I Promise To Never Try To Put You In A Microwave, and other life lessons.

Living with D and her mom has had some interesting effects in my life.  Namely, I drink much less and watch way more awful prime-time television.  In fact, I spent an hour of my life watching The Bachelorette (and basically breaking every promise I’ve ever made about never watching such shit TV), and yelling at the screen… or the moron gracing it.  Seriously, this show is an absolute disaster and their consistent use of grammar as some weird, shallow metaphor was enough to make me repeatedly slap myself in the forehead.  I may have brain damage.  Bad reality television gave me brain damage.  I always said that shit was dangerous.  PROOF!

Hi! I'm an IDIOT. I'm making women look less stable and more frivolous one hour segment at a time.

Anyway, in my own life, I like to think I am far wiser than this dentist-turned-reality-hooker-slash-romantic-retard woman… but we have no evidence of such superiority so I don’t really know.  I’m still whatevering with the Libra.  I say whatevering because I’m trying to be normal and patient and not scare him away I know better than to force some sort of weird name on it just so it makes more sense when I talk about him to my friends, who absolutely love the guy… which is a first.*

My girlfriends hate the guys I date.  And the guys I date never take much of an interest in them which normally is not only irritating but offensive… especially since I take such great pride in friends liking me.  I’m a nice girl, I will buy you a drink and chat you up about your weird job or ugly shoes.  It’s part of the role.  But the guys I date just tell me my friends are “scary” or “party too hard.”  The Libra has been a long time favorite with them- a fact that make him all the more appealing.

There’s a theory about this, one that I heard recently and completely buy into… It says that your friends’ opinions of a significant other are more important generally than your family’s.  This is due to the sheer fact that you choose your friends as some sort of reflection of yourself and your beliefs.  Your family, God bless ’em, you just sort of got put with.  What my family would think of him, who knows.  That’s a bridge I’ll cross when (if) I get there, but my friends being such big fans is reassuring… Given my history of “I think this might be a bad choice but I’ll test it out and figure it out the hard way,” my friends remind me that I’m making a smart (ish?) decision here.  I’m not blindly throwing myself into the wind, I’m not trying to force life or change someone.  I’m accepting it, rolling with it, crossing my fingers with the confidence that I know what I want and for the most part- who he is. 

I’m growing up.  Impressed?  You should be.

In unrelated news, a woman in Sacramento MICROWAVED HER BABY GIRL.  Like she was popcorn.  The baby, obviously, died.  The simple existence of such fucking crazies makes me question my desire to reproduce.  Hell, even marry.  You never fucking know.  Like, did that baby’s daddy recognize that homegirl was literally out of her tree?  She cooked a child.  And then lied.  And then the cops found the pacifier in the microwave and questioned her and she spewed some bullshit about being a schizo.

The world is scary place.  It’s a good thing I’ve got good friends.

*Disclaimer: The Libra knows about this blog.  Whether or not he dislikes himself enough to spend time reading it, I don’t know… But it’s one of those “welcome to my crazy brain” situations.  We’re trying to tone down the crazy*

What’s Your Zodiac Sign? (Always Reminds Me of that Rap Song)…

Almost a year ago I went to go see Camille the fortune teller.  Over a year ago, I cursed Camille for being an idiot and taking my money and sort of creeping me out.  I may (emphasis on MAY) owe that weird clarvoyant an apology.

She babbled on about a lot of things, most interestingly, about D getting pregnant.  But she said I’d have a boyfriend… and I really wanted one at the time, I wanted to fall into something new and see where it would take me.  What I didn’t count on happening was the opportunity to actually have that, and when it presented itself, I freaked out and hid in the corner from it.

I’m not saying she was right… I’m saying that maybe she just had a really awful sense of timing.  Literally hours after I left her creepy voodoo room, I hung out with a guy I liked.  I followed up liking him with acting like a weirdo, and then we went our separate ways.  Remember him? The Libra?  I think he’s… back?  Well, he isn’t really back on his own terms, I sort of drug him kicking and screaming but evidently I’m rather convincing when I’m bitchy.  But we aren’t ruling him out.

Homeboy is getting out of a relationship.  I think he thinks I’m a complete wackjob.  I know he thinks I’m bizarre and mean.  And… I think he likes me?  I don’t know.  I’m confused.  But I’m interested in him because I have awful timing and I can’t do anything unless it’s good and difficult. 

We spent the weekend together- and it was good to see him have fun and interact with my friends.  I forgot how much dating was like a series of increasingly intense interviews.  Or maybe I never dated someone who I found intimidating on some level or another.  But if we are predicating this on any of my other relationships- I would be smart to disregard everything I know.  It’s nice though, and I’m enjoying it while trying to seem relatively normal (which, let’s be frank, easier said than done).

It’s been three weeks since we’ve kind of been talking and doing that, I-think-we-should-hang-out-but-I’m-too-sober-to-be-upfront-about-it thing and it’s going well so I just kind of roll with it.  (By roll with it I mean try my damnedest not to be anal-retentive and keep everything under my control).  I clearly need help.  So what do you do when you have a problem?  Google it!

This is what MSN tells you to do if you like someone (I am NOT making this up):

1. Be touchy but not too touchy.  Touch his arm lightly and briefly, but never go below the belt (although she OKs playing footsie). And yeah, I know some of you are squeamish about contact, but it’s so effective!     What does that even mean?!  I don’t like to be touched when I’m sober and if I’m drinking I want to be taken everywhere via a piggy back ride.  They should be more specific.
2. Let him to do the bend and snap. If you make eye contact with a cute guy in Starbucks and you need an excuse to talk, drop a pen on the way to the bathroom. In the olden days, women dropped hankies.    I’m confused.  Again.  Is this a Legally Blonde reference?
3. Pump him up.  Compliment him, let him talk, make him feel like he’s calling the shots, and laugh at his jokes.      But… what if the jokes aren’t that funny?
4. Keep a full schedule. You’ll be more interesting if you’re busy with different activities. Also, you won’t be totally available for him. Ladies, we could stand to be a little more elusive and mysterious.  Tell him I’m busy when I’m really just watching Friends reruns and drinking wine by myself. 
5. Get a signature scent. The sense of smell aids in sexual attraction. Whatever perfume you wear, he’ll associate it with you! Bonus: if your perfume rubs off on his pillow or towel, it will further remind him of you.    Is this creepy to anyone else?  Don’t cats pee on stuff with the same territory-claiming intentions?

This list was ridiculous, and I genuinely hope women out there aren’t following this kind of misguided wisdom in their own lives, although I’m sure there are some stupid enough to try.  Oh well.  I’ll keep you all posted on any big happenings, like if I start my period in his bed again… (yeah, I blogged about that last year.  That was really special).

Sorry if you read this whole thing.  I’m very tired, but I needed to post something- anything, and now we have a jumping off point for whatever the future holds.  Welcome back, Libra!

 

Tuesday Evening Musings From Your Favorite Dear Abby Wannabe.

In re-reading a lot of my posts, I tend to write heavily about first dates.  Not so much second ones, or third ones, or gulp, break ups.  And as I’m sure everyone will agree- that’s mostly because break ups SUCK.  Like, suck hard.  Perhaps I’m fortunate because I only had one really awful break up that made me a complete bucket of crazy… but I survived it.  I came through the other end with only a slightly alarming drinking problem. 

But- because I’m a good person and I have not much else to write about, I’m going to go ahead and tell you how I was able to move on.  Because that shit is hard.  And sometimes you need a tore-up 23 year old girl with a laptop to tell you how life works.  It’s cool.

1.  Get you some friends.  Good ones.  The last thing a broken hearted, melodramatic girl needs are girls who give shitty advice or just judge you as you cry into your bottle glass of wine.  Recruit the girls who bring you more bottles of wine to be your support system, not the judgy ones.

2. Leave it be.  Just don’t.  I know, you think you have something really important to say… If only you had told him that one thought you had!  He would totally still be in love with you!  …Only, he wouldn’t.  So when you want to pick up the phone/email/blog/twitter (technology is not your friend), punch yourself or something.  Or go back to the bottle of wine.  But do NOT make contact.  Just keep reminding yourself: out of sight, out of mind. Then repeat.

3. On the opposite end of #2, don’t let him jerk you around.  They don’t do that because they are having genuine second thoughts, they do that because they are genuinely terrified of being alone.  I’m sure you’re lovely, but if he wanted you, he’d be with you.

4.  Watch He’s Just Not That Into You and cry for a little while.

5. Cry some more.  I don’t really get (or like) the girls who say, “I just got over him.  I turned off my emotions and I’m over it.” No you’re not you freak of nature! You’re dying on the inside.  Stop pretending like your heart works better than mine.  At the risk of suppressing all those emotions and having them burst out at the worst possible moment and embarrassing the bananas out of you- feel what you have to feel.  Embrace the emotion, accept it, let it go. 

6. Don’t get fat.  Tempting, I know.  But that “Nobody will ever love me again and I’m awful and oh my god I’m just going to wear these pajamas until I die of loneliness” is not a good plan.  Again, call your friend and drink.

7.  But don’t drink too much!  This will make you fat.  And maybe make you cry… okay, it’s totally gonna make you cry and your beer belly will be laughing at you and you’ll just want to die all over again.  So balance the booze with something that makes you feel good about yourself.

8.  People LOVE that saying “The best way to get over someone is to get under someone new.”  That might work.  But I think it just makes you extra crazy, and a whole lotta desperate and maybe an HIV patient.  Triple threat, and I promise, you will only be distracted but not for very long.

9. Keep going… Just keep doing what you do.  Don’t let a break up tell you anything about yourself except that you are ONE step closer to finding the right guy.  So that’s exciting, in a bitter sweet way.

10.  Have faith that you will, one day, be able to see him from across a patio and say to yourself, “oh, there’s  the guy who broke my heart so many months ago.”  And then that thought will be swiftly followed by, “Wait… am I… okay?”

And you will be.