holly, i’m sorry i told you to buy those sweatpants in petite

as a spouse/significant other, you are depended upon for both a) tasks and b) opinions.  in our household, one of my tasks is that i make the coffee because you’re so good at it, holly says, batting her eyelashes. (i need to note here that she’s actually pretty good at making it, too, but she’d rather i’d do it, which is totally fine, as i’d rather her take the recycling and trash out to the black hole that is our alley.)

anyway, sometime within the past six months or so we were perusing our local jcpenny’s–wait, no: JAYCEEPEE–perusing the aisles of our local JCP, when she stumbled across a pair of particularly comfy looking grey sweatpants.

ooooh these are nice, she said.

yeah, i said. nice.

now, you may or may not recall this, but i’m not much of a shopper. it’s like, the “gayest” thing about me (besides, you know, the obvious). i mean, i love a trip to target, but at least there i can make a quick getaway into the greeting cards/ cleaning products/make-up aisle to get away from all the clothes.

holly loves to shop. oh she loooooves to shop. (“i DO NOT love to shop,” she just said. whatever, she likes to. i don’t care what she says.) and she loves to get my damn opinion on everything. so that’s the context here. as i was saying:

do you think i should get them in a regular or petite? she asks me as i walk behind her, distracted and instagramming (is that a verb? i’m making it a verb.)

you’re small. get a petite, i say. otherwise you’re gonna havta get em hemmed and that costs as much as the pants. 

so i should get the petite?

yeah, get the petite.

ok, i’ll get the petite.

great, can we leave now?

no, not yet, i want to look in the kitchen section. where’s the escalator?

at which point i groaned and we had our usual but-i-don’t-want-to/pipe-down-babe-it’ll-just-be-a-minute,-if-you-want-me-to-cook-for-you-i-need-kitchen-tools exchange.

after a couple of washes the pants shrunk. holly noticed first. i looked up from words with friends and agreed that yeah, they were a little on the short side.

now, weeks later, i see that they’re actually not just a little short, they’re painfully short. she likes to wear them, because they’re a great color and they are indeed comfortable, but, like an inside voice or an inside cat, they are inside pants. she’ll occasionally wear them for a walk to the park and immediately regret it, saying she feels like rocky balboa (see below).

rocky balboa’s short pants in the first rocky movie. i guess it was ok because it was the 80s? anyway, holly’s aren’t quite as short, but it’s close. it’s really close.

anyway, now i feel kind of guilty. even though i laugh and call her “short pants,” i really do feel bad. she depended on me for input and i lead her astray. she should have never gotten the petite. babe, i should have never told you to get the petite. i’m sorry and i love you, even in your short pants. especially in your short pants.

i’m also sorry i was accidentally making you caffeinated coffee instead of decaf for like a week last month and you kept feeling anxious and we didn’t know why. i didn’t properly label the ground bulk coffee we got at whole foods. completely my fault. it was my task and i failed. i’ll take the trash and recycling out to make up for it. wait no. i can’t because i’m scared of our alley. but i love you and i’ll be more careful from here on out.

in other news: we’re getting MARRIED this weekend. THIS TIME RIGHT HERE IN OUR HOME STATE OF MARYLAND! on st. patty’s day (sunday!), the three-year anniversary of our first legal wedding in dc.

it was kind of a spur-of-the-moment decision. we ran over to the baltimore city courthouse earlier this week and were like HOLLA! we’re here to get our marriage license! (well, we didn’t say “holla” but we could’ve) and the lady was like HOLLA! here it is! (well, no, not really but she was nice). anyway, the rabbi that married us the first time will do it again, except this time she’ll be able to sign a license. full circle right? and this time in jeans! (if you’re new to this blog and you’d like to read about our nuptial adventures–and oh, we’ve had many–in one fell swoop, check out this essay i wrote for the current issue of baltimore bride.)

until then, folks, take your spousal/significant other-ly duties seriously! if your partner’s pants seem too short, for crying out loud, pay attention and speak up. and if s/he can’t process caffeine, don’t confuse the bags. you know it can only end badly.

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whatever you do, don’t panic

i need to say something: all the energy drinks and “shots” on the market these days are scaring the hell outta me. i mean, how tired and strung-out and overworked are we as a society if you can’t even walk into bed, bath & beyond w/out running into some weirdo twisted energy concoction at the cash register? (true story; totally saw 5-Hour Energy “shots” there last week. they probably tasted like candles, i.e. the way my clothes, hair and skin smell after five minutes there)

i mean, i can’t imagine downing one of those things. not even a red bull. not a monster drink or whatever they’re called. nothing. i remember my freshman year of college (shoutout umcp! holla!), student housing or some such organization sent out these little packages full of samples to all the kids in the dorm. “helpful” things like, oh i don’t know, deodorant, painkillers and No-Doz. b/c college students don’t already have enough issues w/out free, scary pills that make your heart beat fast.

 anyone out there remember No-Doz?? No-Doz was the go-to college all-nighter stuff long before red bull and the 5-Hour shots. little white caffeine bombs. and to 17-year-old fresh-outta-jersey me–that hadn’t discovered the joys of coffee yet–full-on panic pills.

why i decided to take them, i have no idea. i took them in the morning (morning? on an empty stomach, probably) and before long, my heart started pounding out of my chest.

“jess!” i whisper-yelled to my sleeping roommate, yanking her covers. “i…i took No-Doz! i’m…i’m freaking out! i can’t, i can’t breathe! i think i’m having a heart attack!”

she, of course, mumbled something about calming down, patted my shoulder and went back to sleep, leaving me to fend for myself. who knows how the hell i talked myself out of that one, but i did. this was the first and last time i took “energy” pills.

why did i tell you that supremely dorky story? i told it…well i told it to make you laugh. also to prove a point. that sh*t is scary! and now sophisticated commercial chemists are mixing caffeine with, like, panic-inducing jungle roots. plus they make it taste like soda or candy or both.

i’ll tell you what tho: the marketing folks at 5-Hour Energy (or whomever they hire to do their advertising) are brilliant. you’ve probably seen the 5-Hour Energy commercial, right? that “2:30 feeling”? after working in quite a few boring offices, i am quite familiar with that 2:30 feeling. especially after a sizable lunch burrito when you’re sitting in a warm conference room w/annoying ppl discussing crap you don’t care about. (wow! i think i actually fell asleep for a nanosecond while writing that!)

have any of you drank this stuff? were you whirling like a tornado til 7:30pm or did you pull a jessica circa ’96, fall to your knees and weep to your cubicle mate that you were having a heart attack? i hope you whirled b/c, trust me, if you have a panic attack at 2:30 in the afternoon on the floor of your office you will never live it down.

there is absolutely nothing wrong with eating lunch at 11:30

in fact, i encourage it.

there’s two things you ought to know about me before you read this any further: one, this is, for all intents and purposes, a blog still very much in test-mode. well, these first entries anyway. i don’t have a clue of its focus as of yet, and it’s very existence is most likely due to whey protein overload (thank YOU starbucks smoothie! have you tried yet? omG delish!) and over-caffeination (again: thank you, my dear old friend S. Bux), but mostly my fabulous food blogger friend—and bff, i must add—nicole, she of cucinanicolina—who advised me the other day (after excessive cross-country txt msging, i may add.) to “just start.” just to start typing and see where it takes me. so here i am!

number two: yes, i do—more often than not—eat lunch at 11:30. that’s a.m. sometimes even earlier. in fact, oftentimes i’m hungry for lunch at 10:30. (like right now, as i write this.) i used to be embarrassed to even admit it, let alone eat it. but i don’t care anymore. i suppose i’ll discuss some of the reasons why i think get hungry so early in later posts (these will all be theories, as i really and truly do not know). but for now, i’m just putting it out there.
and hell, i’ll add a couple more things while i’m at it:
1. i get a lot of headaches. unfortunately. so if i disappear for a couple days, that’s probably why. fear not, tho! i always return. usually in a downright awesome mood.
2. um, i wear a lot of black, but, contrary to popular belief (and by popular belief i mean that of middle-aged admin ladies), am not goth. not goth. just from jersey. wear frosty lipstick, too. also a north jersey trait, i’ve discovered. am also a big fan of bangs. and i hear i chew gum pretty loudly, too. classy chick, right?? 

3. i’m 29, on the cusp of 30 (october thankyouverymuch), but feel perpetually 15. in fact, i frequent mall psuedo-punk franchise hot topic more than i’d like to admit. (hey, cut me some slack, ppl. where’s a girl supposed to find a ramones t-shirt around these parts anyway?) funny thing is that when i walk in, the grumpy (but pleasantly so) cashiers say hi like i’m not the office drone i some days fear i’ve become so i guess i put up a pretty good front. (well, i guess the bangs help. also said loud gum-chewing.)
4. i live in baltimore. (lots more on baltimore in the near-future, i’m sure.) grew up in, yes, new jersey. lived in D.C. for a good long while and miss it terribly (but still get my hairs did there, so you know i’m back pretty often) what else, what else…ah, right. am gay, gay, gay. in fact, i’m having what i like to call a Big Fat Gay Wedding this fall. i’m tying the knot with my fabulous holly, partner of seven+ years. i’m also jewish. so the gay jokes and the jewish jokes are ON, ppl. don’t even start. b/c if you ARE one, you can poke fun. and, if nothing else, this blog’s gonna be fun.

i think that’s all for now, b/c i’m hungry as all get-out. like, my hands are practically shaking. i know, right?? and it’s not even 11:30.