Jerks ruin childhoods past and future by giving slutty makeovers to beloved fictional characters. They call these makeovers “fruit-forward,” apparently code for killing off beloved pet kitties named Custard in favour of cell phones and supplanting glorious bloomers with high-waisted formal shorts. Jerks also provide hair extensions and freckle erasure in an effort to ensure that today’s prostitots can “relate to” said beloved fictional characters.

Cause, you know, when I was a little girl, living in a berry patch with no adults and spending my days tryin to foil a villainous pie man with the help of my friend THE SUN, those bloomers were really a REFLECTION OF MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. So clearly I should just get with the times and accept that little girls have it a bit different these days…

Ever notice yourself in a moment or action in life that seems like the quintessential example that answers the question “What has my life become?”

Like… leaving work at 5:15 to drive down to the YWCA to post a sign on the third floor that says “Due to illness this evening’s Lesbian Drop-In Group meeting is cancelled”? And then going back to work.

Brother can you spare a peer support group, I need one for myself.

Everyone knows (and so you’ll resent me telling you) that the only good thing a web page can do is provide a hyper-accurate countdown.

At the start of March way back in 2007 I finally gave into the tired archetype of family dysfunction that is a son’s desire for his father’s love and respect. (Oh and by the way my father already loves and respects me.) This unfortunately involved running, because each March my father makes the five hour trip down here to visit with us and run a 30km marathon called the Around the Bay Road Race which, shockingly, goes around the bay.

After many evasions and empty promises I somehow found myself signed up for the 5km run, the “wimpy brother” of the traditional 30km, hilariously named To The Bay and Back. I then had a few weeks of denial followed by two weeks of trying to get into some kind of shape to actually run the thing, having lived a blissfully sedentary life since just before birth.

As I was huffing and puffing my way to the finish line that cold day at the end of March, I was thinking about how much easier it was going to be in 2008 when I’d had 12 months of solid endurance training under my belt.

Oops.

I am going there.

For two weeks.

Everyone says it will be great.

Even the people not going.

Everyone is excited for me to go on vacation.

I am excited about the in-room liquor dispensers.

But give me 45 minutes at Home Depot and I’m pretty sure I could have that here at home.

Picture me wearing a sassy t-shirt that says “I don’t do, I schedule“. (While you’re at it, picture me with time in which to execute a social life, with a spiritually fulfilling relationship with a trophy hottie, and with well defined abdominal muscles.)*

I have reached a point (which I’m sure has a clever name that I don’t know, coined by a well-paid consultant that produces nothing) where I spend 100% of my time planning, scheduling and meeting — leaving, of course, zero time to do the tasks that are planned, scheduled and met about.

It’s hard to talk about resolutions for two reasons. The first is that I’ve shied away from actually writing anything resembling a resolution down to avoid, I realize now, the concrete documentation of a goal. If it’s not written down who’s going to be able to say I’ve failed to live up to it on a bitterly cold January 17th morning? The difficulty then is evident — “talking” would mean “writing” would mean committing to the goal. Opening the door to potential failure.

The second difficulty is jerkspot’s resolution (you were not aware it was both autonomous and sentient?) to be less about the things in my head and more about the world outside it. Stop hating on reality, as it was deftly articulated to me last night. Funny how things fit together.

With that revealed, I am ready to commit to a resolution. And it’s to join the Get Your Life Together Club. An invitation was afforded to me during a commune with my soul mate just following the televised New Hampshire primary debates last night. (I was more interested in the cupcakes and making fun of physical attributes of candidates than the substantive content of this foreign political process, truth be told.) My understanding of this club is that it involves regular meetings of members so that they may have the opportunity to call shenanigans on one another as they begin the inevitable drift away from January 1st ideals. For my part, I will be making buttons and lobbying hard for the service of girly drinks during these meetings.

Honestly, is that not the greatest idea you’ve ever heard? Like weight watchers for the reality challenged. Particularly considering we all are totally on board with getting life together and are equally at risk of, like, not. Codependency. I mean, interdependent support with a common goal. Recipe for success.

And the difficulties only recently articulated are deftly dispatched. It’s written, because to avoid writing it down would be hating on reality. And that’s out. And this here resolute tirade is not all about what I’m thinking, but about a thought my soul mate developed with her sisterly partner in crime on which I am now pinning all my hopes and dreams. Score!

As a side note, I am also adopting the secondary resolution that was assigned to me by Avril: Do not disturb the sexy.

Pretty much just the title. That is all.

This is what my inner child looks like.

Dreams are awesome. Especially when they involve three little girls that are bullying you. Pushing you around and laughing at you. Um, what’s all that about? Girls are mean.

There have been lots of dreams recently. (Remember how I can fly?) I don’t usually remember dreams and I would say that it is the trauma of these few weeks that’s bringing them to the surface… but it’s probably more that the trauma makes me curse my alarm clock and stay in bed, and it’s only the dreams I have between 6am when the alarm rings and 8am when I actually drag myself out of bed that stick.

And you know, horrible as they have mostly been, they are usually much better than anything I could be doing between 6am and 8am.

But, like, if those little girls show up again I am totally gonna kick some ass.