TOOLBAG TUESDAY

People ask me all the time if I can feel my twin sister’s pain. Like physically.

If Joy broke her leg, for example, would mine start to throb?

Do I ever get a weird feeling that something bad is going to happen to her….and then it turns out to be true?

The answer is NO (weirdos.) We just happen to share the same birthday and DNA.

It would be pretty amazing for someone to have that kind of intuition, at least out of nowhere.
Like, if Joy were a NASCAR driver, then yes, I would have a feeling that something bad was going to happen to her during the whole race.

But, James, on the other hand, my friend's ex-boyfriend, miraculously had foreboding intuition.

Meredith and James had dated for three years in high school but broke up before college, and reconnected right as they were both getting their degrees.

They “re-dated” for exactly one month when Meredith decided it wasn’t going to work out, and ended it (again).

Not too long after that, Meredith was held up at knife point.

It was completely unrelated to James, a random act of violence while she was on her way to the college library one night, and she pissed the assailant off by not having any money or jewelry on her person.

Meredith wasn’t hurt physically, but she was a complete mess about it as anyone would be, and was inconsolable.

The next day, James called out of the blue, the first time she’d heard from him in several months.
His opening line was…grim.

“Hey, I had this awful feeling something really bad happened to you and I wanted to call and see if you were OK,” James said.

“What?” Meredith asked.

“Yea, I don’t know, maybe it was a bad dream or something, but I just HAD to call you to see if you were OK. I’m sorry if that’s out of line.”

Meredith wailed, NO, I’M NOT FINE!!! and told James she was held up at KNIFE POINT and described what the guy looked like and what he said and OMG she won’t be able to get that image out of her head. Ever.

James said he was so sorry, he had no idea.

Did she want him to come over?
She said yes.
James spent the night. (As a protector of course.)

How did he know? Meredith wondered. Was James her secret soul mate, someone who could predict the future and save her from all future harm?

At that time, Meredith was sort of seeing someone else who she liked more than James.

But she considered James' phone call in her vulnerable state, and he was comforting, like when they dated in high school and knew everything about each other.

If she hadn’t just been a victim of a horrible crime, and James had called her randomly to grab a burger, she would have said she was busy.

But with ESP on his side, Meredith continued to hang out with both James and this new guy, both casually.
And she played it off really well. (Clearly this was pre-Facebook).

So it seemed out of the blue (again) when James told Meredith that he hoped she wasn’t seeing anyone else.

“Wh….why would you say that?” Meredith asked.

“I don’t know…I just had this feeling that I should just throw that out there,” he said.

A foreboding feeling?

Then he asked her out that Friday night. Meredith hesitated. That was the night she had plans to go out with her other guy.

She suggested they go out Saturday, but James was insistent on Friday.

Did he know about the other guy? Meredith wondered. Was she giving off a weird vibe that he, obviously an expert when it came to her feelings, could pick up on?

She told James she’d let him know about Friday and he left so she could finish studying for her final exam.
And then she checked her email.

“Why didn’t you write back? How are you doing?” a friend chatted with her as she logged onto her (remember this??) America Online account.

“What? What do you mean?” Meredith wrote back.

“You've been online and I chatted you five days in a row asking about the knife thing,” her friend said.

Meredith didn’t remember that pop-up box, because she certainly would have written back.

But she DID remember that someone else knew her email account password: JAMES.
(It was the same password as it was in high school.)

Meredith, suddenly coming to this realization, frantically looked at her inbox and sent folder, scrutinizing them, seeing them as if she were him.

Wide-eyed, she saw emails from the other guy about their Friday night plans and…she saw an email she sent to her Aunt the night she was held up…about being held up.

ESP JAMES’ ASS!!!

James not only logged into her email account, which is completely unacceptable by itself, but he used her horrible situation as an excuse to squeeze his way back into her life.

She remembered his initial opening conversation about his "bad feeling."

“Maybe it was a bad dream or something…” he had said.
UGH.

Meredith changed her password immediately, and got an email alert THAT SAME HOUR that someone was trying to log on as her using the old password.

Once Meredith got that confirmation of being hacked, she sent James an email saying that she knew what he'd been up to, had changed her password to something he'd never guess, and please don’t ever call her again.

And then she thought about him reading it and got a warm, fuzzy feeling all over.

-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

In my opinion, there are a number of reasons why someone would send mixed messages to a love interest.

Alcohol is one.
Because even if you broke up with someone WEEKS ago, vodka makes the heart grow fonder. And will often demand a sleepover.

Jealousy is another.
Because sometimes, even if someone doesn't like you (or like you anymore), if they see someone else hitting on you, they’ll be all interested again.

An example: “Your boyfriend’s cute,” my friend’s EX-BOYFRIEND texted her one night, not even an hour after she ran into him at a restaurant with someone new.

She hadn’t heard from that ex-boyfriend in six months, but the mere glimpse of her sharing an appetizer with someone else made him text her for the rest of the night, and into the next day.

But I have no idea what was behind the mixed messages this guy Ryan threw at my friend Liz a few weeks ago.

Ryan and Liz met through her friend’s boyfriend. They had been out two times and he was actually quite cute. They even spent an (innocent) night together in his bed.

Ryan seemed to like her as well. He went out of his way to meet her at places she was at, and he got to know her friends — asked them questions and bought them drinks.

On their third date, Ryan met Liz and her friends at a bar for some Saturday day drinking.
According to the friends, Ryan was notably "all over her."

“Like, holding her hand, telling her to kiss him in front of everybody,” one friend recalls.

The P.D.A. was a bit odd, considering it was daylight, he wasn’t drunk or anything and, really, isn’t that something a GIRL does? (haha just kidding.)

Liz obliged, and held his hand and tried to resume a normal conversation with her friends across the table even though his hand was creeping up her thigh.

Suddenly, Ryan said in front of everyone, “Liz, can we talk inside? I need to have a private conversation with you.”

(Uhhh private?)

“What’s up?” Liz asked, slightly concerned, when they were alone.

“Well, I just wanted to tell you that I have a date tonight,” Ryan said.

WHAT!!!

“WHAT?!” Liz said.

“Yea. And I wanted to ask you if that was OK.”

“WHAT?!” Liz said, again.

Why THE HELL would he tell her that he had a date that night, let alone ask her for permission?

And, if he indeed had a date that night, why was he was ALL OVER HER mere SECONDS AGO making her kiss him in front of everyone??

Mixed signals indeed!

(P.S. His poor date. She was probably getting her hair did and everything.)

Ryan then looked Liz deep in the eyes.

“I mean, if you don’t want me to go…” he trailed off.

“I don’t care WHAT you do,” Liz said, visibly taken aback.

She then walked back to her table of friends and tried to pretend that the conversation never happened.

But Ryan immediately left the bar, like HE was somehow offended.
As if he wasn't the one who just announced that he was taking another girl out that night.

All of Liz's friends looked at her confused, asking what the hell just happened. All she could do was shrug her shoulders.

I mean, was Ryan looking for Liz to tell him NO, that it wasn’t OK for him to go out with someone else?

That she liked him so much that the idea of him on another date was devastating?

Whatever.

Their “private conversation” in that dark corner of the bar was the last time they ever spoke.

Of course, Ryan continues to ask Liz out, via text messages.
(Maybe things didn’t work out with the “other” woman.)

Liz hasn’t responded.

After all, she wouldn’t want to give him the wrong idea.

-Jenny

Dad jokes

My mom told me this one story about how she and my dad ran into an old friend at a party and asked about his wife, who they also both knew.

“Oh. We’re getting a divorce,” he said.

Uhhhhh AWK-WARD!!

My dad didn’t skip a beat, my mom said, and asked him, “Well, how’s dating?”

All three laughed, and carried on party talk.

My dad’s got jokes.
Everyone who’s met him knows that.

The high school students he used to teach and who were in his homeroom know that – they even repeated jokes back to me and my twin sister, Joy, later, after school.

His fellow racquetball buddies at the gym know that – the times I’ve used my dad’s guest pass to swim laps, his friends would tell me about the latest joke my dad said, and then my dad would have to repeat it again when they forgot the punch line.

(This is in addition to him being the smartest person I know.)

“OH NO!” my mom would say, when my dad would start a joke in front of company that she was offended by.

(F.Y.I. It involves an oyster shucker and a prostitute.)

Usually my mom will walk out of the room, but she’s really missing out. Because they’re hilarious.

I like telling jokes, too, and I’ve found that I have an uncanny ability to remember jokes, like my dad. I learned it from him.
Right now, for example, I can tell 20 jokes.
Right now.
All funny.
No knock knock ones.

This is in addition to teaching me how to ride a bike without training wheels, swing a bat, drive stick shift, peel a crawfish, load up the dishwasher efficiently and water ski.
Lesson #23573242: successful joke telling.

And it's a good lesson. I’m pretty sure I’ve made some friends in life simply by repeating a joke my dad told me.

He even got me and Joy to be PART of a joke when we were two years old.

This was another story our mom told us about.

When we were two, just starting to speak, our dad would USE US to make strangers laugh when he was in a long line or in a group of people.

At a museum: “Oh, girls!” he'd say to us. “What was the American novelist Ernest Hemingway’s nickname?”

“PAPA,” we (were trained to) say.

“THAT’S AMAZING!” people would say, clapping. “GENIUS TWINS!”

Another one: “What was the name of the anti-art movement that was popular in the early 1920’s?” our dad would ask.

“DADA.”

Even when our dad would get mad at us, he’d say something funny.

“How can you be out of toilet paper?? I just bought some this week! You girls go through toilet paper like shit through a goose!”

Hahahaha.
(Ahem, some people like to use more than they need OK????)

How do people who don't have funny dads learn jokes? I guess they had to learn from people in the schoolyard or famous comedians.

(If you’re in the market, George Carlin is my dad’s favorite comedian and they both look eerily alike).

In honor of Father’s Day today, let me pass along an abridged version of how to tell good jokes. All based on observing my dad.
(You know what? These are also good life skills to have anyway.)

GOOD MEMORY. Ever have someone tell a joke and they can’t remember a key detail like what the rabbi wished for when he, a priest and a minister found a lamp and rubbed it?
That wouldn’t have been my dad telling it.
He remembers an entire cache of jokes without having to be like, “wait…no…it was a FEMALE bartender….”

A memory is also a good thing to have in order to tell a diverse range of jokes. You wouldn’t very well tell dead baby jokes at a PTA meeting, for example.

My dad has jokes that are even appropriate for (mature) middle schoolers. And he cracked his high school students up all the time.

GOOD TIMING. In jokes or in life, you’ve got to hit your mark. This is especially useful in groups of 4 or more.

GOOD CHEER. I mean, really, who doesn’t like to laugh? (If you raised your hand, please go sit on the other side of the room.)
People who tell jokes well and often are the ones who want to loosen people up and pass along happiness to others.

And I guess that’s really what it’s about. Passing along happiness.

Laughter is CONTAGIOUS after all, so says all those motivational greeting cards.

And that’s my dad. A sharer of good cheer, always someone to go to when you’re feeling down. Someone you wouldn't mind being with you stranded on a desert island.

None of his jokes are downers, or make fun of any set group of people. Well, except blondes.

If you meet him, he’ll probably tell you a joke, too. And you’ll probably laugh. (Ignore my mom’s protest).

Everyone who meets my dad tells me that I’m lucky to have him as a dad, uh, like I didn’t already know that.

I mean, I’m sure your dad is great, too, but can he make a man going through a divorce laugh about dating?

No. That’s my DADA.

-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

I can’t decide which part of this week’s Toolbag Tuesday is the worst.

I’ve re-told this story countless times, and while it’s agreed that Greg is AWFUL AWFUL AWFUL, everyone has their own opinion about what his biggest crime was.

Not to worry, there’s no WRONG answer.

Is it the fact that Greg, 26, cheated on my friend Eva, 28, with a 52-year-old woman?

Is it the fact that he picked up this 52-year-old woman at bar and bought shots for her and her 17-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTERS all night???

Is it the fact that he DROVE this 52-year-old woman’s car that night and disappeared for an hour, just the two of them?

Is it the fact that he MADE OUT WITH the 52-year-old woman outside of a popular bar, in front of Eva’s male friend?

Or is it the fact that Greg LIED HIS ASS OFF for three days following said cheating, each lie more absurd than the next?

No, wait. I got it.

Maybe it's the fact that AS HE WAS CAUGHT KISSING the 52-year-old woman by one of Eva’s male friends, Greg looked over at him and said, “Bro code.”

BRO code??

Really?

Guys are using this word seriously? Like Craig Kilborn in the movie Old School?

“What are you gonna do? Tell on me? You know you can't buddy. It's guy code. That's something chicks do.”

I never knew guys actually said that to each other in real life.

But you never can tell with seemingly perfect boyfriends.

Because by all accounts, Greg was madly in love with Eva. He doted on her, told her he wanted to marry her (VOMIT) and they were about to celebrate their one-year anniversary.

That is, until Greg went out for “guy’s night” the ONE weekend Eva was out of town.
Within an hour, he had wooed a 52-year-old woman and her 17-year-old daughters.

Before sunset.

Of course, that’s not the story Greg told Eva when she called him the next morning.

Greg said "guy's night" was “super fun” with pool and darts and that he and the guys got really drunk.

Seven of us girls were with Eva that day, on an annual girl’s beach vacation, two hours up the South Carolina coast.
At that moment, we were about to go and lay out on the beach.

But we were stopped in our tracks by a phone call from Thomas, Eva’s friend, the one who Greg had instructed to follow “bro code."
(Turns out, it wasn’t a contractual agreement.)

Thomas told Eva all about the 52-year-old woman, her 17-year-old daughters, the fact that Greg LEFT with the 52-year-old woman in her car for an hour, and that he physically saw them making out in front of a bar.

“And he said, ‘bro code,’” Thomas added.

Eva was dizzy with shock.

“I talked to Greg this morning and he told me that he was playing darts and pool,” she said.

“Yea, he called me this morning at 7 a.m. too...to go over his ‘story’ for you,” Thomas said, incriminating the asshole even more. "He was NEVER at the bar playing pool."

“HE CALLED YOU SPECIFICALLY TO COME UP WITH A ‘STORY’ TO TELL ME??” Eva screamed.

We all stopped getting our beach towels together and stood there, frozen.
Eva called Greg immediately.

“YOU MADE OUT WITH A 52-YEAR-OLD WOMAN LAST NIGHT? YOU CHEATED ON ME WITH A 52-YEAR-OLD WOMAN?” Eva demanded. “YOU REALIZE WE’RE BROKEN UP, RIGHT?”

Greg (for his benefit, hopefully still drunk) laughed.

LAUGHED.

Our jaws dropped.

“What woman??” We heard Greg say through the phone. “Thomas is a liar. He’s just out to GET me. He HATES me.”

Eva was incensed.

“WERE YOU, OR WERE YOU NOT, WITH A 52-YEAR-OLD WOMAN LAST NIGHT?” Eva screamed. “THOMAS SAID YOU WERE NEVER AT THE BAR PLAYING POOL! AND YOU GOT INTO HER CAR?”

“Ok, so, yes, there was an older woman hitting on me, but all I did was give her a hug,” Greg said. “I was playing pool and darts!” he insisted.

(Still laughing.)

“Yea? Where are the pool tables located in the bar?” Eva asked, knowing Greg had never been to that bar before and the tables were, oddly, on the third floor.

“I don’t remember where the pool tables were,” Greg said. “What kind of question is that?”

Ha.

“AND YOU TOLD HIM ‘BRO CODE?’ WHO THE F*CK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE??!!?" Eva demanded.

We gulped.

“I didn’t do anything wrong!” Greg said.

“Oh, what you did WRONG is that you went out with the WRONG DUDE last night,” Eva yelled at him into the phone.
“You went out with the one dude that didn’t keep your little ‘bro code’ a secret.”

The concerning part was that Eva said nothing was wrong in their relationship when the cheating occurred.

Not that it would have made a difference, but they weren’t fighting, they hadn’t been drifting apart. He had even sent her text messages all that day.

It unfolded like a nightmare — Greg, the seemingly perfect boyfriend turning more and more into a Mr. Hyde monster with every passing hour. (or is that Dr. Jekyl…I never remember which one is the asshole).

Over the next 24 hours, Greg — who wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed to begin with — tried to lie his way out of the situation.

Greg wasn’t a very good liar, but not because of something cute like having a conscious.

It was because he’s an idiot.

See, Greg was one of those people that continued to tell lie after lie despite the fact that there was overwhelming evidence against him, and that his lies stopped making sense.

I’ll skip to the good part right now: He told Eva that the 52-year-old woman was a job recruiter.

WHAT!!

(P.S. Bad karma, Greg. I hope you get no interviews. Ever.)

See, Greg had to come up with SOMETHING, since he refused to admit that there was even a 52-year-old woman to begin with.

Eva tried really hard to get him on it.

She made Greg check his bank statement to see how much he spent at the bar, since eyewitness reports (Thomas) said he was buying the 52-year-old woman and her underage daughters shots. (Things Greg denied.)

His bar tab was $60.

“That’s a lot for one person, considering you only spent an hour there,” Eva said.

“What??” Greg said. “I drank six doubles!!!! $10 a piece!!!”

“So you had the equivalent of 12 drinks?” Eva asked. “In an hour?”

She considered all the evidence.

The inflated bar tab was concerning, also the fact that Greg still couldn’t answer the question of where the pool tables were in the bar he was supposedly at all night.

Also, Greg had not called Thomas since the news broke.

Eva put herself into his situation.

If a friend had told her boyfriend that she cheated and it was a lie, you better believe she’d be calling that friend — if not drive over to that friend’s house immediately to clear things up.

Greg remained silent. To this day, he still hasn’t called Thomas since "guys" night.

And since Eva ISN'T an idiot, she told Greg they were completely over and told him to meet her at a neutral place so they could exchange the stuff that they had collected in the YEAR they dated.

Greg, still insisting that he did nothing wrong, was instructed to bring his cell phone so Eva could look through his text messages.

“No probem,” he said.
After all, he had NOTHING to hide.

Not surprisingly, Greg showed up with an empty inbox.

“ALL MY MEMORY WAS FULL AND I HAD TO DELETE MY INBOX!” He said.
How convenient.

In an uncharacteristic move, Eva took his phone and scrolled through his call log.

She said it was beyond frustrating fighting with someone who refused to admit they did anything wrong, and she needed to see the evidence she already knew was there.

It didn’t take long for her to find it.

“Who did you call this morning after you hung up with me?” Eva asked, peering at his screen.

“Who? What?” Greg asked.

“This out-of-state number,” Eva said. “The person who you talked to for FIVE minutes?”

“Oh, I think that was a job recruiter.”

“You THINK you talked to a job recruiter this morning?” Eva asked. “Are you applying to out-of-state jobs now?”

“No. Yea, it was a job recruiter.”

“Oh, so you don’t mind if I call the number back then? It’s after work hours."

Greg turned red and looked fidgety.


Eva hit send and waited for an “agency” to pick up.

“FINE! WHATEVER!” Greg said. Then he started to cry.

>>>RING RING<<<

“Hello?” Eva heard an (older) female voice.

“Hi, who is this?” Eva asked.

“Ummm…may I help you?” the voice on the other line asked.

“Well, I just found this number in my friend’s phone, I was wondering who it was.”

>CLICK.<

Eva threw the phone back at Greg, in tears.

“THAT’S HER, ISN’T IT?!” Eva said. “YOU’VE BEEN CALLING THE 52-YEAR-OLD WOMAN?? WHAT THE F*CK???!?!?!”

“NO!!!!” Greg screamed. “THAT WAS A JOB RECRUITER!!!!”

Tisk, tisk.
Only the sad and desperate go down swinging like that.

Eva, FURIOUS that she wasted a year dating such a loser, looked at him and said, "You're a real piece of work, you know that?"

Then she began to walk away.

Oh but Greg wasn’t done.
He had one more punch left in him.

Seriously, he screamed at her:
“EVA!!!!! YOU JUST BLEW MY CHANCES OF GETTING A JOB INTERVIEW!”

Hahaha OMG SERIOUSLY.

Of course, over the next several weeks, Greg changed his tune and admitted that he did kiss the 52-year-old woman, and that it was her on the phone.

But none of this was his fault because he was drunk when it happened, and he merely called the woman to get a recap of what they did that night.

And then he told Eva to "try and see the bigger picture of their relationship" and work through it.

Um.

WHAT WAS THAT, TOOLBAG???
"BIGGER PICTURE??"

The bigger picture is that lying and cheating is completely unforgivable.

That’s "girl code."

Enjoy your early bird special.

-Jenny

Sister April

I don’t have an older sister. I have a baby sister, Joy, who was born five minutes after me.

As such, Joy and I had to experience all the wonders of female adolescence together (while trying not to look too much alike.)

We didn’t have an older sister to ask about things like bras and dating.
We didn’t have someone who could give us her I.D.

The year I went to college, moving from New Orleans to South Carolina, I was a total tomboy, didn’t know how to use a curling iron and I had one proper boyfriend my whole life.

And then April was randomly assigned to my dorm freshmen year.

I had never met anyone like her before.
She was Southern, blonde, and didn’t wear running shorts to go grocery shopping.

I had never heard a true South Carolina accent before, and I was intrigued by how much April sounded like a movie character.
As I mentioned before, I made April repeat everything, like a parrot.

“Say that again!” I’d insist. “Say the word ‘hill’ again!”

April was confused, but played along.
“HEE-ULL”

AHAHAHA! I clapped my hands wildly. AMAZING!!

April and I were completely different, but she was an expert at all things girly and attractive, like hair and make up and BOYS, and I totally needed her help.

The first guy to ask me out on a date in college, for example, told me to pick the place to eat for dinner.

I had a panic attack.
April picked the place.

The first time I went to the beach in South Carolina, April drove me. And let me borrow one of her bikinis.

She curled my hair when I needed to look fancy, she put eyeliner on me when I needed to meet boys, she took me to Atlanta to get a fake I.D. when I needed to get into bars.

She found me more than one apartment in college, ones that were surprisingly inexpensive.
Now that Joy and I own a house, she’s gotten us roommates to rent our third bedroom.

She’s like the big sister I never had.

In then ten years since my freshmen year of college (what!) April continues to be an older sister-type, beyond lipstick and highlights (which I can handle myself now ThankYouVeryMuch).

For one thing, I don’t think there’s anything you can tell April that she’d judge you for. Not that I have anything to be embarrassed about, uhhhhh…

April remains a comforting person to talk to about problems, because she’s either BEEN THERE, GIRL or knows someone who has.
And I can hang with her when I’m being cranky and she doesn’t take it personally.

I was especially grateful for April’s friendship when I moved to New Orleans last year. I was having an incredibly hard time adjusting to a new life after living in South Carolina for 10 years and April had to talk me out of many-a-panic-attack.

She was sad, but supportive when I moved back home, reminding me that this is what I’ve been saying I wanted to do since I graduated college.

And she continued to be supportive when I found myself depressed, having to make new friends and end a year-long relationship all at the same time, three months after moving home.

A friend who can provide comfort in your darkest hour is the only kind of friend to have around.

It was April’s birthday this past weekend and, due to being 800 miles away, I missed the party.
It was the first time in five years I haven’t been able to surprise her with a (fake) name brand handbag and a cookie cake.

Oh I wish I could meet a nice pilot who has his own plane and flies from New Orleans to South Carolina regularly.
(And who would let me tag along and pay him with my company.)

Because I’d want to tell April all of these things in person — how much I appreciate her, how much she has shaped me and how different my life would be without her.

And, I’d let her do my hair before we went out.





-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

I don’t have a dog because I’m not responsible enough to come home at the same time every day, and I really like happy hour.

It's impressive that people manage to make dog ownership work, since the only dog I've ever lived with was a complete insomniac basket case because he lived with four very social girls on the beach and never knew which one of us would feed him or let him out next.

(He ate a lot of garbage.)

Lately I’ve been hanging out with a lot of dogs, with it being summer and all, and dogs always remind me of my friend Gina and her toolbag ex-boyfriend, Jeff.
They each had a dog.

Gina and Jeff had been dating forEVER and they shared an apartment and then made a cross country move together for her to take a job. (If that’s not commitment, I don’t know what is!)

Jeff, who had his masters degree (then why is he such a dumbass?), got a job teaching at a nearby college.

He wasn’t super interested in teaching, so it was a bit surprising that during the semester Jeff became — as Gina puts it — “engrossed” with the new profession.

So engrossed that he even asked her to move with him to a new (dog-friendly) apartment closer to the college. They did.

Then Jeff began to have late nights at the school. Gina, an overachiever herself, thought absolutely nothing of it since this was her loving, smart, “I-moved-1,000-miles-to-be-with-you” boyfriend.

She passed it off as him just working on complicated lesson plans or grading papers from the freshmen.

But then Gina noticed that Jeff randomly started going to the college's soccer games.

Um...school spirit?

Jeff said yes, SCHOOL SPIRIT, that he was trying to get more involved.

He said he felt like it was his niche now, and he never knew that he’d like teaching so much. It was a miracle!

Gina didn’t have time to question his new passion because the holidays were coming up right then, and she was working a lot.
Jeff was flying home to see his family and he was really excited about it. Gina was staying, working overtime. With the dogs.

Like she had done many times before in their four-year relationship.

Oddly, a few days before his flight, Jeff told Gina that since she was working so hard during the holiday she shouldn’t have to handle the dogs by herself.

So he offered to board them.

No, wait.
Just his.

“I just think it would be easier with one less dog,” he said.

"What?" she said. "You want to board just YOUR dog?"

She was confused. Why would you need to board any of the dogs? Where the EFF did THAT come from?

She told Jeff that was completely unnecessary, she could handle both dogs just fine, ThankYouVeryMuch, and besides, it would cost $150 for the whole week he was gone.

And, since when were both dogs such a burden?
She handled them just fine when he went to all those soccer games.

But Jeff insisted.

In the name of helping HER concentrate on her work, after all.

The holiday break came, and Jeff and Gina called and texted and wished each other happy holidays and all that, but the cheerful spirit left suddenly, not even a week after Jeff got back in town.

He had something to tell her.
He didn’t go out of town at all.

The entire holiday, he was shacking up at his new girlfriend’s house ACROSS TOWN.
With his dog.

And, as you can probably guess, the girlfriend was yes, a.) his student and b.) a soccer player.

"SO, I COULD HAVE RUN INTO YOU AT THE EFFING STARBUCKS WHEN YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE IN NORTH CAROLINA??!?!?" Gina screamed.

Jeff nodded and then asked her, and her dog, to move out of the apartment.

During the post-breakup self-reflection period (which is a DELIGHT to all your friends, haha), Gina kept saying that she knew something was wrong well before Jeff admitted to being a douchebag.

It wasn’t the late nights at the college (although thinking about that makes her want to vomit).
And it wasn’t even the soccer game attendance. (vomit twice.)

It was the fact that he wanted to "board" his dog for a week.
Why did his dog need to be brought into a new place, with a new girl?
Was this their inaugural meeting? Like how people meet their significant others' children for the first time???

DAMMIT! Gina thought. She cursed herself for not pressing him further at the time about why exactly boarding just his dog made sense.

I keep thinking about all the lies Jeff would have likely told her to get his dog out of the house, had they stayed together.

Perhaps his next college "lecture" would be for the students to do an assignment about his dog's unique fur coat and he'd need to bring him to class for observation.
(Extra credit to the new girlfriend for letting his dog SLEEP ON THE FLOOR NEXT TO HER BED.)

Since I don't have a dog, I wonder: do they realize what’s going on when their owners cheat?
Do they whimper at the side of the unfamiliar bed, confused about where "mommy" is?

Do male dogs abide by “guy code?”

Psssh.
That's giving "doggie style" a whole new meaning.

-Jenny

My Google is smarter than your honor student

Isn’t it just the WORST when your boss looks over your shoulder watching you look up something on your computer and you type TWO LETTERS into the Google word box and THIS shows up:


I’m right on top of that Rose!!!


So what, maybe I googled the Christina Applegate 90s movie classic to get a quote. Once.
A month week ago.

(Side note: PARK IT YOURSELF, METALLICA BREATH)

Have you noticed that Google has been getting too smart lately?? It’s like it knows me better than I know MYSELF.

If Google was a boy, we’d be on our 7,000,000,000th date. And he’d know everything about me.

He knows where I live — New Orleans — based on all the address and restaurant searches, and he knows I get lost a lot, so I constantly Mapquest things (with street view!!)

He knows I want to join a gym, because I’ve been doing online comparisons, and he knows I’m probably going with Anytime Fitness, despite all the negative reviews I’ve been reading on Yelp.

He knows I don’t have a pet, because I never ever search for anything pet-related.

(Although I do regularly Google this video of a dog running into a wall.)

(And this depressed kitten in a bucket. Ahahaha!! SO SAD IT’S FUNNY!)

Google knows I can’t cook, because I search “Kraft.com spinach lasagna recipe” on the regular.

He knows my favorite TV show is The Office, since I constantly Google quotes and clips even though I have every episode DVR’d and have an Office quotes desk calendar.

Google knows that my favorite band is Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes, because when I type the letters “J-O” into the search box, the top THREE results are of the band.

More embarrassingly, Google also knows that I had a mysterious black spot on the center of my tongue, which I obviously thought was cancer, and HOLY MOTHER OF GOD you do NOT want to Google image “black tongue.”

You’ve been warned.

Google also knows what caused the black spot, too.

Why else would someone Google search “Listerine Pocket Spray” aside from the fact that they wanted to write under its “feedback” section that IF YOU SPRAY IT TOO MUCH, IT TURNS YOUR TONGUE BLACK.

Um, moving on.

Google might not know that I’m a twin, but he knows I’ve been searching details of this STUPID twin convention that my twin sister, Joy, wants us to go to later this summer.

Too bad it’s in stupid Ohio, because when the convention inevitably SUCKS, we’re going to have nothing else to do.

(I know, I googled “things to do in Ohio.” Nothing. Haha.)

So, don’t let anyone else use your computer!!! Because if they were really nosy, they could learn a lot about you based on your Google search results.

I mean, you could get busted for Google searching someone’s name!!! (Yikes)

Or for your weird health symptoms. (uh black tongue)

Or whatever the top results are of the words “How to." That’s pretty telling.

How to...hide a dead body?
How to...tell your girlfriend you're gay?

(Mine is “how to tie a tie” and this was because I decided that if I ever got dressed up fancy with a guy, I’d want to tie his tie for him all sexy-like, but, holy shit, there are a LOT of steps involved.)

I’m sure there’s a way to clear out your Google search results, probably something complicated that involves “cookies” INSIDE YOUR COMPUTER.

And then no one will know about all those urban dictionary inquiries you searched for so you’ll be able to actually get the jokes you hear on the kickball field.

Uh, for example.

But if I cleared out all my results, then I’d have to start all over with another Google, one that needs to learn that when I search “live wire” that means the New Orleans radio station’s music listings.

And when I type “shit my dad says” I want the twitter account, not a bio of William effing Shatner.

And when I type the word “tool,” obviously I mean “Toolbag Tuesday.”

Hehe

-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

I remember being so mad at an ex-boyfriend that I wanted really bad things to happen to him.

Not anything super horrible or fatal, but just annoying things.

Like, I hoped his next girlfriend would have really, really bad B.O.
Or that he’d get athlete’s foot.
Or a massive speeding ticket.

But no matter how angry I was, I never actually made any of these things happen (although now that I think about it, they would all be unique challenges).

My friend Nicole’s boyfriend, Robert, didn’t have that same filter.

He got so mad at her that he threw all of her things outside the front of his house and set them on fire.
Oh, he made that a reality.

Charred Chanel, ya’ll!

Nicole and Robert were in college, and had dated for almost a year. Nicole spent a lot of time at his apartment, and spent almost every night there. As such, the things she kept there were pretty much things she used regularly.

Class textbooks. Running shoes. iPod. Phone charger.

They were in a fight because he was drunk and wanted to drive his car home, and she told him not to and took his keys.

After an escalating fight, where he swatted at her to get his keys, the bouncer told Robert to leave and told Nicole to "give the asshole his keys."
She did.

Nicole got a call from him a short time later, telling her that he was in the process of throwing all of her things out on the front lawn.

She couldn’t come over immediately, because Robert was her ride.

When she finally got in touch with a friend who could pick her up from the bar and drive her to Robert’s house, at least an hour had passed.
It was dark, and when she arrived she saw her things in a pile across the lawn.

When she walked over, she thought she saw black dirt on top of her stuff.

“Great! He covered my stuff in dirt!” she actually told her friend. But then she smelled something…odd…

She looked down and saw that all of her things weren’t covered in dirt. They had turned to ash.

A piercing scream later, and Nicole started banging on Robert’s door.

“YOU BURNED MY FUCKING THINGS!?!?!??!?!!”

He chided her through the window – oh, you like that!! You like that!! He was saying. He didn't open the door.

Robert's pre-mediated vision was coming true. Here she was screaming as all of her things were now charred flakes, blowing away in the wind. HIS PLAN WORKED!

Not part of his plan?
Nicole calling the cops.

The cops were probably already on their way over, since the impromptu bonfire and screaming was definitely a “disturbance.”

When they showed up, Nicole showed them the ash pile, and HOLY BUZZKILL they made Robert come outside.

His arrogance faded when THEY HANDCUFFED HIM and made him sit on the stoop while talking to Nicole about the value of everything that burned.

She had never called the cops before, and was nervous and angry.

It didn’t help when Robert looked over at her at that exact moment, STILL HANDCUFFED , and said, “I can’t believe you’re doing this to us!”

US!

If the cops had a sense of humor, I'm sure they would have laughed at that.

Now, I certainly don't condone an unwarranted guilt trip, but this one worked for Robert.

Nicole declined to press charges, and the cops told her that if they were called back to that apartment, they’d BOTH be arrested.

(In my opinion, not pressing charges was far too kind of her. She should have burned him like he burned her...phone charger.)

Perhaps this could be a lesson in restraint.

I know it feels really good to wish annoying things upon someone you’re mad at, like them needing to buy all new textbooks a week before the final exams.

Or seeing them attempt to still wear running shoes that could only be described as “medium-well.”

But destruction of property can, and will, bite you in the ass. It's probably a good idea to stay away from arrestable offenses altogether.

I’d stick to the athlete’s foot thing.
Fungus ain’t illegal.

-Jenny

P.S. Sorry, y’all, about my first Wednesday posting of a Toolbag Tuesday! I’ll do better next week. I mean, it’s already Thursday evening in Singapore (for those of you who like to Google “world clock”…for…uh…fun.)