Jersey Can be a State of Mind Too

It’s 11:00 at night on Christmas Eve and I’m downstairs in our basement all alone. I’ve told my husband I’m wrapping a few last minute gifts for the kids but really I’m sprawled out on top of the wrapping paper, positioned on my stomach, head resting on folded arms, legs kicking the sofa behind me, staring up at the television and oblivious to the world around me.

Why?

Three words.

The. Jersey. Shore.

That night I discovered exactly what a Snookie "Poof" was. That’s the night I saw The Situation for the very first time. That’s the night my world was changed for the better.

When I saw those eight orange twenty-somethings fist pumping around the boardwalk and treating the Garden State like their own personal Caligula, I snapped out of my eight month long funk devoid of emotion. I kid you not.

I thought to myself, Self, if this spectacle is out there, who knows what other awesomeness exists? And, Self, get up, wipe the chocolate santa stains off your festive sweats (they were red!) and explore all that you have been missing!

But instead of jumping up and seizing my new found excitement immediately, I thought it best to roll over on my side just far enough to grab another piece of candy and hunker down to watch myself a Jersey Shore marathon. It's always important to pace yourselves with life changing moments.

The next morning, Christmas day, after the presents were all opened, long after our company had arrived, I found myself trying to work The Jersey Shore kids into conversations with my family. Sadly, no one would join in (willingly). Actually, no one knew who the hell I was talking about. I kept shouting We’ve got ourselves a situation here! while making breakfast upstairs. My poor mom, hearing my squawking would run up two flights to see what I had set on fire. Eventually she became too tired to traipse up and down the stairs so she resigned to sit herself at my kitchen table and pretend to read the waffle iron manual with great interest so she didn’t have to engage me in any way when I went over, in great detail, my plot for a second reality show for Snookie titled Snookin' for Love.

Was it divine inspiration that led me to The Jersey Shore marathon? No. Was it a lack of current programming on the part of MTV? I think so. Whatever it was, it was kismet-ish enough for me to finally see it was time for me to stop throwing myself pity parties (which were all the rage in my head - with my house DJ and killer mini sausage hors d’oeuvres and all) and start concentrating on witty things to say to The Situation when I eventually see him at a mall opening ten years from now somewhere in upstate New York because we all know that’s where these kids are going to end up eventually.

So far, all I’ve come up with is, “It looks like this Situation has been downgraded to a Predicament.”

This post was thrown up here today as participation in the ever so lovely Sprite’s Keeper and her Spin Cycle. If you aren’t part of it, you should be.