Monday, October 15, 2007

A Decision Made

The other day, I had begun to brown some ground turkey in preparation for my lunch of (fake) beef stroganoff, when I heard a cat meowing. My downstairs neighbors' cat sometimes comes up the back common stairs to visit, so I opened the door to see if she was out there, when out ran Andy the Giant CatDog. I don't allow my cats outside, so I ran downstairs and luckily the outside door had not been left open (despite the fact that to my chagrin, it so often is) so he was trapped. I picked him up and went back upstairs.

To my locked apartment door. I did not have the key. I did not have my cell phone. I was not wearing shoes, makeup, or a bra. My hair wasn't brushed. I shoved Andy out onto the confined 2nd floor porch and walked around to the front of the house and rang the neighbors' doorbells. No one was home. Of course. I walked next door. No one there. Beyond that, I don't much know many of my neighbors, so I considered: To ring the doorbell of the gay couple kitty-corner to me? One of them is a realtor, but I think the other guy is home most of the day. The new people across the street, or the Jehova's Witnesses? I didn't want my first impression on the new people to be my current state of appearance, so I went with the Witnesses, despite the fact that I may have to engage in a theological discussion.

They weren't home. No one was. It was the middle of the day and I am a lazy bum without a job who better find one before January, because then I might have to move back with my dad. Anywho...I noticed a guy on a cell phone walking down the street, and weighed burning down my home (remember the cooking turkey? on the gas stove?), with making a fool of my nasty self to a stranger. I opted to be a fool.

Called my sister, waited out front for 20 minutes more until my neighbor came home before my sister got there and got let in, called her back, told her to go home, saved 1/2 the turkey (so much for leftovers), and vowed to hide a key somewhere outside, and also begin grooming myself again.

I mean really...without even a bra? If it weren't me, I'd be disgusted. Wait, I am anyway.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Mildew

When I was little, before we had a dishwasher, my mom would make my brother and I do the dishes. He would usually dry. She would yell at him for not drying the dishes completely, saying that mildew would form on them. To this day, in my own apartment, I won't put a dish away until I'm sure every drop of water is off it, and even if there is just a moist streak left on a plate, and the dish towel is too wet to do its job anymore, I will leave that plate in the drying rack for fear of opening my cabinets the next day and finding creeping mildew on all my dishes.

I realized while watching Gossip Girl today (no connection) that in all probability, my brother was carelessly swiping at each dish only once and putting dripping wet dishes away. That's the kind of kid he was. I'm pretty sure now that if I put a plate into the stack in the cabinet with one streak--or even two streaks--of moistness, that it will dry on its own and not produce mildew.

Pretty sure...but I'm also pretty sure I'll keep obsessing about whether my dishes are dry anyway. Just in case.

Monday, October 08, 2007

Bottling again

I think I'm secretly more depressed about my mom's death than I am consciously admitting. I base this on the following facts:
  • I am now living in squalor, allowing dishes to pile up and dirty laundry to spread throughout my apartment to the point where I fear I could be featured on one of my favorite BBC shows, How Clean is Your House?
  • My personal hygiene has become alarmingly poor. I no longer shower every day, or sometimes even every other day. I sometimes go a day or more without brushing my teeth, washing my face, changing my panties, or putting on deodorant. I know. I am gross. I had been blocking out how gross I had become, but be proud! Since realizing this, I have now showered two days in a row!
  • I have been coming up with excuses not to spend time with friends, preferring to stay locked in my apartment all day in a t-shirt and panties (sans bra), watching hours of mindless television, sitting in front of the fan to cool off, during this incredibly hot Fall.
  • I haven't even had the ambition to try to beat the new Zelda on my Wii, one of my few goals for this past Summer.
  • I have managed, despite having absolutely nothing important to do, to fall another month and a half behind on my thesis work. I have also been letting bills go unpaid and managed to forget to file for unemployment for a month. But I did get it reinstated on Friday. I'm trying to get better.
It's the bottling again, I guess.

Saturday, October 06, 2007

The Musician, Part I

I hear--ha ha, quite the pun, as I can't hear right now, due to my ear infection--I hear that if your eardrum ruptures, while it is briefly quite painful, it will shortly thereafter relieve the pressure in your ear from an ear infection and begin to heal. So I am, as an American with no current health insurance, left with the question: To puncture, or not to puncture? (As I hold a sewing needle between thumb and forefinger...) But alas, besides that, I have had much more fun with boys of late...sarcasm overwhelms...
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The Musician is a man I met about a week after I ended things with Crazy Andy. I met him online. (In case I didn't earlier mention it, I have been experimenting with online dating for the last several months.) He was older than me, which was a first since the Big X (well, okay, I lie--a first since the man I had a one-night-stand with in Seattle a few months after the Big X), a musician (clearly), and someone who seemed to share a lot of the same interests and values as me.

He had a great sense of humor, which was a big plus with me. He also readily admitted to currently talking with another girl as well as me, which was a double plus with me: 1. He was honest about things; 2. He was talking with another girl, which to me meant, NOT serious! NOT serious! And so, we talked for a few weeks and then we went on a first date.

Here are the things I first noticed: 1. He had a much longer beard than the picture indicated--like, 6 inches longer; 2. He had quite ugly glasses, which again, he wasn't wearing in the picture; 3. He is very, very shy when meeting in person.

Now, I am shier on a date than I might be in the rest of my life, but he was by far shier than me. He told me that beforehand, so I was being lenient about that much, but I was not at all prepared for a 6 inch goatee. Additionally, I feel the need to point out that the waitress complimented him on his glasses.

His glasses were round with thick, tortoise-shell rims, which are, admittedly, cool. On a tiny, little girl. Okay, not even little girl, but these were way too tiny for the size of his head. The combined effect of his beard, glasses, and shy personality were enough to throw me off. He kissed me on the lips at the end of the night-- closed lips, mind you--but his stomach got in the way. Now, this is not to say that my tummy is little. It is not. But his tummy was a buddha-shaped tummy, where mine is sort of curvy. The end result was a man whose lack of physical attraction and in-person personality could not overcome the online chemical attraction. I did what I do with all my life-altering decisions--presented it to my friends.

I did, admittedly, agree to a second date. I blame this on the fact that I am unable to deal with first dates longer than 1 hour, which is why I usually only agree to a drink. However, Richard got me to agree to dinner AND dessert, rather than a drink, because our online chemistry was so great. We were supposed to go out again the following week. While discussing with my friends, I did have one or two more conversations with him, in which he told me that after our one, single date, he had decided to not talk to the other girl anymore and pull his profile from the dating website, and also had told a friend that he "may soon have a girlfriend." All this did not play well against my commitment fears, particularly after Crazy Andy. I (read: My friends) decided that I would just cancel the second date and leave it at that. I didn't owe any big explanations, as we had only been out once. Not all agreed about this, but the majority did. Rose wanted me to give him another chance, since he was a nice guy.

So I canceled the date, stating that I needed the time to prepare for my mother's memorial that weekend (which was, incidentally, true), and I did not talk to him anymore. After four days, I received an email from him asking what he had done wrong, why I wasn't talking to him, and telling me all sorts of nice stuff about how much he liked me, and filled with compliments. It was so nice I decided to give him one more shot. I wrote back and told him all the things he had said that had scared me off, and told him that I would like to go out with him again, so long as he could take things slow on the relationship front. I was busy with Whitney's wedding and then house-sitting for her while she was on her honeymoon, so we had to wait basically 3 weeks before our next date...