Eventually, I lost them. I don’t mean that euphemistically. I mean that I misplaced them, possibly in my pockets or in the ladies room or whatever. And then I woke up.

I should mention that I’ve had a lot of deadlines lately and haven’t gotten out much.

“Mama, how could you?”

Image: Antiquesnavigator.com

2. There was that thing with the cookies.

3. He was a big ol’ hypochondriac.

The end. 

As we know, I am never happy unless I can worry about something. When I was a kid, I worried all the time about Russians dropping the bomb on us. I practiced hiding under my desk for hours. Then, finally, someone gave me a copy of “Hiroshima” and I realized that two feet of fiberboard and an aluminum frame probably wasn’t going to save me from a nuclear blast. After I told my dad my concerns, he promised that the second the bomb was in the air, we would drive immediately toward the center of the blast, holding hands and singing “Hotel California” all the way. After that, weirdly, I felt better.

After my worries about the nuclear holocaust faded, I found a new scenario to obsess over: the zombie apocalypse. I had so many nightmares about zombies, I think my mom became convinced we’d grown a new personality disorder in our home. Still, she was too nice to bring it up much, except to suggest that perhaps we didn’t need to keep quite so many canned goods on hand, and also to inform me that I was not going to be getting a shotgun anytime soon.

Now, in my maturity, I have a new fear: I’m afraid my teeth are going to fall out. I have those tooth crumbling dreams that everyone seems to have from time to time, especially when they’re under stress. But probably most significantly of all, I have bruxism, which is a fancy name for grinding my teeth. Bruxism can wear down your teeth, or crack them. Eventually, it can make you lose your teeth altogether.

So it’s not totally crazy to think my teeth will one day fall out of my damn head. My dentist made a note of where I’d lost bone along the gum line, although she thought it was more due to my skipping appointments when I didn’t have health insurance years ago. Whatever the reason, it’s a source of great concern for me, as you can imagine. I can do a lot with a few extra pounds, or an unfortunate haircut. But I think even I might have trouble pulling off toothless as a look. 

Jennie Smash: i know what you mean

Jennie Smash: what is it this time?

Horowitz: pushy fundraising phone call

Horowitz: the thing is I try and support Democrats, even in small amounts because I know how much money the GOP has

Horowitz: but the DNC is always so obnoxious about asking for money, it puts me off donating

Horowitz: like if you don’t give money right this second the Republicans will win and chain us all to the wall

Jennie Smash: oh my god, i know

Jennie Smash: they have my email addy

Jennie Smash: and i’m thinking about sueing them for stalking me

Jennie Smash: and their headlines are the worst

Horowitz: Exactly

Jennie Smash: they’re always like, ASS ON FIRE

Horowitz: yes, DOOMSDAY!!!!!!

Jennie Smash: PUPPY IN A BEAR TRAP

Horowitz: lol

Jennie Smash: MITT ROMNEY IS HAVING SEX WITH YOUR MOM RIGHT NOW

Jennie Smash: IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT

Horowitz: IF ONLY YOU HAD DONATED YESTERDAY WE COULD HAVE STOPPED IT

Jennie Smash:  ha ha ha

Jennie Smash:  OR AT LEAST GOTTEN HIM TO USE PROTECTION. NOW SHE HAS GOP HERPES. YOU SEE WHAT YOU DID?

This will sound strange to you, or even kind of mean, but since we have entered the new austerity, we try not to get loads of presents for each other, especially when it’s a holiday and everything is overpriced. So I wondered around the store, picking up heart-shaped candies and stuffed koala bears holding lollipops and I felt generally pretty grim about the whole deal.

Not buying anything was making me feel poorer, I realized. This is a magic trick that poverty performs upon your person. It’s happened to me before. The other big trick is that it makes you think that you’re going to be poor forever. That one usually dissipates after a few years. I hope it does this time, as well.

In the end, I bought Sgt Lucky a bottle of Monster Energy Drink, because he loves it and never buys it, and I bought us both some vitamin D, because I think we’re both depressed — either because of not getting enough sunlight, which the vitamins might fix, or because of not having enough money, in which case, they didn’t make a vitamin for that. If they did, that shit would be sold out all over Brooklyn.

When I got home, I handed Adam the Monster and vitamins and said, “Take two of these, with a meal.”

He popped them in his mouth and swallowed them immediately.

“Wow,” I said. “Usually, I have to fight you to get you to take any medicine at all. What’s up?”

“It’s like giving a dog a pill wrapped in a piece of cheese.” He held up the can. “The Monster is the cheese.” He paused. “Wait. Did you just treat me like a dog?”

Only kinda sorta. For one thing, he won’t do tricks at parties no matter how much you beg. I’ve tried.

Image: http://unobtainium13.com

Which leads me to an interesting experiment I’ve had in mind for awhile: Take Ambien, and then go about my end-of-the-day business. Then, when I wake up, fully rested, with the sun attempting to shine through our black-out drapes and a pigeon cooing away on the fire escape, I will sit up and try to remember what I did the night before. There are always many possibilities, for instance:

1) I once bought a pair of green-blue tunnel loafers from Marc Jacobs, in a size that isn’t even the same shape as my feet, while under the influence. I eventually gave them to a quite petite friend. Now I have a strict shoe uniform of Doc Martins in the winter and gold sandals in the summer. Takes care of all debates about shoes.

2) I have on more than one occasion watched a whole TV show or movie with Himself, only to forget about it. Watching those shows again makes me realize that deja vu is probably crap. I’m sure it’s just stuff we knew and weren’t paying attention to.

3) Barely related, but as I have a number of interesting parasomnias besides insomnia and Ambien-induced amnesia, I figure this counts: Once, at a sleepover in middle school, sat bolt upright in my sleeping bag and started loudly denouncing a girl at the party, until she cried and woke me up, whereupon I began loudly denouncing her for crying. Awake or asleep, I was a real bitch at 13. Sorry, planet earth and everyone on it.

And so there you go. This is my 1000th post, and it is all about Ambien. Feel free to use it as evidence at the hearing. I won’t remember.

Also, here’s how much the internet loves pills. I have a series of stock art to prove it:

This sexy mouth loves pills.

The Lucky Charms Leprechaun loves pills.

Robots love pills.

Your gramma loves pills so much, she keeps them in this coffee dish.

This guy is kind of sad about his pills.

But it's OK, because these pills love being pills.

On a scale of 1 to “it’s inoperable,” this is probably about a 6, in terms of things I do not want my doctor to say to me. And yet he did say that to me, while holding my lab in his hand, just two days ago.

“What does that mean?” I said. “Is that bad?”

“Well,” he harrumphed. “I mean, don’t worry about it. You’re not … you’re not going to turn into a pumpkin or anything.”

In fact, we both knew that my turning into a pumpkin was precisely what had caused this problem. I wasn’t being totally honest when I asked him what that meant. I know what that means. It means you’re pre-diabetic, which is not good news, especially if your dad is diabetic. And his grandmother was diabetic. And your uncle is diabetic. You get the picture. Basically, if you want to clear out a Hubley family reunion in a hurry, all you have to do is yell, “THAT COFFEE IS FULL OF REAL SUGAR!” and everyone will go running for their insulin or metformin or what-have-you.

Still, I gave stupid another go. “Hey,” I said. “Just as long as I’m not, you know, pre-diabetic or anything!”

Crickets.

So. Pre-diabetic then. Anything I can do?

He shrugged. “It’s not … you don’t need to worry right now. I mean, you’ll be fine … for the next year or two.”

I am 35 years old.

I should mention here that my doctor is the tops. He wasn’t bullshitting around with me because he didn’t want to have a hard conversation. In fact, I suspect that he was trying to be kind to me, because he knows how hard I’ve worked to keep my weight under 200 pounds since my thyroid crapped out a few years ago.

“OK, let’s say I lost 20 pounds,” I suggested. “Might that help.”

“Sure!” he said, as if he felt that was just as likely as my growing a unicorn horn and using it to catch hula hoops in front of the statue of Columbus outside his office.

So I went home. I waited to feel terrible, but actually, I felt sort of accepting. OK, pre-diabetes. Basically, I was thinking a simple flow-chart, the kind they made us do in fifth grade, once all our imaginary families had died of cholera in Oregon Trail. I loved flow-charts, and spent a lot of time thinking of ways to make my real life fit into them. It actually did help with decision making.

My flow-chart for pre-diabetes looked like this:

It seemed workable. I texted Sgt. Lucky and announced that I would be losing 20 pounds, due to a scary sounding condition he’d never heard of. Once the heart attack subsided, he was pretty calm about it.

I called my sister and she was super mad. “You have fruit and nuts for breakfast,” she said. “How can you be pre-diabetic?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It doesn’t seem fair. But that’s genes for ya.”

“Well, you’ll always be my little Diabeetus cat,” she said. “My little Wilford Brimley.”

This is truly, and I am not kidding, what family is for.

Later, I made it a Hubley hat trick and called my folks, who were much less concerned.

“I don’t believe in pre-diabetes,” Ma Smash, our nurse, said. “You’re diabetic or you’re not, and 103 fasting isn’t diabetic.”

“You probably have some glucose issues,” Pa Smash said. “Just about everyone who isn’t at the weight they want to be will have those, at one time or another. But I’d kill everyone in this neighborhood for sugars like that, and you’re doing everything right.”

Family, man. Who needs sugar when I have a whole team of sweeties? Love ‘em.

Image via Memestick.

Sgt Lucky and I were discussing this the other day. I mentioned that when I was a kid, I used to dress up like Maleficent.

“My dad brought us these old clothes and things, and we had a dress-up box,” I told him. “I used to run around with a velvet drape pulled up around my head like a cowl, being Maleficent.”

Sgt Lucky shook his head. “I don’t know why you worry about aging.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been training your whole life to become an old drag queen.”

Weirdly, that cheered me up. Cowls for everyone!

Image: Disneyvillians.net

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That’s it for right now. Oh, and if you’re so inclined, hit me on Twitter @jenniesmash. I’m actually trying to use it. Being a mogul is hard, and abbreviations are required.

You are terrible at the internet. Also, probably at life, but that’s just a guess. I’m sure about the internet thing, though.

Sincerely,

A person who could not find porn if it hit her in the face, and yet would know better than to look for it on this blog.