Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Lo. Siento.

Today, for the first time in recent memory, my intentional actions made someone cry. In front of me. A lot.*

I don't really do tears. I would really rather deal with anything else (except for loose teeth) than someone else crying.

And it's bad enough when they're crying over boys or loss or something involving Colin Firth...

But when it's something I have done, something I had all the power to prevent, to control, to avoid - that's when it makes me feel completely wretched.

Or at least that's what I discovered today. I discovered that my legs shake when I make other people cry with my words and my actions. I find myself suddenly very interested in how my pants stretch over my knee caps.

And I wonder about other people who do this on a regular basis. People who will knowingly say and do things and then watch people cry. And I wonder how they get through it.

Do they eat as much chocolate as I did today? Do they get use to the hole-in-the-belly feeling?

I wish it was all over. That this was the first and last time. It's not. I'll come back this to this topic in another blog post when I have some non-chocolate solutions.

*to be clear, while my words and actions were not intended to be malicious in anyway, they could be construed as hurtful. Occasionally, that is the nature of such things.


Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Southern Dreams

I am bad at knowing what I want.

When I do find things I want, they are almost always incredibly impractical.

So I have kind of deduced that being a grown-up means wanting things that are practical.

So some day, I am going to grow up...

but until then, I am going to be your most impractical friend.

I am setting my sights on 2013. Which gives me enough time to research and dream and give up for awhile and get down on myself but then go for it anyway.

New goal? Spend my 30th birthday in Antarctica.

Not into me

Now that I am rather settled into my monogamous life style (after being pretty well duped into it a couple years back) - I have had to find new, more ridiculous ways of embarrassing myself in public.

Back in the day, it was easy enough to have one too many quarts of Miller Lite and completely misread any number of social cues from the opposite sex. This often ended up with me either trying to make up a fake phone number that didn't have 12 digits in it or my friends laughing at me for assuming the guy with the fiancée was trying to hold my hand.

Now I just give dudes the old - "see the guy drinking plain bar coke, in the corner doing math problems for fun? I'm going home with him."

So I have turned my social ineptitude on the ladies mainly by professing my desire for friendship far too strongly.

I meet a new lady and rather than just seeing how things go, I decide (way earlier than is appropriate) that I should tell her I think she is the coolest and I want us to be real, real good friends.

Most girls are perfectly nice about such absurd declarations and I leave the situation excited for all the coffee dates and inside jokes in our joint future.

Then several months go by and it dawns on me that my new Bestie really just wants to be acquaintances. Maybe we will see each other at parties, maybe we play some words with friends, but they don't want to get serious about it. They're not going to call me up just to sit around on the couch and eat brownies. We're not going to make collages out of Seventeen magazines and pictures from winter formal.

And while I spend a few minutes being bummed about this missed friendship, because I am of the opinion that you cannot have too many lady friends, I remember that I am lucky enough to have lots and lots of friends who will talk me out of going to yoga and into sharing a bottle of wine.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Finding it.

(guys- this post is officially 2 weeks old. embarrassing. but enjoy)

Easter had always been a holiday about creating new traditions. Some of the new traditions are now officially old traditions, but Easter is an opportunity to create new things to last for a long time.

Or perhaps. Rediscover old things.

This year we had an egg hunt. I have not participated in an egg hunt in about 12 years. Since Easter had been relocated from its permanent position at Granny's house to wherever-I-am-when-it-happens - there have been pinatas and champagne brunches at midnight, but no eggs to find.

This was Boyfriend's first year as an Easter Orphan and he wanted a real deal Easter (except he wanted turkey instead of ham) including a search for plastic eggs full of candy.

Because he's a grown-up now, he wanted to hide the eggs instead of look. Since we only had a 40' x 20' space to hide them in and we didn't want our friends rooting through all of our shit, he had to do a really good job.

Cut to Easter Sunday, when 7 of our friends were cut loose and told to find all the eggs.

I wish I had stopped worrying about cooking for like 30 seconds and had taken some pictures, because it was literally like they were a bunch of 7 year-olds with empty paper bags in one hand and mimosas in the other.

There were a fair amount of eggs at eye level and easily accessible that kept them busy for about 6 minutes and then things got interesting. I feel as though their grown-up senses got in the way of their egg hunting occasionally. While kids would immediately stick their hands into the paper feeder on the scanner, the adults think twice - worrying about the lasting effects of melting chocolate on electronics.

The last egg needed to be found, we gave a hint or two and then without saying anything, KK climbed up on a table in the living room and plucked the egg from where it was hiding in plain sight on the window, hopped down and held it aloft victorious.

Very few times will one of your fanciest friends abandon decorum and stand on your furniture in the hopes of winning something out of the grab bag. The laugh and sense of nostalgia you will get from that moment will be worth all of the hours you put in to cooking the turkey. Enjoy it. Make it a tradition.

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

whaaa happen?

So, I disappeared from the internet for a while. Whoops. Sorry about that.

A friend made a comment in passing that wasn't meant to be mean, but made me feel self-conscious about this blog. Which is dumb, because this is the internet, its my job as a human to fill it with garbage. But the sensation of doubt was hard to shake and has left me tentative to fill the non-existent (and yet still there) void of internet I have.

Anyway - I promise, I will finish writing about Alinea. For those who are interested.

And I will blog about taking on Easter which will be epic.

And eventually, I will blog about something that isn't food.

Until I do - go download the new Of Monsters and Men album. Its real, real good. I do not consider myself a "music" person. So I am excited to be the first of my friends to have listened to them. They were amazing in concert and I cannot wait to see them again.

She's pint-sized and amazing.