Here comes your nine-teenth nervous breakdown.
Oh, who’s to blame, that girl’s just insane.
Well nothing I do don’t seem to work
It only seems to make matters worse.
Oh please.

well, here i am with less than four months to go until my wedding day, and i feel like from here on out it's going to be anxiety city, population me. here are my major concerns:

1. money. this wedding is going to cost a minimum of 10,000. hopefully, the cheese's mother will pitch in two grand for all of her additional guests. even still, though. even still.
2. the thought of being the center of attention all day has got me ready to vomit.
3. all the details! i'm NOT detail oriented. yes, i lied on my resume. and i'll do it again. it's the details that are keeping me up at night more than anything. and if i start listing the details now, i'll start crying.

so, i've decided to calm myself down by telling myself the following things.

1. excluding cheap bastards and poor saps, i'll probably make a good percentage of my money back. but i can't count on that. i'm the kind of person who goes to a wedding and brings a monogrammed clock purchased from things remembered for thirty bucks. i'm afraid that karma will bite me in the ass and that, come my wedding day, i'll get no dollars and a hundred clocks. but wait, i was trying to make myself feel better. i will make my money back. i will. i MUST.
2. the details will work themselves out. they have to! i have four months!
3. so what if i have to be the center of attention? i'll probably be too drunk to be self-conscious.
4. this is my wedding day. it's supposed to be the happiest day of my life. i should act like it's the happiest day of my life. whatever happened to the power of positive thinking?
5. i have a lot of friends who will be there for me.
6. even if something isn't perfect, nobody will ever remember. even if my veil is ugly or the flowers are not perfect or the priest has a heart attack halfway through the ceremony- it's only one day out of a lifetime. and once it's over, it's over.
7. the honeymoon. must remember that after the monstrosity that is this wedding, i'll be on what will hopefully be one of the best vacations of my life. april isn't hurricane season, is it?

argh. part of me wants to kill chris. yes, chris, you heard me, but you already knew that anyways. ain't no big surprises there. i ALWAYS wanted to elope. but then i meet this jackass with grand dreams, and, bam, here i am. you got to love him for his traditional ideas, i know. you got to love a guy who wants to celebrate his love. you got to love a guy who gets excited thinking about his wedding day. but, damn. enough is enough.

i'm sorry.

now is the time that i would like to become medicated. the tom cruise in me has always been against psychiatric drugs, especially since my three weeks on paxil made me realized that depressive was worth it for manic, but now i think i'm ready. bring on the pills.

unless they cause hair loss, in which case, count me out. why am i this way? why am i such a worrywart and a neurotic and a practical patty? somebody tell me before i rip out my eyeballs.

i actually considered setting fire to the reception site. because if the place burned down, then i'd have no choice but to call off the wedding. then i realized i would make a terrible arsonist, what with all of the flammable gel i wear in my hair. besides, i would not cope well in jail.

i feel like i spent my entire christmas holiday drunk. christmas eve was quite the spectacle. we were at the cheese's grandparents' house, and i must have had about eight glasses of wine. i told jessie and beth that they were my best friends, i hugged chris' grandmother about seven times (according to beth), and then the last fifteen minutes were spent drunkenly apologizing to everybody. i'm mortified just thinking about it, especially since i don't even remember half the night. on the car ride home, i threw up a mixture of red wine and pasta. christmas day was spent hungover. we went to my parents' house where i proceeded to watch chris and my dad get loaded, which was both endearing and (since i was so hungover) kind of irritating. i don't like watching other people have fun if i can't. on the other hand, we got a ton of great gifts. monday, chris and i had lunch and did a little lot shopping. we went home, watched our new quantum leap dvd, and then i went downtown for jessie's birthday, where i proceeded to get extremely drunk. at about three in the morning, i started crying insanely, but today i don't remember why. for the most part, except for the crying, i had a great time. however, i spent the night at jessie's with some of the other girls, and they stayed up ordering pizza and watching a movie while i bitched at them to just go to sleep already. again, i can't stand other people having fun if i'm tired and drunk. i got about two hours of sleep, woke up, drove home, and then spent all of today lamenting over my state. i don't want to touch booze ever again. or at least not until tomorrow. i feel like the biggest lush, and while i do enjoy the occasional cocktail, it is somewhat rare for me to get all out loaded.

bleh. i wish i didn't have to go to work tomorrow. but it will be nice for me to get back into my routine. i need routine. i crave it.

what is this, miami beach?

you'd think it was a freaking heat wave. granted, it's forty-five degrees and sunny, and, in december, it doesn't get much better than this. chicagoans, though, are a crazy bunch when it comes to weather. every person i've seen today is either wearing a light spring jacket or no jacket at all. i suppose it's like taking a mental vacation; for a day, at least, we can pretend like frostbite isn't completely unavoidable this season. for a day we can pretend like it may be months before we have to dig our cars out of a pile of snow, or shovel the walks in below zero weather while our eyelashes freeze off.

today is xmas eve eve, and thus the annual potluck and grab bag at ye olde place of work. both of these events have been poorly organized. for the potluck, we have nine different deserts and then six different taco dips and nothing to drink. perhaps we should have all checked with each other first; perhaps i should just shut up and have some more taco dip and cake. then we have the disaster that is the grab bag. my gift, granted, is huge. it takes up the whole table. everyone else on the other hand? gift cards. i hate gift cards, especially for a grab bag. a gift card says, "here, jerkface, this is the least amount of effort i could possibly put into this without resorting to a crumpled twenty dollar bill from my sock drawer."

freaking ingrates.

i did recieve my first gift from a client today, a lovely box of frango mints. it's about damn time that somebody gave me something to show their appreciation. too bad the gift wasn't a sandwich or a pepsi; a girl can't sustain herself on taco dip and sweets alone.

i hate eating in front of other people. because i am basically postponing a root canal until my tooth just falls out, probably at a socially crippling time, i tend to bite out of the corner of my mouth. this leads to smears of food across my cheeks and chin, and it generally takes anywhere from ten to sixteen napkins just to get me through a meal. aside from my side-bite, i'm just a sloppy person in general. when i stand up after completing a meal, crumbs rain from my lap like golf-ball sized chunks of hail, the kind that causes the insurance companies to set up camp and assess the damage. i get various sauces all over my shirt and under my finger nails. i chew with my mouth open, like some kind of unpolished animal, and, if i especially like a meal, i won't be above licking the plate. if i especially dislike a meal, i may vomit on the spot.

for all these reasons, i avoid eating in front of people i've just met. i like to project an image of grace at all times, and getting mustard all over my face just ruins the facade. this is why i stick to drinking at social outings. of course, that's its own can of worms right there, because, let's face it, i say inappropriate things when i'm drunk. or i cry. or i vomit.

i guess i should just stick to coffee.

"puppy smugglers" sounds funny.

helen told me about this new "extreme sport" called zorb. basically, you climb inside a huge, inflated beach ball. some dude throws in a bucket of water to make the inside slippery. and then you're launched down a hill, bouncing around inside this big beach ball while trying to avoid drowning. where do they come up with this stuff? and is my age showing or does this seem like it's just begging for a broken neck?

i can't even get up the nerve to rent ice skates, much less be stuck inside a giant death ball.

my butt hurts really bad this morning. i pulled a muscle inside of my right cheek, and i can barely walk. the funny thing is, my butt didn't hurt at all when i first woke up. then when i got to work, bam, i needed a tourniquet for my ass. i hope this pain goes away, because it can end up being socially crippling.

i just finished reading another oprah's book club selection, and i have to ask: when will this madness end? why do i keep finding myself with these books? this time, i swear, it was completely on accident, but the fact that i've read about 80% of her selections (and enjoyed only 20% of that 80%- [what is the total percentage of oprah books i've enjoyed? show your work.]) is alarming. something has to be done about this. perhaps my library card should be revoked until i can demonstrate some better judgement.

this one was about a divorced woman trying to pick up the pieces of her life by falling in love with a fat man. granted, the fat man does lose some weight by the end of the book, so all wasn't lost, but why did the divorced woman have to fall in love at all? i want to read a book about a woman so scorned that she goes on a shooting spree and then decides to pursue life as a recording artist while hiding out from the cops. that's how you take a story about a divorced woman and turn it into something interesting. falling in love with a fat man. pssh.

that's all i got today, except for a link to my second blog, walks into a bar. i still don't know the purpose of this blog, but it will somehow be different than this one. all i have right now is a rant about "happy holidays," but that will probably come down once i figure out a "theme." it's a placeholder. anyways, check that one frequently for great things. or mediocre things. or recipes. who knows.

what a beautiful house. wouldn't you agree? i can have this house built for me for 118,000 dollars. think i'm kidding? think again. just south of indianapolis is where i can get top bang for my real estate buck. up here, 118,000 will get you a one bedroom condo in the worst area in town. down in franklin, indiana? 118,000 will get you a house, complete with 3 bedrooms, kitchen, breakfast nook, dining room, living room, upstairs loft-style family room, and three bathrooms. i can afford this NOW. i could be living like a freaking queen!

so, i brought the idea of relocation up to chris, who was immediately against the idea, until i brought up several good points. 1, indianapolis is only 3 hours away from chicago, so we could still see family and friends on weekends, etc. 2, we are never going to find such a nice house around here that we can afford. never! 3, cost of living is lower, so even if we ended up with lower paying jobs (which i can assure you we wouldn't), we'd STILL have more disposable income. 4, our mortgage payment on A BEAUTIFUL HOME would be less than our rent. 5, indianapolis is a classy city. it really is. it's no chicago, but that can be a good thing, for those of us who have sat in ridiculous bumper to bumper traffic, or paid high sales or property tax, or been shot at, or just dislike, in general, big city life. i like the idea of a small big city. in fact i love it. 6, great place to raise children. 7, there seem to be plenty of jobs available. 8, did you see the picture of the house? you should see the floor plan!!

i am mostly serious about moving to franklin, indiana. also, one of the street names is "woodfield drive," so that would be like still having a small sliver of schaumburg. not that i necessarily like schaumburg, but, you know. i am sick of illinois. i'm sick of cook county. and, dammit, i want that house.

today is our official three year anniversary. if you had told me three years ago that the guy sitting across from me in the sushi restaurant (the guy with the easy grin who had pushed on an entrance door plainly labeled "pull") was my future husband, i wouldn't necessarily have laughed in your face- but i would have found it difficult to believe. this is because i didn't expect to get married until well into my thirties. i figured this was when my "awkward" stage was finally going to end. but strange things happen. you meet a dude online, and, bam, three years later you're still together planning a wedding. the world is unpredictable.

since the cheese is working late tonight, we celebrated our anniversary last night by going out to a nice restaurant and keeping our snappy insults to each other to an absolute minimum. the cheese came home with wildflowers for me, a card that plainly professed his love for me, and new gold earrings. i dare you to guess what stone was in the gold earrings. go ahead, try. yes, it was a peridot, and if my name was patty, i would be peridot patty. as it stands, 'peridot jackie' doesn't quite have the same ring. the amount of peridot jewelry in my possession has spiraled out of control; chris is extremely lucky that my birthstone isn't a diamond or, like, a washer and dryer combo set.

it was a lovely evening, and i forget sometimes how truly lucky i am to have him in my life. nobody else has ever fit me so perfectly. hopefully, we will always have the laughter. if we don't always have the laughter, then, please lord, let us always have an abundant supply of pasta.

chris and i had agreed on "have i told you lately?" by van morrison for our wedding song. however, the more i think about it, the more it seems too much like the obvious choice. and since i am not the obvious choice for chris, and nor is chris the obvious choice for me, i decided to choose a new song. i decided to do this on my own without consulting chris, but i think he should be okay with whatever decision i make due to the fact that i have impeccable taste.

this is the song i am very majorly leaning towards right now.

This Must Be The Place
(Talking Heads)

Home is where I want to be
Pick me up and turn me round
I feel numb - born with a weak heart
I guess I must be having fun
The less we say about it the better
Make it up as we go along
Feet on the ground
Head in the sky
It's okay, I know nothing's wrong . . nothing

Hi yo I got plenty of time
Hi yo You got light in your eyes
And you're standing here beside me
I love the passing of time
Never for money
Always for love
Cover up and say goodnight . . . say goodnight

Home - is where I want to be
But I guess I'm already there
I come home - she lifted up her wings
Guess that this must be the place
I can't tell one from another
Did I find you, or you find me?
There was a time before we were born
If someone asks, this where I'll be . . . where I'll be

Hi yo We drift in and out
Hi yo Sing into my mouth
Out of all those kinds of people
You got a face with a view
I'm just an animal looking for a home
Share the same space for a minute or two
And you love me till my heart stops
Love me till I'm dead
Eyes that light up, eyes look through you
Cover up the blank spots
Hit me on the head Ah ooh

however, of course i'm having my doubts. if you've ever heard this song, then you must know it is by far one of the most beautiful songs ever done by the talking heads. reading the lyrics, though, makes me wonder if it's 100 % appropriate. here are the problems i'm having:

1. "born with a weak heart." ... some of the elderly guests at the wedding may actually have weak hearts. i don't want to insult them to the point where they take back their envelope.

2. "sing into my mouth" sounds vaguely dirty.

3. should the word "dead" appear in a wedding song? at weddings, don't people pretend that nobody will ever, ever die? except for the "until death do you part" segment, all people talk about are the many, innumerable years ahead of you, as if the happy couple will live until they're a million years old, rather than suddenly drop dead of a heart attack at 42.

4. "hit me on the head." should domestic abuse be a part of my wedding song?

i really do love this song, though. it makes me almost want to cry, and very few songs move me to tears, excluding, of course, everything by jeff buckley. now there's a tragic story. excuse me, i have to be alone.

maniac mansion is my absolute favorite video game, ever, and i just recently found a download. fortunately, it was a free download. unfortunately, i believe it has given my computer an irremovable virus. fortunately, i also have a laptop. unfortunately, this laptop is also infected with a number of viruses. fortunately, i still have booze.

playing maniac mansion takes me on a trip down memory lane. i remember playing this game for hours in the basement, nintendo controller wedged painfully into my hands while my butt sat firmly planted on a small carpet sample acquired solely for sitting on the cold basement floor. see, my father was always thinking of me. we couldn't possibly move the nintendo upstairs where it was temperature controlled, well-lit, and near all the snacks, but, at the very least i could have a tiny square of carpet for my ass. oh, the games i played while sitting on my square of carpet. we'd probably still have that carpet square if not for the fact that my cat decided to die on it.

great, now i'm thinking about my poor cat. and this blog entry was supposed to be whimsical.

maniac mansion embodies all the things i love about good games and good fiction. interesting cast of characters. interesting setting. strange myseries to solve. talking tentacles. i wish i could design a game like maniac mansion. once, my cousin and i made a board game, but it was nothing like maniac mansion. we called it "teen problems," and the point of the game was to turn twenty without becoming a nervous wreck. we were eleven and twelve, and, as you can see, had a pretty weak outlook on teenaged life. unfortunately, in my own life, i did not turn twenty without becoming a nervous wreck. fortunately, i did have a decent selection of video games. unfortunately, my cat was not alive to see me playing most of them.

yesterday, i purchased my grab bag gift for work. as you may remember, the plan was to go to the dollar store and spend the specified twenty dollars on twenty items. one of the items i bought was a big laundry basket to hold the other nineteen items, and i have to say, even though everything i bought was mostly crap, it does look pretty impressive. who wouldn't want a big laundry basket full of gifts? one of these gifts is a digital poker game pen. i think this particular gift is ingenious; you can get your writing done AND satisfy the need to gamble.

when chris got home from work, i showed him my gift laundry basket, spreading the items out all over the floor. chris confirmed what i had already suspected: that this was an absolutely brilliant idea and i, clearly, was also absolutely brilliant. you should see the stuff in this basket. there are dvd movies in it, for christ's sake- robert deniro and betty boop. i just love betty boop; i would have been her for halloween if my body type wasn't so obviously olive oyl. damn those cartoon characters and their massive bosoms.

anyhow, chris and i discussed the option of giving personalized laundry baskets of crap to everyone in our lives. we would walk into his parent's house with a virtual truckload of presents. we tried to figure our who would love this gift idea and who would hate it. his little brother, we decided, would love a basket of crap. he is truly a man after our own hearts. chris' mother, on the other hand? she'd probably ask us what, exactly, was she supposed to do with a digital poker pen, a betty boop dvd, and a pirate's hat. then she'd disown us, which would possibly solve certain invitational problems we're having with our wedding. that's a topic for a different post, though.

since i am so good at assembling the baskets of crap, i've decided to do it for a living. email me with the number of baskets you'll need, the gender of the recievers, and whether or not they have a sense of humor. i will then assemble the basket, and you will pay me the price of the gifts (one dollar per gift) plus another fifty bucks for my time and the cost of gas.

in other news, we went out last night with a friend of mine to see the lounge puppets, a tribute to '80's hair bands. and while chris was pumped, i was revolted. and then when the music started, i had the time of my life. who would have thought i would enjoy two hours of skid row, motley crue, and guns & roses? not i. not i. but i guess i learn a little something about myself everyday.

now, i've seen a lot of ridiculous blogs in my day, but this one really takes the cake. it's an online log that records all the spare change this person has found out on the streets. this could have the potential to be interesting if maybe the writer talked about the neuroses behind this obsession of looking for change, or how scrounging for change under bookshelves at the store has affected his social life, and also his bad back, but for crying out loud, i've never seen anything as completely boring in my entire life. except for maybe this blog, but that's because it's about cars. also, it seems to be in a different language.

and the truth is, i am fascinated with found change. i think i saw on the news last week that there was this guy out east who has collected about $9,000 in found change over the last ten years or something. the news footage shows him walking through drive-thrus with a look on his face that can only be constipation or concentration as he kicks at the ground looking for pennies. they show him walking slowly through intersections, eyes aimed downwards, as cars swerve to avoid him. this is the portrait of a madman, and it's interesting. but this above-mentioned blog? here's a sample entry to illustrate my point:

Wednesday, December 07, 2005
I found ten cents, one dime. It was in the street as I walked to my car after work at the Harrison PATH train station.

that's the whole entry! talk about dullsville, population that guy.

anyhow, i myself don't go around looking for spare change. the only place i actively search for spare change is in our sofa, because when we moved a few months ago, tipping over the couch to get it out the door resulted in about fifteen dollars in dimes and nickels raining out from between the cushions. chris likes to refer to the couch as our "nest egg." i like to refer to it as a sure place to find cash for a cheeseburger.

i've been feeling sludgey for the past few days, but maybe that's because i've spent the better part of this week drinking. i would imagine that the holidays have to be the hardest time for a recovering alcoholic, what with all the drunken holiday parties and the ritualistic drowning of the sorrows when one realizes that, hey, yet another year has gone by and not an once of weight has been lost.

this severely cold weather is wreaking havoc on my skin, and the situation has further contributed to the above-mentioned drinking. my skin is dry and flakey, and there's a zit on my forehead which will just not go away, no matter how much i may pick at it. to combat the dryness, i've tried dunking my entire head in a bucket full of lotion, but that only succeeded in making my eyelashes goopy. plus, now my ears and nose are all clogged up with lotion, so i can neither smell nor hear. i just can't seem to win; i think my living quarters are too dry. i woke up the other morning with a nosebleed. and i KNOW it wasn't the altitude.

tonight i am trapped at work until a very late hour while the snow accumulates outside, making conditions for both driving and living an absolute nightmare. why do so many people live up here? are we all just dumb? i guess i'd choose snow over hurricanes any day, but that really depends on whether or not hurricanes are bad for the skin. and if they cause nosebleeds.

this holiday season, i will be taking on the persona of santa claus and writing letters to local children. don't get the wrong idea- i'm not doing this randomly in a creepy i-know-you've-been-naughty-and-this-letter-has-come-from-inside-the-house kind of way. i'm doing it in conjunction with our local jaycee's. i have to admit i'm a little nervous about this whole endeavor. the kids will write letters to santa, and then i have to respond to them. what do i do if they ask for a pony?

kid: can i have a pony?

me as santa: sure, you can have two ponies. plus the barbie dream condo.

then, come boxing day on dec. 26, i'll have an army of angry mothers banging on my door. of course, i'm doing this anonymously, so it will probably take until dec. 29 for them to track me down. this should give me plenty of time to purchase a guard dog and a rifle.

hopefully, being santa will launch me into a career of taking on other fictional, child-friendly characters. i will write letters as the tooth fairy, telling kids i'll be on a bender in south america for the entire summer, so don't lose any teeth between june and september. as the easter bunny, i'll give tips on how to expertly dye an egg, warning kids that alien babies will somehow hatch from any egg that is unattractively dyed. as strawberry shortcake, i will announce my plans to run for senate.

my gift giving problems are solved!

and, in response to ferozan's request for me to describe the top i'm wearing out on saturday, let me just say i'm sick of being the only girl in the group wearing a turtleneck or a sweater pulled over some t-shirt featuring jem and holograms. so i went out and bought myself a sleeveless, black lacy number, the kind with a neckline low enough to hint at a little cleavage but high enough to still be respectable. of course, i'm planning on wearing either a cardigan over it or a turtleneck under it, so i guess old habits do die hard. either way, i plan on looking hot, so, chris, you'd better get my engagement ring back from the jeweler's, and fast!

ah, ha ha. anyhow, as i speak the copier at work is churning out fifty of these human fund donor cards, so, seriously, my gift giving problems really are solved.

at the end of next week, and wrapping around to the following week, i have six days off of work straight. this is six days off of both of my jobs, and so i must say thinking about this upcoming vacation is making me rather giddy. what will i do with all of my free time? hopefully, i'll get to hang out with some friends i haven't seen in a while, but that will depend on a number of factors, including their availability, the amount of snow on the ground, and whether or not i feel like getting out of my pajamas.

i have turned into quite the lazy hermit these past few... weeks? months? years? was i always this lazy? it seems to me that this is a somewhat recent phenonemon. i have become a major homebody, whereas, before, i couldn't get enough out of going out. it didn't matter where i went or who came with, as long as my butt didn't hit the couch. or at least my own couch; like when george costanza went to jerry's to watch "home alone" by himself, he justified it by saying that at least he was "out," he was doing something. now i have become great friends with the couch, and while that may sound mildly depressing, at least... well, at least i have my health.

although i do have a few busy weekends coming up, all of them which can be described as "girls' night out." i love the girls' night out. i never thought i would enjoy such an evening; i thought girls' nights out would entail the in depth discussion of pms or nail color. however, it's very refreshing. most of the day at work, and of course at home, i'm surrounded by boys. it's nice to take a vacation from that. i'm sick of talking about hunting and football.

i even bought a new top for this weekend's girls' night out. see how excited i am?