I've been watching you people (2011 edition)

Does anyone remember last year when I wrote about how I got a tracker on my blog without telling anybody?

And I got to see where you people are from?

And I got to see how long you spend reading this blog?? AND ALL YOUR IP ADDRESSES??

Yea, I still have it.

Hello loyal readers from Canada!! And hello new reader from Australia!!

Are you by chance good-looking??

Ha.

You people's locations are hardly the most fun part of this site tracker, except when little icons of your foreign flags pop up. They're so cute. (P.S. How would you say "Toolbag" in Burmese?)

No...the best thing about this tracker is seeing the the referring page for this blog.

It's mostly through Facebook (THANKS FRIENDS!!!) but almost daily, people are referred to my blog from a dumb Google search.

Yes, I get to read people's dumb Google searches!!

And I can say with confidence that 90 percent of the people who clicked on my blog from a Google search did NOT get the answer they were looking for.

...unless they Google searched "Toolbag Tuesday"...BECAUSE PEOPLE TOTALLY GOOGLE SEARCH TOOLBAG TUESDAY!!!

Maybe I'll make some T-shirts.

So, what did I do with these Google searches? I did the same thing I did last year. I put them all into a Word document...while laughing.

Yet, tragedy struck when I got laid off from my job and the four-page Word document with ALL the searches I had collected was deleted when I wiped out my entire existence from the work computer.

D'OH!!!

But there's never a shortage of material when it comes to Google searches!!! In between screaming at the Louisiana Unemployment Commission, I've been collecting you people's Google searches since July.

And, I've solved a Google search mystery!

A lot of people were getting to my blog by searching for PORN with the names "Jenny and Joy" (which happens to be me and my twin sister's names)...and that made me suspicious.

But then I found out that there is Japanese CARTOON PORN (um...what) involving a "nurse Jenny" and "officer Joy" and that's really what people wanted to see, not hear about the adventures of me and my non-Asian twin...

Shouldn't the nurse wear the gloves??

It didn't help that I wrote a delightful blog about having strep throat this year and used the words "nurse," "Jenny," and "shot in the butt" (purely medical terms people!!!) because now I get a ton of internet traffic from people searching for "butt shot of nurse Jenny."

So, in addition to disappointing Japanese porn-lovers, here's what people Google-searched for hoping to learn by clicking on my blog:

Is it a good idea to use two running backs from the same team

robin quivers see through shirt

funny made up country names for beer Olympics

Toolbag Tuesday (yaaaay!!!)

JennySays

thriller dance arms

boyfriend goes zydeco dancing without me

twin tattoos

nurse ass shot

nurse patient butt shot

nurse put shot in my ass

gymnastics crab

the strep shot

nurse Jenny butt shot

jennyandjoy.com

mom biceps

salon permed hair

twin tattos

body wave perm before and after

"Wayne Campbell" catholic priest

grapes fancy dress

robin quivers nude

emma watson lipstick on teeth

my identical twin sister and I when we were babies

modern toilet paper holder

What are some Greek letters

grapes costume

what is colonel angus

Haha. That last one was quite a funny blog...you can read it here.

But, in all seriousness, thank you thank you THANK YOU EVERYONE from the bottom of my heart for reading!!!

27,614 people have read this blog since I started it as my New Year's resolution two years ago --- now averaging 40 people a day!!!

That's awesome!!!

Are you all bored at work too??

Thank you for letting me share my life and stories and I'm glad that at least some of you still want to be my friend in real life. Ha

I hope you have a great New Year and here's to a super bright future for each and every one of you!!

New Toolbag Tuesday suggestions welcome.

-Jenny

Life with stupid (phone)

For Christmas I got an iPhone (or, more specifically I was promised an iPhone, but I need to go with my dad to the Verizon store to retrieve it).

I asked for one after quickly realizing that there are things like fantasy football scores and Google searches that need to be accessed IMMEDIATELY, especially if you’re out at a bar.

But there are far more ways the iPhone will improve my quality of life.

For one, I get lost a stupid amount and smart phone maps are helpful when my GPS is being a slow-ass B.

I’ve also been juggling a lot of freelance assignments and need to read my email from my phone instead of calling my brother in California (two times zones away) asking him to log in as me or look up an address RIGHT NOW PLEASE, I’M LOST ON THE INTERSTATE!!!

Also, I have no calendar to speak of...which is probably why I missed your party.

My work calendar is on my work computer, see, which I can’t access from my phone and my phone calendar only lets you put in 20 characters per entry.

WTF??

As such, on Feb. 12, I have a “dentist apt. nap. ave. 1 p”

I’m pretty sure life can be much more organized than this.

Also, as a writer, I’m constantly thinking of new things to write about, ideas to pitch, new toolbag material blah blah blah and my phone has no “notepad” of any kind.

And, since ideas slip away like an eel if you don’t write them down, I regularly send text messages with ideas...to my email.

Is that odd? My million dollar ideas (ha) can be found by doing a Yahoo email search of my phone number -- garbled text messages lost among Groupon and Living Social offers.

Speaking of text messages, my inbox gets filled to capacity every two weeks and I have to empty it.

(It’s not my fault I send 200 texts a week!! I’m basically a middle school girl.)

Having to regularly clear out all my text messages has caused me to accidently delete people’s phone numbers and delete important texts.

So now I’m trained to remember that if I get a particularly important or cute text message that I want to keep, I have to “lock” it, or else it will be deleted in the weekly exodus.

I won’t miss this phone at all.

I’ve been hating on it for a while now, especially since I accidently dropped it into a pool of beer and for some reason can’t turn the sound below the “LOUD AS F*CK” option.

And it no longer lets me access speakerphone which means I can't talk to anyone while brushing my teeth anymore.

And, embarrassingly enough, in the two years I’ve had it, I don’t even know how to turn it off.

Seriously!! Holding down the END button doesn’t work!!! (I’m so 90s)

I have to put the thing on “airplane mode” when I’m on an airplane and hope I don’t take the plane down!!!

But all this changes now.

iPHONE here I come!!! 2012!! EFF YEA

Onto a smarter and better me!

Just you wait until I start holding my phone up to a speaker to figure out what song is playing!

Or write down a grocery list that will activate when I walk into a grocery store!!!

I just hope my brother and email don’t get too lonely.

-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

Girls are good at using Facebook to make ex-boyfriends jealous.

(Everything I need to know I learned from my all-girls Catholic School!!)

Photoshopped zits!! A carefully placed good-looking stranger in the background!!

Tagging your friends at a bar with you to look popular even if your friends weren’t really there!!!

The best, though, is when GUYS use Facebook to make their exes jealous. It’s effing hilarious.

Because guys are so bad at it. And obvious.

Good to know: DON’T MAKE SUDDEN CHANGES TO YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE POST-BREAKUP. It’s…telling.

Case in point: My twin sister Joy’s ex-boyfriend. He NEVER used Facebook EVER. It was almost as if he didn’t have one.

He didn’t update anything, he didn’t upload anything.

He had one picture that was his profile picture and the most recent comment on his wall was from six months earlier, when someone wished him a belated happy birthday.

Yet, when they broke up, his page started blowing up.

It was a miracle!

We all laughed our asses off when THE WEEK AFTER THEY BROKE UP he uploaded a picture from his phone (He knew how to do that??) to his Facebook wall.

It was of plops of cookie dough on a pan.

Caption: “Baking cookies with the cutest girl!!! Thanks Kayla!!!” he wrote.

Ahahahahaha loser, we all said.

Joy said she wanted to vomit.

Brian, this guy who dated my friend Jill, took it a step further with the toolbag Facebooking.

They dated for about five months, and after another big fight, they decided to take a “break.”

The “break” was good timing because Brian was about to fly home to see his family for Christmas.

They lived in the Mid-West and Brian bitched about how boring the place was and how he did nothing the whole time.

But, that’s not what his Facebook page said.

Jill looked in horror during his vacation home to see girl, after girl, AFTER GIRL writing suggestive things on his Facebook wall.

“Last night was soooo crazy!” one wrote. “You were hilarious!!!”

“OMG Can’t wait to see you tonight!” wrote another.

It was odd because Brian wasn’t exactly a ladies’ man. A quick search saw that the girls had gone to high school with Brian, but he never talked about them before.

Or hung out with them.

Now they were telling him how crazy and fun he was???

Jill was livid. Here she was alone and sad about their “break” and he was running around with his entire graduating class!!

Then Jill saw the worst one:

“I have your clothes!!!” one girl wrote.

OH HELL NAW.

She called up Brian immediately.

“What the hell is going on?” she asked.

“What?” he asked casually. “A bunch of us all went camping together.”

“You went CAMPING with five girls? WITH NO CLOTHES?” she asked. “In the middle of winter?”

She screamed at him and told him it was definitely over now between the two of them, and that’s when Brian broke down and said it was all a lie.

“I’m sorry. I just wanted to make you jealous,” Brian cried. “I never saw any of them. I just messaged a bunch of girls from my high school asking them to write something flirty on my wall.”

“OMG YOU ARE SUCH A DORK!” Jill screamed. “That’s the lamest thing I’ve ever heard!”

Jillian hung up and fumed.

A few hours later she checked his page and saw that he had deleted each of the girls’ comments.

He tried to win her back when he came back to town after the holidays but Jill was over it.

She was clearly dating a 12-year-old girl.

Who ASKS people to do that???

She decided to play his game.

She immediately took her page and publicly made her relationship status “single.”

And then liked it.

And waited for all the boys to comment.

-Jenny

Everything that could possibly go wrong with mailing holiday cards

I wrote out 30 holiday cards this year (well, technically 32 because I messed up twice) ALL BY HAND and the mailman just picked them up, and now I’m having a panic attack.

Did I spell everything right?? Did I make sure to put the right addresses on the right envelopes???

What if the 80-year old lady accidentally gets the card congratulating her on recently giving birth????!

What if I accidentally sent a Merry Christmas card to a known non-Christian???

See, I sent these holiday cards to business contacts, so they’re not really my friends.

As such, I don’t know how they feel about cards with rabbits decorating a snowman on the front of them (WTF Walgreens).

I don't know if they’re sticklers for good penmanship, because that ship sailed before I graduated high school.

Will they find my personalized messages and attempts to be funny sweet or inappropriate??

Will it be like the time I got my boss in South Carolina a Christmas present from a voodoo shop in New Orleans and she was like...ummm thanks...weirdo and hid it in a drawer??

You know, it would calm my fears if I could just click on a SENT folder and review each and every message for mistakes, like I do anytime I send a professional (or break-up) email. Ha. Kidding.

Will the snail mail get there in time? Aren’t postal workers being laid off??

What if some people are out of town and don’t get the cards until after New Years??

Even worse, what if they had an absolutely terrible holiday season and get home and get mad reading my message hoping they had a good one???

Then they’ll look at the date it was mailed and be like, what slacker mails cards THREE DAYS before Christmas??

You know, most normal people feel proud of themselves when they send out 30 holiday cards. They are excited to spread joy and good cheer.

They aren’t frantic at the post office THREE DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS buying stamps – (“Excuse me, I said NOT the religious ones”) - and suddenly noticing just how cheesy the fake snow looks on the front of one of the cards.

Wait...is a card with a bunch of dogs wearing Santa hats saying, “Bark the Herald Angels Sing” considered religious????

Oh God.

Excuse me while I chase down the mailman.

-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

Boys are so destructive.

What, simple yelling and screaming doesn’t do it for them??

They have to do things like rip doors off their hinges and throw things across the room to show that they’re really mad???

It’s especially infuriating when the destruction is done to your own house.

I’ve written before about the JOYS of homeownership, after my twin sister, Joy, and I bought a house in South Carolina together in 2006.

In addition to the housing bubble and rats in the attic, one other thing we’ve unexpectedly had to deal with are dumb boys who wreak havoc on our walls.

HELLO!!! WE CAN’T VERY WELL CALL A LANDLORD!! WE’RE THE DAMN LANDLORDS!!!

James was destructive, and for a very reasonable reason: our roommate didn’t want him to sleep over...in her bed.

GAW.

They had JUST MET at a party at our house and he was there as SOMEONE ELSE’S DATE.

GAW.

But he really liked Emily, our roommate. He kept taking pictures of just her like paparazzi, and wouldn’t leave her alone even though his date was Joy’s co-worker and that was super awkward for everyone.

When his date left the party, alone, James became even more annoying about his love for Emily.

He started talking to everyone else at the party about how awesome Emily was, and we were all like, yea, we know...she’s standing like 20 feet away from us.

As the party was winding down, James was somehow convinced that Emily felt the same way and he asked if he could spend the night.

No, she said.

He asked if he could kiss her.

No, she said.

Tired and annoyed, Emily then yelled at him when it looked as if he was following her into her bedroom.

“NO!” she yelled angrily at him in the hallway. “YOU ARE NOT COMING INTO MY ROOM!!”

“I was just going to the bathroom!” he said. And then he walked into the bathroom.

It wasn’t until after he left a short time later when we saw what happened: James had destroyed our bathroom.

He ripped out our toilet paper holder FROM THE WALL and threw it on the ground, leaving a gaping hole.

He pulled down our shower curtain – TWO gaping holes – and had kicked over our trash can, toilet cleaners, toilet brush holder and everything else he could.

He was MAD, y’all.

Someone passing by the bathroom said later that she heard noises in there, but she was drunk and didn’t pay attention.

We were horrified when we saw it and were stuck having to clean it and fix it, because we couldn’t very well call a landlord and say, “I don’t know...the shower curtain rod just FELL off of the wall! Crazy! When should we expect the carpenter?”

And we didn’t know how to get in touch with James since WE HAD JUST MET HIM, and Joy didn’t want to have another super awkward conversation with her co-worker.

UGH.

So we had to go to Wal-Mart and spend $30 buying all new things and spend a Saturday afternoon re-painting the wall and screwing in a new toilet paper holder and shower curtain.

It was annoyingly ironic. Everyone got screwed except James.

-Jenny

The old country

If I had to categorically say what genre of music I hated the most, I would say country.

The cheesy accents, the superficial lyrics, the sissy man-voice – it immediately hurts my ears and I have no choice but obnoxiously scream, MAKE IT GO AWAY!!! MAKE IT GO AWAY!!! AHHHHH!!!

Even the name Brad Paisley I find annoying.

As such, when I visited Nashville two weeks ago and was told I was going to the Country Music Museum and Hall of Fame, I was like, no way, man...country music is STUPID.

As it turns out, I was stupid. I was incorrectly equating today’s country music with all country music.

Tisk Tisk.

Saying, “I hate country music” or “country music makes me want to vomit” isn’t really fair now.

Because old school country music is nothing like the crap that’s on the radio today!!

Let me prove it: I listened to a Conway Twitty CD on the drive home to New Orleans and didn’t want to vomit once!

It was a miracle!!!

After a two-hour tour of the museum, I now have a newfound respect for the genre, although let’s be honest, the music kind of went to shit in the1970s (uh, pretty much everything on the left side of the third floor).

Still, I was so impressed (especially with the yodeling that accompanied many songs) that I actually took pictures of people’s immortalized faces in the hall of fame.

The thing I found so touching is that country music started from ridiculously humble beginnings – like the poor kid who banged on a bucket with a stick, for example, and he grew up to be Chet Atkins.

Or the gospel choir that JUST WANTED TO SING outside of church and all loaded into a cart and drove into town and came up with the world’s first honky tonk.

Many country stars were very poor and their simple music reflected that. And I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the beginnings of country sound a lot like the blues, which I love.

(I guess back then they had more problems than a BBQ stain on a white T-shirt.) Ha.

I learned about how country music got popular during the depression because people could relate to its downtrodden lyrics and then people started honky tonking at circuses and carnivals and then it got popular on the radio.

(Um, disclaimer, I’m not Wikipedia. Don’t cite any of this in your term papers, kids).

I’ve never been to a music museum before, unless you count the Hard Rock Café, which you shouldn’t, and this one was awesome.

There was a ton of memorabilia like actual blue suede shoes and people’s original guitars (so they say) and Elvis’ gold limousine.

I saw a taped interview with Dolly Parton about her song Jolene, which has long been one of the only exceptions to my “I hate country” attitude.

Dolly said Jolene was the name of a little girl and small fan of hers, the most beautiful little girl Dolly had ever met.

After signing her record, Dolly asked her name and said it was the most beautiful name she’d ever heard. She told her to listen for a song called Jolene in the future.

...and Dolly has never heard from that girl again, even though in interviews she’s been like, “Jolene are you out there??? Call me.”

(You can cite that, kids.)

Even after being enlightened by the history of country music, I’m still not a fan of today’s country, which was put to the test when my twin sister, Joy, put on a song recently.

“MAKE IT GO AWAY!!!” I screamed.

“Listen to this one,” she said. “I’m POSITIVE you’ll like it. It’s called ‘Louisiana woman, Mississippi man.’”

“I know that song!!!” I said all proud. “Conway Twitty yea!”

No.

Carrie fucking Underwood.

MAKE IT GO AWAY.

-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

I’ve never been someone who is just dying to get married.

I have friends who are dying to get married and I listen to their reasons and all, but I feel like getting married is something you do when you’re all grown up and stop day drinking.

But Jack didn’t know that.

If I had been someone who was overly obsessed with getting married, he would have gotten a slap to the face.

Jack and I were both in the same wedding party and he was already annoying in that he hooked up with a bridesmaid the night before and ignored her the next day at the wedding, making group pictures uncomfortable.

All the groomsmen were being quite annoying that day, scattering around and not taking the professional photos seriously, although they did share their Jameson with us.

After the ceremony and group pictures, I was anxious to get into the reception. My friends who I hadn’t seen in a long time (and my then-boyfriend) were partying and eating oysters and watching an LSU game and I was missing it.

“Can we go inside now??” I asked the fussy wedding planner.

“No,” she said. “We need to get the entire wedding party to line up and follow the bride and groom into the reception.”

The bride and groom were still taking photos by themselves.

All the bridesmaids were lined up perfectly. Only one groomsman was in line.

“Where is everyone else??” I asked him.

“They’re in the reception.”

“WHAT!”

I wanted to be in the reception! They probably didn’t even know we had to line up. So I marched inside and tapped each one on the shoulder.

“Hey, can you come outside and line up?” I asked, longfully waving to my friends who were already celebrating.

Each groomsman was confused and irritated they had to walk back outside (YEA, I KNOW THE FEELING) and when I walked back to the line, every groomsman followed...except for Jack.

“WHAT THE F---?” I said, as the wedding planner started hyperventilating and the bride and groom were walking towards the line.

“We can’t walk in unless EVERYONE is here,” she said. “They are announcing each of your names.”

At this point, we had all been waiting for over 20 minutes and I was hungry and I wasn’t about to wait longer because someone can’t follow simple instructions.

I walked back to the reception, found Jack flirting with someone and interrupted the conversation.

“Hey, Jack, everyone is lined up except you, can you come please? Outside the tent?”

He ROLLED HIS EYES, making me feel like a huge bitch but I didn’t care because at least he followed.

Finally we were all in line, ready to go inside.

I couldn’t have been happier.

Yet, what should have been an adorable moment of watching my best friend and her new husband being presented for the first time as a married couple, Jack had to ruin the moment.

“Woah, look at little Miss NAG over here,” he said loudly as we were all about to walk in. “Now I know why YOU’RE not the one getting married.”

ALL THE OTHER GROOMSMAN STARTED LAUGHING and my jaw dropped as a gracious bridesmaid turned around and called him an asshole.

And that’s how I ended up walking into the reception of my best friend’s wedding with a red face feeling super self-conscious even though everyone was clapping and my hair looked awesome.

I should have pointed out that I didn’t see a ring on his finger either, but I was too shocked and embarrassed.

I guess that's what happens when someone THROWS THE FACT THAT YOU’RE NOT MARRIED IN YOUR FACE and then points out that it must be because of your personality.

I then realized that while I DON'T have a deep desire to get married, I’d at least like to be considered marriage material, rather than an annoying nag.

I just wanted to get into the reception! I wailed to my friends as I recapped what Jack said. I wasn’t even being that nagg-y!!! This is all the wedding planner's fault!!!

They repeated what the fellow bridesmaid called him and told me to get over it, but I was still upset.

SEE? I CAN’T LET THINGS GO!!! I'M SO NEUROTIC!! THIS IS WHY I’M NEVER GETTING MARRIED!

(My then-boyfriend was too enthralled by the LSU game to console me.)

After awhile, I started to feel better, thanks to a bit of a reality check and the delightful sangria they were serving.

I mean, who needs to get married, anyway?

I’m not a grown up yet.

Here’s to day drinking.

-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

I was too busy watching Jerry Springer after school to bother with after-school specials.

But I get it: Lessons for impressionable youngsters about staying in school and sex and drugs and being honest and keeping your nose clean with good-looking actors who were probably in their 20s.

(Too bad I was too enthralled with who’s having an affair with a midget...who’s really their sister.)

Um. Anyway.

Richard, this guy my friend Haley went out with three times, could have been the star of his very own after-school TV special: how to be a cliché toolbag when a girl won’t sleep with you.

I’m pretty sure they covered this exact theme in order to show girls how mean and bratty boys can get when you don’t give it up....so...NEVER. GIVE. IT. UP.

It makes sense, then, that the first night Haley and Richard met, they acted like middle schoolers.

Or are you never too old to make out with someone in the back seat of your roommate’s car on the way home???

Richard and Haley were both in their late 20s and had met at a bar and danced a salsa and seemingly had a connection.

Thinking back, Haley said Richard said all the right things and made her feel like the only person in the world. (Suspicious. Ha)

They ended up at her house and while they sort of hooked up they didn’t DO IT, although Richard was literally begging her, and he was really sexy.

She didn’t want to seem trampy. And, ahem, it was that time of the month.

The next day, after dropping him off at home, Haley got excited about a potential relationship with him.

He was cute, a good dancer and they had talked all night without finding each other annoying.

But then Richard only texted her at 2 a.m. for the rest of the week.

Haley looked at her phone the next morning and frowned. She had been staring at her phone all day, why couldn’t he have texted at 2 p.m.?

The next weekend she invited him to a party hoping they could dance again but he sat there bored and then spent the entire time trying to get Haley to go with him to an empty bedroom.

Do what??? Haley asked. Are you retarded?

A few days later, Richard finally called her during daylight hours.

“Come over for dinner!” he said.

Dinner! So cute!

Haley was as excited as a schoolgirl...in an after-school special.

Yet when she got over to his house, there was no dinner cooking. No delicious smells.

Richard was on the couch drinking a beer, and didn’t even offer her one.

Regardless, they started making out and he told her that he couldn’t stop thinking about their hot-and-heavy hookup from two weeks earlier.

“Like, I haven’t stopped thinking about that for a MINUTE!” he said.

Haley, on the other hand, had been thinking about how well they talked and laughed and danced together.

Typical. Humph.

With still no mention of dinner, Richard suggested they go to his bedroom, but Haley said naw, man.

“Oh, so that’s it?” Richard said, annoyed. “This is all that’s going to happen here?

He was starting to run out of all the perfect things to say.

It was ironic because maybe if Richard had actually made a delicious dinner then he’d have gotten some.

But instead Haley left, feeling OH SO cheap.

Not surprisingly, Richard hasn’t called or texted since that night. Not even a 2 a.m. text.

For the first week, Haley kept checking her empty inbox and feeling depressed.

Maybe he hadn’t been with someone in awhile and he was just overly eager! She cried at dinner, mourning the potential she had for them. Maybe he just thinks I’m THAT irresistible!

“Wait, are you talking about Richard (insert last name)?” asked a friend’s boyfriend, who was at dinner and overhead.

“Yea,” Haley responded slowly. “Why.”

“He was my friend’s roommate. He brings home girls every weekend and brags about it.”

OH.

Well thank God I didn’t sleep with him! she said.

(P.S. when a girl thanks God that she didn’t sleep with you, you’re a toolbag.)

Yet despite that unattractive news about Richard, it was all Haley needed to hear to, uh, change the channel.

No more after-school special!

She deleted his number and never cried over him again.

-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

Both sexes can be judgmental about where someone they’re dating lives.

In my experience, it can either be the best, most comforting place in the world with the most comfortable couch ever, or make your skin crawl with its black fuzz growing in the toilet and fossilized dog shit on the floor and I’ve been scared to walk around barefoot before.

But cleanliness isn’t the only thing people judge your habitat on:

They judge you on your living circumstances as well.

“Wait, you have SIX roommates???”

“I have to pay a dollar for the toll bridge every time I want to go over to your house?”

Or, the most common, yet most hated-on circumstance:

“You live with your parents??”

There are lots of reasons why people in their 20s and 30s still live with their parents.

They could be broke, or don’t want to be broke. They could be paying off their credit card(s) or be filming a public access show in the basement (Wayne Campbell.)

They could be living there temporarily because they were living with their significant other and that bitch kept the apartment.

Or escaping to their parents’ because their roommate turned out to be crazy and they’re waiting out their lease.

Or, maybe they live with their parents because they just moved back to New Orleans from South Carolina and still needed to pay mortgage on the house they own with their twin sister in South Carolina until she found a suitable roommate. (For example.)

This is why it’s important to ask someone you’re dating why they live with their parents, if that sort of thing bothers you.

Because while you may think they’re being a huge baby by raiding mom and dad’s fridge every night, you could be wrong.

Jonathan was wrong about my friend Elisa.

They dated for just a few weeks and despite the fact that he spent the night already, she wasn’t that into him.

Which made it even more annoying that HE ended things with HER.

But it wasn’t so much the fact that he ended things, it was his reasoning:

“Because you live with your mom.”

“WHAT?” Elisa said. “ARE YOU SERIOUS?”

If Jonathan had bothered to ask, Elisa would have told him that she was living with her mom and little brother because her mom couldn’t cover the mortgage by herself.

She would have explained that she paid her mom rent — not even a discounted rent — for her room and bathroom because if she didn’t, her mom would have to get a stranger/roommate to move in and that’s not something you put a high school boy through.

...that she put off dreams of having her own apartment and being closer to work because she’s committed to helping her family and is super effing selfless.

OK, ASSHOLE???

Yet, Elisa sat in silence on the phone and never explained her living situation. She was suddenly embarrassed and wanted to hang up immediately.

But Jonathan continued to talk.

“Yea, the other night when I spent the night I was TOTALLY freaked out knowing your MOM was upstairs...” he said.

If he had bothered to ask about that, too, Elisa would have told him how her mom was one of those young moms who doesn’t care that her gentlemen friends spend the night, gives her all the privacy in the world and is actually way cooler than most roommates. And he didn't even meet her!

But Jonathan continued on with his speech.

“Because, see, I need someone who has their own place...”

Elisa rolled her eyes.

Was he somehow better than she was with HIS own place, despite the fact that it was boy-scuzzy with whisker hairs on the sink, well-read magazines with curling pages on the bathroom floor and an oddball roommate who exclusively drank vodka and sprite while watching Braveheart on loop?

Who is this person that speaks to me as though I needed his advice?

But she didn’t say anything.

“Ok, well, sorry,” she said. And hung up.

But she wasn’t sorry about anything.

Sorry I’m a good person by helping my mom and brother out? Sorry my family is counting on me to pitch in during a shitty economy?

Perhaps it was a sorry to Jonathan.

Sorry your toilet is covered in black fuzz.

Enjoy your roommate.

-Jenny

Church changes

I don’t go to church, but I do have a number of Catholic prayers memorized.

This is what happens when your mom forces you to go to mass every Sunday for the first 18 years of your life, and also every month at Catholic High School.

As such, I not only know the prayers by heart, but I know which ones indicate that the mass is almost over.

(The “Our Father” = home stretch!!!!)

These memorization skills come in handy the times my mom still forces me to go to church or during Christmas, the only holiday where I worship on my own free will.

Because despite my lack of regular worship, no one can tell I haven't been to church since before Easter when they see me politely recite the Eucharistic prayer word for word.

And the Our Father
And all that business about Pontius Pilot.

But today, everything changed for me.
(No, I did not become enlightened.)

Today, I looked in horror at the brochures in everyone’s pew about the “new translation” for the Bible and our new, revised prayers.

WTF??

Isn’t the Bible a gagillion years old? And NOW we’re making changes???

This must be a mistake!

But no. I read both sides of the brochure. Entire words of well-memorized prayers have now been changed, effective immediately.

Basically, a whole bunch of bishops got together and decided to make changes in order to be relevant or something.

The priest said the change only affects English-speaking Roman Catholics.

“When you tell your Spanish and German friends about this change, they won’t have any idea what you’re talking about!” the priest said.

That’s funny, I thought. Who would bring that up to ANY friend, let alone a foreign one?

The problem with the old way, he said, is that the English translation from the original Latin was translated a few different ways depending on if you live in England or Australia or the United States or maybe Canada, too.

For example, the word “dead” in one version may be written as “passed away” in another version and obviously that’s super-confusing so now everything is being streamlined to be the same word no matter what English-speaking country you’re in.

It’s also supposed to give people better insight into exactly what the disciples and Jesus “really meant," the priest said.

(You know, big misinterpretations like instead of chanting the word “cup” we're now expected to say “chalice.” Because no one wants to confuse a "chalice" with the thing that protects guys’ junk when they play sports.)

And now, when the priest says “Peace be with you” instead of saying, “And also with you,” we’re now supposed to say, “and with your spirit.”

DO YOU SEE THE DISTINCTION?

Totally necessary.

Now, normally this would be as insignificant in my life as Google + , but it turns out this change is really going to screw up fly-by worshippers like me.

I have to memorize everything all over again!!!

I can no longer impress my former boyfriend’s family people with my vast knowledge of Catholic mass prayers!

I’M GOING TO BE EXPOSED!!!

Because while everyone today stumbled through the new changes, regular church-goers are going to memorize the new sayings with each passing week and I’ll be left out in the cold by Christmas.

I bet by then all the brochures will be removed and I’ll be nervously lip-syncing the Gloria hoping I won’t be accused of being a Baptist.

THE HORROR!

Thank God we still get to keep the wine.

-Jenny

Modern family

Every year our family takes a Christmas photo to properly document things like awkward adolescent phases, childhood pets and bad haircuts.

According to the photo collage on the wall in my parents’ house, this tradition started when my twin sister, Joy, and I were 8 months old, our first Christmas, and we’ve taken a family photo every year since.

(That first photo was the only year Joy and I were dressed alike, and we were not in khaki pants and white tops, nor were we on the beach. Ha.)

Our photos are far from professional.

(See: the year we decided to be snapped mid-jump on a trampoline in our backyard, the time Joy wouldn’t stay on her tricycle and her Britney Spears-inspired underwear shot made the photo or the year my brother, Franklin, cut my bangs right before the photo when he was five and I was three.)

...Or the many years we described our Great Dane as “wonder dog” in the inscribed holiday message.

It’s a funny thing, yearly traditions. A reference point where you can reflect on exactly what you were doing a year ago.

A year ago at this time, for example, I was at a job I am no longer at, dating someone I am no longer dating and had just moved back to New Orleans and hated it.

Ah, memories.
Ha.

Not to worry. I’m light years happier now.

Getting the five of us together each year has been a challenge the past few years, since Joy lives on the East Coast, Franklin lives on the West Coast and my parents and I are in the middle.

But it’s an unspoken rule that each year we all fly to one place and my mom will declare that we will be taking our Christmas picture.

Even if it’s in the middle of August.

Because we don’t need a professional photographer or a glorious backdrop. We all just need to get together wearing something "fairly appropriate" on top and someone to point and click a digital camera.

Well, point and click at least five different shots because someone always closes their eyes. MOM

And someone always feels like they look fat. (Related note: WHY AM I ALWAYS STUCK IN THE FRONT OF THE PHOTO?? THE PERSON IN THE FRONT OF THE PHOTO ALWAYS LOOKS THE FATTEST!!! THAT'S A FACT!)

If the complaints are severe enough, Joy, who’s a graphic designer, will edit out someone’s crow’s feet (HOW DOES SOMEONE HAVE CROW’S FEET AT AGE 28!?!?!)

Or fix someone’s eyes. FRANKLIN.

Or photoshop fix our broken shutters. Ha. Shhh don’t tell.

But the photo each year always turns out refrigerator-worthy and we add it to the wall of Christmas photos so when we’re 101 years old we can look at it and say, man, I didn’t look so fat after all.



And this is what I’m thankful for today.

-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

Some guys just don’t respect the sanctity of the B.F.F’S (.....+E +E!)

They don’t care how long girl friends have been best friends, even if it’s been a lifetime, and decide that it’s OK to sleep with both of them, ruining deep-rooted friendships forever.

How many discarded B.F.F. necklaces end up in the trash because of this????

This was exactly what Andrew did with my two best friends, who, lucky for me, were my roommates at the time.

It was the summer after college and Andrew was properly dating one roommate, Becca, and then sleeping with another roommate, Samantha, on the side.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG???

Yes, Samantha was also a toolbag here, but we were all 22 years old at the time. Wet behind the ears!
Andrew was 31 years old.

31. Like almost the same age as someone who can run for President of the United States.

He absolutely should have known better.

“YOU OLD EFFING MAN!!” I remember screaming at him one night when everyone’s friendship was ruined on his behalf. “WHY ARE YOU EFFING WITH 22-YEAR-OLD’S LIVES?”

Even before Becca CAUGHT Andrew and Samantha...together...doing it, his existence ruined the balance of peace in our apartment.

We had all been best friends for five years, and I had been best friends with Samantha for 15 years. It only took six months for Andrew to unravel it.

I used to roll my eyes whenever I heard his voice in the living room.
He would come over under the guise of being with Becca, yet flirt with Samantha incessantly.

It was done in a teasing way that makes a guy’s current girlfriend uncomfortable when witnessing it.

He laughed at all of Samantha’s jokes and paid 1000% attention to her, and then he’d suddenly have something to do and leave our apartment feeling smug.

This went on for months.

Becca would cry when he didn’t text her and crumble into the fetal position on the floor, like many 22-year-olds do when they think they’ve met the 31-year-old man of their dreams.

One night at a bar, I got pissed when Andrew and Samantha spent 20 minutes “listening to CDs” in her car, just the two of them.

It was something Becca would have LOVED to do with Andrew, but she wasn’t there, and I was stuck in the position of having to believe them when they said only music was on the agenda.

“Why don’t you just end things with Becca?” I snapped at Andrew when Samantha went inside the bar. (He and I never got along.)

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Well, you clearly like Samantha,” I said.

I thought he was the most pathetic person I’d ever met.

Here he was, 31-YEARS OLD, playing two 22-YEAR-OLD ROOMMATES, and he knew he was cracking the bonds of friendship among everyone in the apartment.

And he didn’t do anything to fix it. He didn't give a shit!

He still didn’t give a shit when Becca surprised him at his house one day and caught him and Samantha DOING IT, on his boat floating in the creek behind his house.

“WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THEM TOGETHER??!?!” Becca wailed at all of us other roommates when she came home.

And that’s when everyone took sides and severed their friendship with Samantha and I was forced to move out because I couldn’t take the in-fighting.

Until I moved, however, I still had to deal with Andrew being around, DRIVING OVER TO OUR APARTMENT TO PICK SAMANTHA UP.

Oh god.

Despite the fact that he was responsible for breaking up an entire clan of girl friends who were not talking to one another, he STILL CAME OVER TO SPEND THE NIGHT.

ONE ROOM AWAY FROM WHERE HE USED TO SLEEP.

Some people would call that balls.
I call them old, pathetic balls.

One for each piece of a B.F.F. necklace

...that should be jammed into his scrotum.

-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

NEWSFLASH GUYS: not all girls want you.

And ASSuming that makes an ass out of you and me.
Hey-ohhh!

No, but I’m serious. This has happened to me more than once, most recently this past weekend.

I was dancing at a bar and this very tall man was dancing in the front row (Toolbag!!! Height order dude) and since I’m very short, I couldn’t see the stage because his torso was blocking my view.

“Excuse me,” I tapped him on the shoulder. “Do you think I could get in front of you, because I’m shorter than you?” I asked him.

“Look, I’m here with my WIFE, OK?” he said, looking down on me, giving me a shitty look.

Um....does that make you SHORTER??? I wanted to yell at him.

Instead I gave HIM a shitty look.
But he didn’t see me way down there.

I’m sorry, but was I unknowingly hitting on him??
Did I mistakenly ask him if I could grind on him and take him home?

Definitely not.

I couldn’t believe it!

This guy was giving me a shitty look and making me feel like an A-hole when he was the sasquatch dancing front and center!!!

AND I WASN’T HITTING ON HIM!

This happened this past summer too, at a music festival, when I was standing in an insanely long beer line.

I looked at the guy standing in the long line next to me, and said “damn, this line suuuucks” and he immediately responded with, “Look, I have a girlfriend.”

“Um, OK,” I said.

WTF??

He continued to stare straight ahead and deliberately not look left anymore, making me feel so uncomfortable that I wanted to scream.

I was fuming that other people in line heard him say that, AS IF HE WAS TURNING ME DOWN OR SOMETHING.

Then I had an internal conflict over whether to go in another beer line, but I didn’t want to make his “rejection” true.

I mean, WTF?
I wasn’t hitting on him! He’s the ass here...and then he has to make me feel bad???

HELLO! It’s not that uncommon for people at music festivals to make small talk when they’re going to be standing in line together for the next 15 minutes.

I’ve met wonderful people in the bathroom line at Jazz Fest, for example.

But this jerk....I tell ya.

HEY, A-HOLE, IT’S NOT MY FAULT YOU WERE CAUGHT CHEATING. WITH A SHORT BLONDE.

Which must have been the case, because his girlfriend came over a few minutes later and he made an obvious and gratuitous display of making out with her and grabbing her ass. And I could swear she gave me a look.

LIKE I GIVE A SHIT!

I, for one, never ASSume anyone is trying to hit on me unless they say things that are, oh...I don’t know...SUGGESTIVE.

When I was at a Christmas party last year and a cute waiter tapped me on the shoulder to tell me I still had the tag on my dress, (d’oh!!!) I wasn’t like, LOOK I’M HERE WITH A DATE SIR. HOW DARE YOU!!

Or the time a guy pointed out at a bar that the bartender was taking a freaking MONTH to take people’s orders, I didn’t say, LOOK, I’M PUTTING THIS BEER ON MY BOYFRIEND'S TAB! DON’T LOOK AT ME!

Maybe it’s because I’ve never been caught cheating. With a short blonde.
And I’m not a toolbag.

-Jenny

How South Carolina makes ordering shots overly complicated

I ordered four shots at a bar in South Carolina recently and the bartender looked at me and said, “how many ways?”

I understand this is a confusing question to anyone who didn’t live in South Carolina prior to 2004.

How many ways? What the EFF is that supposed to mean??
How many bartenders does it take to screw in a lightbulb??

But, I knew the answer.

“Two, four ways,” I said.
“Got it,” he said and began pouring.

Then I rolled my eyes.

I didn’t want to get into it with him, but the clarification is no longer necessary. South Carolina has big liquor bottles now, people!!!

Let me explain.

When I went off to college in South Carolina in 2001, I shit you not, bars and restaurants were only allowed to serve liquor in mini bottles.

Mini bottles! Like the ones you get on airplanes.

This was a massive change for me, being from New Orleans, where bars actually serve pre-mixed drinks from an IGLOO cooler.

(Seriously, when a friend from New Orleans visited me in South Carolina, he bought a whole bunch of mini bottles to take home and lined them up on a shelf in his house. They were that cute.)

The mini-bottle decree was in effect because South Carolina was desperately holding on to a mandate following prohibition that liquor can only be served in pre-portioned, pre-sealed bottles.

Every state apparently had the law in effect so they could monitor bar patrons’ alcohol intake.

And every state quickly got rid of it IN THE 1930S, except South Carolina.

It was a total waste of plastic.

The thing that sucked the most about it (aside from, uh, hurting the environment) is that you had to pay for each mini bottle separately, which meant that ordering a double broke the bank. And you had to take out a small loan just to pay for a Long Island Iced Tea. ($16??!?!!)

Shots were also tricky with mini-bottles.

Because no one does an entire 1.7 shot of liquor when they do shots. (A shot is normally 1.5 ounces.)

As such, when ordering shots, you had to specify how many bottles you wanted to pay for (2, for example) and then how many shots you wanted out of those two bottles (4, for example.)

So, standard ordering with shots was, “two jaagerbombs, three ways” or “one lemon drop, two ways,” etc.

It was a total waste of plastic.

Thank God people voted to change the law in 2004. Seriously, it had to be done with a vote. And a ballot.

Question #1 : Who do you want to be president of the United States?

Question #2: Should bars be allowed to serve 'big people' drinks?

Both sides of the issue were really riled up about it.

Bar owners in favor of changing the law said it would be much cheaper to have big bottles, since they were taxed on each individual mini bottle.

Environmentalists wailed about how none of the bottles are recycled and some of the more popular bars must go through like 100 mini-bottles a day, at least.

Bar owners NOT in favor of changing the law said they didn’t have the money to re-arrange their liquor cabinets to accommodate big bottles and liked their mini-bottle cubby holes just fine, ThankYouVeryMuch.

And then Big Brother politicians warned that giving up the mini-bottles meant giving up control over how much people were drinking.

This was as much of an abomination as removing the confederate flag from the state capitol!!!

(Well, maybe they said that).

Voters overwhelmingly decided to allow big bottles to be served, WELCOME TO THIS CENTURY SOUTH CAROLINA, and now the mini-bottles have been banished to the 2-for-$1 bin at the local liquor stores.
(Not a bad deal if I do say so myself.)

Anyone visiting South Carolina today would have no idea that less than 10 years ago, bartenders had to open teeny tiny bottles every time liquor was ordered.

South Carolina now looks like any other bar in the U.S.A.!
But now they need to act like it.

Really, they gotta get this shot thing under control. Why do we still have to specify how many “ways” we want our shots dispersed?

It doesn’t matter anymore!!! I want four shots! Regular ones!!!

Ok, ok, let me be more clear.

I want 1/16 of the bottle. One way.

-Jenny