cry for help: i can’t stop watching “i shouldn’t be alive”

trust me, without the proper snacks & hydration, i probably wouldn’t be.

i’m not a big tv person. sure, i love my today show. i love a little ellen here and there. cooking shows even tho i have no patience for cooking b/c i’m always too damn hungry to follow directions and wind up screwing everything up. obviously i love my golden girls reruns even tho holly won’t let me watch them anymore, don’t ask me why. (i’m sure she’ll be annoyed i wrote that, but whatever. that’s what the comment section is for.)

but i’ll tellya what: every now and then a show comes along, and you cannot. stop. watching it. for me, that show is “i shouldn’t be alive.” it’s on animal planet. hell if i know why, as the stories are always about humans but whatever.

if you’ve never seen it, the scenario is usually something along the lines of a couple/few dumbbutts go on a backwoods/water-oriented/mountain, etc. adventure and something goes terrible wrong and then they’re stranded and in a race for time to a) survive and b) get rescued somehow. it is damn good tv.

they weave interviews w/the person or people that went thru the ordeal into the narration and have actors dramatize the whole thing. it sucks when all of the people aren’t interviewed b/c then you know one died. i hate that.

anyway, our household television viewing usually goes something like this: holly’s watching something downstairs. i shout BABE WHAT ARE YOU WATCHING three or four times from the sink (where i’m doing the dishes) until she hears me over the running water and whatever’s on. (i’m sure she now regrets the tragically hip open floor plan she designed for us, which allows to me to yell like a jewish grandmother across the entire first floor whenever i want.)

she pretends not to hear me until i become unbearably loud and then she says something along the lines of stop asking so many questions/sit down and watch this, will you?

i have a very short attention span for tv, but sometimes i’ll actually sit down and watch whatever she’s got on. that’s how i started watching the new york/beverly hills/new jersey housewives. also america’s funniest home videos, which i used to really not like but now kind of enjoy b/c holly’s taught me how to laugh when ppl fall down (except old ppl and little kids; we don’t like that–hello, we’re not evil).

anyway, “i shouldn’t be alive” (ISBA) was one of those shows. and on the weekends it’s like these ISBA marathons. we try to get up but we can’t. my fingers and toes and the tip of my nose get freezing cold even tho duh, i know they’re going to be saved!

on more than one occasion, i’ve told holly–as i shiver w/nerves next to her on the couch–that i’m quite sure i’d be the first to die in one of those scenarios. holly says people surprise themselves in those dire-straight type situations, but i’m telling you, low blood-sugar runs in my family. if i don’t eat every three hours i’m toast. i get migraines w/out the proper amount of caffeine and water. not to mention the fact that my overly sensitive cervical spine (i.e. neck), which will undoubtedly get irritated w/out at least one feather pillow. the sad thing is here you think i’m kidding but i’m actually not.

i’m like the 21st-century jersey-girl version of the princess and the pea.  “oh my gaaaaaaaawsh. ew, i can’t sleep on the ground! is there a starbucks around here? oh my gawsh how do you know those berries aren’t poisonous?” oh and let’s not forget the lack of my precious straightening iron. if i don’t wind up bear food and actually manage to get rescued, my hair would be a mess.

oh i also failed to mention that i can only tread water for like three minutes tops so if this is an ocean adventure gone awry, i’d drown almost immediately b/c i’d be too panicked to take off my shirt/jeggings/whatever and blow it/them up into a flotation device however the hell you do that.

i’m going off-topic here. what i’m trying to say is, if you haven’t watched the show, i doubledog dare you to turn it on, watch for 5, 10 minutes and then try to turn it off. it’s nearly impossible. kind of like american idol tryouts except worse. and with wolves.

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