i love you but i leave you, i don't want you but i need you

And despite my crossed fingers and hope for the best, I enter week seven of injured wrist-itude with a new, equally neon-coloured cast.

I saw my arm for approximately 3.4456 seconds. I got to scratch one dry spot. Then it was back into fibreglass, at least for another two weeks, til the poking and prodding and testing of our marvellous health care system can figure out wtf is wrong with me. Because apparently, apparently, there might not have been a fracture at all. But: "Oh, scaphoids are pretty hard to tell my dear" and "I'm about 90% sure that it was fractured" and "Well you're still having a lot of pain right there, so there must be something"

No shit.

I'm getting a little tired of guessing games when it comes to my health. I want my arm back, I want to go back to my full-time job, I want to be able to shower without a freakin' plastic bag having to join me (plastic bags, unlike other people, do not make good shower companions)...I am just frustrated at having been injured, and even more frustrated that this medical system has been jerking me around for SEVEN WEEKS.

Either it is fractured, or it isn't. If it isn't, figure out what's wrong. Being given guesses isn't good enough for me anymore, and when an xray tech brings me to tears because the pain is excrutiating as she's trying to get my wrist in the right spot for a (count it) fourth set of radioactive pictures of my freaking arm, I think it's a PRETTY GOOD SIGN that somethin' ain't right.

I'm not asking the hospital to know everything. I'm just asking for some answers, and maybe, maybe just a little less condescension in their tones when they talk to me. I'm not 2, I'm 22, and I know my own body. When something hurts, it hurts. Help me figure out why?

....In the meantime, I'm going back to my basically-pretty-happy attitude. Sometimes you just need a good rage post!

I leave you with a photo of my new bright green roommate--I promise I'm laughing about this all sometime tomorrow. Especially my guinea pig status.

Much love, everyone who sat through that <3

Jmart out!

there's no guarantee, that leavin' town's gonna set us both free

So, I'm still broken.

This wrist baloney makes typing blogs incredibly difficult, but I've decided to not let it get me and to keep on blogging just the same. Unfortunately, because blogging is so sucky with this broken arm thing, I won't be posting any deep, meaningful rants. Instead, today I thought I'd share my list of top 10 things that are next-to-impossible-to-do when your arm is casted from elbow to fingers, including your thumb.

I don't know if it's ever possible to truly be ready for this, but here goes:

10. Paint your nails. My left hand's look good, my right hand's cannot be completed. Fail.

9. Bra hooks. I now understand why males complain about their difficulty.

8. Buttons. Buttons are the devil when you can't use both opposable thumbs--good thing I work in retail.

7. Zippers. See above comments. Retail's AWESOME.

6. My dishes. When a cast cannot get wet, dishes become incredibly tough to deal with. It's really freakin' hard to tape my arm into a plastic bag in order to be able to just wash my dishes. And even harder to try and cut myself OUT of it.

5. Shower. The plastic bag rant applies here, too, only add in trying to wash one's hair with only one hand--squeezing out shampoo, conditioner and body wash is so not as easy as you'd think.

4. Do my hair. My hair is short. It requires a straightener, product and teasing half the time to get it the way I want. Teasing cannot occur with one hand. And I've burnt my forehead twice with my straightener. I'm awesome.

3. Cleaning. Not that I actually enjoy cleaning ever anyway, but it becomes even more of a pain in the ass when you've only got one hand that can actually grasp stuff. Carrying clothes basket? Nay. Folding clothes? Not a chance. Working the dustpan and broom together to sweep my floor? I suspect it's pretty comedic to watch. Someone should film.

2. Sleeping. I am a deep sleeper, but I also move aorund a ton. As a result, I have rolled over and bashed myself in the arm and/or face with my cast. Also, my wrist aches like a motherbitch a lot at night, making it hard to sleep. Rock on, broken scaphoid, rock on.

Annnnnndddd finally:
1. Playing video games. So it turns out you actually need both your thumbs to play video games. Including Super Mario Bros Wii. And Wii boxing. And Guitar Hero. I'm already pro (literally) at Wii Baseball and Tennis...I'm running out of things to play.


Honourable mention goes out to scratching hard-to-reach itches, including those that happen underneath the cast. Apparently you're not supposed to stick stuff down your cast to reach those itches--who knew?!

While my list seems bitter (okay, it is a little bitter), I hope you managed to get a chuckle or two out of it. And if you didn't...come watch me try and accomplish any of those tasks. I can guarantee you'll get yourself a laugh then!!

Thanks to my dear friend Lee, who helped me out big time this weekend and was the inspiration for this here blog post.
Til next time, pals, I leave you with this vision of my lovely, construction-cone coloured, casted broken arm, and how I really feel about it:

Take care, blogosphere. Stay alert, stay safe (and in one piece!!)

you don't wanna be here in the future, so you say the present's just a pleasant interruption to the past

Oh man

I've been MIA for exactly a month.

I feel terrible, but I have legitimately good reasons, blogosphere. They include such exciting things as working a week of 5:30 am start-time kitchen shifts (which were, as you may suspect, pretty terrible); having someone in my building *attempt* to break into my place (but they didn't, and they've been dealt with, and I'm totally fine); getting into a minor, albeit also scary, fender bender with my beloved Mia the Kia (she's okay, just a little bent license plate) and breaking my left wrist in one of the stupidest, and klutziest incidents of my life (I was late for work, wiped out in my kitchen and am now willing my left scaphoid to heeeeaaaalll).

Of course, I make it sound like I've spent a month having an awful time, but that isn't true. With the bad always comes the good, and in that month I've had a lot of good- meals with friends, nights at my favourite bars, "Charlie Sheen" weekend with some of my favourite people in the entire world, drinks and laughs and dancing...All the important stuff.

It really makes the whole 'bad' crap seem like it hardly exists--which is awe-some.

So in short, I've been off living life. I gotta say, I really think the first month-ish of 2011 has seen me fail some of my resolutions (broken wrists are hardly taking better care of myself, after all), but really, really rock some of the others: in particular, the whole appreciating everything I have thing.

As a result, I just want to say thanks. Those of you who worried for me, with me, and about me. Those of you who made me laugh, made me feel better when I cried, who kept me fed and helped me with my dishes, and drove six hours to see me and drink with me, and those of you who just consistently check in. Without you, I'd have probably just curled up in bed after the break in attempt and called 2011 another waste. But it's not...and I love you all so, so much.

Let's just hope that the remainder of the year has a few less accidents- car, kitchen and otherwise.

Til next time, blogosphere.

your voice was the soundtrack of my summer

"Well, I don't tell you everything"
"...What?! You don't tell me everything?"

Those could have been throw-a-way lines in the screenplay that is our life. They could have been something I said just to screw with your continual need to know everything I do and everyone I know, everything I think and everything I am. (This sounds derisive, but it isn't--your need to know everything makes me feel loved).

They could have been.

But they weren't. They aren't. I can't get them out of my head.

They're stuck there, on replay.

I don't tell you everything, because I can't tell you everything. And I know you're going to want to ask questions- but don't. Isn't it time we both learned to leave well enough alone?

And besides, everyone's entitled to their secrets.

every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end

Told you my song lyric post title for the new year's resolution business was going to be kick-ass. And so you're aware, contrary to popular societal belief "Closing Time" isn't by Third Eye Blind: it's by Semisonic. (I make this distinction because of a trailer I watched recently for some new Justin Timberlake movie about him banging his best friend and thinking there couldn't be complications--he mistakes the artists. And I'm too lazy to Google anymore details for this, so if you have gotten through this ramble/if you care--hit up Google).

Anyway.

Welcome 2011!

I hope y'all had a most fantastic NYE. I was one lucky woman this year. I had a wicked awesome New Year's. There was alcohol, there was laughter, there was hugs and dancing and food and Rockband and a whole bunch of my favourite people in the world (not all, but a lot of 'em). There was sharing and reminiscing, looking forward and toasting and counting down over a computer clock because I still don't have cable. There were Youtube videos and plans for "Bad Porn Sundays" and tubing adventures, and cookies and fireworks, and early or delayed New Year's texts about kisses and hugs and best wishes for the new year. It was a kick-ass way to welcome 2011, and I only hope that everyone had as much fun (and got to see their favourite people too--unless you didn't get to see me, then I apologize...hahaha. I kid. Mostly.)

It feels good to be on the precipice of something new and different, yet strangely the same. It's just another day, it's just another year, it's really not a big deal--and yet it is. It gives us the chance for renewal, to start over, to look back at a pre-determined packet of time in which we lived, see our successes, see our failures, see where we want to change and what we want to improve.

I spent an entire post rambling about all that was good and bad about 2010, and now that it's over, I kind of want to spend another post rambling, this time about the things I want to do with 2011. You lucky bums who bother to read my rambles get to hear them. Excited? I'll bet you are. :P

So without further ado, my resolutions, which, I will not list but will simply write in normal paragraph form because there's few of them and they're complicated.

This year, I'm going to take better care of myself. I know this is probably something everyone vows, but in all seriousness, I get my ass so busy working or helping other people (or in 2010, in school) that I forget about me. So this year, I'm eating better, actually hauling my ass to a gym, sleeping like a normal person, taking my vitamins--all the things I need to do so as not to be ill for ninety percent of the year, mentally and physically.

And on that note, this year I'm going to be braver. That's right: I'm going to keep grabbing the bull by the horns, so to speak, and doing that whole carpe diem thing. It's been working out so far for me with the 'life transformation', but I'm still missing key elements. I took a big leap moving without a plan. Now I need to take bigger leaps--confess things, take risks in relationships...and maybe jump out of a plane. Okay, not the last one--but the first two terrify the hell out of me, so they're basically equivocal anyway. I will be brave, I will take risks...I will stop talking myself out of things.

This year, I'm going to keep up with the writing. In fact, I'm going to write something every day: a poem, a thought, a sentence, a blog post. Anything to keep me going with it, because to lose it again would be to lose the rediscovered creative part of me that makes me who I am. Never again.

And, finalement: This year, I'm going to appreciate what I have, and who I have. I'm going to love the hell out of my friends and my family, and they're going to know it. I'm going to keep perspective. I'm going to laugh more (I lost some of that in 2010- stupid me, because laughing is who I am). I'm going to dance like no one's watching (and if it's in my apartment, no one had better be watching anyway!). I'm going to sing like no one can hear me. I'm going to get my tattoo. I'm going to laugh and love and live--I'm going to remember that there are people in the world worse off than I. I'm going to reconnect with my sisters from other misters. I'm going to roll with the punches (which better be less painful this year--you listenin, 2011?). I'm going to deal with things, and be there for people and ask for help when I need it--or at least, I'm gonna try.

Above all, I'm going to be me- whosoever she happens to be. I'm going to let myself change and evolve, but I'm going to stay true to who I am and what I believe. I'm going to take this clean slate and scribble my Jmartness all over the damn thing.

I hope you all do the same. Squeeze every second you can out of 2011- 'cause you just never know how many of them you have left.

Best wishes for the new year, friends.

Lookin' forward to y'all suffering through more of my rambling <3
And thanks for being there. For everything.

I'd rather live my whole life with a sense of abandon, squeeze every drop out no matter what happens

It's been awhile.

Between 17-day stretches of work, keeping my apartment from looking like a bomb literally went off in the middle of it, and the complete madness of the holiday season, this baby slowly fell by the wayside.

But here I am, in that awkward spot between Christmas and New Year's, where you still feel like you should be celebrating but you have a week with no official anything to celebrate, and I find myself reminiscing and remembering, and it struck me that I needed to write something.

Staring down the barrel of 2011 really makes me back on the year that was...with one day left of 2010, I'm just wondering if it has any last crappy things to throw at me. You know, I like to do years in review, and normally I'd write them down in some notebook that I'd eventually shove in the corner of my desk and forget until next almost-new-year's-eve, but...tonight, I think I'll blog it out and that way I can't forget.

I wish I could look back and say that it was everything I'd hoped for, and that 2010 was so rockin' that I had nothing bad to say. I wish I could, but I can't. I know I've said it elsewhere in another post, but 2010 was overwhelmingly a shitty year for me, my friends, and my family. There were huge, messy romantic breakups; hernias; strokes; a lot of mental health issues for a lot of folks (myself included- meltdowns are not fun, people). There were car accidents, pelvis-crushing-tractor accidents, job losses, huge disappointing moves, psycho pseudo-exes, messy friend break ups, lost and stolen wallets and purses and laptops. There was a huge oil spill, there were earthquakes, natural disasters, tsunamis. There were so many awful things that it seemed like everytime we started to get ourselves up, the universe governing 2010 would kick us riiiiight back down.

But

But I can't lie and say it was all bad. There was a lot of bad, but then you have to take the bad with the good, and the year held a lot of that, too. I have to be grateful. I lived, I laughed, I loved. I moved. I worked towards transforming my life. I found my writing again. I graduated from my undergrad. I formed bonds with people that will never be broken. I made a difference. We all did.

And we made it to the other side. If nothing else, this year taught me to appreciate what I have. That doesn't mean just things-- stuff's nice, but it isn't the be-all. More than ever, I appreciate the time I have with the friends and family, and want to make the most out of it. You never know when this moment might be the last, so it's important to appreciate the time you have, and the people you have. I guess this realization has really been driven home this year, and it's something I'll take with me into 2011, so: thanks, 2010. Even though you really, really sucked, I guess you were worth it in the end.

I feel as though I need to write about my resolutions (yeah, I've got them...) but I'm going to hold off on that cliche until the new year officially begins: I have a sick song title for the post so I may as well wait-- what? I'm being honest!

I sincerely hope y'all--whoever may or may not be reading this-- had the very best December-holiday-that-you-celebrate ever, and I wish you lots of luck, love and happiness in the coming New Year.

Til 2011, friends,

Jmart

you say you're goin' to be a star, but to me you are

As I begin my insane stretch of seventeen-days-in-a-row-working, I find myself pondering a lot of stuff: keeping my apartment in one piece while I'm working, actually buying groceries and doing laundry, how the heck I'm going to get any sleep, how much wine I am going to try and consume unwinding--all the important stuff, of course

But lately, more and more, what's been on my mind is an intertwining of issues that I just can't seem to let go. And they are: weight/body image/self image/self esteem. In that vein, they also intertwine with my previous whiney-esque post about wanting to have a partner.

Here's the thing: so many people I know lately have been mentioning weight. And I'm of two minds about the whole thing. On the one hand (or mind, as it were), I find myself understanding where people are coming frmo when they say things like "I need to watch my weight" or "Don't let me eat another one of those chocolate covered confections" or mention holiday weight or say that they're trying to lose a few pounds- I've been there, I think we've all been there, and I'd be lying if I said that 100% of the time I feel 100% confident in my body image. And parts of me have wondered if maybe that's why I've had a hard time finding someone- because I'm not some thin attractive little thing (this is not altogether a frequent thought, but it has popped up annoyingly from time to time in the back of my mind--like I said, not 100% confident all the time).

But then

THEN I go blind with rage at some of the things people say, and my anger isn't targeted at them, it's targeted at...the universe? Society? Whatever unknown entity it is that makes us, particularly women but everyone, base their self-worth on how we look and how much we weigh? I rage at all of that, because I hear value-laden judgement statements about how someone is "being good" by bringing just a salad for lunch, because I know my friends think they are lesser than they used to be because they've put on a few pounds, because it actually even crosses my mind at any one point ever that the reason I'm single is because I'm a larger woman. I get so frustrated and angry at it because we live in a society where we raise our kids to believe that the perfect model on the magazine cover is real, even when she's airbrushed to shit; because we live in a culture where the media rules, and the media gives us such enlightening television as The Biggest Loser and Bulging Brides and a Rachel Ray narrative that tracks the weight loss of a teen because she is too big to go to prom. How can we possibly think this is okay? You know what? My anger is at society overall, but it's one we all participate in. When we watch a television show like TLC's Say Yes to the Dress: Big Bliss, a show about fat women trying to find wedding dresses, or The Biggest Loser or any other show that takes larger people and turns them into a spectacle, into some kind of freak show that we should all witness and then take as a warning so we don't turn into them- we participate. When we stay away from sweets because we're trying to be 'good' as though our behaviour with food weren't disordered, as if we were meant to judge our eating habits with some kind of value, usually negative, because our self-esteem is innately now tied to that which we require to live: we are participating.

I'm not suggesting that stopping is easy- in fact, I stopped in the middle of this post to eat the Domino's I had delivered and then felt guilty about having eaten that much (as a sidenote, to someone who knows who they are-- yes, I do still feel guilty sometimes. Guess my food-shame isn't all the way off, is it?). I think what I'm trying to get at is that I want people to think about their unhealthy relationship with food and with their weight and make changes to be healthy, not to be "good", and if you eat something that isn't the healthiest, you don't have to feel like you're bad or that you failed. This is just insanity...and I'm tired of being sucked in.

It's liberating to love yourself for who you are and what you look like, but it's a freaking bitch on occasion to get others to do the same. Isn't it time we all took a step back and said WTF?