Yes, dear readers, I survived an overnight trip with my family! And no, it’s not because I pushed them in front of a moving bus, hahahaa!

Well… the cocktails helped… They were named after my niece, her new husband and their dog. I had one named after the dog and three that were named after my niece. Bourbon, blackberry syrup, Sprite and lime juice. Man, were they tasty! A little too tasty because I was knocking them back like they were fruit juice… Sadly, it apparently wasn’t enough to get me drunk. I was kind of disappointed, but I guess I didn’t really need the alcohol. My mother and Sponge weren’t around me much (or I them) so it was a really nice time! And my niece looked so beautiful… As soon as I saw her in her dress, I started to cry. I didn’t think I would as I’m not that type to cry at weddings. But… she was born right after I turned 18, I held her when she was just a few hours old. And we were always close. I guess that’s why I cried… But not to fear, her new husband is a really good man. I know because he didn’t set my radar off… And she deserves a good man because she’s a sweet girl.I was so proud that day!

And the hors-d’œuvres!

Let me tell you… If I knew dinner was going to be so lackluster, I would have filled up on hors-d’œuvres… I got the chicken, as I can’t eat certain cuts of beef and I didn’t want lasagna or a vegan meal. It was literally just a breaded chicken patty type deal, like the frozen ones you buy, extremely processed. It came with string beans and a tiny dollop of mashed potatoes. No dessert, no wedding cake… I just assumed that such an expensive affair as this was that the food would have been better. But whatever, there were hors-d’œuvres and they were amazing! There were soft pretzel sticks (that were really soft) in little glasses filled with spinach dip, mini grilled cheese in tomato bisque (shown here, so good and I hate tomatoes), fried dill pickles spears in little glasses of ranch dressing to dip them and teriyaki braised pork belly on thin slices of toasted bread! You know I was cleaning them out of fried pickles, right…? Hahahaa… They also had some raw veggies, bruschetta, ring bologna and cheese, some fruits… Seriously, who needed dinner? But I decided to try and reign in my taste buds because I knew we were going to have dinner. In hindsight, I should have said fuck it to dinner…

All in all, it was a beautiful day.

Then the morning came…

Now, before you say, “Well, after all that alcohol, of course you woke up feeling like shit, Jackie,” let me tell you one of the biggest reasons I felt like shit… This was an outdoor wedding in the middle of bumblefuck, during ragweed season. I already wasn’t feeling well prior to this. Then spending an entire Indian Summer day in a place that is a lot more rural than where I live (shocking that there is such a place) with that nice gentle breeze blowing… gently blowing ragweed pollen up into my sinuses… And this is the time of the season that it’s at the worst. Well… I woke up with my right eye throbbing from all the pressure and so congested I pretty much drank a bottle of Sinex through my nose over that day and still couldn’t breathe through my nose! I was sneezing and had the worst headache all day.

Hahahaa, I love weird Snapchat filters…

So as if the allergens waging war against my sinuses wasn’t enough to give me a headache, so was the way I slept…

Periodically, I wake up with horrible headaches, stemming from the right side of the back of my neck, that last me an entire day. I think it’s arthritis that developed from a car accident I had when I was 19. The driver’s side slammed into the curved piece in the break of a guardrail, I got whipped to the side, bashed my head off the guardrail and was whipped back into the car… I was fine for years, but now I’m finding that I’ve been getting these headaches that stem from neck pain if I sleep wrong. That’s been going on a few years and is just getting worse. Don’t get me wrong, the hotel was amazing! It had a queen sized bed (I sprawled out) that was so soft and squishy! And the pillows! Your head literally sank into them! But my dumb ass didn’t stop to think that might upset my neck… To top it off, I slept on my stomach (that’s how I sleep best). I was so damned comfortable, I slept like the dead for the first time in decades! Then I woke up with that hellacious headache… It literally took all day for the neck pain to go away and that was with a lot of pain pills. I still have the sinus headache, but it’s not bad…

The day my niece got married was also my favorite J-rocker testu’s birthday! Happy 56th birthday, tetsu! Don’t feel bad, I’m not far behind… Oof… Now I feel bad. Because I didn’t feel old enough watching my niece get married…

Speaking of music… That was something I could have done without. I knew all of three songs played at the reception. One was Elvis, “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You”, LeAnn Rimes “How Do I Live” and this weird dance remix of AC/DC “You Shook Me All Night Long”… The other shit they played was– well– shit! It was newer dance/rap/techno kind of shit. I mean, it’s good to dance to if you’re drinking, I guess… But to be honest, I don’t know that you can dance to that shit, and I don’t think anyone else did, either. Most of them were just kind of jumping around. What the fuck is that?! Is that what they call dancing?! Absolutely not… I was looking forward to dancing, but I just couldn’t figure out how… Plus my feet were killing me from my new shoes, which I took off and then the deejay announced that everyone needed to put their shoes on…

Thanks for making me targeted, dickhead… Like shoes are cleaner than my stocking feet…

Anyway… There was a shuttle to take everyone from the hotel to the wedding and back again, which was nice, no drinking and driving. And these weren’t little buses, they were like luxury liners with a bathroom and everything! I told you it was an expensive affair…

One thing I didn’t know about these kind of busses is that you can connect with Bluetooth to the speakers. But one of the guests knew it… It wasn’t long into the half hour ride to the wedding that some absolutely horrible music started playing loudly. Now, I’m not a fan of much rap as it is. But when it sounds like some guy just talking, saying the filthiest things and dropping the “N” bomb every few seconds, that’s a huge no for me. And I listened to 2 Live Crew! Some of their shit was flat out vulgar and they used “fuck” more times than I could count in one song! But the stuff today, for some reason, I find horribly offensive. And the thing is, I may be 52, but it’s not a matter of age. I just find that inappropriate, especially when you’re in the company of older people.

I don’t really consider myself to be old, or at least I don’t feel like it. But there were relatives and family friends from both sides on that bus that were my age and older, like my mom who will be 76 in a few days. Now… I was raised that you respect your elders. You don’t swear in front of them, you treat them with respect and you don’t do disrespectful things like being loud and completely obnoxious in front of them. This idiot pretty much did all those things and got everyone else all fired up and obnoxious. Ah well… Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I really am old, too old to relate to these kids… I just think it’s sad that this is what society has become. And with every new generation, it gets a little bit worse. When did people stop teaching good manners? Can we please bring them back…?

I’m sure you figured out that I started playing my Animal Crossing game again…

I’m not sure why, but all of a sudden, my YouTube feed was just littered with videos of people who made some amazing looking islands in their game. It got me thinking… I had been wanting to redo mine for a very long time, but there were some factors that stopped me. One was that I didn’t want to erase the island I had to start a new one (you can only have one game actively going at a time). That would mean I’d lose all my villagers that I love, all the stuff it took forever to acquire… Nope. I could have just leveled my island to a flat working area and start terraforming from a blank slate, but I had nowhere to put all the trees, flowers and villager homes in the meantime. And it would have been ridiculously costly! Nope… So the best I could do was change what I could and move homes a little at a time with what currency I had…

And, you know… I also took some time to visit with my villagers and talk to them. One night I found my little bestie, Punchy, in the museum and followed him around. Then he graced me with the most adorable photo op!

Look how fucking adorable he is!!

Laugh if you will, but I find this incredibly relaxing… I get to be creative and everything moves at a slow pace. I get to design clothing (we’re both wearing my designs), pathways, lots of things… I get to shape my surroundings… It’s all very relaxing but very controlled, a place where I’m the “puppet master”, so to speak. It gives me that illusion of control that I desperately need in the current state of the world, the US in particular. And at least I still have freedom of expression and speech in this game…

Sadly, I’m not as creative as some people who play this game. I find that frustrating… I’m an artist, damn it! I should be able to terraform and decorate a video game environment!

But I digress…

Halloween will soon be upon us! I love Halloween… But for some reason, I’m just not in the spirit this year. Maybe it’s because I’m feeling so bleh… It’s hard to be festive when your head hurts and your nose is so god-damn stuffy you couldn’t get air up through it if the vacuum of space was up in your sinus cavities. I still have yet to decorate and I should have already done that…

But hey, at least I can decorate my island, right…?

Plus I get to make cute little scenes to take pictures! That’s probably the most fun of the holidays and other special occasions that pop up. I like to make silly things, it helps keep me somewhat sane. And let me tell you, we should all be happy for that!

Until next time, dear readers! Go create your own worlds!