The Chronicles Of Jessica

Sometimes things are happening, and sometimes you are in the time which is between things happening. I think this is one of those times.

Paul was invited to blog at Oval Office 2008. Go show him some love.

Let's see, let's seee.....news. There must be some news. The save-the-date cards for the wedding went out, finally. Ass-o-graphics (not their real name) did not exactly provide the Dunton/Fidalgo nuptials with what I would call an overwhelming customer service experience. Matter of fact, I don't think I can recall the last time I had an overwhelming customer service experience, unless you count the massage I had on my birthday when the masseuse placed a tissue on the floor under my face because I had a sinus infection and was worried about dripping onto the floor.

Ew.

I had my first wedding-anxiety nightmare the other day. It was time for the wedding to start, and I had done my hair and put on my dress, only to find that every time I looked in the mirror, my hair was oily and stringy as though I had not washed it for days. So I'd put it back up, with all these barrettes and bobby pins, only to check myself again in the mirror and find it looking the exact same way. This happened a few times. Then Donald Trump appeared, and he offered me some fried chicken, which I accepted, and then, I looked down to find that my wedding dress had somehow morphed into the costume that I wore as Old Lady in Crowd in "King and No King".

I woke up in a cold sweat. With a spork under my pillow.

I have a bunch of auditions coming up, and on Saturday I'm invited to do a short spot at a comedy show in Maryland, which should be great fun. I am telling myself that I was not invited solely because it is Easter weekend and a lot of the gentile comics will be out of town. Anyway, if you're reading this and you're in the DC area and you want to come see me, let me know and I'll get you the details.

We're starting to get more used to D.C., although every single time that I walk anywhere (which is every day), I almost get hit by a car. I am at pains to point out that I have lived in New York and Chicago, so it's not like I'm some hayseed who's wandering the city streets unawares. People here just view the red light as more of a guideline than a hard and fast rule. AND - they are all on their cell phones. (I know that some of you are guiltily laughing because you talk on your cell phones while you're driving. YOU NEED TO NOT DO THAT. A study at the University of Utah showed that the level of impairment to your driving is equivalent to driving while intoxicated. You probably don't think your driving is affected but I'm telling you, it is. Keep both hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road. If you killed someone, it would make you feel bad about yourself. End rant.)

Anyway, who are they calling at 8 in the morning? I cannot imagine. Most, if not all, of the people I know would not be up for meaningful conversation at 8 a.m. A lot of people I know are actors and would lose their shoe up your butt if you called them at 8 in the morning, and the other half are all on their way to work themselves. So I guess maybe these commuters are calling other commuters, maybe in other cities, just to see what the ass end of an SUV looks like in, say, Topeka, as opposed to Washington.

"Really, you can't see anything except for their beanie baby collection on the rear windshield? Me neither!"

"Really, a decal of Calvin peeing on Hobbes? What a coincidence!!"

A bunch of my friends and I have decided to embark on a little experiment, wherein we actively try not to complain for 21 days. Starting tomorrow. The idea is, if we just don't give voice to a lot of needless negativity, we can become more positive and generate better mojo and our skin will clear up, that kind of thing. Several of the ladies have already started getting the complaining out of their systems, a kind of bitch-cleanse, if you will. I'm not sure how the experiment will affect my writings here, which is a matter of no small concern. Without anything to complain about it may just devolve into one of those weird blogs where people just write about errands they're running and what they're making for dinner, the antics of their pets. I could write about the antics of Paul, but lately they just involve him sitting alone in the office at the computer, emerging every couple of hours for a panic attack and a light snack.

Seeing as I'm leading the experiment and I want to set a good example for the participants, I'm going to go ahead and get some stuff off my chest.

I have nothing to wear. I know women always say this, but it's reached a critical mass. I haven't had any new clothes in what seems like a very, very long time. I hate everything I own, and every day I stand around in my underwear cursing the contents of my closet and my bureau and wondering if renters insurance would cover us if I set fire to all of it. I have a lot of clothes that once were really cute and flattering, but somewhere along the line, they gave up. They became shapeless, threadbare, pit-stained versions of their former selves. Kind of like what's happened to Britney.

I'm tired of trying to think about what to cook. I want to take a space pill that will give me all the nutrients I need and make me full and have that be the end of it. Every day, three times a day, I have to decide what to eat and how to make it and if it costs too much and whether I can afford the calories and if I should feel guilty over it not being organic and will it make me have a sugar crash and is it dolphin-safe and is the container recyclable and can I bring the leftovers to work the next day and I have just had it. Sustinence is too much damn trouble. And yes, I know perfectly well how horrific this rant would sound to the ears of people in parts of the world where they are starving and don't have enough food. Something else to feel guilty about.

I hate feeling guilty.

I hate Spam. Who is the one person who actually got the Viagra email, read it, and said - "Well if it's from the internet it must be pharmaceutically sound!" That one sale is forcing the rest of humanity to suffer these advertisements filling up our inboxes day after day after day? The other day I finally got into my website email and I had over FIVE THOUSAND messages - all of it spam.

I hate my career. What kind of a profession is this supposed to be? You go into a little room and you show them your acting talent for about 60 seconds, and then maybe they say something or maybe they don't, and you hand them an expensively-produced photo of yourself and then you leave. How is this productive? And it's not like you do that once or twice a week and you're done, you do it over and over and over and over again, and you have to pretend to like it. Then you spend all this energy trying to figure out if anything is going to come out of anything. Maybe they say, "Nice job." Then you get outside and you're thinking, "Nice job? Was that a politeness or did they really mean I did a nice job? Is nice better than good? It would've been better if they'd said 'good job' or 'great job'. But they were smiling when they said it. They definitely smiled. But they emphasized 'job' instead of 'nice'. Nice job. Surely an emphasis on 'nice' would have been better than an emphasis on 'job'. Great. Perfect. Just wonderful. I see now that I will never work again." Then, you're not even allowed to do what normal people would do when they apply for a job. You can't, for example, ask when you might hear something. No, no, no, that would never do. That would make you appear desperate, which you are, but God forbid they should know that you're desperate. You're supposed to seem like you just happened to waltz into their audition in between lunching at the Fairmont and your daily stopoff at the spa at Red Door.

Why are there only about 6 days of the year now where it is actually pleasant and a good thing to be outside? Either it's an absolute sweatbox outside or it's freezing, or raining, or both. Yesterday was Easter and there was snow on the ground. And the other day Al Gore was in town doing his thing on Capitol Hill, and there were all these screwballs around town passing out flyers about how the Nazis invented the concept of global warming. Really? That's fascinating. What a waste of skin these guys are. I'm sorry, but if you don't understand by now that global warming and climate change is real, and scary, and almost entirely our fault, then you are out of touch with reality. Don a tin foil helmet and just claim your spot out in front of the Port Authority with the rest of the lunatics.

All righty. I got all of that out of my system, I'm ready to start fresh. No complaining. Starting now.

Oh, but also - how is VC Andrews still writing books when she's been dead since the mid-eighties? I'm supposed to just swallow that? Pfffft.

Okay - starting now.