Ah, a picture of yours truly with all the Cymbalta fat… Normally I would burn all those pictures and send them back to the bowels of Hell from whence they came, but I really loved this Snapchat filter. It was like evil, demented kitty…

Which kind of describes how I’ve been feeling as of late… Let me tell you something, if October is “Try Jackie’s Patience Month”, a lot of people are definitely getting into the spirit of the season. October is a bad month for me in general and has been for 16 years. That was when my first ovary blew up like a bomb and the following October I lost the second one. Can we see a pattern to October? I have horrible PTSD from it and every year for an entire monthI suffer the worst type of anxiety. Every little ache or pain is suspect to being something bigger. Some years are better than others… But I’m always anxious the entire year and say nothing to anyone, preferring to suffer in silence. Except now all of you know… And I finally told my therapist the other day… Anyway, the point is that this is the wrong time of year to irk my fucking nerves and that seems to be all anyone ever wants to fucking do for some reason. I’m not gonna lie, I’m losing my shit…

Morticia is one of my biggest triggers at the moment… Wait… When isn’t she?! But lately it’s been a lot worse. I’m just tired of listening to her bitch about how much she hates her job, hates Gomez (yep, she’s still with him), doesn’t have money for important things like lot rent or heating fuel but can buy cigarettes or a bottle of booze… She’s borrowed large amounts of money from people then gets angry when they hound her to pay them something in an attempt to pay it back. She was in charge of a large sum of money that wasn’t hers (it belonged to a league she belonged to) and used all of it to pay bills and whatnot. Now they want it and she can’t pay it. She asked her oldest son for help and he said he would try to give her some money, behind his wife’s back mind you. When it seemed to be taking him too long, Morticia’s response was, “He better give me that money.” What the actual fuck?! He doesn’t owe you anything! On top of that, I have to listen to her telling me I need to just get over my PTSD and the upset I’ve been feeling over my new medical conditions while she’s constantly whining about her Crohn’s and rheumatoid arthritis. I’m sorry, I just found out my lungs are rotting and that the loss of my ovaries has made my bones so frail they could snap for no reason. Shitting a lot is so much worse, what was I thinking?! To be fair, I’m sure it sucks, but I’m the Queen of Constipation, so I don’t see an issue with being able to go, honestly… And when you consider this is the person who thought that osteoarthritis (which we both have in our backs) and osteoporosis are the same thing, well…

A few days ago, I had to call the internet company I was using… When I first got them, it was $80 for so-called “high speed” internet. Over the last few years, the rate has gone up and the speed has gone down. So I called and found out my rate just went up again and was now $160! I said, “How in the hell can you justify charging people that much money for internet every month?! There are other companies out there that charge considerably less!” She got cocky with me and said they charged less because that was their promotional prices and she could give me a promo price of $84 a month and after a year I’d have to call back to see what other promos they had to keep my bill low. What the fuck is that shit?! I told her fine, whatever. Then I called Verizon. For $80 (if you’re not enrolled in autopay) a month, you can get 1GB a second upload and download speed. That’s mad ass fast! So I asked the guy if that was a promo price. He seemed puzzled and said no, that was their price all the time… When I told him how much my other company was charging me, he was shocked and appalled. Needless to say, the equipment arrived the next day, I love my new service and today I’m calling my old company and telling them to shove their service up their fucking asses…

It’s not my first run in with this company… I used to have phone service with them. Long story short, they gave me the wrong phone plan, I was overcharged thousands of dollars which was, not surprisingly, during the time they were going through bankruptcy. They assured me a refund but it would take a few weeks to figure out. I called 2 to 3 times every week for a year. After a year, they told me they had no record of it because they don’t keep records longer than a year. I was livid! So fast forward to about 8 years later. I get a house and their’s was the only cable you could get in this development. But they wouldn’t come hook mine up because I never paid my last $75 phone bill. I let them have it… I made sure I told the rep about all the money I was overcharged, how I never got a refund because they “didn’t keep records more than a year”, but they remembered I didn’t pay my last phone bill from 8 years ago… I also mentioned that, gee, wasn’t it funny that I was overcharged and never reimbursed during that time they were going through a bankruptcy… He fell dead ass silent, as well he should have. That was when I told him, “So you’re going to forget that 75 fucking dollars and you’re going to send someone over here to hook up my fucking cable and not say boo about it! Got it?!” Yup, a few days later, I had cable and didn’t pay that $75.

Did you enjoy my little story, dear readers…? I wish I could tell you it was a work of fiction, but that’s how shit flies in Jackie’s world…

I once bitched out a harassing bill collector for calling on a Sunday (yes, me, the atheist) so badly that I’ve never gotten a harassing call of any kind on a Sunday ever again. When I was in my early 20s (a million years ago) I had this army recruiter who was still harassing me since high school. I tried telling him I was lazy and would never make it through basic training, that his offer of the army helping me in my career choice was a moot point because I wanted to draw cartoons for a living, that I thought war was stupid because there was no winning only degrees of losing, that I simply wasn’t interested. He kept calling. One day, I put on the performance of my life… I excitedly told him, “You know what, I’d love to join the army!” I thought he was going to jazz his pants when he said, “Really?!” I responded with an enthusiastic, “Yeah!” then quickly changed my tone to a sad one and said, “But you won’t let me..” He asked, “Why is that?” I responded, “Because I’m a lesbian and you won’t let us join the army.” His response? “Okaythankyoubye!” and hung up! Hahahaa… I’m not a lesbian, but the US army thinks I am. And at that time, they weren’t allowing gays in the military. At least he stopped calling me… I got the Jehovah’s Witnesses to stop coming to my house by questioning the whole Christmas vs Easter thing. Christmas, the day Christ was born supposedly, is always on the same date in the same month, right? So Easter, the day he rose again or something? Anyway, it’s never on the same date, half the time it isn’t even in the same month, and it’s always on a Sunday. I asked what was up with that and she started babbling about calendars being different back then and I kept asking, “But why is it always on a Sunday?!” She said she’d get back to me and never returned… Make them question their faith, they’ll leave you alone.

By the way, how do you like my bell bottoms? It’s hard to tell the way the picture was taken, but they are bell bottoms… They were plain, except small holes purposely put in the thighs (I hate that) so I asked my mom to patch them. Her neighbor was telling her how they used to embellish their bell bottoms back in the day and, well… I have the funkiest custom bell bottoms ever! I absolutely love them! Oddly enough, I’ve gotten lots of compliments on these pants and I got a lot of compliments on this outfit and how I looked so cute! That was nice to hear… I’m nearly 50… Hearing you look cute is a great compliment at that age! And my mom’s friend loved the jeans and said that was exactly how they wore them when she was young. Sweet!

Speaking of young… A few weekends ago I went with some people to this thing called Brickfest (it was a Lego convention) which I wasn’t really too thrilled about going to, even though I always like Lego. But as soon as I got inside, I went from 49 to 9 in no seconds! It was amazing what people do with Lego! And they had fun set ups like this one where you could get pictures taken! The Star Wars nerd I am was freaking out! I got a picture on a speeder as well as selfies with people dressed as Mandalorians and a Storm Trooper! It was the most fun I’d had in forever!

But life is full of ups and downs… The day after Brickfest and the tons of fun I had acting like a child and harassing a Storm Trooper, I had some mild personal drama going on. In the end I did talk to said person and tell them they hurt my feelings, something I apparently have difficulty doing, so all my therapists have said… I always say they pissed me off when what I really mean is my feelings were hurt, yada yada… I wasn’t sure me addressing the issue was going to be a good idea, but it turns out that it was. I think we both have a better understanding of things and each other now. I hope she remembers to think next time and remember that the entire world does not center around just her husband’s family but hers as well.

At least I have a little bit of happy going on today… I ordered the new iPhone 14 Pro Max and it should be delivered today, earlier than expected! I was kind of on the fence about it, but my current phone (the 12 Pro Max) is about two years old at this point and I’m noticing some weird little issues with the text function. I use the Swype feature (because I’m too fucking old to text like younger people) and it’s giving me weird words. Even if I type them in a letter at a time, it’s autocorrecting to incorrect words, jumbling words together, not leaving spaces when it should or doubling up on letters. I think it’s just because I text and leave comments a lot, but this seems to happen about two years into every iPhone I’ve ever had. So it’s time… I’ll miss my 12, but I’m looking forward to my new one. And don’t we all need something to look forward to sometimes?