what exactly is the point again?

i think it's pretty much a given that i'm the listener in my group of friends. well, i should clarify... when i lived in my hometown and the majority of my friends also lived in that city, i was the listener in my group of friends. as time goes on, and i continue to embrace this new town, i find that the holes that i left when i moved away are quickly being filled... to the point where you wouldn't even notice that a space for me had even existed. people are having a hard time with family issues, and relationship issues... and where i normally would be the big ear and shoulder (listener and hugger, if you will), now i hear things later. after they've talked things out with so and so, and so and so new friend was there last night to be the voice of reason etc. why does this bother me? i have no effing clue.

or maybe i do. because when you invest in a friendship or relationship with someone, you want to continue to be as important to them, as they are to you. regardless of where i live, i still keep three or four names at the top of the list that are my emotional dumping ground, and the people that i turn to when I actually need to talk about things. it just hurts to realize that this isn't necessarily the reciprocated case. this has been brewing for awhile...

i'm seeing a lot of breaking up and separating... marriages, friendships, relationships... ending. and i wonder why i stay away from such things. because endings SUCK. and the last time that something really ended for me, it was almost three years ago... and to be honest, i don't really ever want to go through that again. i found some old pictures that used to hang on my wall... and my roommate was looking at them and said "he's HOT!"... and my heart actually ached.

i think i've officially lost my optimism when it comes to love. if one more person tells me that something has ended because "the timing wasn't right", i'm going to throw up on the spot. timing is bollocks. if two people can come together and agree to work at something, because it's within them to be together... then you just DO. no one says "hey i'm in love, lemme check my watch to make sure it's the right time". you don't make excuses, you find the way to make it work. and if it isn't within you to make it work... LET. IT. GO.

some of you are reading this and thinking "oh shit, she's talking about me"... "she's angry that i vented to her yesterday"... and that's just not the case. multiply your problems with that of six other people, and you'll understand what i've been listening to for the last twenty four hours.

good riddance, love. i've lost my faith in you.

go go gadget downtown bonanza...

i adopted the term "downtown bonanza" a long time ago. it's a dane cook reference... from back in the days when he actually did stand up... and therefore, made me laugh.

anyways, i'm currently having a conversation with a male friend of mine about the downtown bonanza and about the various scenarios in which the DTB can be unpleasant: the girl just doesn't maintain a nice landscape... has an excessive element of pungeancy (totally not a word)... etc etc. and so he's telling me about how he ended up going home with some "girl" back when he was in his early 20s and they'd been out dancing all night. he said the experience was NOT awesome.

now this seems rather obvious to me. it's not like i'm going to want my bed companion to come directly home from a two hour gymathon some weekend and drop trou in the kitchen. who needs a ball sweat salad in the middle of the afternoon... i mean GEEEZ. so likewise, i would probably make sure that my business was freshly laundered, trimmed, and ready for the DTB.

poor guy... really makes me laugh though. the good ole DTB.

weird dreams are made of thee...

i had an utterly bizarre dream last night. normally i don't remember my dreams, i am merely left with a vague sense of memory, or adventure, but i never remember specifics. for some reason, i remember almost all of my dream last night. and it included a bunch of people that i've never met before, but they all had distinguishable faces and names. i ended up falling in love with a man named steve. i have an ex named steve that i sometimes think about and wonder the 'what ifs' of me actually moving to new jersey six years ago and actually marrying him... but that's neither here nor there. he married someone else last july and we no longer speak. moving on.

the man from my dream was named steve, and he lived in a house with his sister and a few other people. it was a big house, and the main bedroom had a big bed that was low to the ground. there were a lot of weird adventure related elements to the dream that i won't bother going into... but the odd piece of it that is still resonating with me is that i felt loved. whatever relationship i was creating with this steve in my dream included him loving me. and as sappy as this sounds, it's been so long since a man actually loved me, that i woke up with tears on my cheeks. so girlie.

my dreams are sometimes a foreshadowing of what will occur. i have had instances of supreme deja vu, or experienced something that i KNOW i dreamt about a few nights or weeks before. not to say that some guy named steve is going to love me tomorrow, but for some reason i woke up feeling really hopeful this morning... and very anti the bullshit.

i even wrote a few emails to men that i've gone out with over the last few months that sort of pulled a slow fade or just haven't followed through on the things that they said they'd do... we all know how i love the slow fade... and i feel better having at least put it out there that i don't appreciate the cowardly bow out.

gotta love being thirty...

sometimes taking that next step is a bad idea...

sooooo the last few weeks, i've been talking to some people (aka men/boys/guys/etc)... some of which... delightful, i look forward to meeting in person, trying out that hand holding thing... attempting to look you in the eyes for an extended period of time without blushing... etc.

some... not so much. i'm sure most people would agree that there are certain "steps" that you would follow whilst meeting people from the interweb dating sites. you email on that site, then you move to normal email, then maybe IM, then texting, and then up to a phone call. then depending on how the voice interraction goes, you think about meeting in person. and usually by then you have a sense of whether or not you like their personality, and you just hope that part of your loins/heart/reactionary bits respond positively to seeing them in person.

then there's the guy, who on the phone, makes you crawl out of your skin every time he laughs. you rub your temples trying to be strategic about how to get off the phone, and then about how you can let him down gently...because it's clearly not going to be easy when he's already talking about "showing you around town" and referring to you as "babe". and please note (as if you didn't know this about me already), i HATE being called babe. if you are not my boyfriend of several weeks/months/years, you do not get to call me babe... or hun... or cutie. or some other pet name that makes me want to stab sharp objects into my eyeballs and maybe punch a puppy or two. don't do it.

sometimes i hate dating, and sometimes i love it. and sometimes i have to calm myself down about getting excited about someone new that i'm talking too. have to be patient, go slowly...blah blah blah BLAH. what if i just want some good smooches, eh?

okay, that's enough of that. i'd love to close with this factoid: one of my girlfriends just ended our IM convo with "i'm gonna go have sex now"... and i love her for it.

GET IT GET IT!!

men vs women

it goes without saying (and yet, here i am bothering to say it) that men don't often have to plan their footwear around WHO they are going to be spending an evening with. that's so odd. i'm having lunch with a man that is 5'11"... so i'm wearing flats right now.

pfffft.

excellent exfoliation

i am 29 years old. for the most, i never get pegged as 29... even from coworkers that usually see the more serious side of me (and yes, thank you very much, i do have one). and i think i know why...

i was just checking to see if any of the salad that i've just eaten ended up in my teeth, and i noticed that the skin on my chin was flaking off...revealing a lovely new layer of fresh skin.

makeouts are the greatest exfoliant... forget anti-aging creams, just give me a good smooch with a man that can grow a beard baby!

a shmilly bit of shhmistocation...

it's friday, i have zero plans tonight... and to be honest, nothing sounds better. i cannot wait to get home and just relax. i feel like i've squeezed two years into one week... eventhough nothing notable happened. so bizarre.

do ever just get tired? tired of waking up in the morning? i was discussing this topic with pinkangel earlier, so i'm not going to get into it at length again... but at what point do you just get fed up with the half life while trying to be patient for the full life to find you. she suggested that i go out and find it... but you can't find love, and you can't magically create some lovely familial image out of a crockpot (or banged up rice cooker in my case) and secret spices from the cupboard (i only own nutmeg, if you're needing some).

why is it that i get so disturbed by other people leaving newspapers in the public restrooms at work? and by "people", i mean "women"... because that's the restroom that i go into every day. there's always that little receptacle attached the stall door that allows you to dispose of your naughty vittles... but please dont leave your US Weekly in there. how much time are you REALLY spending in there to warrant bringing in the actual mag or paper? i bring W into the bathroom with me at home.. mostly because if i'm in the middle of a good article, i'll want to keep reading even while "divulging" (we'll call it)... but that's at HOME for crying out loud. i do all kinds of things at home that we wont really go in to... but geeeez.

tracy chapman is playing on my itunes channel now... so i'm going to go belt out 'gimme one reason to love you' in my head. of course i'll need to stop typing to you, in order to do that.

what?

a date with myself and other tidbits of "business"

i really do have odd names for everything... it's not an intentional thing that i do with language, i just put words together in bizarre ways... it's sort of my thing. i like having a thing, or things... depending on how oddball i'm feeling.

last night, after a week filled with responsibilities, i decided to put off all work and just have a date with myself. i got home and instantly put on the jams, popped 'stranger than fiction' into the dvd player, put on a pot of boiling water for my one artichoke (cooking for one will be a whining topic for another day.. when i actually feel like whining of course), got online to order my freshdirect for today, and settled in.

i'm in the final countdown to girl time, and who knows if other women have this 'problem' but i tend to get a little fiesty (will fiester than usual, let's be honest) during the last three days before armageddon. needless to say, i decided to really have a date with myself... so i checked the arti... aaaaaand took care of business. i am not a ride the wave, twelve hour sexcapade, multi orgasmic individual. i'm a one massive, smack the wall, yell your name (if applicable, i have yet to actually yell my own name, but might as well have in this instance) kind of person... and then, please leave me alone. i won't be able to form words, i don't reeaaaally want to cuddle, please lord just let me relish. anyway, last night... for the first time in my ENTIRE life... i gave myself TWO. yes people, you heard me correctly, I HAD TWO IN A ROW!!!

i have girlfriends that like to sort of brag in the tellings of their sexcapades, and how many times they finished and all that la la la. and i've never been jealous, b/c i've always been supremely happy with my big one (as opposed to their smaller many)... but i have to tell you, i was rather a big fan of the multi-BONANZA that was my date with myself.

i should date me more often.

in other news, a guy that i went out on a date with last week (aka rode the motorcycle with), has decided to send me a picture of his business. as a sort of, here's what you're in for kind of a thing. except this particular image that he sent me is of another girls face about to give HIS business the business. now why does this turn me off? hmmmmmmm. i'm all for sexy time, and a little pre naughty talk to get a person excited for the actual business... but really, you ruin the surprise. and if you are going to blatantly push your agenda for the business, i'm going to lose interest in you faster than you can take off your clothes. and in this man's case, i'm going to assume that with that much practice, he's got that down to a science.

cheers.

the letter j is my nemesis... literally

i dont know what it is about the letter j and it's ability to just tear me to pieces. every emotional breakdown i've had, because of a break up or a relationship gone bad, has mostly had to do with the guy having a name that started with a J (ironically, my best friend's name starts with j... so this is the universe's way of saying that i should really be a lesbian.. bygones).

it happened... AGAIN! even in the briefest of interludes i met a man in this city that was actually interesting, and good looking, and talented.. and passionate about so many things... i was actually excited to get to know him. the first week = magic. three great dates and many hours spent together talking, eating, watching movies, and just getting down to the good stuff. week two = the antithesis and the slow fade. if you don't know me then you aren't fully aware of my 'isms', but the slow fade is something i came up with a few years ago to coin a man's sudden failure to communicate... and slowly and quietly slip out of your life without one of those communicative discussions that could be quite simple if someone just said 'it's too fast' or 'i'm not really into you' or 'i'm an idiot and want to be with someone skinnier and with less of a sense of humor'. who knows what goes on inside of a man's brain, but the 180 slow retreat is the most cowardly move i've ever been privvy to. and yet...it happens to me alot. not a LOT, mind you. but i find that the men i meet just can't seem to be honest about what's going on in their little brains.

and so i'm left a little curious, and a lot of wounded... sort of sad, and pretending that someone i've known for 2.5 weeks doesn't have the capability of reducing me to tears by simply deciding that he's not as excited about me as he was when we first met.

alas... the letter j... you've thwarted me again.
check mate.