the (mis)adventures of jenna

I just subjected Laura to this, so I figured I might as well get the rest of you.

I absolutely cannot handle this hilarious article (link below) I just found in the UK Daily Mail.  It kills me every time I read it and I almost cry from laughing so hard (which is not a good thing to be doing after eating a Freebirds salad).

Since you probably won’t read the article, I’ll give you the jist:

Dude finishes pool, throws a party.  Right before party starts, renegade bull comes crashing through wall surrounding pool.  Runs into pool.  Gets stuck, must tread water for three hours.  Pool must be drained.  Crane type thing is brought in to hoist bull out of pool.  Pictures are hilarious.

At the very least, you gotta click the article so you too can cry at the pictures.  (Or you can shake your head and think “gosh, that’s not very funny, Jenna is messed up” and that would be fine too.)

I dig cows.

And here’s the article link.

So, after much consideration, I put one of Henry’s bathtub pictures on ICanHasCheezburger.com.  Now that I think of it I probably should have put it on IHasAHotDog.com, but I didn’t.

Make me proud.  Go to This Link and vote for my baby!  Give him 5 cheeseburgers, they’re right above the picture of him in the tub.

Joey’s in the air right now, flying from Green Bay to Chicago.  I can’t wait for him to get home, safe and sound on the ground with ME!  I’m trying not to stress out and be anxious, so I just came down from the kitchen with a blob of Blue Bell and some little brownie bites.

What.

No, I’m not stress eating.

OK, so three really strange things happened to me last night, and I attribute them all to the fact that Joey is gone and I’m jumpy.  He is flying back on the 2:27 out of Green Bay and I am quite anticipatory.  I’m picking him up at the airport very late, we are going to dinner, and then I will no longer be scared in my own house.  In the last two nights I have had visions of the boogey man (YES, I am still afraid of that thing), monsters, and robbers.  Last night was one such night.  I heard:

1.  Unusual Echoey Noises

Since Joey isn’t home, I have been a bum.  I didn’t make the bed yesterday, nor did I pick up my clothes when I changed from work, I just threw them on the bed.  I know, I know.  Anyway, around 8:00 I started feeling bad for being so lazy and finally got around to hanging up my work pants. Henry had been sitting in the doorway watching me.  I was talking to him, of course, because there was noone else to talk to, when suddenly I noticed he was gone.  (He usually walks out on me when I’m baring my soul to him, though, so I didn’t hold it against him.)

But then I started hearing hollow, echoing sounds.

I got very scared.

“Henry?” I called feebly from the bedroom.  He didn’t come jingling into the bedroom like normal when I call him, so I got even scarder.  He was probably hijacked or something.

“Buddy?  Boo?”  I resorted to calling his nicknames, but still he did not come.

I told myself I’d better suck it up and investigate the strange noises, so I ventured slowly to the bedroom door.  It was then that I heard licking.  Puppy licking.

“Henry?  Where…” I glanced in the bathroom and noticed the shower curtain was askew.  And the licking noises seemed to be loudest in the bathroom…but Henry was nowhere to be found.

Maybe he was in the tub?

He was in the tub.  And he hates baths.  He was licking the water around the drain, which horrified me to no end, and I immediately took him to his water dish, which was full of nice fresh water.  He turned his shih-tzu nose up at it and pranced away, I guess shower drain water tastes better.

The thud and clanging noises had been Henry jumping in the shower.  Nothing to worry about at all…

2.  Scary Thuds

I was all tucked in and reading my book last night, when I heard a loud THUD come from another part of the house.  Conviced I was being robbed and would probably never see Joey again, I pulled the covers tighter and read my book out loud to myself.

No robbers ever entered my room.

This morning I discovered that the thud had been my unicycle falling over, it was laying awkwardly on the floor in the study when I went in to let Henry out of his kennel.  I’m a nerd.  There were no robbers.

3.  Moldy Legs

So I have been practicing my unicycle when it hasn’t been raining, and last night was no exception.  I put on my shorts, Tevas, and bike gloves (to protect my palms in the event of a serious wipeout) and hauled my uni down the stairs, keeping it as far away from my person as possible.  That thing has wicked pedals, they each have about 16 sharp nubs on them to keep my shoe on the pedal, but I gotta tell you, those things hurt like Charles Dickens when they get planted in your shin.  (I know because I have a green/yellow bruise on my left calf from pedal bites.)

Anyway, it was like 400 degrees last night.  I was sweaty in about 1 minute, and quite saturated in 5, but I was feeling kick-awesome because I could get on without slamming my shins, balance the way Joey showed me, and then ride several pedal turns without falling off or bracing myself against the wall.

Progress.

Then, my sweaty shorts slid off the duct-taped unicycle seat.  As my shorts slide, so did I.  I went falling to the cement, catching myself just in time to get a serious pedal-plant in the back of my right calf.

“DAAAANG!” I moaned.

I glanced around to make sure no one saw me, no one did, and hopped back on my uni.  My calf was now shaking from the pedal plant, so I couldn’t stay on anymore.  After five more minutes of falling off, I took the thing back inside, dragging my bleeding right calf behind me.

Once inside I noticed little purple spots all over my legs, conveniently it was as I was talking to Joey on the phone.

“JOEY, my legs are molding!”  I wailed.

“Um, what?” He asked.

“It looks like black mold on my legs.  I’m going to die.”  A little fatalism never hurt anyone, right.

“Oh, no, that’s just from your unicycle.  You’ll get used to it and won’t be sitting on it/banging it wrong, and then you’ll stop getting the bruises,” he assured me.

I am not very reassured.  Seems to me that learning to ride a unicycle is hazardous to ones health, especially mine.  Once Joey gets home, surely I will be less jumpy, uncoordinated, and moldy.  So he better get here fast before I implode.

Kudos to Sister for being the 19,001 person to view the blog since I started keeping track two years ago.  If I was more organized, I would give her a prize.  However, since I’m not, I’ll probably just throw her in the lake in the Boundary Waters…which is in twenty four days.

Thanks Sister.  Maybe if you’re lucky you can break 20,000 for me too.

(please read the preface if you have not yet.)

It was an unseasonably warm morning for early November in Iowa.  I sat in an uncomfortable black plastic chair designed for someone with a much girthier frame, the lumbar support always hit the wrong spot on my back.  The whole setup always gave me a cramp.

It was 9:55 – chapel was about to start.  I was in my (first) senior year at a small, extremely conservative Bible college, smack dab in the middle of sweet corn country.  I glanced up and noticed my friend Jamie smile and wave, she was making her way over to sit by me.

Fifth row from the front.  Stage right.  Four seats in.

That is where I sat almost every chapel service when I sat with Jamie.  When I wasn’t sitting with her I was usually sitting with my brother Andrew.  (Fifth row from the back, stage left, three seats in.)  I very rarely sat with X regardless of the fact that he was, more often than not, my boyfriend and had been for the last two years.  He didn’t really like to sit with me any more than I liked to sit with him, and we were currently in an “off again” month.  We had been together for so long that I felt obligated to glance around to see where he was.  I noticed him sitting about six rows behind me and I gave him a weak smile.  He barely acknowledged me with a nod.

During the X perusal I saw an RA looking my way.  I glanced down at my black polyester-blend skirt and frantically began tugging it even further down on my hipbones to make sure that it was covering my entire kneecap.  The last thing I needed was a violation.  (Or, as we called it when the administration wasn’t around “getting violated”.)  You could “get violated” for showing your kneecaps, your calves minus stockings, or the wrong part of your shoulder.  I’m not even kidding.  I cannot tell you how many pairs of stockings I went through every semester.

The chapel service started and, if you’ve ever been to a Baptist church, it was conducted pretty much exactly like your stereotypical memory.  Piano, organ, song leader, hymnal, special music (yes, every single chapel service), and four guys sitting on chairs, two on each side flanking the pulpit.

To the left of the pulpit was a guy I’d seen in class before, he had on a white shirt, dark blue tie, and navy suit jacket.  His hair was parted down the side and he was so far in between haircuts that he was constantly tossing his head to keep that hair out of his eyes.  I was surprised he hadn’t gotten violated for that, men’s hair wasn’t supposed to touch the tops of their ears.

The song leader directed us to the opening hymn and, since I had forgotten to grab a hymnal, Jamie shared hers with me.  I sang halfheartedly, my mind more on if/why X was mad at me again than concentrating on the words of the song.  I yanked my skirt a little bit lower as we sat down, ensuring that my entire kneecap was invisible, and tried to get comfortable in my black plastic chair.

The shaggy-haired guy sitting on the podium was starting to look really, really nervous.  I wasn’t sure why until Dr. Bob, our preaching professor and part-time groundskeeper, introduced him as the Homiletics (that means “preaching”) student elected by his classmates to preach once this semester.

Dr. Bob always had a warm, joyful, easy spirit about him.  He was the kind of guy who was just as happy on a John Deere lawnmower cutting grass in the summer as he was on that same John Deere plowing sidewalks with a blade on a brisk,    -15 degree morning without the benefit of a heated cab.  Dr. Bob stood at the podium smiling at all us students, giving a little bit of background on the nervous guy, who was getting pale by this time, before saying, “Joey Woestman, please come up here and open the Word for us.”

He preached on Noah.

I will always remember that.

I don’t really remember what about Noah (I’m pretty sure it was how Noah was faithful in adversity, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it) but I remember thinking, “Wow…there is a godly guy.  He’s attractive…and he’s funny, too.”

He was.  He was very funny.

And then I remembered something awful.  Dangit…I’m off again with X right now, but there is no guarantee that we won’t get back together again.  I cannot be attracted to Joey…it’s not faithful.  Do not think nice thoughts about Joey.  Stop it.  Now.

I left chapel that day feeling extremely weird.  I knew X was somewhere behind me, but I didn’t even wait for him.  I ran straight back to my dorm room and threw myself into my desk chair.

In a moment of “I’m single right now and I don’t have to do what X wants me to do” rebellion, I added Joey to my MSN buddy list.

He was online.

I was feeling forward, which was very unlike the “scared of my own shadow” personality I had developed recently, so I sent him a message.

Your sermon was really great.

It didn’t take him long to reply.

And I missed my next class because of it…we chatted for, like, an hour.  At the end of which I had discovered that my earlier attraction to him while he was preaching had the capability of blowing into a full-fledged crush.

I had to be careful.  For both of us.

But then, suddenly, my phone rang.  It was the kind of jarring ring that shakes you back to your senses: it was X.  I quickly closed the chat window I had going with Joey, probably leaving him hanging in the middle of the conversation.  I felt so rude.

“Can I see you tonight?” X asked me without preamble.

My heart sank.

“Sure,” I said, lying through my teeth; my voice sounded so happy and chipper while my stomach was tossing and turning.

“I’ll pick you up at 7:30,” he said.

That was the end of the conversation, but I knew it was just the beginning of another rollercoaster.

I knew it meant we were “on again”.

I kicked myself in the shins repeatedly (mentally, of course), leaned back in my desk chair and tried to figure out why, exactly, I couldn’t say no to X, especially when I knew we were both so miserable together.  After about twenty minutes of staring at the drab cream wall I still couldn’t figure it out.  Glancing at my watch, I got out of the chair and headed to my closet to change out of my stockings and stretchy black skirt which was, by this time, quite a bit above my kneecaps.

To Be Continued…

Joey, rockstar that he is, bought me a laptop so I could write.  And so, I have been.  For the last several weeks, before I knew he was buying me a laptop, even, I have been writing the story of how Joey and I fell in love.

It’s one of those stories that starts out all awkward.  You know, where you cringe and think “wow, are you kidding me?” for about fifteen pages in Word before things start looking up.

So just for kicks and giggles, I’ll be posting one part a week, probably on Wednesdays (PEPSI DAY!), until I finish.  I’m having a blast writing it, too.  I didn’t realize how much yucky love stuff I had forgotten, but my favorite part has been hauling Joey over to read what I’ve written after I finish a part.  Love’s fun.

I tried to be as tactful as possible…the ex referred to in this story as X is not a bad person, he’s not a major jerk, and I don’t have an X voodoo doll or anything.  I really tried to paint him in a neutral light, but as the author who fell madly in love with someone else, I know I probably failed at least a little bit.  I couldn’t get around including him, or I would have.

That being said, please enjoy reading how Joey and I tiptoed around the “does he like me?” phase, continue to disagree about how long we actually did date before we got engaged, and eventually fell madly in love with each other.

OK, so apparently I do have my own personal genie.

I should preface this by reminding the reader that Joey and I rode our bikes to work yesterday.  It was hot like fire but downhill the whole way (which, conversely, means that it’s uphill the entire way home) and I was not looking forward to my evening commute.  Not so much at all.  But I was going to do it and I was going to be awesome.

But back on track.

Right after I had finished posting the previous, Joey called me.  He sounded out of breath.

“What are you doing?” I asked, thinking he had been chasing Danny around the quad while wearing the steadicam again.

“I….I just raced home.” He panted.  “I wanted to beat the postman home so I could get your lappy.”

It was like 106 degrees outside yesterday.  I had visions of him passing out from heat stroke on the stairs.

“OH MY GOSH.”

“I didn’t beat the postman home,” he said, and my heart sank.  He busted his butt for nothing!  “BUT…the postman left your lappy sitting on the doorstep.  So it’s in the house with me now.”

“YAY!  I LOVE YOU!” I shrieked very quietly.  (I wasn’t exactly in a shriek-appropriate location.)  “Now go lay down and drink some water so you don’t throw up,” I insisted.

“I rode 5.5 miles in 20 minutes,” Joey was still panting.

“You are probably a rockstar.  Now go drink some water.”

“I need a shower,” he said.  He was sounding loopy.

“If you die because you burned rubber to come home and get my lappy, I’ll kill you,” I said.

“OK, well, I’ll get back on my bike and ride down to come get you,” he said.

“Wait….what?  I can just ride home by myself, do not even get back on your bike and ride down here,” I insisted.

“No, I’m just teasing, I’ll drive down and come get you in the car,” he said drowsily.

Whatever. We saved no gas at all yesterday, but at least my lappy didn’t get stolen off the front step.  We went to Gap Kids last night and got the messenger bag, but couldn’t decide on a sleeve, so I still don’t have a skooshy case for it yet.  However, the likelihood of me dropping my lappy has gone down significantly now that I have a bag to carry it in.  Joey’s going to look on The Internets for awhile to see if he can find me a sleeve that fits my lappy “just so”.  He’s quite insistent, trust me.

Anyway, Joey is a rockstar even though I will miss him for three whole days.  I can look at my lappy and remember how he almost gave himself cardiac arrest riding home in 106 degree afternoon heat.

I think he loves me.

OK, so it’s here.  Joey just called to say that he tracked it and it was in Dallas this morning…but the USPS is holding it hostage.  Joey tried to get the shipper to change the shipping address to go to DTS instead of our home, and the guy wouldn’t do it.  SO, the lappy is going to our house.

And it has to be signed for.

Lame.

This means I probably won’t get it until the weekend, unless I go to the post office over lunch, which sounds like a headache.  But I want my lappy, so I might make sacrifices.

I’m currently trying to select a bag and corresponding neoprene case for it.  Some of you know how accident prone I am…it’s always best to be too careful.

Anyway, the options are:

This is the bag I want.  Yes, it’s the exact same one that Sister has.  Yes, I am a copycat.  No, I don’t care.  It’s cool and so is she, so I have no problem with plagiarizing her.

Now, InCase makes about three different colors of neoprene cases that fit my new lappy.  One’s black (lame) and the other two are olive green and magenta.  I’m kind of leaning towards the magenta, but I’m not sure if I’d feel like I got pink-attacked when I looked at it.  And there is a sort of olivey spot in the messenger bag…

Anyway, if I had my own genie, one of my three wishes would be that my new lappy would be sitting safely on my doorstep when I got home tonight.  That way Joey could get it all set up for me…he’s going to stupid Green Bay tomorrow and I need something to keep me occupied while he’s gone!  (And my unicycle isn’t going to cut the mustard for three whole evenings by myself; I’d be totally black and blue.