JON ZAL

Your front-row seat to my nervous breakdown

Archives for January 2009

A new beginning

Leave a Comment

Obama shirt
Old enough to remember when easily-taken selfies weren’t a thing.

I bought this shirt about a year ago, not long after President Obama (President Obama! Sweet Jumping Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, I love saying that!) won the Iowa Caucus. At the time, I still thought he was a bit of a long shot, but, after having started off the campaign season convinced that Hillary was my candidate, I suddenly found myself swept up in the excitement of Barack Obama’s candidacy. The man moved me — and still does. And, thankfully, he also moved a majority of the voting public last November.

Read the rest »

And the Academy Award for Best Parent in an Improv Performance While Operating an Automobile goes to …

8 Comments

Tuesday is my morning to chauffeur the lovely Miss Jayna to her nursery school, and doing so is always a bit of a crap shoot, because I never know which Jayna I’m going to get. Will it be the “Yay! School!” Jayna, or the “I DON’T WANNA GO TO SCHOOL! [weeping and crying and screaming]” Jayna?

This morning, it seemed to be the middle ground: she was neither psyched nor horrified by the prospect … and when your child is balancing between the realms of “Best Possible Outcome” and “Worst Possible Outcome,” ye must tread lightly and be on the lookout for potential landmines, for one wrong move and BOOM! And that explosion, brothers and sisters, will topple your little bundle of joy from the balance beam of ambiguity into a very clearly defined emotional realm, and you will wish you could put your fingers in your ears and curl up in a ball until The Screaming and The Crying have stopped.

And you definitely, definitely, de-fin-ite-ly do not want The Screaming and The Crying to take place as you attempt to part with your little bundle of joy during the preschool drop-off, because then you have yourself A Situation—or, worse yet, A Scene.

Read the rest »

Still headbanging after all these years

8 Comments

Welcome to the early aughts, children … when taking a selfie meant holding up a standalone camera in front of the mirror. I was seated atop my dinosaur at the time I snapped this one. -JZ, 2022

There are so many things wrong with this photo (not the least of which is the fact that I was standing in the bathroom at midnight taking a picture of myself in the mirror), or at least why this photo came to be, that I hardly know where to begin.

Read the rest »