Jenna's House of Idiosyncrasies Version 10.0 [Focus.]

There's a feeling I sometimes get before going to a party. This sensation that I'm about to step into a den of lions, where I have no control. Where there is a possibility, though sometimes faint, that I'll be eaten alive.

I've always been fairly big on comfort zones. I like knowing my surroundings, spotting all the emergency exits, finding my allies in the crowd. Not having these things makes me nervous, not just for comfort reasons but also for safety. Read More »

I had a terrifying nightmare last night, disturbing enough to cause me to not even want to write about it now. It woke me up in the middle of the night, but I had already forgotten it and didn't know why I had woken up. Being the geek that I am, upon waking I wondered over to my computer to check my email. I was in the middle of surfing Consumating five minutes later when awful flashes of it suddenly started coming back to me, and I immediately opened up Notepad and typed out the details as they came back. Then I couldn't sit in the dark at my computer anymore, and I got back into bed, curling into a ball under the covers to wait for dawn, when things hopefully wouldn't be so scary. I fell into a restless sleep, and when I woke up at 6:30 I watched some Sopranos and stayed bed until the sun came up.

After all that, when I started to work this morning, I was tired and couldn't concentrate, not to mention sort of traumatized by what my brain is capable of producing. So I took up my long-dead habit of drinking coffee. Four cups later I'm wired and can't concentrate, not to mention sort of traumatized by what my brain is capable of producing. I drugged myself into mania and nervousness.

I think I miscalculated.

I need some ideas: how do I raise $600 in 5 days without resorting to prostitution or say, violent robbery?

With that kind of financial problem you'd think I'd copped some kind of fantastic narcotic habit, but the truth is, I'm just trying to pay my bills.

If I was a heroin user it would give this near poverty lifestyle I'm currently living a much more romantic spin. Then I could sell my memoirs.

Remember when you were a kid, and your parents imposed this insane idea of a ‘bedtime’ on you?

“Why would you want to go to sleep,” you'd wonder, either aloud or to yourself, “when there is all this time in which to read, watch movies, or play games? I'm not even tired! I could be using this valuable time! It's the best time of day, after all. No school.”

At some point you grow older and realize that as much as your parents were looking out for their young'un—making sure you could grow your tallest, act your brightest and perform in your curricular and extracurricular activities to the best of your ability—they also were furtively trying to hang onto that last shred of sanity, just trying to go to sleep themselves.

In short, you feel what your parents must have felt when trying to get you to just go to bed, already—really. fucking. tired.

I have fallen asleep on the living room couch twice just this week. Fallen asleep like out cold, for the night. This alternates with bouts of insomnia that only allow me 4 hours of sleep many nights. Hence the eventual uncontrollable drowsiness.

For a little while this didn't bother me so much as perplex me. Four hours a night, often even less, was pretty much the schedule I kept in my high school days. I'm not that much older. It's not as if I'm nearing 30, or 40. I'm 22. I'm supposed to be in the prime of my life!

Then it dawned on me. The reason I was able to do that in high school is two fold:

1. Lots and lots of sleeping during class, such as each and every one of my first period Algebra II classes.
2. An excessive (like, uncontrollable shaking excessive) addiction to caffeine pills

My refusal to get back on harsh stimulants and my employer's refusal to let me sleep through my shift, compounded with being 6 years older, means that if I get no sleep I can feel it each and every day until I'm caught up.

I'm not complaining so much as I am fascinated by my own selective memory—I had pushed out all the coping mechanisms and left some sort of invincible Jenna in their wake. It's nice to realize that I haven't lost any kind of special power. I've simply gained some judgment.

“Don't forget you are going to help me plan my future tonight, okay?” I yell up to Abie's loft while she's trying to have an international conversation.

“I know, we're going to get high and plan your future.
“Not in that order, though.”

The basic idea (with some can't-talk-about-it-yet ulterior motives) was to map out what I have left to take in order to just graduate, already!

Abie, my dear Abie, did all of the legwork, and I sat and watched her, confused. I am indebted to the redhead, of course. She figured most of it out.

I'm putting it in writing so I have to commit to it: if I'm not out by December of 2007, I will most certainly be out by May of 2008. This is going to happen by picking the pace back up just a bit, taking summer classes, and a fair amount of determination on my part.

Now that I have a date, an idea of what I have to do, I'm much more motivated to go ahead and knock it out. Its not an impassable obstacle but just some hurdles to jump. No problem.

“Abie, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to graduate.”

Due to some uncharacteristic nervousness about making my flight, about being on time, I arrived at my gate more than 2 hours early, with nothing but time to kill. I sat and played Lemonade Tycoon on my cell phone and did some people watching.

There's a metrosexual young man seated on the other side of my duffle bag, talking on his cell phone. He has gelled hair that has been professionally colored and highlighted, shined shoes and and outfit that is entirely black—black tailored pants, black button-down shirt, black footwear. His streamlined outfit bothers me, like he's making the rest of us—the people with outfits for traveling in comfort rather than style—look mussed and ragged by comparison. He's wearing a ring that is a king's crown wrapped around one finger, and he uses his other hand to thump an empty Dansani bottle against his knee as he talks. I feel the tinge of class warfare come over me as I watch him, resentful.

I shouldn't be so judgemental, I think. I'm the one drinking Perrier.

His ease, treating air travel as such a non-event, is a sharp contrast to the young woman seated across from me with her mother. Her dress and manner could easily make her a native of Winder or a similar town. She wears an oversized sweatshirt, tight leggings and sneakers. The whole getup makes her like a shapeless blob perched atop two legs. I conjecture she's actually much thinner under her sweatshirt tent, even if she is carrying one of Dr. Phil's weight loss books in her purse. She dresses, sits and speaks as if she doesn't travel into the city often, as if she simply doesn't notice how outlandish she seems against the backdrop of business travelers and suburban parents.

Being from such a small town myself, it's a quality I've come to recognize easily, largely so I may fight such characteristics from coming out in my own behavior and appearance.

The young woman keeps proclaiming loudly to someone on her cell phone that she's never flow before. She stresses over and over how nervous she is. I can see the cold sweat across her forehead. Her mother keeps chanting to her, like a mantra: “You're going to have fun. You're going to have fun. You're going to have fun.”

The woman takes deep breaths and complains that the Dramamine she took is making her drowsy. As high strung as she is, however, I think it may be best if she can sleep through her first venture into air travel.

The metrosexual and the young woman and her mother board the flight before mine and depart for Pheonix. The chairs around me empty and suddenly, I'm all alone. The air is cooler and I worry less about the metrosexual glancing over and somehow reading the less than flattering description I've scrawled in my notebook.

I mean, he's probably just a person like everyone else.

I sit and play more cell phone games, and then get up and go to the rest room. When I come out, I realize I've been here for quite a while. I check the time.

6:20. I'm scheduled to depart at 6:40, but there is no significant number of people sitting at my gate, and more importantly, no one at the counter. Looking in that direction I realize the information above the counter says that the next flight is going to San Francisco at 7:20.

What. The. Fuck.

I recheck my boarding pass, put it away, and then take it out and check it again. Everytime I check it, it still reads gate A21. I'm at A21. Something has been switched up on me, and I have 20 minutes to figure out where I'm actually supposed to be.

I haven't panicked, but it's going in that direction for sure. I look up at the various, essentially useless “information screens” mounted above the fray in the terminal. Nothing. I decide I need help. Needing help irritates me, as I like being self-reliant, but I decide I have no choice. No matter, I was made to feel like a fool no matter how self-reliant I wished to be.

I walk across to A19, where there are Delta employees at the counter who do not look extremely busy but somehow still manage to look extremely put out when I politely ask them for their help.

“Could you please help me figure out where I'm supposed to be?”

“Where are you going?”

“Seattle.”

“What does your boarding pass say?”

“My boarding pass says A21,” I counter, “but A21 is not going to Seattle. I am going to Seattle.”

He asks for the flight number and I provide it for him without looking at the pass, as I have closely examined all text on the pass over and over in near panic.

He types briefly and reading off the screen he says, “197 is now boarding at A25.”

“A25?”

He looks up at me like I'm being completely unreasonable, like needing one additional verbal confirmation after the mixup makes me into some kind of detail-obsessed savant, and he is amazed I was able to get this close to my flight by myself. “Yes, A25.”

I say my thanks and rush off, arriving at my gate just as they are boarding my “zone”. I settle in to my seat, and when we are up in the air, I spike my ginger ale with Jack Daniels. I've earned it.

Jenna (12:39:57 AM): how was your day?
Emily (12:40:19 AM): ok. non-eventful.
Jenna (12:41:10 AM): mine was also non-eventful, except I went to get my tires balanced and rotated and they told me what I really need is new tires
Jenna (12:41:16 AM): which is mucho $$$
Jenna (12:41:20 AM): so I am not happy
Jenna (12:41:23 AM): haha
Jenna (12:41:46 AM): they were like... "I guess we can balance them, but it won't do you any good..."
Emily (12:42:18 AM): :-(
Emily (12:42:21 AM): i'm quite sorry
Jenna (12:42:29 AM): it's not your fault, but I appreciate the sympathy
Emily (12:42:38 AM): be careful on your not good enough tires
Jenna (12:42:40 AM): I shall
Jenna (12:42:56 AM): the trips will have to be cut down until I raise the money somehow
Jenna (12:43:02 AM): no idea how
Jenna (12:43:11 AM): maybe I should start selling drugs
Jenna (12:43:20 AM): that has a good profit margin
Jenna (12:43:25 AM): right?
Emily (12:43:30 AM): and you're a bad ass..and you can do it
Emily (12:43:33 AM): do it!
Jenna (12:43:38 AM): hahahaha
Jenna (12:44:08 AM): well thank you for the vote of confidence
Emily (12:44:38 AM): no prob, dude