Dude, I think I was the oldest person at the House of Blues last night. I should have expected that the Fray would appeal to the eighteen year old girl crowd, and I know they're not all that great, but I did like them enough to go when Beth invited me. Last night, though, I was feeling my age. Which, in about two weeks, will be 26. Yet another year closer to 30. Last year's trek into the age of 25 was somewhat of a sobering moment when I realized I had hit the halfway mark into this particular decade. Now I'm going to be 26. A married, 26 year old woman. Maybe it's not a big deal to you, but it's a big deal to me.

I don't know, I don't think I like going to concerts. My dislike of people combined with my distaste for spending money multiplied by my love of activities in which I can sit is one factor. Which is yet another indication that I am getting old. Oh well.

On the other hand, I still have seven vacation days left for 2006. That's after taking off a week and a half for my wedding and honeymoon and going to NY for four days. I love this company and their uber generosity with the vacay days. Now if Ferozan would move to Los Angeles, I'd have a reason to use a few of those days. Or if Chris would surprise me with a trip to my favorite city Seattle. Either scenario would work just fine.

A bit of a disappointing week here at the office. One of my favorite co-workers was passed over for a promotion. My stomach sank when I found out; his possible promotion had meant more to me than my wedding day and last year's Thanksgiving Day parade combined. I really, truly think that he deserved this position, and when the company hired somebody else, my gut reaction was to punch somebody and then curl up and cry. The unfairness of it all.

This week has been mildly eventful, at best, with a small poker party on Tuesday and a few nights out for some cocktails. Tonight I'm going to the House of Blues with the sister-in-law and her two friends to see Augustana and The Fray. I mostly forgot that I was supposed to go with them until yesterday, when I thought I would be carless today due to Chris' hot little Sunfire being out of comission. "Well, now we're down to one car," I thought to myself, "Which means I probably have something to do requiring a car that I've totally forgotten about."

Alas, Chris' car is feeling a little better today, thanks to our local mechanic, whom Chris plans on paying in beer.

Then, tomorrow, we've got Aunt Mary's charity dinner. Cookbooks are for sale, people! You too can own your very own copy of Mary's Favorite Recipes, thoughfully and diligently compiled and formatted by yours truly, Jackie B. This is it: seven weeks of my life finally coming to fruition. Paperback is fifteen, hardbound is twenty-five, and if you'd like the liner notes in which I do complaining about everybody in Chris' family who did not provide proper leadership, then that will be an extra ten.

Sunday, I have Patti's bridal shower. Some of you may remember Patti from when she took complete control of my wedding and basically saved me from a full-on nervous breakdown. Now it's payback time. I feel mildly guilty that part of the gift I purchased for her was from a gift card somebody else gave me... and a coupon. But the retail value, folks- it's huge. I love this girl. I'm naming my first born Patti Berger.

Nothing like a good old fashioned pregnancy scare to really put things in perspective. The last week of my life has been somewhat hellish, and it made me realize a few things. One, I don't want kids. Maybe that will change, but right now, I can't imagine anything else ruining my life as much as nine months of pregnancy and eighteen years of screaming. Two, I need to not take such a casual approach to birth control. That's why I told Chris that I was going to start embracing abstinence. I believe my exact words were, "You're not allowed to touch me ever again." Three, buying a pregnancy test at the drug store makes for an awkward conversation with the clerk. You'd think that there are things you are trained, as a clerk, not to say when people approach the counter. When your customer purchases laxatives, you wouldn't dare say, "Must be constipated." When your customer purchases yeast infection medicine, you wouldn't dare say, "Must be itchy." And, moving on to the point I'm trying to make, when your customer purchases a pregnancy test, you wouldn't dare say, "Oh, you think you're pregnant?"

I looked away, thinking that there must be a way the clerk could redeem himself from making such a comment. Unfortunately, he only made things worse by handing me a coupon for baby formula. I will be writing Walgreens a strongly worded letter about their lack of sensitivity.

Last night, I celebrated my good fortune in not being pregnant by getting drunk and smoking a pack of cigarettes with my friend Lore. I went on and on about not being ready for pregnancy and how I was so freaking happy and how children are just the worst things, ever. Then I remembered, much too late, that she just had a miscarriage only weeks ago, and that I was the biggest jerk alive. She didn't seem too bothered by my crass and blunt comments, but I found myself thinking that if Walgreens did start having training sessions for their clerks on what not to say, that maybe I should sit in on a few of those sessions as well.

All's swell that ends swell. Cheers to a long and barren life, until I choose otherwise.

Grounded Teen Kills Family And Then Attends The Prom.

Sweet. Lord knows there were times as a kid when I wanted to go to the movies, my mom said no, and I sat in my room and contemplated murdering the whole lot of them. The thing is, if I had to slaughter my entire family first, I don't really think I would have enjoyed the movies as much, what with all the worrying about fingerprints and whether or not the will had been updated recently. Even though the prom is usually (not always) more fun than the movies, I would think that the same basic principle would apply. But what do I know, I've never killed more than one person in a single sitting.

Things Chris Has Taught Me:

How to open a bottle of wine in a mostly proper fashion.

The game of Texas Hold 'Em.

Baseball basics.

How to use a dishwasher.

How to tie a tie. Or, rather, he attempted to, but I blew up when I couldn't do it on the first try.

Things TV Has Taught Me:

Different ways to chop vegetables.

How to separate truth from urban legend, Mythbusters style.

What not to wear.

How Kirk Cameron screwed up 'Growing Pains' and got that poor girl fired.

The seven day forecast.

How to parlay an unsuccessful stint on a reality show into my ticket onto the red carpet.

How to spend only forty dollars a day on food next time I'm in Memphis.

There are several good ways to lower my cholesterol, pill-style.

Ways to get a PBS tote bag.

I'm a lot more like Larry David than I'd like to admit.

What a Fanilow is.

I can sit AND be fit.

Katie Segal has had an interesting career.

Police video catches the strangest things!

$19.99 will buy a lot if I act now.

What College Taught Me:

If the train pulls into the Metra Station late, for God's sake get a note from the conductor or from somebody, anybody, in a train-ish suit.

Is 30 dollars of gas worth it?

my parents are coming over for dinner today. this should be interesting. my mother will ask two hundred questions in a row without waiting for answers, and then she'll comment on how much fat is in the meal i've prepared.

we saw master of none at the metro last night. i thought of all the bands i'd seen at the metro over the years, and then when i looked up and saw dan and company, it was like something out of a movie. they didn't come in first place, but hey. how many other area bands can say they've played at the m-fing METRO? well, after last night, at least fifteen. but that's not the point.

i started watching "six feet under" as recommended by will and dan, two males that really have their pulse on the kind of tv-viewing i end up liking. it's great, so far. although now i can't stop picturing the last five minutes of my life. right now i'm torn between having a semi-truck slam into me on the highway or a panic attack in my kitchen that turns into a full blown, fatal heart attack. i told chris that i thought he would probably die on a hospital bed. he didn't seem to like discussing our deaths, though, so then i moved on and listed all of the people we knew that would either be stabbed, shot, or poisoned. there were more than you'd think.

i'm still working on mary's cookbook, and it's draining every last bit of energy from my already weakened mind. i feel like i've been abandoned on this project. that's what i get for volunteering to help. next time somebody says they're working on something that seems to sound interesting, i'm going to say, "that's great. let me know how it goes." then i'm going to help myself to a snack.

I don't know what kind of sick pervert I am, exactly, but I get a real kick out of searching the sex offender database. I can kill hours on end doing this. I tell you, it just doesn't get old.

I KNEW I came from royalty. I guess this article makes complete sense and isn't that surprising, but it's still kind of neat. I wonder which royal family I'm descended from. I hope it was somebody who ruled with an iron fist. I hope it was somebody despised by peasants.

I can't sleep. I have a lot of stuff on my mind, and none of it has anything to do with real, every day life. Which, I suppose, is a nice break from the stuff I normally have on my mind. I had a dream last night that is keeping me awake tonight, and I wish that I could tip my head over a sink and just let the remnants from the nightmare pour out like bad juice from a carton marked "Best If Used By March '02."

Where did last night's dream even come from? I spent my time at work today searching online dream dictionaries for an analysis or answer, but those things are a load of crap anyway. I think that I have to make my own peace with myself. I have a younger mentality in my worst dreams- even if I'm the same age I am now, only stuck in my own past. The thing is, I can never graduate high school. This is always the most recurring theme, and it manages to sneak itself into every one of my worst dreams. There might be something else totally huge going on- such as I'm lost somewhere in 1674 with no freaking idea where I parked my time machine- and, oh yeah, I need three more credits or I'm not going to graduate high school. Or, I'm about to be murdered by my old best friend who happens to have stolen my dad's car and run over my sister, but, guess what, I just remembered that I haven't been to Biology all semester and there's no way I'm going to catch up now. I've graduated high school. I even graduated college. So why doesn't my brain believe it yet?

I don't know. I don't get it. It's the same thing every time- it's all about whether or not I'm going to graduate. What really gets my goat is that I was a really good student (except for Calculus, RIP), and there was never, EVER a doubt of anything below a 3.0. So why don't my nightmares instead focus on more realistic problems I had, such as finding a group of friends I could identify with or finally figuring out what the hell to do with my hair. The worst people always show up in these dreams too, people I knew well after high school. Some of these people, I suppose, made me feel like I was still in high school, but still others empowered me and were my friends. Yet they're all there, shaking their heads and muttering, "Jackie, I don't know what you're going to do about Spanish class. Mr. Gravyhead says he's going to fail you. And I don't know where your locker is; maybe you should keep looking down all these dark, dusty hallways. Don't even tell me you forgot your combo!"

That's my problem at this moment in time- trying to understand why my brain is stuck at seventeen, why I'll never graduate high school, why I don't have money for books, why I keep ditching gym class even though I know I need the credit and why, a lot of times, I'm a married, 25 year old woman with a decent job who can't seem to get a passing grade in basic high school algebra. I can't go to sleep until I figure it out. I can't keep having these dreams with their strange and familiar cast of characters.

And I very rarely dream about anyone I actually knew in high school, which is a stand-out point. The only real classmates who ever show up are the ones I knew only vaguely. That girl who lived down the block from me with the big shoulders and the little ankles. That guy who hummed Police (or was it Sting?) songs in geometry. What gives?

I can't take it.

* * * * * * * * *

Tonight, I held a sparkler. I haven't held a sparkler since I was a kid, and I swirled the fiery stick around in an attempt to spell out my name with the smoke. However, there was no smoke. I could have sworn those damn things let out enough smoke so that you could make designs in the air. Maybe my memory has misled me again; I was the only person waving my sparkler around like some kind of fool.

It's been a decent 4th of July weekend so far. Chris and I went to the Palatine fest on Saturday and will try to hit up Arlington Heights tomorrow after his friend's barbecue. Fourth of July fests make me feel guilty. They make me feel like I have to go, because they only come around once a year. And if I miss them, then I may have regrets.

* * * * * * * * * *

Speaking of dreams, I dreamt that Beatta had a baby girl. I went into work to tell her, and, before I could, she said, "Jackie, I had a dream about you." How nuts that we dreamt about each other the same night? Only while my dream had her cradling a beautiful little baby, her dream had me having a heart attack at a dinner party. Fabulous, Beatta.

But forget the heart attack, my friend- was I a high school graduate in your dream?

I woke up this morning feeling like an eighty year old after a mostly unsuccessful hip replacement. Yesterday I was sore from my Thursday of hard labor; then I aggravated my condition by walking around the city yesterday with Shane for five hours. This morning, my legs (especially the backs of my thighs and my butt) were so sore that I had to slowly ease myself onto the toilet in a fashion that reminded me of how Chris had once moved, in the recent hours after the doctor sloppily plucked his gallbladder from the ever-attractive gaping belly gash I later named "Walt."

However, the aches are worth it in denim alone. Allow me to explain. We saw a thrift store on Belmont and stopped in. There in the racks was a brand new pair of size 3 Miss Sixty jeans. I'd never heard of Miss Sixty, but the style and fit of these jeans was superb, making my already slim and long legs even more attractive to the average passer-by. There were three bucks, so I bought them. The clerk told me that the jeans retailed for $160, which I had a hard time believing (who pays $160 for jeans???). Then I found them on the internet. Deal. Of. The. Century. I can't wait to wear these bad boys to various local malls and burger joints.

It was good to see Shane last night, as it always is. He's currently in the process of making a lamp out of a bowling ball. That's the thing about Shane- he's always converting objects into their exact opposites. Maybe not their EXACT opposites- but you get the picture.