Confessions

Here's the thing, you guys...

I have some deep, dark secrets that I have been holding back from the world for too long now, and it's starting to eat me up inside. 

Now, I know what you must be thinking. "Jackie? Dark secrets? Pshhh! She's far too adorable and awesome to have dark secrets. Besides, with how much she talks all the time, it's ridiculous to think that there are words that have not yet spilled out of her brain through her mouth."

And to you I say... ouch. But also, it's true. As multi-faceted as my personality may seem, it's actually extra extra SUPER multi-faceted, and some of those facets are shameful and appalling. 

So with no further ado, let's all get ready to be horrified!

Here are ten of my darkest secrets that come to mind right away: 

1. I don't believe in chinchillas.

"But Jackie, chinchillas are real!"

No they're not. You know nothing.

"Wh-- I've seen them! I had a pet chinchilla for like three years!"

That's just what they want you to think. Next you'll be trying to tell me that unicorns and jackalopes and platypuses are real. It's all part of the conspiracy. I've looked many a chinchilla in the eye and denounced their existence to their furry little faces.

I don't know what sort of scarring childhood experience I had that has caused my unshakable disbelief in a scientifically acknowledged reality, but so help me, I won't be convinced.

Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?

That wasn't a political statement.

...or was it?

2. Sometimes (often), I think about drawing freckles on my face so that people will think I'm cuter. 

Okay, this one isn't even making a statement. This is just a true fact.

Truth is, I'm getting older. It happens to most people, but I never realized it could happen to me. Unfortunately, as I get older, it gets harder to be super adorable all the time. My baby-face is starting to look more mature, I sometimes get heartburn, I've even started to get terrible bags under my eyes and faint wrinkles on my forehead.

Ever since my smartness all burned up, I've had to get by on my sense of humor and cuteness. With my cuteness gone, all I would have left is my quick wit, and I don't know if that's enough to make everyone like me all the time.

Freckles are the obvious solution.

3. These days, I spend more time carefully arranging my clothing so that it squishes my fat roll into smaller, less noticeable fat rolls, than I do putting on makeup.

This comes with getting older, too.

Back in the day, I used to survive off a steady diet of ice cream and Doritos, and my weight had stayed within about a 5 or 6 pound range from the time I turned about 14. Sadly, now that I am no longer a teenager, my metabolism has apparently slowed to a screeching halt.

The problem is, I have no idea how to diet or exercise, and my regular routine of wandering the house searching for snacks just isn't cutting it anymore. And the other problem is, gaining weight means that all my clothes don't fit the same anymore. And the other other problem is that I refuse to go out and buy a whole new wardrobe just because I can't squeeze all my regular pants over my butt-fat.

So, I've developed a brilliant solution. If I carefully smush my fat in all the right directions, no one will notice that I've gotten kinda pudgy over the last little while!

4. I actually listen to a lot of Britney Spears.

Okay, I didn't even draw a picture for this one. Some of her music is really catchy! Stop judging me, you know you've done it too. You can't be an 18-24 year old and honestly tell me that you don't secretly jam to some Britney every now and then.

...hmm hmm taste of your lips, hmm hm hm hmmm, you're toxic, I'm slipping under...

5. I can't use the bathroom if it's at an unfamiliar place, or if anyone at all is in the bathroom or within like a five mile radius.

I know I'm not the only one that does this! I'm not weird, you're weird! One of these days I'm just going to die of... kidney failure or something. Honestly, Daniel and I started dating over a year ago, and I have used the bathroom at his parents' house exactly three times. And that was only when I had no other choice.

For some reason I'm mostly fine with using public restrooms, but people's houses really freak me out. In a public restroom, if you find some mysterious hair, you're like "Ew gross, a mysterious hair." But if you find a mysterious hair in the restroom of someone's house, you're like "This hair belongs to someone IN THIS HOUSEHOLD." And then it's weird.

Usually, the three places I can use the bathroom without freaking out are as follows: Home (but only if Daniel isn't lurking around somewhere), work (but only if I am certain there is no one else in the bathroom, and if someone does come in I'll abort the mission), and my parents' house. Seriously, the other day I was visiting an old friend from high school, and on the way back I stopped at my parents' house to use the bathroom, so I didn't have to hold it for the 20 minute drive back to our apartment. True story. I pretended like I was visiting them just to say hey.

6. Up until recently, I couldn't cook rice without starting a fire.

This one is really sad. I would consider myself a pretty awesome cook, frankly. I can make French Silk pie no problemo. I've made all manner of casseroles, soups, stews, stir fries, and pastas, all without a hitch. One time I helped my father make crème brûlée WITH A BLOWTORCH and didn't start a fire.

For some reason, though, there was a period of time in my life where me making one of the simplest dishes known to mankind resulted in something burning. And I'm not just talking about the rice, either.

Once I was making rice, and some melted butter caught fire. Being the competent kitchen safety technician I am, I threw water on it, but that's another story. I cleaned up all the smoke damage before my parents even got home.

Since I got married and moved into my own apartment, though, I haven't started a single fire, so maybe my curse is lifted. Maybe true love's kiss stopped me from randomly setting fired to my home, or some like that.

7. I think I may have backed into a mailbox one time, but it was dark and I panicked and drove away.

Once, when I was young and kinda newish to driving, I was dog-sitting for a friend of the family. This friend lived in a somewhat sketchy area of town, and sometimes I was a little nervous to be over there at night. He had some neighbors across the street that were often drunk and often yelling at each other, so I usually let the dog out and then skeedaddled as quickly as I could, so as to avoid... I don't even know. Maybe my irrational teenage mind thought I was going to get dragged in to mediate, and that would just be awkward.

Anywho.

One day I was over letting the dog out, and I had driven over in my dad's great big truck. I usually parked up the street and walked down to the house because it had a shared driveway and I really didn't want to accidentally block off the other neighbor, because that would also be awkward. This particular time, however, I pulled into the driveway because it was pretty late and I wanted to just be in and out of there.

I did my thing, fed the beast, and then jumped into the truck to drive away.

Now, this road was also quite narrow, and the truck was pretty long and monstrous. I pulled out of the driveway somewhat faster than I should have, and felt a little teeny tiny "bump."

It was probably just the tires hitting the curb, but when I pulled forward, I saw that there was a mailbox behind me. Not wanting to get shanked or yelled at by strangers, I pulled off and sped away.

I checked the next day and the mailbox seemed fine, but the guilt has been destroying me inside for years.

Phew. It's good to get that off my chest.

8. Once I and a couple of my friends threw some nerds under the proverbial bus for a terrible high school crime we committed. 

I can't say too much, for fear of being arrested or hanged or something, but let's just say...

Once upon a time, my friends and I were up to some mischief. I won't specify what sort of mischief, but we'll say... we were somewhere we weren't supposed to be at school, and something happened that was... uh... we'll call it "minor property damage." We didn't really know the extent of our crime at the time, but we knew we were in trouble when we heard footsteps behind us in the darkness of the Forbidden Place.

We scampered as fast as we could toward the nearest exit, and emerged into the hall just outside the band room at my high school.

This hall was notorious for hosting a menagerie of nerds at any given time. I can say that because I was one of the nerds, before y'all get on my back about stereotyping. It's our word.

Anyway, being the crafty rapscallions that we were, we decided that the only way to escape conviction was to give the authorities a scapegoat.

We showed the nerds into the secret... uh... place of mystery... just in time for the vice principal to come out and catch them in the act of illicit trespassing. They were sternly lectured in our place, and we got away clean as a whistle. And to this day, no one but us knows what we did.

And, you know, all those people that we told.

9. I'd rather get a kitty than another hamster.

Does that make me a terrible person? I mean, hamsters have kind of become my "thing" these days... I'm the resident authority on rodents and all the random trivia associated therewith.

But if I could get another pet... I don't know if it would be a hamster.

It's not because I don't love hamsters or don't think they're the cutest creatures ever to grace the face of this otherwise depressing planet, not at all. Mostly it's a result of the overpowering guilt left over from the untimely deaths of Walter and Radagast.

When Nigel died, it was incredibly sad and heartbreaking, but I was still comfortable getting another hamster, because I didn't feel responsible for Nigel's death. I had closure. He had cancer and he was getting old, it was just his time to go, and I did absolutely everything I could to make him better and to make sure he didn't suffer. But with the others, I have no idea to this day what killed them, and I constantly worry that it is a result of my negligence.

Kitties, on the other hand, are a lot harder to accidentally kill. I mean, the chances that you'll run over your kitty with your car are infinitely higher than with a hamster, but they aren't going to die if you don't feed them often enough, or you forget to refill their water, or if it's too hot or too cold in your house. Kitties are tough. They can more or less take care of themselves.

Hamsters, for all their cuteness, are helpless.

10. I sometimes read my own blog when I'm bored, because I think I'm really hilarious.

I'm not vain or anything like that. It's just that I don't have great long-term memory, so when I go back and read my own work, it's always a new experience. Plus I actually am pretty proud of some of the stuff I've done.

Unlike any other art I've ever done, I can still be proud of my blog after I've finished a post. Normally with any other drawing or design or whatever, I'm really excited about it while I'm working on it, and then when I'm done, I step back and look at it and think to myself, "This is a disgrace to the name of art and should never see the light of day again."

Not so with my blog, though. I am genuinely un-ashamed of my work here, and I want to continue sharing it with the world! Admittedly, sometimes Daniel has to go through and point out the embarrassing number of typos in every post after it's first published, but after a couple revisions every post is like a child to me.

Except better than a child, because none of my posts scream or puke or touch me with creepy tiny sticky hands.

***

On that note, I hope you like my blog too, and in order to make it easier for you to enjoy it, I want to hear more from you, the readers, so that it can become more of a conversation. A conversation with pictures! I'm sure you are all aware of the sweet poll I've got posted over there in the right sidebar. It seriously takes a total of like three seconds to take a poll, and it doesn't even hurt. If you look at my blog, just click an answer on the poll. It will make everyone's lives better, and I'll be updating the question bi-weekly, to keep things fresh. Your opinions will be heard, and your suggestions will be featured right here in the post-y section.

Don't you want to be a part of the action?

Yes. Say yes.

Good.