Kosher Pork Chops Dot Com

Rub-a-dub-dub

2012-04-15T14:57:00.001-05:00

Eric called me into the bathroom while he was taking a shower. He leans his head out of the shower curtain to talk to me and he is covered in soap lather. I start laughing about how he is covered head to toe in soap lather, and he drops his voice and gets all serious and asks me "dude, wait, do you not use soap when you shower?" which makes me double over in laughter because it is just hilarious to me.

But apparently I have been showering wrong my whole life, as I lather up quadrants of my body at a time, whereas apparently the rest of America lathers up everything in one go.

I know why this tickles me like nothing else.

I have a friend whose boyfriend never knew that toilet seats were for men too. He would sit directly on the bowl, and managed to make it to 32 without anyone telling him that men can use toilet seats too, they are not just for women. And to answer the question that no one wants to ask: yeah, he sat directly on the bowl on public toilets too.

That'll Do Pig

2012-04-14T10:14:00.000-05:00

A lot of people have asked me why, after teaching Sunday school for a whole year, why I didn't go back to teach another year this year.

The reason is named Jeremy. OK, not really, but I can't exactly call out a minor on a public website. So the assholes name will be Jeremy for this post.

I brought a Wii into Sunday school last year for the kids to play with. For a group of forty or so sixth graders, this was huge. They got to play video games while at church - score! Well Jeremy different think so, he had that cooler than shit attitude that I totally hated when I was a kid, and sure add shit want going to put up with now that I was an adult, so I told him I didn't care.

Side note, teachers listen up, if you ever have a kid in your class who has a bad attitude and is just being contrary, and you have tried everything and you are at your wits end, pull them aside and tell them you don't care about their happiness, or that they are bored, and that you would sooner see them leave than deal with them another minute. I don't know why we sugar coat things for kids, when you tell the truth to kids it shuts them up for quite awhile.

Maybe I am just a bad teacher. Actually, I know I am a bad teacher. Speaking of sugar coating lol...
Anyway, Jeremy didn't want to play Wii, so he sat down and played with his phone, which was fine by me because that is what my entire generation does while bored. Later on that night, I receive a call from the head of the Sunday school program, Jeremy used his phone to film up the skirts of the little girls playing the Wii. And thats when I said some not so religious phrases and quit. And not just Sunday school, but church altogether.

I imagined Jesus patting me on the head and saying "that'll do pig, that'll do."

This is a Test

2012-04-13T21:13:00.001-05:00

Yep, I am coming back to blogging. I just can't quit you, girl.

All Mediocre Things Must Come to an End

2011-09-02T11:05:00.001-05:00

I am ending this blog. I know, I know, but we all knew this was going to happen sooner or later. I still blog elsewhere. I am considering going back to blogging/writing in the future, but for right now, I am going to concentrate on finishing this last year of school and working on my masters. I still own an internet store that needs managing, and I work full time. It's a wonder I EVER wrote on this thing, frankly.

If you still want to be connected to me, I suggest finding me and friending me on Facebook. I am still on Twitter, and I am on Google Plus (I would link to that, but I think facebook and twitter will be my main two stomping grounds.)

I probably will keep the domain name, and I will probably still post on here every once in a great while. I wanted to say thank you to everyone for supporting me through my blog, through the community garden, through my prison reform campaign, through life. I appreciated every comment I received, every link, every email.

I'll be back next year, you know it, I know it, we all know it. But for now.

Good-bye and thanks for all the porkchops!

You Have Come to the Wrong Place

2011-08-02T16:14:00.000-05:00

Dude, this is the internet, if you can't find proper smut like a normal human being we are going to be forced to ask you to leave.

Also, have I ever written about this? No? That's what I thought.

I Think, Therefore I Do Not Get Punched In The Ovaries

2011-08-01T18:18:00.001-05:00

I am a sucker for buying children presents, especially when it isn't a present-centered occasion. Now that almost all my friends have children, this means I am buying a lot of presents for no reason whatsoever. As a result, I now limit my purchases to $10 per kid for these any-occasion presents.

The other day, I was out shopping for a 5 year-old and a 9 year-old, and I came upon the fishing section. "Came upon" isn't the right wordage. Ran full speed to that section and used the cart as a riding toy by running and getting it up to the proper speed and then hopping on and yelling "whee!" while the wind blew in my hair is probably more proper wordage.

I adore the fishing section of stores. Fishing is the greatest thing ever. EVER. I do not possess the vocabulary to tell you why fishing is so awesome, so I will let Ron Swanson tell you for me:

I wander down the fishing aisle, look at a bunch of rods and reels (not a euphemism, I genuinely did this) and then came upon something so wonderful, something so magical, it almost appeared to glow:

AIR HORNS

For some reason, I thought this was the greatest gift ever for a couple of little boys. So I put about 14 of them in my cart. See, I had already spent about $6 on candy for them. CANDY AND AIR HORNS = the perfect gift in my eyes.

I got to the checkout, started to unload my cart, and looked up at the checkout woman. She was looking at me with a look that said "She's too fat to be on meth, but CLEARLY a woman who has a cart full of nothing but candy and air horns is on drugs."

And that's about when my common sense came back to me. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to buy children of any age air horns. I am not sure where my brain went when I originally threw them in the cart, I hope it had a nice vacation.

I guess what I am trying to say is if I ever bring your child a gift, just check it first, because there is no assurance that my brain is on vacation or not.

Sick Day

2011-07-20T14:52:00.001-05:00

Am I the only one who sits around watching thirtysomething and Misfits when sick? Yes? Okay then.

I Never Left 5th Grade

2011-07-14T16:14:00.001-05:00

I have a serious thing for small, food-shaped erasers.

Summertime

2011-07-13T16:22:00.001-05:00

Naps in the grass on lunch are the very best.

Skin shrapnel

2011-07-11T18:25:00.001-05:00

Eric has peeling skin lately because he was badly sunburned over the fourth of July weekend. (Truth be told, so was I.) When my skin peels after a burn, it comes off in one giant sheet. I literally peeled off my entire left arm skin in almost one piece while screaming at Eric that he should get the camera so I can show my grandkids this awesomely gross event someday. He declined, compared it to the Hindenburg, and dry heaved a couple of times.

When he started peeling, his skin comes off in these little whispy flakes. And it is everywhere.

The day after he started peeling (aka molting) I went to work, sat down at my chair, and felt something fuse with my eye. A flake of sunburned skin got stuck on my clothes, and then floated up and SLOOP make a film over my eye. It took me an hour to get it all out of my eye.

When I got home, I decided to lie in wait for Eric to relax, unwind, and start reading. I stalked him from the bedroom, loofa in hand, and sprung at the first opportunity.

Apparently getting your sunburned skin loofa'd is painful and also like the Hindenburg because he just yelled "oh the humanity!" While I was loofaing.

Liz Taylor Approved

2011-06-27T08:12:00.001-05:00

Have you ever had such a bad day that you wore the Liz Taylor jewels your mom gave you to work?
No? Just me? It is definitely a Monday ya'll.

Hey! This is important!

2011-06-22T14:59:00.001-05:00

If you are/were a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan, you need to stop and look at this site. Seriously.

Hey! You! You look like you're literate!

2011-06-20T19:50:00.002-05:00

Psst, want to know a secret? Until July 20th 2011, you can use the code JL72W and get my book for your Ipad, Ipod, Sony E-reader, Kindle, Nook, ANY E-READER for a grand total of... $1.50! That's right, all you have to do is go to this site right here to download it, and in the checkout area, enter the code listed above.

If you are like me, you accidentally drop books in the tub all the time. (And that, my dear friends, is why I do not own an E-reader.) You can still buy my book in paperback form on Amazon.

Ok, we're good? I can stop annoying you with my shameless plugging of my crapping writing (cough cough ahem cough cough.)

Recap on my health

2011-06-15T21:11:00.001-05:00

My doctor told me that I need to drink a glass of wine a night.

Best medicine ever, ya'll.

Me, at work

2011-06-13T16:05:00.001-05:00

Oh, wait, this picture doesn't capture the utter disdain for mondays I had hoped it would. Oh well.

Awww Snap!

2011-06-12T21:57:00.001-05:00

Guess who has the blogger app for android? Me!

This is a test post.

My Hometown

2011-05-30T12:39:00.000-05:00

“I have struck a city - a real city - and they call it Chicago... I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages.” - Rudyard Kipling

Recently, at a backyard BBQ, I was introduced this way:
"This is Enna, she's from the south side of Chicago, like, she actually grew up there."

AND THEN PEOPLE GASPED.

I wasn't sure why, seeing as this wasn't a particularly shocking fact to me. But apparently, to the people I was talking to, I was the only person they had ever met who grew up in the city limits. Ever. Four million people just thirty miles east and I was the only one they had ever met.

This was completely bizzare to me.

Another instance of this happened at Sunday school. A little girl asked me where I grew up. This was a pretty big deal to me, since the rest of my class of middle schoolers are a bunch of self-absorbed little pricks (don't hate me: all middle schoolers are.) So I told her, and she looked at me questioningly and said "But you're not black?"

Yes, captain obvious, I am not. I wanted to be a prick back to her and say "WHO DO YOU THINK LIVES IN CHINATOWN?" (Answer: Chinese people! And some Italian and Polish immigrants.) But apparently harrassing your students and ridiculing them is not something that is the curriculum for Sunday school teachers. (Side note: I wanted to hand out pins on the last day that said 'Jesus may love you but I think you're a prick.' But I am pretty sure in the great shoots and ladders of life, that would land me right on the shoot to hell.)

I guess what I am trying to say is that Chicago isn't the giant whirling cesspool of povery and crack that apparently everyone I know thinks it is. I think it's neat that you can look at a shoe store and see that it is in a building that used to be a Hewbrew Temple, or a firehouse that is in a theater that went out of business in 1920. It just keeps building up, this city.

So, without further ado, here are some pictures of my fabulous city, and my old stomping grounds:

The South Side Irish Parade

(Found here)

County Fair, where everyone's grandma gets her groceries.

(Found here.)

Post WWII housing

(Found here.)

The 95th Street CTA Bus.

(Found here.)

News stand on the south side

(Found here.)

HOTDOGS!

(Found here.)

The Chicago Stockyards Entrance

(Found here.)

Chinatown

(Found here.)

Steak 'n' Egger's - we in Chicago appreciate a good greasy spoon

(Found here.)

LOL. So many butchers.

(Found here.)

My old high school.

(Found here.)

Midway Airport. Chicago has two airports: Midway and O'hare. Midway is easier for the traveler to get through, O'hare is easier for the person PICKING YOU UP from the airport to get in and out of.

(Found here.)

Lindy's and Gertie's Ice Cream in Ford City Mall.

(Found here.)

The Art Institute of Chicago

(Found here.)

Inside the Old Marshall Fields on State, at Christmas, before it became a Macy's.

(Found here.)

Comisky! Now it's US Cellular, but back in the day, it was Comisky.

(Found here.)

I have eaten here, and it is greasy, and therefore good.

(Found here.)

Light snowstorm over a Chicago neighborhood.

(Found here.)

Ah but Summer, it's totally worth it! (Lincoln Park Beach)

(Found here.)

Just Discovered Poetry, Don't Mind Me

2011-05-29T22:11:00.000-05:00

Yes and Yes: Because I Refuse to Take a No

2011-05-20T08:26:00.001-05:00

Someone once told me "Never accept a 'no' from someone who isn't authorized to give you a 'yes'" and whew, did that become my life motto from that point on. This little motto got utilized a whole bunch when I created a community garden (which I am sure I mentioned here before. In fact, I am quite sure I never shut up about it) and if you would like to know HOW to create a community garden, then I highly suggest you mosey on over to Sarah Von's blog yesandyes.org and see the guest post I did about this very subject.

Two Random Things:

2011-05-16T14:55:00.000-05:00

1. I have given more money to bartenders this past week than I gave to my church. I am pretty sure that's a sin.
2. I wonder if my brain has a smell. What about my liver? Does it smell like me on a particular hot and humid day?

I would totally lick my own brain to see what it tastes like. I wonder if when/if I get to heaven, and Jesus is like "My child, what would you like to do first?" if I won't be totally kicked out for replying "I wanna lick my brain, Jesus!"

Listen to the man, he knows what he is talking about

2011-05-12T08:11:00.000-05:00

(Found on Aw Poops)

A Quote

2011-05-11T12:25:00.000-05:00

This is what enlightenment is all about - a deep understanding that there is no problem. Then, with no problem to solve, what will you do? Immediately you start living. You will eat, you will sleep, you will love, you will work, you will have a chit-chat, you will sing, you will dance - what else is there to do? ~Osho

And I heard in my head "This is your life"

2011-05-09T21:02:00.000-05:00

Today I am going to tell you two stories. One is going to be funny, one won’t be. First, the funny:

When I was about 8 or so, my friend’s mother took my friend and I to a fun fest for some suburb of Chicago. They had this little child-sized complete house there that I was infatuated with. I kept trying to peek inside to see all the little eight-year-old-me sized furniture inside. A fireman came up to me and asked if I wanted to go inside with some other kids, and I agreed, and my friend and I went inside. Inside, we got to play around in the house, while the fireman told us all the things that could suddenly set on fire and kill us all in our sleep. I had no idea why he was telling us this, I just liked the fact that there was a wee recliner and a wee table and chairs, and a wee fireplace. I loved this place! Then, suddenly, smoke filled the house (side note: it’s fake smoke and completely harmless, but I do remember it coming out the vents and screaming “GAS!” because I totally thought it was a gas chamber. Seriously, who designs a learning tool that makes it seem like kids are being gassed to death?) The fireman told us there was a fire escape out through the back window, and that we could all exit safely out that way.

I was having NONE of that. I came in through the front door, I can leave that way. After all, that was the closest exit. BUT NO. The fireman herded us kids like the little sheeple we were out the back window. We had to climb down a ladder to the ground and then we would be given a gift bag and a plastic fire hat to show that we survived the Gas Chamber Learning Experience.

Here’s the thing about me – I am afraid of heights. I am also afraid of fire, and being gassed to death in a small space, and I think we can all agree we know where THAT fear came from. Anyway, I am afraid of heights, so I get out this window, and look down. And you might as well have asked me to climb down the Grand Canyon. I start to climb down the ladder, and I freeze up I am so scared.

And then I pee. I pee out of fear. This wouldn’t have been such a bad thing, except there were three kids on the ladder below me. Three kids who got peed on. By me. And this wouldn’t have happened if they just let me leave out the front door.

I should have known right then that I would not face my death in a reasonable, rational, and calm manner. No, I will face my death probably clutching something metal and peeing on people. Or just myself. Others if I am lucky.

See, I don’t want to go into exactly what just happened a couple weeks ago (right about the time I stopped posting) but here is the gist: No amount of persuasion will convince me that I didn’t almost just die.

Death is such a funny thing. Not funny ha-ha, but funny in the sense that not only do you not know when it’s coming, but also you have no idea how you will react until you face it head on.

I completely forgot all those things I was supposed to remember. You know – things like praying, asking God for help, asking others for help, etc. I always expected to face my death ala old French Movie Way. Where is my blindfold and cigarette? Where is my striped boat-neck shirt, and little fashionable scarf. Put the blindfold on over my sunglasses monsieur, I want to enter the afterlife fashionable.

That is most certainly not how it happened. I did not face my death with a coolness and cavalier attitude. And I am sitting here, in what is assuredly survivor’s guilt, wondering why the hell I am alive. I hear some people call their loved ones, some people make peace with their enemies, some people completely change their lives. I didn’t do any of these things. I walked away like nothing ever happened. Short of 5 people, no one even knows what the heck I am talking about.

So, I stopped posting for awhile. I completely abandoned some projects. I took stock of my life, and looked at what I didn’t like – and now I am on the road to changing it.

I remember when I was about 4 years old, I woke up one day and realized that I was alive. I had a soul and I existed and I was a human being, and I remember running around the house and being so excited to be alive! And everything was new and amazing!

That’s how I am all the time now. Everything is new and amazing. I made stew the other day, because carbs and salts be damned, I love stew! I love a good stew like nobody’s business! I walked into our condo the day after the accident and I ran around yelling how much I loved this place! I love Eric! And I love the stupid broken dishwasher! And I love the patio! And I love my bed! I love my crazy laptop where half the keys are broken! I love my view! I love stew! I love me!

I came out of this with a renewed sense of life. It just took awhile for it to appear. It took awhile for me to get it. When I was a little kid, the teachers in my (Catholic) school used to show us videos about children who became saints because God called them to do something great.

This is going to sound totally cynical, but whenever God called one of these children to do these miracles for Him, the Catholic church would send out a priest to try to uncover whether or not the kids were faking it. And in the movies, the priest would be all mean to the kids and try to trick them, just to see if they were lying. It always seemed like a dickish thing to do to children, in my opinion. As a child, I thought if God ever called me to do something, I am going to keep my dang mouth shut, lest a priest come out, take me away from my parents, and then yell at me for days on end.

I guess what I am saying is this: I got this brand new idea of what life is supposed to be like, and how awesome this gift really is. And I don’t really care if it means people are going to be dickish to me because of my faith or my renewed excitement about life. If it happens, it happens. And I will cross that bridge when I get to it. And maybe I will get a chance to pee over the side again.

So happy to be employed

2011-04-27T21:44:00.000-05:00

Best thing I have read in awhile: http://imgur.com/a/mTWpc/1
it reminds me of being unemployed. Thank goodness that is over with.

Small Bags of Poop, All in a Tidy Row

2011-04-19T07:55:00.000-05:00

(This is not a paid endorsement of either of these products. I just like them.)

My mother used to lament that the one thing that she wished that she had when he had small children (aka the awesomeness that is me) was the Diaper Genie. The fact that it contained all the smell in these individualize poop packages was awesome to my mother. I think it's the most bizarre thing ever. It's like small rope-packages of poop. Normally when you find a bunch of small packages, all in a row, it's a good thing (i.e. lots of jewelry, or party favors of cocaine if you are into that sort of thing.)

I have to admit I am the same though (about the lamenting, not the pooping in small packages thing) about Yes and Yes's Post-College Survival Kit: Growing Up Without Fucking Up. For serious. FOR SERIOUS. This is awesome.

PS Erin get your butt over to that site right now.