My perpetual fight with the mayonnaise jar or How it may have won the battle but not yet the war.

I'm quite possibly the only person in history to get in an actual fight with a jar of anything and lose, but that's later.

First I want to address my remonstrance with the mayonnaise jar:

Why is it whenever I want a turkey sandwich I can never get the damn jar of mayonnaise open? I'm beginning to think it really is a message from the Lord warning me against eventual arterial clogs. And reminding me of my limited caloric intake. I'm serious! I can never it get it open!

I've begun to formulate a series of postulations about how the temperature change between my fridge and the outside air is causing a negative pressure differential. This would in turn create a vacuum in the mayonnaise jar. I've seriously looked it up, but not in a book or anything. On wikipedia. The part about the air pressure differential and temperature, not the mayonnaise jar part.

I've also wondered if maybe I have a rare degenerative muscle disease that prevents me from opening it. Pondering this reminded me to take my vitamins.

Now for a short story of how the mayonnaise jar won our fight:

Imagine an evening in which your humble narrator and protagonist has had a bad day. Go ahead...I'll wait. Not a horrible day, I survived and all, just a bad day.

Okay, now that you're finished I won't bore you with the details of the day because in reality I had probably over-reacted. So bad day turns into bad evening. I'm sure traffic was stupid on I-40 and I'm also confident I had to be somewhere that I was already late for. All I really want is a God-Blessed turkey sandwich. With mayo. Not unreasonable.

My first mistake was in assuming my foe wasn't formidable. I was lulled by the availability of resources. I had bread, turkey, even fake cheese. I had clean utensils. Hell, I even had papertowels. I was already crafting my victory speech. I was already tasting the sweetness of the turkey and mayo combined with the white bread.

Oh no! The mayo won't open. I try again. And again and again and again ad nauseum. I whack on the lid with a knife. I beat the lid against the counter. I grab a dishtowel to get some grip. It's not opening. My mother calls and catches an undeserved wrath by suggesting that I run the lid under hot water. (It didn't work by the way.) I should have admitted defeat. I should have had something different. But I'm not one to shy away from danger. I'm not a chump. I'm not a wuss. I can out-think the jar of mayonnaise because I am smarter than it. And I have been blessed with the gift of opposable thumbs. These thumbs separated my species from our lowly common ape-like ancestors and brought us off the harsh ground niche into the canopy where we feasted like kings on the ripe fruits and berries available there. Had I been around I would have scoffed at those still lumbering on the ground waiting for the offal and cast-offs of my petit-dejuener. I can get the mayonnaise jar open. I merely have to be smarter.

Plastic is a wonderful thing. It has certainly been a useful invention derived from our limited fossil fuels But, it does break. If you slam a mayonnaise jar against the floor hard enough not only does the lid break but the actual dense plastic jar does too.

And what I hadn't looked up on the wikipedia beforehand was the physics of momentum. This being that whenever an object collides with another non-movable stationary object the contents of the first object escape at the velocity with which they were impacted against the non-movable object.

You would be amazed at how fast you can hurl a mayonnaise jar.

You would also be amazed at how well mustard compliments turkey.

I am most definitely a stress eater.

I've had a trying evening.

Very trying.

I went to spin class and damn near died. Mostly because I think I overdid it at spin class last night. And then...

Did I say and then?

And then my lock won't unlock so my $300 pocketbook is held captive in my locker and I can hear my phone ringing and ringing and my blood pressure starts to rise and to rise and I'm all sweaty and exasperated and my legs are burning because I overdid it last night at spin class

Did I mention that part about overdoing it last night already?

and my freaking lock won't open. At all.

This is at which point the girls from spin class decide to help. This girl

Did I mention she was a girl? She couldn't have been more than 18.

completely ignores the fact that I graduated from Wake Forest and are not stupid which was completely obvious because I'm wearing my grungy Wake Forest shirt, tries to open my lock. WHICH MAGICALLY DOESN'T OPEN!

Seriously. I almost punched her in the face. I wanted to rip her arm off her body and beat her bleeding torso with it.

Her next piece of advice is priceless:

"I guess you could cut it off."

Well since it's not coming off any other way I'm going to agree with your brilliant and accurate assessment of the current situation.

"Yeah, I guess I'm going to have to."

"Do you want me to get someone to come down here when I go upstairs to leave?"

Yes, not only am I such an idiot I cannot open my lock; I am also so stupid that I cannot function in public. You're lucky I haven't asked you to accompany me to bathroom to wipe my ass.

"No, I'll do it."

So I meander upstairs which is painful because my quads are still burning because I overdid it last night and for some reason stuck through the whole 45 grueling minutes of spin class tonight and ask the guy at the front desk for the bolt cutters which was way more difficult than it had to be because when I asked for the bolt cutters he said:

"Oh, Do you need to cut your lock off?"

No, there is this really annoying girl downstairs that I want to beat with them, but she's probably already left by now so I'll beat you by proxy.

"Yes."

So bolt cutters in hand I go back down stairs to the locker room. I must say at this point I imagine that I make a pretty menacing figure with my sweat stained shirt and my honking legs and my crazy hair and my highly exasperated face tromping down the stairs with a pair of very large bolt cutters in my hand. I think this image was truly the only thing that saved me. Long story short, this very nice man whose name I've already forgotten because I'm not only ungrateful but apathetic as well, managed to get my lock off. I must say once I had my expensive pocketbook in my hands my mood improved significantly. I returned the bolt cutters to the cute gym guy I've had a crush on since day one who was mildly impressed with my ability to cut my lock off.

I neglected to inform him that it wasn't I who did it. I was having some self esteem issues and needed the pick-me-up.

So I proceed to my mothers to watch our Thursday night tv shows and I am ravenous! But does she have anything to eat? NO. Why would she? I thought it was a rule in the South that if you have children you're required to keep food for them. So for dinner I had 10 olives, which are probably closer to my calorie plan anyways.

I'm still not happy about it though.

So I've spent the last 20 minutes trying to ignore the oncoming indigestion because now that I'm freaking old olives OBVIOUSLY give me indigestion. How fun.

I'm still hungry.

I am most definitely a stress eater.

You smell like you'd like to be alone.

This endearing tidbit came from a guest last night at the shelter. The conversation had turned to the warm weather and then progressed quickly downward into a diatribe about the necessities of bathing. It not only made me laugh for a solid minute and a half but also got me thinking about those odorous chemical cues.

Our sense of smell is our oldest sense. It's how we interact with our environment chemically. (We do to a certain extent with taste but you smell most of what you perceive as taste anyway.) I think it's fun to imagine a bunch of single celled amoeba like critters swimming in the primordial ooze sensing their environment through chemical signals.

Hey there. Yeah you, across the ooze. How you doin?

Are you going to ingest that proteinaceous goo to your left?

I am a molecular biologist after all.

A quick google search for pheromones lead me to the HHMI (Howard Hughes Medical Institute) website here: Sniffing Out Social and Sexual Signals. It speaks of an even older structure: vomeronasal organs (VNOs) where these chemical signals are first received. The article goes on to discuss various evidence for the presence of these organs in humans.

The third entry in the article is all about pheromones. We know pheromones exist in bugs (because they're generally more effective at life than we are anyways) but their prevalence in human biology has not been so clearly elucidated.

They do this interesting experiment with hamsters where a single male hamster is anesthetized in a cage and they introduce another male hamster. Nothing of interest happens. Re-cue anesthetized hamster. Add vaginal secretions from a hip female hamster and things start to get zany. Cue second male hamster again and now mating occurs (along with all those uncomfortable chats with the hamster parents about 'labels' and 'experimentation.') This leads researchers to believe that the non-anesthetized male hamster must smell something that leads him to believe that the anesthetized hamster is receptive for mating.

Isn't this what happens at Burke St Pub every Friday night? Right about the time when "Pour Some Sugar On Me" gets played for the 9 millionth time? I personally think that a serious amount of research dollars should be invested in figuring out why tequila induces production of said pheromones.

So I guess my real question here is this: Can you really project your current stasis outward in your chemical cues? Can you really smell like you want be alone?

Or what about other emotions? Can you smell happy? Sad? Angry? Bitter? It would be interesting to see the correlation between the "mob mentality" and the chemical cues there.

Think about that the next time someone says "You smell funny."

Don't mind me. I'm...Well you get the picture.

Hello there Virtual Friends (proper nouns, you are).

And to think about it I'm sure the majority all of you are my actual friends; which means I should love you more than I would if you were only virtual. And I do for the most part. But if you were only virtual then wouldn't it be a waste? Isn't loving you then like getting attached to your favorite character in a TV show? Doesn't it just become awkward then?

I still support my original supposition that my marriage to Johnny Depp is completely valid. Just because he hasn't called me yet is not indicative of our deep and lasting emotional connection. That bitch with the gap teeth keeps getting in my way.

I'll be using this forum as a place to vent, whine and bitch mostly. Let's face it; no one hears about it when you're happy. But I'll try and keep it light.

But seriously, I think it's total crap that the only time I see my beloved is when he's got orange hair and his eyebrows are out-of-control. Not to mention the amount of alone time you get when you're with with 42 of your non-closest friends and only 1 of your closest friends is non-existent.

Don't get me wrong, I love RR to death but I'm sure even he draws the line somewhere when it comes to witnessing alone time. Especially when the only time a girl gets it is with a 40 ft screen. In public.

I guess the pertinent information that should be perfunctorily shared is as follows:

I'm currently 27 years of age.

Although I'm currently unwed I'm okay with it.
Some days.

I'm gainfully employed and enjoy my job.
Some days.

I enjoy activities partaken in the sunshine.
Especially with cocktails.

Seriously, You can't go wrong with a good cocktail.

Anywho, I seriously do hope that you enjoy this blog. I think it really does help to take some time for brevity and the like. Check back regularly. You've met me. I've got plenty to say.