check your sugarcoat at the door

Dear WordPress,
I’m not cranking out award winning books and saving animals on the side, donning a purple cape, like ten-year-old me thought I would be doing by my mid-twenties. Who-da thunk. Ten-year-old me had pretty high expectations of future me.

I’m getting a grip on this life thing, as a pseudo-pretend-adult, with a stunning blue-eyed, second-grader-sidekick in tow. While I navigate through Orange County traffuck, pull off the forty hour work week pushing paper and making friends, squeeze in the occasional college course & happy hour and do my damn best to maintain the reverence for humanity I’ve SOMEHOW developed in this monster-sized, cruel world, I write. A lot. Way more than is posted here at calamityjill.com. I write because: this. More or less. Mostly more.

And this: “God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.” – Tyler Durden, Fight Club

Though I find this be a hard-assed truth with a capital T, I pay money toward a prescription that makes me see it with a little more optimism than Mr. Durden.

If I don’t reach out into the wide world, I’ll never close my hand around anything that comes close to defining this craziness we call living or motivating me to keep doing it.

I’ve caught some kick ass shit and some incredible people.

Also of note, I collect argyle socks and dark chocolate is life.

Much love,
Calamity Jill

Cast:

• Baby daddy, Kiddo’s dad, etc: obviously, the father of my child, with whom I’ve grown up. We met in a parking lot in February, 2002, through the window of my El Camino and have spent the better part of eight years trying to figure out how to make the insane passion we have for one another work in the least complicated and most peaceful way. His dry and dark humor is perfectly hilarious and he’s ridiculously handsome.
• Kiddo: my seven year old daughter, born in January, 2003 by way of emergency c-section at seven months. She began her life at four pounds but has grown into a tall, scrawny, gorgeous little tomboy who reflects her parents’ personalities more and more every day. This is both frightening and fascinating. She’s a unique, loving individual with a penchant for all things Tim Burton.
• Ree: my ninja*, my best friend for life. We took the time to get to know each other on a dinner date almost three years ago. Our relationship was much more than friendship in the beginning. Having faced more than our share of troubles, we’re finding the happy medium and having so much fun doing it. She’s my partner in crime and the other mind behind most of the shenanigans I encounter. She plays a mean game of poker.
  The nicknamed stemmed from a coin machine in a Taco Bell. Don’t ask.
• Lucy: the absolute bane of my existence, I took this shaggy black mutt in when my cousin temporarily adopted her from a family who couldn’t keep her. She has ruined thousands of dollars worth of material possessions and two rooms of carpet. She’s a door bolter and a lover and so, so sweet. I absolutely hate her except when I’m head over heels in love with her.
• The fam: I’m very close to my parents and two siblings; a younger brother by four years and a younger sister by ten years. They live about twenty minutes away and I’m in touch with one or more of them every single day. When it comes to being guilted into an unfaltering love for a group of human beings just because of your blood line, at least I scored. They all have excellent taste in music and humor and I would loathe my existence without them all.