Bad Day

Jacy and I got to talking today about our blog and how we hardly ever post anymore. And by "we," I mean me. Why don't I post anymore? I think it's because I need to have some epic story idea in order to blog (it's the journalist in me). However, Jacy doesn't feel like that's the case at all. She thinks I should post little nuggets instead. So that's what I'm doing tonight....

Last night's nugget:

This is Jacy. Jacy is "tired." Jacy is not passed out at all. When I accused Jacy of being passed out, she yelled at me and said I was being "goofy." However, this picture was taken right before she asked me to make a drunk run through McDonald's to get her a "Number 1 with a Bertrand Burger and a side of Chambers."Bertrand and Chambers are both towns in Nebraska. Evidently, her drunk self is really homesick for Bertrand (a place we've never been) and Chambers (a place that we were just at). Let me just tell you how awkward it was for me to run through Mickey Dees with Jacy in this state. The guy at the drive-thru window winked at me and said, "Good night, huh?" Yeah, maybe for you sir. You don't have to deal with drunk Jacy.

Nugget #2:

Please take a good, hard look at my pupils in this photo. So after I made sure Jacy was nice and passed out in a good place (errr... I mean after I tucked sleeping beauty in bed), I woke up in the middle of the night with an excruciating pain in my left eye. I had NO IDEA what could have caused the pain. Surely it wasn't because I hadn't taken my contacts out for 3 months, right? NO WAY. I decided to be smart about the issue and take my contacts out, squirt some eye drops in my eye, and go back to bed. However, at about 7 a.m., I couldn't stand the pain anymore. I forced hungover Jacy to take me to the eye doctor. Let's just say that Dr. Scott Mendell of Norman Eye Care is my hero (Does this plug get me a discount on my next pair of glasses, Doc?). He rolled out of bed on his day off and opened up his shop to deal with my dumb, non-contact-taking-outing ass. He even had to drive to Tulsa today for a Bachelor party. I've seen The Hangover. I know what goes down at those things. He dilated my one pupil (to minimize pain), gave me some eye drops, and sent me on my way. It's 10 p.m. on a Saturday and my left pupil is still blown up like I've been doing coke on just my left side. I've never done coke, but I've seen enough movies to know what it does to a person's eyes. Anyway, Jacy has been laughing at me all day and calling me "Mad Eye Jessica." What a treat!

Nugget numero tres:

I didn't really think a day where my eyeball got torn to shreds by a contact lens could get much worse, but it did. I decided to be semi-responsible on my Saturday afternoon, so I did a little laundry. Um, yeah, I failed to look in the laundry machine before I put my clothes in it. Who'da thunk that someone would have placed a paper grocery bag in the machine? (Really though, why would a paper bag be in our washer? I don't understand...) Evidently, paper bags don't make it through the machine as well as, say, clothing. I spent a good 10 minutes trying to peel paper bag off of my clothes until Jacy suggested I throw them in the drier so the lint catcher would sort out the paper shreds. Here's what the giant mass looked like -- kind of rats nest like, huh? And I know a thing or two about rats nests. (Well, not anymore. Blanche and Harriet decided to take a vacation.) My clothes are currently being processed again.

Wow, those little nuggets turned into an entire 4,000-word blog. My bad. I guess I need some nugget practice. Hey, at least my day has gotten better. I'm sitting on the couch - blogging - and watching Jacy go through our old home movies (not THOSE kind of movies). Love me some really fat and ugly Jessica and Jacy. I refuse to ever give my kids a video camera.

Tag. You're it!

You've played that game, right? I played it all the time when I was growing up. You know -- the one where you'd choose which parent you'd live with if they got divorced. (I always played this game in my head of course. I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings.)

Every single time I played, I'd always choose my dad. It was nothing against you, Mama Schwag. I love you both equally. I just felt like the courts would force Jacy to live with Mom because, let's face it, Jacy's a complete mama's girl. I'm about 98 percent sure Mom still calls to wake Jacy up in the mornings. And when Jacy loses her keys/cell phone, who's the first person she calls? Mom. For some reason, Mom can always remind Jacy that she left them in the parking lot/freezer.

I also knew Dad would need someone to not only cook and clean, but help him do chores and watch gates. I felt like I was the best girl for the job. (At the time, I took Gina out of the running because she was 10 years older than me and in college. Surely she wouldn't move home to live with Dad, would she?)

By choosing to live with my father in a faux divorce settlement, I think I inadvertently learned things that no other girls/boys at my age knew. I had to be prepared in case the worst happened. (Middle Child Syndrome -- we're realists and cynics. Divorce rates were climbing quickly!) First, I learned the basic things... how to fasten a fishing line to a hook, how to make perfectly-mixed Windsor-Squirts, and how to watch the History channel with my eyes open. But then I started asking Dad to teach me more in-depth things.

Grinding corn? Check. Changing oil filters on a tractor? Check. Sharpening sickles? Check. Netting the river for minnows? Definitely. Making "bombs" to blow rabbits out of old irrigation system pipes? Oh hell yeah. (Though I'm fairly certain this is why Dad and I are hard of hearing...not to mention our poor dog, Lady, who typically waited anxiously near the pipe to eat the rabbit. She had no idea a bomb was going to blow up in her face. She walked around in circles, ear-to-ground, for weeks.)

One summer, I even helped Dad change the sprinkler heads on an entire irrigation system. Yeah, I'm awesome like that. There are days I wonder why I'm still single. Ohhh wait, it's because I can't sit around playing stupid while a guy "teaches" me how to fish. Belieeeveeee me, I've tried to be less cool than I am. Take the other night, for instance. Some really gorgeous man offered to teach me how to play Baggo. I played stupid for a while - oh, ya know, beginner's luck giggle, giggle. I think he caught on to me when I hit the mark with my eyes closed. He left soon after. (Really, I think he left because I screamed "SUCK IT!" and made obnoxious, Eminem-like hand gestures around my waist/thigh area after sinking a shot. THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is why I'm still single.)

There was one thing -- besides the hunting/fishing/Judge Judy-watching -- that Dad loved to do and that was positively unique to my family. He absolutely loved playing Tag. If I were to have lived with Dad post-divorce, I would've been forced to be on my toes at all times. Hmmm, maybe a divorce would have been in my best interest. Playing 10 straight years of Tag surely could have helped my childhood obesity problem....

I'm not sure when the game started, but I was probably 7 or 8 years old. I believe it may have begun in our front yard -- just Jacy, Dad and I playing a friendly game of Tag. We didn't really have rules in our game of Tag. Jacy and I were on one team and Dad was on the other. Really, the only time we couldn't "tag" someone is when they were sleeping because that was unfair.

The game was fairly harmless for Dad and Jacy. Not so much for Jessica. One time, I went to tag Dad in the living room. I had so much momentum going that I completely missed him and jammed my thumb into the floor. I passed out for minutes. The same incident happened out by our sandbox, too. I chased Dad around the sandbox to tag him, I fell off the sandbox, I reached out to tag him, I missed him and jammed my thumb on the ground. Out cold. Another time, when we were playing in the front yard, I tripped over my own fat feet and took a tumble, causing a chronic scraped-up knee. (Seriously, my clumsiness caused it to never quite heal. Red Rover, marching band, volleyball -- all things that caused my knee to be a bloody, oozing mess for years. Hot.)

Despite the injuries, we have kept our game of Tag going for almost 20 years. I'm sure that has to be a World Record of some sort. Everytime Jacy and I come home, we can expect to be knocked upside the head, jabbed in the arm, kicked -- really, whatever it takes for Dad to make sure "we're it."

Okay, so my family may be a little different. I mean, who comes up with a neverending game of Tag? But I love 'em and couldn't ask for better parents. I'm happy they didn't get divorced. Happy (almost) Father's Day, Papa Schwag! Thanks for teaching me everything I know about the most random shit in the world. Love you.

Jacy and I are making an epic trip back to Nebraska in three weeks. Let the games begin, Dad. TAG, YOU'RE IT!

Oh, Rats!

This blog is dedicated to Katie B. Now...GET OFF MY ASS! Just kidding, friend. Thanks for reading. I'll blog more often, I promise. Miss you! :)

Jacy and I have officially been in Oklahoma for four months now and I've officially been away from Nebraska for almost a year. Who'd of thunk I'd make a grand tour of the Bible Belt in less than 12 months? I shall note here that I am still a registered Democrat; however, I do enjoy the hundreds of pro-life signs on my drives back to Nebraska. (Mainly, I just use them to pass boredom. I like to count them like I used to count windmills when I was younger.) I am also looking into joining the NRA. Guns, guns, for everyone!

Jacy and I are definitely not the same two girls who left the Cornhusker state. We're much more mature. Case in point: Jacy has unofficially changed her name to "Jae," which is her professional hairstylist name. And I now go by Jes (with one "s") because I was getting sick of having gender identity issues caused by the spelling of "Jess." Rest assured, faithful readers, we will NOT be changing our website to jesandjae.blogspot.com. It doesn't flow off the tongue quite as well. And I'd rather not drop our blog's readership from two people a day down to one person a day....

In our quest to become more mature, Jae and I decided that this was a great time to take on the responsibility of a pet. Our apartment complex doesn't allow pets, so I told Jacy "Oh, hell naw" when she asked if we could get dogs, cats, pigs, mini giraffes, penguins, etc. But, for some reason or another, I really liked her idea of getting rats. I once heard they were loving, affectionate creatures. Plus, they were much easier to clean up after than boyfriends. AND if our landlord caught us with the rats, we could essentially turn the situation around and blame her. "Well, our apartment had a rat infestation, so we felt the only way to control it was to take them in as pets." If she didn't believe us and eviction was threatened, we could just take the easy way out and give them to our friends with snakes.... (gah-ross).

Everyone, meet Blanche.....



And Harriet....



Jacy and I are really great about naming our pets racially-obvious names. When we were younger, Jacy had a white rabbit named Ivory and I had a black rabbit named Ebony. When Jacy got a Chihuahua, we didn't have a hard time picking out the name "Cholo." (Thank you, Down aka Kilo for one of the best songs ever written, "Lean Like A Cholo.") Times still haven't changed. I named my white rat "Blanche" after everyone's favorite Southern belle, Blanche Devereaux on The Golden Girls (Caucausian slut). And Jacy named her black rat "Harriet" after Harriet Tubman (African-American abolitionist). Jacy is really into history. I'm really into 1980s sitcoms. We felt like these were very strong and very appropriate Southern names.

Choosing Harriet and Blanche was no easy task. We went to Petco to find them. There were three cages containing rats. The cages didn't indicate what breed of rat was inside, rather they were just labeled "small," "medium," and "large." We thought the labels had something to do with how big the rats were going to get. Come to find out, they were labeled based on the size of the snake that would be eating them. Small rats were for small snakes, large rats were for large snakes. I absolutely despise snakes. I typically go out of my way to kill snakes with lawn mowers, ice picks, machetes, etc. I immediately wanted to save all of the rats. (Kind of like the time I wanted to rescue all of the puppies from puppy mills after taking that stinkin' animal welfare class in college...)

Unfortunately, because we really aren't supposed to have pets at all inside of our apartment, Jae and I could only take home two rats. Jae wanted a "large" one. I didn't. They were far too creepy for me. You've seen "Willard," right? The idea of our rats eating our faces off was unsettling. I had to ease into the rodent thing. So, I convinced her to get a "medium" one and I got the lonely "small" one. (Getting smaller ones really hasn't lessened my fear. Everytime I hear the dang rats stirring during the night, I'm convinced they're bee-lining for my bedroom to begin chomping on my fingers off while I sleep.)

Jae tried to warn me that I should get one of the medium rats because rats were much more social when they were living with other rats, but I was willing to take on the challenge of Blanche. She was so tiny and white and perfect and LONELY. Not to mention, she was inevitably the next rat up for a small snake date. There was no other option. I HAD to take her home with me.

I should have listened to Jacy. Blanche is scared of everything. Oh, yeah, and she has a major problem. She can't control her freaking bowels. I have never been shit on more in my life...and I'm a middle child! (woe is me, woe is me.) Naturally, Jacy's rat is awesome. She perches on her shoulder and cuddles and doesn't poop on Jacy's clothing/floor/hands/carpet. Go figure. Jacy's good at everything, even raising rats (insert more middle child whining here).

If anyone has any great rat-raising tips, I'd love to hear them. I just want to know how to teach my rat to not poop. I'm reallllyyyy far behind on the rat training thing. Jacy's already working on sit, shake, and bang. Also, if you make rat clothing, please let me know. Or little wooden rat spatulas.

I Heart My Mama

I told my friend, Katie, I would dedicate my next blog to her. Sorry, Katie, but I'm a big, fat liar. I promise you'll get the next one, dear! Instead, I'm dedicating this blog to my amazing mother.

Mother's Day is just around the corner and my hometown's local radio station offered a Mother's Day contest this week. There are so many wonderful moms in our little community, so I didn't know if my mama would be able to pull off the victory. (Well, in my heart of hearts I knew she would because she is just that awesome!) In order to nominate her, I had to write a short essay on why she's the "best, most deserving mom of all." I knew instantly what I would write. I thought I'd post it on zee ol' blog for all to enjoy. I only wish my words could give her more justice.

When I think of my mother, Jan Schwager, three words automatically come to mind: courage, strength and love.

My mother’s courage began in 1972, when she moved to Chambers to begin her career as a school teacher. My mom grew up in Elkhorn, so moving to Chambers seemed completely irrational to her friends and family back in Southeast Nebraska. After a couple of miserable years of living in a one-bedroom trailer in Chambers (not that Chambers isn’t the greatest place in the world!), my mom met a smooth-talkin’ country boy, who swept her off of her feet – my father, Gene.

My parents got married in 1975 and had their first daughter, Gina, in 1977. In 1979, my parents had a son, Jeff, and my mom took off work to raise her family. However, my parents were struck with terrible tragedy in their newlywed stage. In 1983, my mother’s father died of a heart attack at a very young age. Then, just a year later, my parents lost their only son in a tragic snowmobile accident.

The death of a child often tears families apart, but my mother’s strength and courage held my family together through even the darkest times. My mother went back to work, helped provide for her family, and put a smile on her face despite the pain. After all, she had a young daughter and a grieving husband to take care of.

Just three short years after my brother’s death, my parents had two more daughters – me and my sister, Jacy. Despite having two young daughters, my mom never lost sight of her career goals and decided to take classes the University of Nebraska at Kearney to complete her Master’s degree. Upon completion, my mom became the guidance counselor at Chambers.

My mom wears many hats at Chambers – English teacher, geography teacher, guidance counselor. She even teaches college-credit classes through Northeast Community College at 7 a.m. every other day. Oh – not to mention – she is one of the school’s administrators. But her passion for teaching has never, EVER prevented her from being a tremendous mother. Even after a long day at work, my mom would have time to cook supper, clean the house and help my sister and me with our homework. Somehow she even attended every single athletic event my sisters and I participated in – and those bleachers aren’t comfortable!

Even though I’ve been far away from home for nearly six years, my mom’s love has never wavered. I always look forward to my daily chat with her. She understands my busy lifestyle, so she even learned how to text, Facebook, Skype and Twitter to keep our family connected at all times.

There is so much more I wish I could say about my mother. And, there is so much more I wish I could give back to my mother for all of the courage, strength and love she has provided to my family. I hope by winning KBRX’s Mother’s Day gift basket, my mother would finally see how amazing she is. I only hope to someday be half the mother my mother has been.

Thank you, Mama Schwag, for always being my light, guidance, and friend. And, perhaps, for giving me one of my greatest gifts --- my words. Happy Mother's Day, Mama Schwag! I love you!
-Jessica

We Aren't In Kansas Anymore (Thank Goodness)

Evidently I've turned into one of those lame bloggers who only blogs once a month. I really have zero excuse. Sure, I've been busy with my new life, but not busy enough to neglect my love for writing. Actually, I'm going to blame my Kindle. Stupid thing stealing my time. Or maybe it's because I've spent so much time traveling back to Nebraska. I've gone back to The Good Life two out of the past four weekends. Yeah, I'm that girl who moves away from "home" but still finds it necessary to go back 12 times a year. Whatev. Don't judge me.

I guess there's some good that has come out of my travels....

1. On a more serious note, I've figured out some shiz in my personal life and now I'm 200 percent ready to move forward with my amazing Oklahoma life.

and

2. I've come to the realization that I completely and irrevocably despise the state of Kansas.

I've spent more than 32 hours on the road, with about 20 of those hours spent driving through Kansas. Those 20 hours were the most miserable hours of my entire life. The first trip wasn't completely terrible. Jacy was with me and we were still getting along in Kansas. (We started bitching at each other about 20 miles into Nebraska.) But my second trip was how I imagine driving through the seventh circle of Hell would be like...I now know where Dante Alighieri gained inspiration for the Inferno.


For some reason, the Kansas government found it necessary to conduct controlled burns throughout the entire state to "green up the grass." It's not just an acre of controlled burning here and there, OH NOOO, it's 100s and 100s of miles of controlled burning. And I'm not even sure it was that "controlled." I didn't see one fireman containing the burn. There were times that the fire was hopping onto the highway. Sure, I smoke cigarettes every once in a while, but I'm pretty sure that an hour of driving through Kansas has increased my chances of lung cancer even more than smoking.

As if smelling like a bonfire wasn't bad enough, I couldn't even place any calls to keep my mind off of the desolate, charbroiled land. Yeah, zero US Cellular reception in the middle of Kansas. Oh, and did I mention that my GPS got me lost? Only because it lost reception, too. Probably because its signal couldn't zoom past the clouds of smoke (is that what signal does? zoom? I'd like to think so.) My rat bastard GPS died for a while and then came back on, only to instruct me to drive up a two-lane highway at 60 miles per hour. Somehow it made me miss the sign for the interstate (...not my fault at all...). Luckily, I got behind a car with Oklahoma license plates who felt the need to escape Kansas as bad as I did. Unluckily, some idiot with the Kansas Department of Roads thought rumble bars ALL OVER THE ROAD were a good idea. Everytime me and my fellow Okie went to pass the slow-moving vehicles, we'd almost get jiggled to death by the rumble bars (which ran down the center freaking line for miles and miles).

I guess there was one saving grace in Kansas: there were no cliffs to drive off of. Because, after about 100 miles of blackened tumbleweeds, I really may have driven my car off a cliff.

But hey, I had a fantastic trip in Nebraska once I made it there. Slept in a Motel 6 (not a great experience), drank Bloody Marys at Wheatfields (great experience), ate my body weight in Runza (STELLAR EXPERIENCE), caught up with my best friends (an even better experience!) and prayed to the porcelain gods (not a great experience at the time. However, as I reflect back on the weekend, I've realized it was just a symbol of the freaking awesome time I had).

I'll try not to make it a month again, folks.

Peace. Love. Stay out of Kansas.

Really? Baby Titties?

There are some really sick people in this world. Case in point: The fact that our most popular blog post on jessandjacy.blogspot.com thus far has been "Baby Titties." Hey folks, I can SEE where people are viewing our blog from. Okay, I can't really see if you're accessing our blog naked from your living room computer while you sip white wine. But I can see what town your house is located in. (See the tracker to the right of this screen...scroll down a little. See it? Yeah, that's it.) I can also see how you stumbled upon our blog. For instance, I can see that "Baby Titties" has acquired 114 page views THIS YEAR, with most of the views coming from someone typing in "Baby Titties" on Google.

So here's what I want to know - are people look for the titties of a baby? Or surfing for girls with tiny breasts? Or were they really just looking for our blog, which, in fact, has nothing to do with the latter or the former. In fact, our blog had to do with baby kitties. Cats. Meow.

Really, I'm posting this blog more as a test. Hey, you out there! Yes, you. The one searching for baby titties. What are YOU really searching for? Pray, do tell. I'm quite curious.

In other, non-related news....

1) I met Aiden from Sex and the City (John Corbett) the other night at a tiny bar in Shawnee, Oklahoma. He's pretty tasty. Can you believe he's 49-years-old? Why is it that guys age so much better than women? That's a whole other blog topic. I won't go there. But feel free to gawk at this silver fox....

2) Jacy is kind of a jerk. We ordered pizza yesterday and the jackwagon dropped me off to pay for the pizza and never came back. I skipped out of The Hideaway, pizza in tote, only to find I had no ride. I also left my cell phone in her car. I wandered around the street aimlessly. Just as I started to wimper, I found her parked in a lot a half a block away. She was just playing around on her phone, unconcerned that I could have been murdered. Some people's kids...

3) I got my new Oklahoma driver's license and license plates, which leads me to believe that I can now drive like an Oklahoman (an utterly negligent, cell-phone gawking, inconsiderate, road-raging, no-blinker-using driver). No offense to my fellow Oklahomans, but y'all can't drive. I thought it was bad when they got 5 inches of snow, but it's really just bad all the way around. On my way home a couple of weeks ago, I counted 12 DIFFERENT CARS that didn't use their blinkers. TWELVE! In THREE MILES. Unacceptable. Yesterday, I literally shook my freaking fist at a car. Jacy witnessed. Who even shakes a fist anymore? It was the only gesture I could think of at the time... I felt it showed more heart and anger than just giving that ridiculous, good-for-nothing driver "the bird."

And on that note, I'm going to bed. Actually, I'm not going to bed at all. I thought it was a brilliant idea to order a grande skinny vanilla latte at 6:30 tonight. I'm going to be up a while. But I have a jolly good book to read - Water For Elephants. Read it. I can't put it down. Goodnight lovessss!

Medifast

Well, it's about that time. Yes, I'm annoucing my latest "fad" in dieting. First it was QuickTrim, then it was working out like a crazy person and now (drumroll please) it's Medifast. Don't get me wrong, I'm still going to work out like a crazy person, but I think I need to be a bit more consistent on the whole not eating like shit part of the plan.

I took my last bites of human food last night with a 3 a.m. McDonald's run. Five hours later, I woke up and took my first bites of baby poop (i.e. Medifast's maple and brown sugar oatmeal). They don't call it Medi-FAST for nothing. A bowl of oatmeal here, a weightloss shake there - ayiyiyiiiiii - I'm going to need a lot of strength to get me through this one. Basically, the plan is to eat six times a day. I'll eat five "meals" that Medifast supplies to me and then I eat one Lean and Green meal that I prepare on my own. Today, I prepared chicken on my George Foreman and then ate a few cups of salad with low-fat dressing.

Do you know how hard it is to diet when someone else in the house is eating real food? At noon, Jacy knocked down some Mac and Cheese, at 4 p.m., she inhaled some sushi, and at the movies tonight she ate an entire box of milk duds. I have to confess, I did eat some edamame at the sushi joint, but I didn't think that was TOO bad considering the dreadful circumstances.

I've hit a plateau that I just can't seem to shake, so I'm going to try this crap for a couple of weeks and see how I do. I'll be sure keep y'all updated. Honestly, my posts could get reallllll interesting the next two weeks. Have you ever seen a Schwager deprived of food?? We're like rabid dogs. I'm sure I'll do something completely insane that I'll have to blog about. Stay tuned.....