The way you spit when you say “Sesquipedalian”
Totally terrifies me.

Your homework orders are quite titillating,
And I cannot wait to start.
The way you tell me what to do
Practically tears my brain apart [with glee].

I dance in anticipation,
Can’t wait to begin each day,
School is fun and the homework funner,
Glorious in every way.

Oh, Teacher, the way you guide my study
With books and syllabi,
And the way you read right from the slides,
Which you refuse to put online

Tantalizes my brain stem
And makes my neurons sing.
And that way you go off on a 20-minute tangent that has nothing to do with the lecture
Leaves my brain cells tingling.

What do they want me to know?
Will this be on the test?
That rant about the foods you hate?
I couldn’t even hazard a guess.

I don’t care that you hate Nixon
Or that strawberries give you a rash.
Is there any way to stay on the subject?
Considering the large amounts of cash [you’ve forcibly taken from my parents]?

In the end, I graduated
Though I'm not quite sure how
And now I'm out in the real world.
You should probably be scared now.

I Am The Coolest Aunt Ever

Great things have come out of my parents getting grandchildren through my oldest brother. First off, my typical Jewish mother no longer asks when I’m planning to pop out kids. My large Jewish family has stopped asking when I’m going to get married at every family event. I have an adorable niece and nephew whom I play with and lavish with love and bubbles. I get to be “cool Aunt Jyssica.”

My 4-year-old niece loves to see me and knows I’ll roll around on the floor to play with her. I bring her bubbles, which are cheap and apparently the coolest thing since dinosaurs, and she knows I have a ladybug earring that I wear in my right ear. She loves this ladybug. Every time I visit, she climbs up me like I’m a wobbly talking tree and yells “CAN I SEE YOUR LADYBUG?!” (directly INTO my ear) and then yanks my ear to her and says hello to him. Also, she named the ladybug George.  Which didn’t make any sense to me, either, until I realized she names everything George, after the curious monkey.

Side note, I almost traumatized my niece beyond all recognition at my sisters baby shower for her second kid, when I bought a Curious George pinata. We made sure the kid was safely inside when the adults were hitting George with a wooden baseball bat (It was a big hit. Pinatas should be at every baby shower. 8 month pregnant women, blindfolded with a bat, hitting a tree, are hilarious.).

My nephew is only 1 and a half, and he’s one handsome rugrat (despite my brother’s ugly mug, haha) and has the sweetest laugh and smile. He is also a climber. I never realized how impressive chairs are. He will walk up to a chair—any chair at all—and climb onto it. Once there, he’ll grin and look so incredibly proud of himself. Then he climbs down and wanders over to the next chair. He has welcomed himself to the world of walking and climbing with many tumbles, stumbles, trips, and falls. And bruises. Well, that’s all of us…

We are not a coordinated family. Trust me. Within 4 months of moving to NYC, I fell in a crosswalk and ended up needing a wristguard and a sling. My mom once sprained BOTH ankles so badly that the doctor actually said it would have been better if she’d broken them.  My brother, who the father of these 2 adorable children and both my biggest protector, as well as one of the most annoying people in the whole world, once skateboarded his way to a broken arm so severe that he needed surgery, a cast from shoulder to fingertips, and it STILL looks weird in comparison to his other arm.

Me, I’ve broken many bones. Some more than once. And I don’t always remember how each of them happened.  

The best thing ever is that no one in the family is as concerned about my love life, or lack of one, since there are kids to focus on! These 2 kids, the beginning of the newest generation of Scotts, are already carrying on our awkward tradition of being accident-prone. It’s not a good or braggable tradition, but a tradition nonetheless. Some families have names or jobs they pass on, some have weird habits or traits. We have a distinct lack of coordination.

My nephew jumped out of his high chair recently. He stood up and launched himself off of a high chair onto tile floors. This action resulted immediately in almost giving my brother his first heart attack, added to the gray already in his hair, and a trip to the hospital to make sure nothing in the kid's head was shaken loose. Luckily, along with little to no coordination, the Scotts also pass along a hard head from generation to generation. The boy is perfectly fine.

My sister-in-law is actually completely awesome. I'm not sure how, but she is the biggest dork I know and fits perfectly in my dorky family, even though she is a Catholic mexican. She's hilarious, though. My mom thinks she's a sweet angel (who delivered grandkids to her), but the rest of us know she is just as mischievious and silly and dorky as the rest of us, and has consequently passed that onto my niece and nephew!

I’m pretty sure if I were to hatch a kid, my family would visit me more. This is just an unrelated thought. Not that that is happening any time soon. I don’t even have a dog right now. And everyone knows that dogs are like starter kids! But being an aunt is good training, too, and one of the coolest, most satisfying roles I’ve ever had.

SuperQuitter?

I am a quitter.

I quit smoking a mere 5 days ago. And I am awesome. AND apparently have the willpower of a VERY WILLPOWERY person!

I always thought my willpower was hidden away somewhere with my as-yet-unfound impulse control and my never-to-be-found patience. People say patience is a virtue, but I have to tell you, it is a virtue I have never possessed. ADHD much? Mayyyyybe...ooh! Shiny! Skip, jump, bounce. *waddle like penguin and make penguin sounds.* What? I'm not ADHD.

Here’s the thing though: I do feel proud of myself, to a certain extent. I mean, I was a smoker for close to 10 years, and in all that time have made maybe 2 efforts to quit, both of which ended before 24 hours had passed. But at the same time, it hasn’t been hard. I expected to be fighting cravings like a superhero and using willpower to scale difficult times of shivering, foaming-at-the-mouth withdrawal symptoms.

How wrong I was. For whatever reason, I woke up one morning, said “I am DONE.” And proceeded to take the last few cigarettes out of my purse to give the boyfriend, and bouncingly went about my day.

Where is the STRUGGLE? Where are the HARDSHIPS?

Dammit. How am I ever going to become a superhero, if I have no obstacles and struggles to overcome? What the heck?! No one ever becomes a superhero because they were supremely average and just went about their day—even of it includes SKIPPING!!

On the other hand, I suppose I have options. I could go be exposed to a ton of radiation, get toxic waste spilled on me (a la Alex Mack…oh yeah, baby…90s reference!), maybe get bitten by some sort of bionic insect. Any suggestions? Help a poor, well-adjusted kid become superhero-worthy?

This isn’t even fodder for a good children’s book! “Jyssica woke up one morning perfectly fine, and had a good day.” No one wants to read that!

I need excitement! I need villains. I need something! If I am ever going to become a superhero and have powers, and become the stuff that myths, children’s tales, and newspaper stories are made of, SOMEthing is going to have to change around here!

Waking Up Supermad

Do you ever have one of those days when you just wake up, and right from the moment you get out of bed, you’re spoiling for a good fight?

You get up, and for no reason, you are just PISSED. You don’t remember your dreams from the night before, you just KNOW that something went down in them. Someone killed your hamster, your boyfriend cheated on you with a Japanese transvestite stripper-by-night/bus-driver-by-day, your parents moved and changed their number and didn’t tell you, which finally led to your understanding you are the least favorite and leading to years of expensive therapy that you couldn't afford, SOMETHING happened.

And even if you don’t know exactly what it is, you know you’re mad about it. And you are just going to keep that mad going. On those days, I’m not doing anything so tame as “waking up.” No, I am GETTING THE HELL OUT OF SLEEP! And I see my alarm clock, and it’s buzzing, and that annoying little beeping isn’t just gently awakening me from a deep sleep, it is jackhammering my face screaming “WAKE UP, SUCKA! You gotta go to WORK! HAAAAHA!” My alarm clock is taunting me, and I cannot handle that level of childish mockery at 7:00 in the morning.

Have I ever mentioned that I am not a morning person? I don’t like for anyone to talk to me for that first maybe 30 minutes of being awake. I just shower, and go about my morning, and by the time I get on the train, I am awake and ready to greet people civilly. Usually, anyway.

Things that normally wouldn’t bother me, or that I might not notice, suddenly become a HUGE DEAL. Stub my toe? I curse like a sailor. Loudly. Shower isn’t getting hot fast enough to please me? Curse at it, in multiple languages, and maybe throw in a hand gesture or 2, all while cranking it to the “Fire of a Thousand Suns” setting. And THEN (you know you saw this coming) being supremely annoyed when it’s so hot that the shower curtain starts to melt into a sad plastic-y puddle.

But ok, let’s say you make through your morning routine and out the door, all without killing yourself with a business card, just to make a point. You don’t know what that point might be at the moment, but you’re pretty sure it has a “deeper meaning” and substance, and that only poor misunderstood, pissed-off you would “get it.”

Not catching the light to cross the street, a pedestrian asking me for ANYTHING, the train not magically arriving as my feet step onto the platform, anything is fuel for my mood.

My sister-in-law was once mad for an entire day, and smacked my brother upon waking up, because she had a dream in which he cheated on her. 99% of the time I think that’s insane. That one day I wake up ready to kick a squirrel, I figure he probably had it coming.

Then, suddenly, I'm fine. I don’t know what made me want to suddenly stop mentally burning everyone’s hair, but I’m suddenly completely okay again. My mood is uplifted, my optimism is back in place, and I’m happy again. And off I go, tra-la-la-ing, as if nothing happened.

On this, the Anniversary of Your Birth

I recently turned 25. I like to joke that it’s time to have a quarter-life crisis. You know, trade that sports car in for a minivan, and start dating older men. I find it hilarious that people freak out over turning 25 or 30. With the average life expectancy in the US rising, being 30 is practically still a baby!

I have my whole life ahead of me. I’ve only been out of college for 4 and a half years. Hell, I still refer to things with “half” added to them. I noticed when I was 24-and-a-half. I’ll notice again this December when I am 25-and-a-half. I love these milestones. Birthdays, holidays, other people’s birthdays. I get as excited, of not more so, about other people’s birthdays as I do my own!

It’s because I love buying gifts for people. Two of my best friends in the whole world, Mike and Chris, turn 25 today. Because I live in NY and they live in FL, this is the first year I am not able to be around. I am, however, still able to buy them gifts!

My friends know not to expect something practical from me. Practical is from my mother, your mother, their mother, maybe their well-meaning-but-not-quite-getting-it significant others. I don't give practical to my best friends. The ONLY exception to this is when it is something they actually need and specifically ask for. Otherwise, I’m hitting the toy aisle.

They do it too! Among recent years, I have received: a slip n’ slide (yes, we played with it), a bubble wand, a huge thing of water balloons (with convenient filler nozzles), and more.

This year, I hit up Toys R Us online! So not only do they get cool gifts, which are NOT socks, but they also get to receive a package in the mail. And everyone loves getting presents in the mail. It’s one of those things, like fireworks and Halloween, that take us back to a time of youth and excitement. What could it be? Shake it a little, look at the address label. And finally, rip it open in excitement and glee. And for those few minutes, we don’t care where the packaging went, or that we have to clean it up later, we don’t rip the paper off carefully, and we use our hands, nails, and teeth, before finally resorting to going off and finding scissors for that ONE inevitable stubborn piece of tape we have to cut through.

They are going to love it! I can’t spill yet, as they read this blog and haven’t received it yet. BUT, I can tell you it’s fun, silly, something their parents wouldn’t get them, and completely impractical for an adult.

Bet you $10 that they are even more psyched to receive it since reading this!

Happy 25^th birthday, Mike and Chris Kilborn. AKA 2 of my best friends in the whole world.

PS Emily (AKA other bffeeee), I love you dearly and wish I could have made a supercool blog post about you on YOUR birthday, but I didn’t have a blog at that time. Please accept my undying love and affection, and laughing while kicking your husband out of bed so that you and I can indulge in girl talk without him, as a substitute until next year. :)