Is it considered failure?

I was telling a story to a friend today and had it pointed out that my dating habits are much like her shopping habits which I found highly entertaining and quite close to the mark. Let me explain. Two weeks ago a different friend sent me an email with one of those "friends and family" discounts to an upcoming cultural event. Basically I could get $50 tickets for half price. I often think that I should make some attempt at least every two weeks to push my boundaries so I went ahead and bought two tickets, thinking that maybe in between then and now (the show is tonight) I could use it as the incentive to find a date.

And in fact I actually met someone in that time span that I thought might be nice to go on a date with. However, when the opportunity presented itself, for a depressingly shorter time span than I was hoping, on Tuesday I froze. I mean I didn't freeze all the way, there was some lame attempt at conversation, but in the end I was left with no invitation extended (or even mentioned!) and two empty seats in my pocket.

Which all brings me to today's conversation - my friend's shopping habits. She equated my life to when you buy that pair of pants just a hair too small, convinced you'll lose the weight and they will fit and be fantastic! and then they sit in the corner for months, or years at a time, till finally you toss them in the give away pile. Which makes me wonder, when do personally bought incentives work? Is it just me (and the people I associate with) who fail to utilize these promises to ourselves to push ahead? If someone else had bought the tickets and said I could take anyone I wanted would I have been more forceful or thoughtful in my hunt for a date? Is it the price of the incentive? Is $50 too low? And in the end, is the experience considered a failure?

For today those questions will remain unanswered. I am lucky in my life that I have a friend at work that said she would go with on my last minute invite this morning so the ticket is not going to waste. And I know I will probably try again. In fact, there is a roller derby show coming up (I've never been, and really kind of want to go!) that I might buy a group of seats for if they are cheap enough and just figure out the invites later. Hopefully next time I will follow my own ideas through.

3 percent taken care of

He's gone. Not a surprise I guess, but still somewhat of a shock. A few days ago I filled the world (and by world I mean my half a dozen or so readers out there) in on this unfolding story. And today when I logged into the Good Reads account he was gone. My tiny little friend list had dwindled down to one less. The message I sent deleted from my outbox. Like it never even happened. If I hadn't blogged it, I might even believe that it didn't exist. And now I sit here and I can feel that damned 3 percent from before swell within me. It expands to fill me from top to bottom, it's leaking out my fingertips as I type. Why? Why do I care, what did I do, why can I know not stop thinking about it? Where does this feeling like I am 13 years old and just got laughed at as I stand in the corner of the spring dance come from god damn it?

Well at least now my friends that I know were worried that the 3 percent from before would overrule any good sense I had can be assured that I will make no mistakes down that road anymore. I think I'm going to go smoke now.

Lousy 3 percent

A few months ago, I think April to be exact, I met a guy. I had heard about this guy from a mutual friend who thought we would hit it off and she really wanted to hook us up. Catch was, he was just getting out of a long term relationship and it was an ugly break up. I briefly interacted with him at a party that our mutual friend was hosting and quickly made clear to all my friends that I was not interested. While he did show up with gin, and was not horribly unattractive, the guy was just in too dark a place for me to even begin to get involved in. Plus, there were a few extra complications that just made the whole situation icky.

Fast forward to about a month later. Early May and we run into each other again at earlier mentioned mutual friends A Capella concert. Apparently by that time all my misgivings had dissipated because I began to eyeball the guy as a possibility. Play the night on high speed and by the end I had made my move. A brief make out session on a street corner, a quick invite with the rules laid out (I wouldn't sleep with him), and we were soon in a cab on the way to my apartment.

What followed was what I could only presume to be a good time had by all. We left with no exchange of info and had an awkward/slightly cute exchange between mutual friend to set up plans again. Within the week we hung out again, again at my place, and again he spent the night (same rules as night #1 - I do have some standards).

The rest is pretty simple and slightly painful so I am making the executive decision not to go into gory details. Basically after date #2 - nothing. A few feeble attempts at email exchange and then bam! off the grid he went. It took me awhile to get him off my mind, wondering what I did wrong, what move I should or should not have made, but eventually he dissipated from my thoughts.

And then out of nowhere he pops up again. But not in any kind of actual form of communication, oh no that would be way, way to simple. No, I randomly got a friend request a few weeks ago through a book site I am a part of called Good Reads. No message, no warning, just a "Hey, So-and-so wants to be your friend!" standard message. Being the fool I am I thought, what the hell, I'll accept it, maybe I can get some good book recommendations off the kid. Turns out, he doesn't even have any freaking books listed. WTF?

So we have sat in this stasis for a few weeks, where I have no idea what the hell he wants or if he even realizes who I am that he has invited to be friends with. Turning 28 this weekend kicked my ass into gear apparently because I decided this was 7th grade BS and I sent him a quick and basic message asking if he had a particular reason for friending me, or was it one of those add all your friends from your email address book kind of things.

And now I wait. I wait to see if he replies. I wait to see if he has anything to say for himself. And as I wait, I find myself in the most unsettling of situations. 97% of me is pretty ticked off. I finally got this guy off my internal radar, and wham he jumps back on with no explanation at all. 97% of me is filled with a fuck you attitude that says unless you've been trapped in a damn coal mine for 3 months I've got nothing to say to you. 97% of me knows I am better than this, knows I kick ass and take names, and has no time for folks with no decency to have a conversation with someone if they aren't interested, but instead just leaves them hanging. But 3% of me, the 3% that lives somewhere down in my big toe, the part that is crushed into my high heeled, muscle cramp causing shoes for work, 3 fucking percent of me knows that if he emailed and said sorry, want to get coffee? I would say "okay". 3 bloody percent.

Oops, I did it again

I wonder somedays at what point in ones life do they begin to learn from their mistakes? I thought by now there would be certain things that I would of simply picked up on, figured out not to do again, and again, and again...Perfect example, tequila. Really never a good idea at 2 AM but have I figured this out yet? Nope. Maybe once I crest the golden age of 30 that lesson will stick past 1:30 AM. Another life lesson that I seem to be groundhog daying? Men. There are certain habits, which I will not go into on this page for personal embarrassment reasons, that I continue to repeat over and over with nothing ever learned. To be honest, it's starting to get a bit old. Now, if I manage to learn the tequila lesson, then maybe these other bad habits will fade away, but until then I am doomed to continue repeating the same dumb mating/dating moves apparently regardless of geographic location. Next time. Next time I will figure this out.

On to happier news, though still on the "I will never learn" front. I managed to find myself another book fair this past weekend. The Newberry library has an annual sale that I found myself immersed in Saturday morning. $18.50 and 19 books later I was on my way home. And by the way, 20 books (I had one in my bag to begin with) is no light affair. I have now run out of room in the existing set up of my library with this purchase so am trying to find a way to rearrange the over 350 books that live with me. Which means that the floor of my living room is covered in piles and stacks of books. I'm hoping by Friday to have them reshelved...we'll have to wait and see on that one.

Milk and why I now will buy only soy products

I don't usually keep milk in my house, but because I recently had a weekend guest and my ability to produce food at any given interval is decidedly lacking, I choose to cover up this fact with the option of cereal (which we also had to buy when she got here because apparently my personal choice of cheerios which I keep on hand to munch dry right out of the box on Saturday mornings was too much like "sawdust" for her - yeah I sent her home with her own half eaten box of lucky charms).

There are multiple reasons my fridge is usually sans milk. The top three are I never drink it fast enough so it always ends up spoiling, I'm not completely lactose intolerant but I get a little queasy when too many dairy products start entering my eating cycles and I choose to save that small section of my food choices for ice cream and sharp cheddar cheese, and finally that weird ass crust that forms around the edge of the milk jug. I have always bought my milk in plastic containers. Gallon, half gallon, or that weird two serving size at the gas station, it is always a plastic bottle. I have seen milk in bags back home but maybe that was just a Wisconsin thing because my local store here doesn't have them. Maybe if I didn't drink directly from the container this weird crust process wouldn't happen. But lets face it when you live alone, with no dishwasher save your own two hands, breaking the habit of swigging any product straight from the fridge is mighty hard to break.

The reason this crusty, hardened milk substance is so disturbing to me is two fold. One, it's creepy to drink any liquid and have unsuspecting solids touch any part of your mouth. I have an overall issue with food substance (which is why I never eat Jello regardless of the amount of liquor it may or may not hold) which may be why this one is so icky to my. The second one I figured out today. I came home and slugged down the remainder of this weekend's milk before it got out of date and as I proceeded to lean over the garbage and brush the milk flakes off my lips I watched them fall to the top of my garbage (which was admittedly close to me since it's about time to empty it). As I looked at them I thought "Wow, that substance looks familiar". And this is when it dawned on me. What they looked like was my sheets right before I washed them after a weekend in with a boyfriend. Do I really need to spell this one out? I am trying to keep this relatively family friendly here folks. What I will say is that I'm pretty sure every person who might read this is familiar with that wonderful white spot hidden under the duvet cover.

The really disturbing part was the realization that two years of basically single in the city, with a few random exceptions, meant the closest I was coming (mind out of the gutter people!) to the "wonderful white spot" was crusty milk flakes in my fridge. From now on it's soy products all the way.

All's Well on the Western Front...

...and that's all I'm saying on the matter till more develops.

Not really an update....more like a statement

I understand that making any follow up commentary now to yesterday's blog post is kind of like trying to call the Democratic primary - it's just too damn early. None the less, I have this thought running through my head so I'm putting it down here so I can come back and look at it as proof.

As of yet, no word/reply to my outing email that was sent yesterday, but I have still come to this conclusion. No matter what happens I'm glad I did it. I'm in my 20's and this is the time to do these foolish things, because otherwise I will have nothing to laugh about in my 30's...and that's getting just a little too close for comfort. And I will go back into the store even if nothing comes of this exchange because books will always be more important than boys.

So thanks for all the random support and I promise to keep you updated if anything develops and if nothing else this nerve wracking waiting period gives me a chance to rediscover my love of indie girl rock bands* :)

* For those unfamiliar with the indie girl rock band category it includes (but is never limited to) Ani DiFranco, Dar Williams, Feist, Regina Spektor, Indigo Girls....you get the idea.

One in a ...?

I would love it if someone better at math than me (and don't get me wrong, I'm not too shabby when it comes to the numbers, I just don't have the time to lay this one out) could figure out the odds of this conundrum. In a city of 3 million, what are the odds that a Missed Connection posted on the website Craigslist will be found by the actual intended recipient? Because depending on the results of that math, I just may need to take my ass into a casino and roll with it.

Here's how the story goes....there's this boy (isn't there always?) who has caught my eye on a few occasions and I was interested in knowing more about him. Catch is he works in one of my favorite hang out/relax and unwind places so it made it slightly awkward to approach him as the situation is undoubtedly me=customer, him=working....and who really wants to get hit on while at work? So I decided on some high tech recon by way of the glorious internet. I mean really, what can you not do these days by way of the good old WWW? It's almost as if the internet's main goal was to elevate stalking to a higher grass-stain free plane of existence... but I digress.

So, clever as I thought I was, I posted myself a pretty much 90 percent false missed connection on Craigslist. I find it not even remotely possible that there are readers out there unfamiliar with at least the concept of Craigslist, but if there are check it out here and prepare to have the rest of your day sucked away down the rabbit hole.

The whole idea was to try and flush out information about the kid, so I pretended that I had just recently stopped in the store for the first time and saw him and that said store was not really in my neighborhood. Truth - I'm in there all the damn time, I have been checking him out for awhile now, and it's completely and totally in my hood.

So the hours pass and I actually get a reply from a supportive neighbor who suggests "if hes single you should totally go for it, i live in the area and ive seen him a few times and thought he was totally cute!" (all punctuation and spelling complete from original sender). Not quite what I was looking for, but hey it's good to know strangers got my back.

Then it happens. The email comes in to my inbox like a stealth bomber and knocks me completely for a loop. I get a reply, with all the information I could of ever wanted. I get a reply from him. Complete with last name so now he is Google-able (which may not be a word quite yet, but ya'll know exactly what I mean).

And now I am stuck between a rock and a really embarrassing place. If/when I reply I have to now fess up that the original missed connection was pretty much a recon mission and that in reality he knows perfectly well who I am. As soon as he sees my name on the email he will probably figure it out.

So as I formulate my eventual reply, and I will reply because now I have to see what will happen, I just need someone to do the math for me on the odds of this whole damn thing happening, because if I need to rearrange my schedule to get to an East Chicago riverboat....

Ah, to be 19 again

I managed to completely regress and act like a 19 year old this weekend. It was not a planned trip back to 1999, and I didn't dress appropriately for travel, but I ended up there none the less. Friday night I drank more than I should have and finally confronted a nagging question I had regarding a possible romantic interest. While I did learn that the door was shut, and it was shut in a nice and non accusatory way, I still feel silly for not realizing the door wasn't open earlier, and I have made further shopping excursions for my favorite addiction potentially embarrassing.

Then on Saturday I decided that one night of drunken revelry was not enough and got even more intoxicated at a bowling alley during a double birthday celebration....and really what else is there to do at a bowling alley? After having a ridiculously too fun time bowling in my sneakers with a group of people I barely know (being surrounded by folks you don't have a high potential for running into again breaks down and often obliterates the ability to think rationally about ones actions....that and 4 glasses of gin helps) I found myself in the delightfully risque position of pressed up against the outside wall under the lips of the little brother of one of the actual honorees of the party (lucky for me it was not the little brother of the honoree who I know and consider a friend, that would of been entirely inappropriate). A whirlwind of encounters happened in which everyone left, I lost the boy (whose name, much to my friends delight, completely escapes me) and then wandered home in a gin soaked haze. I did manage to only walk down one wrong alley before I found my apartment (hey I just moved, give me a break!) and slipped into a dreamless slumber.

So here it is Monday morning. I have seen some of the birthday pictures, and feel pretty justified in saying that they should never, ever be posted anywhere and I need to invest in t-shirts that fit. I checked in with the friend, who assures me that she is not mad at me, and thinks the whole situation is actually quite funny and is enjoying laughing at me as I wander by hoping she will tell me the name of my Saturday night suitor (which so far she has not!). Apparently I had some lingering youth issues that I needed to exorcise this weekend, hopefully that has taken care of it and I can go back to floating through life somewhere in my late 20's where I belong.

Boston

Hello again my random readers. Sorry for the absence, I went out of town for the long holiday weekend - actually extended it by a day on each end so it was especially long for me. There is a bunch of news going on in the world around me, but this is mostly a personal update post, it's just too nice outside to dwell on the bottom feeding politicians out there today.

Around Labor Day each year I start to get antsy. Something about the end of summer, school starting, and my recently passed birthday makes me want to leave wherever I am and go explore. Last year I went to DC and had a marvelous time hanging out with my brother (and met a marvelous man, but that is a post for another day). This year I decided to mix it up a bit and do a traveling vacation.

I flew into DC late Thursday night and hung out with my brother all that night and Friday. It was actually nice to see him, his girlfriend (who I like) had to work all weekend so it was just the two of us, which it hasn't been since he started seeing her. Saturday I jumped on an Amtrak train and headed up to Boston to spend the rest of my weekend in bean town. I flew home out of Boston on Tuesday afternoon.

I took the trip for all the usual reasons one takes a trip. But I also took it for another reason, one that for cathartic reasons I will share here. From previous posts you know that my birthday just passed. When it did I took a long look in the mirror and thought about a lot of things regarding my life and the path that I seem to be on. Don't worry, it wasn't one of those melodramatic, poor me, will I always be alone, where is my life going kind of looks. But I did need to get realistic about some decisions that I have made.

I don't want kids. I never have, and I doubt I ever will. My own mother thinks I shouldn't have kids. It drives me crazy when people say that I just need more time, or I will change my mind when I meet the right guy, or when they presume I am a lesbian! I'm okay with the fact that I don't want kids. I understand that it is not the usual life path for most women but that it does not make me less of a woman for choosing it. But I also understand that by choosing this path I restrict my options for future partners. I have purposely chosen to fish in a much smaller pond, and this was something that turning 27 made me face head on. I am not in a relationship, serious or any other kind, and I needed to know if I could do this for the unforeseeable future. While those around me settled into routines, partnerships, houses, and kid care would I be able to walk with my head high through it all?

So I went to Boston. By myself, with no plan, no partner, no friends. I went to see if I could vacation alone and enjoy myself. Because I can face the possibility of being alone but I could not face being alone and not able to travel.

Well, it turns out I had a good time on my trip. It got lonely at times, and it sucks not being able to leave my purse at a table when I use the restroom at a restaurant, but overall I think I did really well. Next time I head to Massachusetts (and I will, because there is so much more to explore) I might plan a bit more. Create a list or two of things I would like to do. But now I know plan or no plan, I can do it and I will do it for as long as life takes me.

I faced my fears and I won which might have been the best birthday present ever. Oh, and the pic is from the Public Gardens, it's the Make Way for Ducklings statues - even though I don't want kids, doesn't mean I can't enjoy their part in this world!