the earnestness of being Jen


Sky is of the opinion that I am not being real here on the blawg... He said I didn't share the whole juicy story about our not-back-to-school day at Disneyland.

I was trying to be upbeat and not weigh you all down with my whining and complaining and travailing all over the place...but in an effort to be transparent, I'll share...

It's really a story of my deep-down Jenn-ness, it's like a really bad, sitcom- karma- ring.

I have this Jennifer-trait of waiting till the last minute to do really complicated things. I self-deceive myself weeks up till the event, telling myself such things as..."it will be a really simple project, I'll just pick up these items and do it in the evening, 20 minutes-tops!" or better yet, I will veto the idea (in an effort to thwart my inner-Jen) and wisely choose to forgo proposed project, just to change my mind at the last minute and frantically try to do it, gather all supplies, etc..

So, back to the Disneyland thing...we were supposed to wear tie-dye shirts so we can identify ourselves as homeschoolers. I thought about it weeks in advance, kept my eye out for tie-dye shirts when we were out and about (because buying them would be simpler, by far).

Fast forward to the night before. I make plans to go to Old Navy and buy plain shirts to dye if we can't find any already made. I distantly remember in my childhood, making tie-dye shirts with friends, using food coloring and bleach...we did something with vinegar to make them set, or not..I can't remember.

So, plain shirts, check. Food color, and vinegar, check. I go online real quick to find directions to refresh myself on what to do with the vinegar.

Screech to a halt. Everything said not to use food color on cotton shirts...they would fade out.

So, ahem.

For a split second I acknowledged the zen thing to do, the mature-self-actualized Jen thing to do would be to say never-mind, we'll do it next time...
-The normal Jen thing to do would be to go crazy and rush to Micheal's before it closes in 30 minutes and buy some kind of dye and try to resurrect the whole thing.

Sky sat at the table and watched me go full-bore into Jen mode. He considered saying something, reconsidered and just let me go.

at about 9:30 that night I decided this was not what I wanted to be doing, and I gave up...after reading the dye directions and realizing I would not only have to wash and dry the shirts first, but then would have to let the shirts sit 5 hours after being dyed, and then wash and dry them again...

I went to bed very frustrated with myself, because 5 hours earlier I had planned to sit down with a bowl full of strawberries, cool-whip and bitter-sweet chocolate chips and watch SuperNanny.

I ruined my whole night. Dang.

The Jen thing, mostly it's a curse..sometimes it's a gift, but mostly it's a curse.