A Tale of Two Kitties

I am not one of those people who take in animals willy-nilly. For me, pet adoption is a huge decision, taken deeply seriously, but also made largely on gut feeling. It’s basically like marrying someone you’ve only known for an hour, with no information beyond “does well with cats” and “likes to snuggle.” (Incidentally, those are things I look for in both cats and men.)

But is the new cat going to get along with Puss? Will there be some kind of bizarre urine war? Am I really ready to double the litter box, double the hair, double the food and vet bills? (Double the snuggles! Double the play time! Double the purring!) What if the new cat ends up having some super-expensive chronic health problem? What if the new cat just doesn’t take to me? What if…

Oh, stop.

The bottom line is that Herr Puss had been showing me that he was lonely as hell now that I don’t work from home anymore. I’m gone for 12-16 hours of every day, and I feel guilty about it, but not guilty enough to resign myself to quitting everything I do so I can be home with my cat. I try to stay around the house on the weekends, but still. Puss seemed miserable, like he was looking at me saying, “you were ALWAYS here. How come you don’t want to be with me anymore?” I looked in those big blue eyes and saw a feeling that once built a 100-acre farm in mine. Maybe I was projecting, but maybe he really was feeling cast aside.

“What if I get you a buddy? Would that help? Then all 3 of us could pile in bed at night, like the grandparents in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Wouldn’t that be lovely? You can be Grandpa Joe!”

He’s a 12 year old perpetual only child with a ton of personality, a loud voice and sharp claws. I kind of wished I could give him a vote before I opened myself up to having everything in my house peed on in protest. Alas, all I could do is try to find another cat that won’t challenge Herr Puss’s “authoritah.”

As it turns out, Herr Puss apparently DID want a playmate. I introduced his brother, Sterling, with very little drama. There was nary a hiss, in fact. On day 3, I gave them free access to each other and, by day 7, Puss was actually giving Sterling a moment’s peace. He was so excited to have someone else around that he seriously wouldn’t leave Sterling alone. Sterling’s reaction to this was basically “WTF? I’m going to go hide behind the couch.”

So, here we are mid-way through week 2 and everybody seems to be getting along famously, with the one bone of contention being who gets to nestle in my left arm while I watch TV (Puss has put his paw down on this and has won consistently). Sterling is eating everything on Earth and badgering me for head scratching and a bite of whatever I’m eating. Puss seems monumentally better-adjusted, and I am no longer being greeted at night with the signature (and really pitiful) Siamese wail. It’s still early, but I’m willing to chalk this one up as a good life choice. The kitties are happy and mama has stopped feeling guilty all the time. Now, if I could just keep Sterling from eating me out of house and home…

State of the Heart Address 2012

Every year at this time, I sit down and take stock of the last year and the current state of my heart. Last year, I wrote to you of having finally met a man worth writing about. I sit now, still close enough to see that man in the rear view mirror, and the state of the heart depends on the day.

One day, it is content. It is among friends, the best job it’s ever had, leisure time, and the peace that comes from having no one to answer to. A single person is afforded a certain amount of selfishness. I get to wake up and be loud since no one has slept over. I don’t have to keep a stash of emergency frozen food that is actual food. (I can exist on yogurt, carrots and crab sticks, but one does not feed that to guests.) I don’t have to hang out with someone else’s group of friends. I don’t have to watch tv shows I didn’t choose. I can put my phone on vibrate, since it’s not my job to be a first line of defense on needed rides, bad days, forgotten items and the like. I get to do my own hobbies and spend time on my own things. I never have to take one for the team, because my team is just me. My team consists of one, and that is a much simpler operation. I get to go about my schedule only having to worry about being a good enough employee, friend, student and cat mother.

Other days, I just miss things. I miss how it was a year ago, when I wrote last year’s post. That post seems as though it was written about some other guy, some person I knew once who no longer exists. I miss every good time the two of us had. I miss the future I thought I was going to get. I was happy for a while. So happy. And then so very sad. I know I did the right thing in walking away, but it still hurts. You want to believe that if you just want it enough or stick it out a little longer, you can save everything. That everything will be fine and you will feel warm and safe again. Then you accept that you can’t save it, the baggage has piled too high and you only want to run. You leave, but something in you still just pulls and wishes for a time machine.

I tried some dating and decided that dating strangers is kind of silly. Instead, guys and I have been just hanging out. Slowly, one of them stopped being just my friend. But I’m scared as hell because I’m still The Walking Wounded and I don’t want to accidentally hurt anybody. I don’t want to get into anything I’m not ready to get into, and I don’t really want a boyfriend right now. I just DID the whole boyfriend thing, so I just want some time to be a selfish single person for a little bit. Besides, the last time I did this, it ended in all that crying. Someone touches me, and half of me says, “oh, this is nice,” and the other half pulls out lights and sirens and yells “oh my God, it’s happening again! Run! Run!” I don’t really know what to do and no one has any answers or a crystal ball. I have resolved to move slowly because I need time to wrap my head around this whole thing, and moving slowly never hurt anybody. I don’t have a thesis statement, but I enjoy hanging out with this person, and that’s reason enough to see where it goes.

Then there’s other part of me that says, “you know, maybe we’re just not cut out for all this.” Maybe it’s not that I haven’t met the right guy; maybe it’s that I’m not built for this. Relationships just wither me up, turning me into a big ball of tongue-biting and half-fulfillment, shouldering yet another yoke of responsibility and feeling like I can never live up to my own expectations of myself. It’s exhausting. After a while, I think back on my life as a single person and the question that had been getting answered with “no,” gets answered with “yes.” That question: “do you want your single life back?” Except in the last case. I never wanted my single life back. I just wanted to stop crying all the time, and I just wanted to get some decent sleep.

I have failed at being a friend to the man in the rear view mirror. I feel guilty about this failure, feeling like a horrible, fickle person for saying that I love someone and then walking away. Love is supposed to mean that you have that person’s back forever. Desertion is not how I like to roll, and it makes me feel like a hypocrite.

But it is hard to be a friend to an ex. It is even harder when strangers at the gym provide you with information that you didn’t want. Information that makes you feel nauseous and stupid. Information that makes it mandatory to walk away and not look back. While there are parts of me that will always love and never forget him, I have to walk away. Otherwise, I just end up staying sad and angry forever, and that will not do.

There are still so many questions that will never get answers. So much disrespect and insult I can’t overlook and hurt I can’t completely convey. I and am tempted to sift through all of that in some vain attempt to make it all make sense. Why this, why that, how can I avoid having it happen again? What did I do to make it happen at all? But you never get answers to everything. You will never make everything make sense. Maybe one day, years from now, I’ll run into him and my husband and I will have lunch with him and his wife. But now is the time for walking away.

When I told the ex that I loved him, I had planned to make an art piece in a shadow box to give to him. It would have been a Victorian lithograph of an anatomical heart, layered among foil, bits of CDs, sheet music, lace, a couple of satin ruffles and a tiny bit of cat hair. I would tell him it was my heart, and I would give it to him. I had fantasized that he would also make one, made of tubes and gears and possibly a small, working carburetor. Each of us would hang the other’s heart on the wall. One day the two hearts would hang side by side on the same wall in the same house.

The I Love Yous burned me from the inside and I had to get them out before I had time to make the art piece, so I wrote down the words but skipped the crafts. He had told me at the time that he had words for me too, but he never bothered to finish them. There were so many other ways for him to spend his time, and finishing words of love for me just didn’t rank highly enough.

Things went to hell. The heart piece never got made.

After the breakup, I found the forgotten, empty shadow box while looking for tape to wrap Christmas presents. When I remembered the box’s intended use, it seemed a hundred years removed, like something that happened to someone else a long time ago. The nebulous idea of being in love enough to make an art piece to celebrate it was like something I thought had happened to me, but was really in a movie that was on while I was falling asleep.

And so the state of the heart, as it pertains to romantic things, is as that box is. It is made of tough metal and delicate glass. It is half-forgotten and stored away. It is piled among a thousand special, beloved things, but it is not filled. It is waiting to be filled by the right things, very special things, when they come along.

It will keep.

Stella

It’s a Saturday night. I’m standing in a gay bar wearing tight bondage pants, red lipstick and a thin film of sweat. It is 80s night and I’ve just gotten done dancing to “Rock Me Amadeus” with some gay dude who tried to get me to kiss him. I look around the room and feel like me again.

It’s an odd, happy thing to feel after 6 or 8 months of feeling decidedly unlike myself. I had been feeling all gray and sad, sandwiched between a deeply abusive work life and a relationship that was making me spend my whole life feeling like the walking wounded. I went through life zombie-like, feeling like everything I did was something I was doing for someone who wouldn’t care or appreciate me or my efforts. Like everybody was telling me, “you should feel lucky to be here,” when I felt miserable to be everywhere.

If I’d had time to do something of my own, I’d have just thought “oh, everything I like is stupid,” consumed some wine and fallen asleep. I got into an endless death loop of jigsaw puzzles. It was like a default setting. Toward the end of the relationship, I would just sit and do puzzles and cry. For hours. The only thing that gave me any real pleasure was helping my friends do stuff: move, paint rooms, etc. because it made me feel like I was good for something. The thing about that kind of slow roasted sadness is that you don’t see it for so long. Until multiple friends ask you what you have done with their Amy and when you’re planning on returning her.

Eventually, I dug out of that hole. I got a new job working for people who appreciate me and have told me repeatedly that I’m doing a good job. I’m not a person who needs a lot of praise, but I am a person who (for better or worse) defines a big part of herself by her work. It is nice to feel valued. It is nice to work for someone who is not insane. I don’t have to fill out detailed time sheets or answer 100 crazy emails or get yelled at because I didn’t answer my phone at 10 pm.

While cleaning some pictures off my phone, I had occasion to go through my Flickr photo stream. There were all these pictures taken while biding time. Sitting around his living room, walking around some store, sitting around his living room some more. Then, as I went back further, there was my life before him: DJing at one of Abbey’s goth nights, going to parties, Dragon*Con, Jen’s wedding. All of that is mostly my fault. It was a life scheduled around HIS life, because he refused to schedule with me. I shouldn’t have even let it start happening, much less allow it to continue for so long. My life slowly just became some stupid, pointless accessory to his because I let it happen.

The feeling of being all gray and old creeps in so slowly that you don’t even notice until, one day, you look at your life and realize that you’re miserable. That you haven’t felt like you in a long time because part of what makes you who you are is going out dancing, making art pieces that might or might not work out, playing music, weiring odd outfits and being a weirdo. And what have you been doing? Sitting on someone’s couch watching tv. Being too afraid of failure that you never even try anything new. When dancing, you have to commit to the move, even if it turns out imperfectly. Do it all the way and stop second guessing yourself and secretly thinking that everything you do is lame. Get out there and find your groove. (Also, stop hanging out with people who make you feel like everything you do is lame.)

The groove is hard to find because it’s all over the place. I hate monotony and would rather do something new that might kind of end up sucking than just do the same thing all the time. I like going new places, eating weird things, and doing stuff that might end awkwardly. This gets me into trouble sometimes, but it usually works out pretty well. My first circuit blast class was super awkward; I couldn’t even remember how to jump rope. Two months later, I can get through class pretty easily, though my rope jumping is still more “3rd grade double hop” than “Rocky Balboa.” Hopefully, the future experiments in furniture refinishing, bread making and pyrography turn out as well, if I ever get time for them. Stupid school and life goals are taking up too much of my life.

Then again, the groove is easy to find because all you have to do is whatever you feel like doing at the moment. Failing that, just go do something new. There’s a solid 50% chance that you’ll end up having a good time. If nothing else, whatever you do could be horrible enough to get blog material out of it. There’s a part of me that is always screaming, “let’s go have adventures!” even when day to day life and finances require that “adventures” be a new restaurant, hanging out with someone new or going to a party where you’ll only know 1 person. When you have school and work, Adventure becomes Adventure Lite, but it’s still better than just sitting there.

So, the template is this: work when you have to and spend the rest of your life doing stuff that makes you happy. Or pissy. Or whatever. Just feel some way about something. Go do something worth writing about.

The Cynic

In these post-breakup days, I have had a lot of time to myself. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been working, going to school, seeing friends, working out, Christmas shopping, playing the piano, and…well, good lord. You get the picture. But one of the strange things about these days is the amount of time that I’ve had to just THINK. For whatever reason, I just hadn’t had much time to do it. Or I’d been spending all of my thinking time thinking about the wrong things. I’d been wondering where I was going to work when my contract ran out. Wondering if a certain horrible group project would turn out OK. Wondering what the flying hell happened to my relationship. All of those things can tend to take up a lot of time, and most of them don’t end up with answers. Now that my brain is no longer in survival mode, it can get back to “leisure thinking.” Things like “what if, like energy, there’s a certain amount of fat in the world? A morbidly obese person dies, and 60 girls gain ten pounds? They blame their birth control, but really it’s because the weight needed to be redistributed as the fat person rotted. Fat IS stored energy, right?”

Seriously. I pondered that through an entire grocery trip.

In survival mode, everything just stops while your brain just tries to get through the day. I had nothing to say and nothing to write because there simply hadn’t been a thought in my head that wasn’t about what I did that day. Even my internal dialog had become plot summary. As a side note, I hate plot summary. Conversation should not be like a third grader’s book report. I only want to know what you did so that we can then move on to how you felt about it, how you hope it turns out, or how it fits into your master plan. The big picture.

Anyway, with all this quiet around me during holiday drives, commutes, workouts, etc., I felt my brain open up. It had time to think. To wonder about things. To think of things it wanted to do. To slow down and try to figure things out. I started to give some thought to the nature of love. Like, maybe my relationship fell apart because I just wouldn’t know a man that loved me if he walked up and shook my hand. Maybe I was just THAT cynical.

But no.

I knew that one friend loved me because he listened to me bitch about my job ALL the damn time. There were long stories detailing such riveting topics as paper jams and mail merges, and he listened to every single word of every single one, without interrupting me, acting bored or changing the topic. If memory serves, he would even reach over and mute the tv or pause the DVR so we could talk. That man loved me.

What happened to him? If I wanted to blame him, I’d say that he found a girlfriend and forgot about me. If I told the truth, I’d say I wasn’t that great a friend to him (he supported me, and I’d be like “thanks” and then miss important things like his college graduation) and he finally found a girl who would accept his love properly. I still owe him an apology, and he’s going to get it if I ever manage to track him down.

I knew that another friend loved me because he talked me down from 100 different ledges after a particularly gross breakup. I’d get going on some rant, and he would just stop me with “Amy, this person threw you away. Like trash. Via TEXT. Why are you spending all this time even thinking about him? He should be wiped from the Earth, along with your memory of him.”

He helped me through that breakup and when his breakup came, I legitimately tried. I listened to his understated story of being tossed aside by a girl he thought he would marry. I thought he was fine, because he seemed so calm. I knew that he loved me because I got a chance to beg. To say goodbye. To tell him I loved him. When he killed himself anyway, it changed me forever and I forgot how to be terrified of everything. That man loved me.

I know dad was kind of contractually obligated, but still. There must have been countless times that he gave something up for mom, sis and me. Countless times that he didn’t get to do what he wanted to do because we were the bigger picture. Countless things he couldn’t have because he was squirreling money away. Money that became part of the down payment on my house. My car. My eyes. This is the man that made a goth girl do a mock interview because “I think you’re cheating yourself out of 20 grand a year with that nose ring.” The man who looked at a disheveled 10 year old and made her “have some self respect and iron that shirt.” The man who kept asking “no, really, what ARE your goals?” until I figured out an answer. He loved me enough to not let me get away with anything. He loved me enough to tell me that I could do better until I did better.

I’m still a terribly cynical person. I will check your actions eight ways to Sunday to make sure they’re true. I do this to protect myself.

But, by God, I know when I am loved.
And I never, ever forget it.

Tomorrow The Green Grass

“I’m thinking grilled shrimp. But wait! There are deep fried gator sliders! God, ever since I went back to eating meat, it takes me 15 minutes just to order in a restaurant.”

I am sitting across from an old friend, trying to do what you’d think would be easy: I’m trying to sit down and figure out what I want. It’s easier said than done. I look at this menu, look at her and realize that few things are really that simple.

All you have to do is sit down, decide what you want and then go after it. Life isn’t like being a vegetarian in a restaurant, where all you have to choose from is salad or french fries. Life is like being Anthony Bourdain: you could have the steak, the fish or you could just have the chef cook up whatever’s living under the fridge. The menu doesn’t have pictures, and you don’t know what the portions are like. How are you supposed to just sit down, figure out what you want and order it? What if it comes and it’s nothing like you thought it would be? Buyer’s remorse on a plate of gator sliders is a lot different from buyer’s remorse on a career. A spouse. A family.

She chose differently than I did. Though we are the same age, my friend has chosen a husband, kids and a very different career than mine. I chose a career, a cat and a life where I come home to a house of near silence. Though neither of us wishes to swap lives, there are certainly days when we would both like to swap for a couple of hours. After those two hours, I would say “I just need some quiet,” and she would say “I’m bored and miss my family,” but the impulse is still there.

I look at her life and think “look at these people on her team, look at the life they can make together. She does not have to go on awkward first dates and her house is not like a library. She and her husband can lean on each other, and her kids need her.” I’m sure there’s some little part of her that looks at my life and thinks “she can talk on the phone without anyone yelling ‘mommy!’ She can go out dancing, nobody asks her what’s for dinner after she’s worked a long day, and nobody ever pukes on her.”

Universal truth: it is nice to not be puked on.

The thing about choosing a life is that it really is possible to change your mind. You can choose the career for a while, and then choose the family. You don’t always have to choose correctly the first time (though I don’t recommend un-choosing your children), but everything you do is a kind of choice.

Indecision is still a decision, it’s just really lazy. It is you saying, “I choose to not eat.” I would rather make a decision and then change my mind than just not care, and lord knows I’ve changed my mind a few times. Go on, ask me about my college credits.

I have friends who are thinking of changing their direction. I have friends who love their direction. I have friends who forgot to choose. Though my friend and I may think for a minute or two that the grass is greener on the other side, we are both ultimately content with what we’ve chosen. One day I may choose something else, but that doesn’t mean that what I have is somehow unacceptable. It’s like choosing between shrimp and gator: there’s no wrong choice, but there might be a better one.

In the great restaurant of life, you may regret having ordered gator sliders. You may sit and wonder if the shrimp might have been better. But if you don’t choose something, you definitely lose. You sit there and starve.

I ended up picking the grilled shrimp. They were delicious. But I’m getting the gator sliders next time.

Of Children, Piercings and Bluebirds

Somewhere in Nashville today, an eight year old girl might be piercing her own ear cartilage with a safety pin without her parents’ permission. She is doing so because of me.

The locker rooms at the Y are separated by gender, but they are also separated by age. Anyone under the age of 13 is supposed to be using the Family Locker Room. I had always assumed that this was so little kids weren’t running around annoying the single adults, but maybe it’s also to keep kids out of an area where said adults might be walking around naked. Mainly, this rule translates to one thing: the adult locker room is a strange world of forbidden fascination. I imagine this is why 3 little girls, all clad in blue karate gis, were running around me as I gathered up my bag, boots and cloak after an hour on the elliptical machine. Then they weren’t running. They were just standing there, staring at me. The brave one spoke up.

“You have TWO earrings in your ear,” marveled the freckled, curly-haired 8ish year old.

“Oh no,” I answered, pulling back my hair, “there are SIX.”

Awed gasps all around. In adult land, I’m the most white bread goth chick alive. To these kids, I was Fakir Musafar.

I am interrogated until these girls know exactly how long cartilage takes to heal, how to pierce an ear, how much it will hurt and to “not walk around with a safety pin in your ear because it’s not very classy.”

“When did you get your first one?”

“When I was four. The second one, I did a long time ago, when I was sixteen.”

“How old are you now?”

“Thirty-four.”

(This time, the awed gasps translate to “holy crap, that’s older than MOM, and she’s OLD.”)

“Wow…that WAS a long time ago. What about that? Did that hurt?” She motions toward my tattoo, a black bow just above my wrist.

“Yes, especially on the tender meat on the inside, but it only took an hour and a half.”

“Did it hurt a lot?”

“Have you ever been stung by a bee? It’s like that, but it takes so long that you just get used to it after a while. Then you go home and take a nap.”

“I could never have a bow on me. That’s going to be there until YOU DIE.”

“I wondered that, but after a week, I couldn’t imagine my arm without it.”

“You can get it removed with surgery.”

(She also asked if my earring holes would hear all the way. This little girl remaking me in the image of Martha Stewart with a tone of “it’s not too late for you.”)

“But I don’t want to have it removed. I want more of them. I want to do my whole arm, but I keep having to spend money on other things, things around the house.”

“What color is your house?”

“Gray, but next summer it’s going to change to light green.”

They pause. I could fairly see the gears turning in the brave one’s mind.

Tick…

tock…

tick…

“Amy?”

She has read my name from the ID tag on my gym bag and said my name with a certain brand of solid, deadpan, “let’s get serious” tone. I’m startled, momentarily thinking that this little girl has, in fact, been hired by my mother to remake me in the image of Martha Stewart.

“Are you married?”

“No.”

“Engaged??”

“No.”

“Do you have a boyfriend???”

Her tone gets more and more strained with each question, as though she’s begging me to throw her a bone. To make the world make sense. To explain how someone can be OLDER THAN MOM and still be single.

“We just broke up, actually.”

“How long were you together?”

“Almost a year.”

Again, her world is making no sense. A year is FOREVER.

“It’s fine, really. Sometimes people just can’t get things to work and you have to realize that maybe you should just be friends instead.”

This is me, putting on my happy, independent face. I’m single! I have freedom! Wheeeeeee! Everything will be wonderful and everybody will be friends and bluebirds will my onto my finger if I put my hand out the window in the morning. I most certainly was not drunk for two weeks, I didn’t do jigsaw puzzles and cry and I certainly haven’t been freebasing sappy Gavin DeGraw songs. No, sir. Everybody’s wonderful and there are frickin bluebirds and—

“But do you have a boyfriend NOW?”

(God, are we still on this? Look, I told you, HAPPY INDEPENDENT FACE.)

“No. It’s a little too soon. I’m just having fun doing my thing and hanging out with friends.” (Also, bluebirds!)

Her face is calling bullshit on me. I am being CALLED BULLSHIT ON by an 8 year old in a karate outfit. This, readers, is why I have a hard time taking myself seriously. I’m standing there, trying to explain the complexities of relationships and moving on to someone who (statistically) does not yet fully grasp abstract nouns. Also, I am sweaty and would like a shower.

I excuse myself and leave the three confused girls standing there in the locker room. I’m still not sure who the Y is trying to protect with that “adults only” locker room rule.

Adult Contemporary Smackdown

He said something. I don’t even remember what it was, but he said something. Otherwise, I’d have had no reason to turn and look at him. I was a little unsettled as to why exactly Gavin DeGraw was in my bed, but what the hell. He was being terribly nice and there’s a snuggle famine happening at the Batcave. Any balding pseudo-Southern port in a storm.

After that, the death buzz from my Hello Kitty alarm clock slices through the whole damn thing.

Still, I have secretly allowed myself to maintain the delusion that I am dating Gavin DeGraw. After all, who could it hurt? No one.

No one but Adam Levine, that is.

My fantasy world is elaborate and detailed and, in said fantasy world, I have to come to a decision. DeGraw or Levine? On the one hand, DeGraw can be a bit doofy-looking and smokes pot. On the other hand, Levine is rumored to be a bit of a douche and likes deep V-necks a little more than a straight man ought to. Clearly, the only thing to do is make a bar graph.

1.Appearances in dreams: advantage DeGraw

2. Maroon 5 logo looks like it was designed by Klaus Nomi. Advantage: Levine

3. DeGraw smokes pot. Advantage Levine.

4. DeGraw is on record using the phrase “Do you know who I am?” non-sarcastically. Advantage: Levine.

5. Whispering into a microphone: advantage: Levine.

6. Dudes playing piano are hot. Advantage: DeGraw.

7. Both give unsettling quantities of eye contact. Advantage: none.

8. Twitter sarcasm: DeGraw’s twitter uses “u” for “you.” Levine’s is clever. Advantage: Levine.

9. Sense of humor: DeGraw seems eternally earnest, yet Levine is quite the snarky bastard. (It’s a fine line between douchebag and delightful snark pirate. For my dollar, I vote “snark pirate.”)

10.Video sexiness: advantage Levine.

11. Fashion: DeGraw just got out of bed. Levine wears deep V-necks. Advantage: none. (However, Levin in a suit sweeps the category)

12. Hair: Levine’s hair seems bulletproof, but DeGraw always wears hats and is thus suspected of baldness. Advantage: Levine.

13. Tattoos: advantage: Levine.

14. Workout habits: Advantage Levine

15. Lady hips: advantage: Levine.

16. Southern Accent for no good reason: advantage DeGraw

17. Twitter humor: advantage: Levine Exhibit A and Exhibit B

18. Interview mannerisms: DeGraw seems kind of nervous and fidgety, like someone who is endearing REALLY uncomfortable being interviewed. Levine is better rehearsed (upon telling Chelsea Handler that he’s dating a model, he says “go ahead, roll your eyes” and mentions that “it’s possible to be cool AND like Maroon 5…I think.”)

19. Love of Prince: advantage Levine.

20. Artsy pretentiousness (or lack thereof): advantage Levine. When interviewed, DeGraw says things like “I wanted to get back to basics, to get out of the way of the songs,” which is valid and true (and worked really well on Free), but I can’t help but prefer Levine, who summed up his latest work with, “we were like, fuck it, let’s have fun and make a sexy, confident record.” (They did. Hands All Over is awesome, y’all.)

So, which wins? The lovable awkward piano playing-ness of DeGraw, or the fuck-you snark-swagger of Levine? So help me, I’m gonna go with the swagger. Whip-smart humor is sexy. Not taking yourself too seriously is sexy. In the words of Levine, “confidence is sexy.”

Now I just have to break it to DeGraw next time he shows up in a dream.

In the Land of Happy, Skinny People

I suspect that people who work in service industries are taught to fill awkward silences with questions. If the guy at the bank’s computer takes too long, he starts asking how my Thanksgiving was, knowing that if I had a good one, I’m more than happy to tell him about it. If I had a bad one, I’ll abide the laws of common courtesy and just say “oh, I got to just relax at home!” (This means “I ate Funyuns in my underwear and drank a 40 because I have no family” or something. Whether or not that sounds like an awesome time is a matter of personal opinion.)

I was more than happy to tell the guy at the bank about how well my mom’s stuffing went over. We all miss grandma, but (all due respect) alzheimer’s will seriously screw up your cooking skills. I also abided the rules of courtesy and left out the part about how I came home, drank a 40 and cried out a recent breakup. These things happen.

I ran into “when in doubt, ask questions” while signing up at the local YMCA.

“So, what do you do?”
(Web design, moving into development.)

“Oh, so you type fast?”
(Yes, but mainly cause I typed a lot of letters in high school and play the piano.)

“Piano? Do you also sing?”
(Not in public.)

With that, I paid my money and had done something I’d wanted to do for a long time but had never had time or money. I joined the local Y. So, how’s it going?

The Y is the land of happy, skinny people. All of the women are toned, all of the guys are good-looking, and everybody’s rosy-cheeked and nice. I suspect that the Y is a lot like Sweden. I would feel terribly awkward and out of place, except that all of the employees are super nice and the other patrons seem to be too involved in whatever they’re doing to notice what I giant n00b I am.

You’d think by now that I would know that the locker room is pretty much ALWAYS right next to the pool. You’d think the Y would give new people some kind of tour or a map. You’d be wrong on all counts. However, once I just ASKED somebody to point me toward the locker room, I found the one at the Margaret Maddox Y (Inglewood) to be pretty nice. The one downtown is, hands down, the nicest locker room I have ever seen in my limited experience of locker rooms. In square footage, it might be bigger than my house, and the shower steam is kept separate, avoiding having the whole room turn into a nasty sauna.

Learn from my mistakes: if you just START USING the machine, whether it be elliptical, bike, or whatever, the thing will turn on and instruct you. Please do not ask me how I learned this. Please also do not tell any tv producers that they should follow me around with a tv camera for a show called “Adventures of Smart Girls with No Common Sense.”

If the class says “Advanced Step Aerobics,” this is not a descriptor of how much cardio will be done. This is a descriptor of how familiar you will need to be with WHAT THE HELL has happened to step aerobics since I took it in college. Those women were doing a full-out improv dance routine, apparently based solely on whatever the instructor was yelling. It was like really fast square dancing. I was positioned behind two leggy amazons from Planet Pilates who would literally do ballet jumps while the rest of us were marching in place. This leaves me with the following conclusion:

Assuming I did not unknowingly drop acid before class, I should hit a beginner class until I know what the hell “bus stop,” “rhumba left,” and “revolving door” are.

I also went to a sculpting class and learned that I am a total wuss. Judging from the feel of my arms 6 hours after class, I may not be able to move my arms tomorrow. Just FYI in case you need any air traffic control or baseball umpiring.

All in all, it’s been a really good experience so far. After a month of not being able to work out because of school and work, it feels really good and productive to be back at it, and to be doing something more interesting than walking the same 6 mile neighborhood loop that I always walk. Granted, this means I will no longer get cat calls from the NADC dorms, but you know: everything’s a trade off.

The Torrid Life of Female Underwear

I’m standing in a friend’s kitchen, waving my arms above my head as though I were pretending to be an underwater plant or a high-speed cat tail. I’m not being either of those.

I’m being the crotch of my underwear.

My friend informs me that some magazine says that a lady ought to replace her underwear every three years. I’m willing to bet that said magazine was Cosmo. Then again, Cosmo also recently claimed that a good way to spice up one’s sex life was to wear one’s thong as a scrunchie.

PS: That’s sort of gross.
PPS: WHY ARE YOU WEARING A SCRUNCHIE?

Things like that make me picture some poor writer, fresh out of Yale, getting her first job in writing. Her editor, who looks like Devil Wears Prada Meryl Streep, plops down a stack of back issues, has her read all of the “____ ways to spice up your sex life” articles, and then demands she think of something new.

She feels her face flush with anger at the injustice of the job market and then sarcastically suggests thong scrunchies. She expects to be fired for her insolence. Instead, she is promoted.

Anyway. The underwear.

Guys get a bad rap for wearing their underwear until it falls apart, but I’m here to tell you that women are just as bad. The underwear life cycle goes a little something like this:

1. “Whee! Look at my sexy new underwear! Hey, boyfriend, check out my butt!”

2. “The elastic’s starting to give up on life. I guess these should go into the ‘period drawers’ category.”

3. “Oh, who am I kidding? These don’t even have enough life to properly position feminine hygiene products.”

4. “Fine. But only when I’m sure no one will see.”

Then, one day, you hit step 5. You go to pee and realize that you can see the floor through a tiny hole in the front. The cotton crotch is in bits, dangling separately from the satiny part. There are only two choices at this stage:

1. Throw the underwear away
2. Wear the underwear as a scrunchie

I assume you know what to do. Unless you work at Cosmo.

Surviving BarCamp 2011

“What are you doing today?”

“Going to BarCamp.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s basically a day of douchebaggery and business card distribution, thinly disguised as a day of informative seminars.”

As you may have guessed, I was less than enthused about the idea of spending my Saturday attempting to mingle with people I’d never met. Three years of working from home has made me weird(er), and I wasn’t much of a mingler in the first place. Thus, the idea of being thrown into a room of total strangers and expected to mingle is right up there with “mow the lawn” and “go to baby shower” on the list of things I would rather not do.

I went because I have finally realized that working by yourself at home is perhaps not the best way to stay on top of what people are talking about. Yes, there’s twitter. There are blogs. But neither of those involve BEER, so I went to BarCamp. If nothing else, I would suck it up and perhaps learn how to mingle. Or at least watch successful minglers (aka “marketing people”) in their natural habitat. As I often do, I psyched myself up in order to develop a positive attitude:

“It’ll be like Big Cat Diary. In your head, you can narrate in a British accent. If all else fails, you can do what all other socially awkward people do: you can mess around with your phone and pretend it’s the most interesting thing ever.”

I ended up being pleasantly surprised. While not all of the panels I went to ended up being super exciting, I did actually end up meeting some cool people. I had some very pleasant and non-fake feeling conversations. Yes, I gave out my business card to a few people, but all but one of those people asked for said card. I tend to get into a conversation and completely forget to even OFFER the card, being too distracted by whatever’s being said and the general sensory overload of being in a room full of people.

I ran into a couple of people I know from the coffee shop, one guy I dated for a while and a couple of people I know from Twitter. The surprisingly pleasant day was topped off at the after party, held in a karaoke bar. When one fellow got on stage to sing “Purple Rain,” the initial crowd response was, “hey, he’s actually pretty good.” By the time the guy on stage was hitting the super-high notes at the end, the reaction had grown into “stunned, awed silence.”

“That’s the guy who played guitar for Prince in the 80s!”

“That’s Dez Dickerson?!”

(Of COURSE I knew the guy’s name. Are you new here?)

After he was done singing, I went over and showed him the pictures inside the locket I always wear. Purple Rain-era Prince on the right, Morris Day on the left.

I survived mingling, and I’m glad I didn’t peace out early. I believe this BarCamp thing will have to happen again.