So...What are we doing?

Isn’t it interesting that both men and women complain about all the same things? People just want to hang out and get to know each other without imposed “titles” placed on their relationships. The funny thing is that everyone who hates it when they are asked, “So…What are we doing?” or “What are we?” only hates it when someone they aren’t really interested in asks! When a person really likes someone, they just “are.” We forget this sometimes and try to force someone to want us, or force ourselves to want someone cause they already want us. It doesn’t ever work that way! I’ve “hung out” with guys who were so into me that I felt smothered. I have chosen to see where it goes because their interest seems to be, at the very least, flattering. Somehow a few weeks later, out of the blue, they have started being dishonest or broken up with me. I think, “um…come on! I didn’t like you long before you didn’t like me! You can’t just “Unlike” me!”… I guess I should’ve taken my own advice. When they asked me, “What are we doing?” instead of saying, “nothing. I don’t like you.” I’ve said, “let’s just take it day by day and see where it goes.” My mistake. From now on, if someone has to ask, the answer is clear. “I’m sorry. I can’t hear you. There must be a bad connection on this phone!”…(static noises…hang up…sell the house and leave town!)…cause it’s just easier that way!

Optimist!

I dropped my cutting board and it split completely in half. I thought, “Oh good! Now I have two!” I have this issue with almost everything. It drives people crazy sometimes. When some of my friends have huge problems, I try my best to reprogram their day by focusing on the good. Sometimes it’s a little bit of a stretch… “You have a huge zit? Oh. Well…just think of how beautiful your skin is going to look after it’s done rotting off and forms a new layer of clear skin in a few weeks! You’ll feel so pretty and youthful with all that young skin!”…Yeah…but how else can you look at it?

The funny thing is that I am really good at turning things to gold where almost everything but dating is concerned. My optimism is a tiny bit less helpful in this area…Actually…I’m pretty good with other people’s lives…but my own?…Not so much! I think it may just be something I’ve developed as a protective mechanism. If I expect the worst, then I’m pleasantly surprised when I get the best. It seems better than being disappointed by it day after day! The only problem with that is the fact that the law of attraction suggests that you get what you expect to get! Ok then: I expect to meet a 32 year old, catholic, Italian, businessman whose never been married, has no children and doesn’t lie or cheat!… ha!…Oh crap!…I negated my optimism with the uproarious laughter in my head! Oh well…I’ll work on it! I know he exists…hee hee…darn…He’s been working for Microsoft 80 hours a week and now he’s ready to meet someone…(snicker…)…aaahhh!…and the cycle continues…

Bad Mustache for Charity!

I think it’s nice that people want to help others. That being said though: What is up with these ridiculous mustaches? Don’t people know that they never look good? A charity that forces people to look as stupid as possible may be considered a fun idea…but…I will actually pay those charities how ever much they are making for all these men with mustaches to shave them! It’s like asking women to paint a giant “I am a skank” on their faces and selling ugliness for prostitution awareness!

Oh well! I guess it’s a good thing that people are actually trying to take creative action against things that they want to change. I can only imagine the fundraiser brainstorming meeting:

Coordinator who is paid to care: We need some creative ideas for how to raise money.

Person who cares: We could sell ribbons?

Person who pretends to care : No. It’s been done.

Person whose girlfriend cares : We could purchase a bunch of baby koalas and make coats?

Person who got roped into caring: Yeah…but the animal rights people wouldn’t like that.

Person who is text messaging: We could arrest each other and have people’s loved ones raise money to get them out.

Coordinator's assistant who is paid less to care: But do you know anyone whose loved ones wouldn’t pay money for us to keep them out of their way for a while?

(guy with attention deficit disorder gets distracted)

Person with ADD: Hey Mike! You have powered sugar from that donut you just ate stuck in that mustache of yours!

Person who no longer cares: It looks ridiculous! I’ll pay you $1000 to shave it right now!

All of the members of the committee looked at each other and a huge light bulb blared over their collective heads….and that’s how the mustache fundraiser was born!

An extra pair of shoes and a grounding adapter...that's all I need!

I find that being prepared for everything at any time, keeps me sane! I was at a party the other night and a lady walked into the rest room and noticed that she was wearing one black shoe and one blue shoe…The funny thing was that the blue one had a high wedge heal and the black one was a flat. This was actually quite funny to me. I offered her the shoes I was wearing from behind the door of the stall. She asked me what size and it turned out that there was no way that mine would’ve fit her. Even more, when I saw the shoes she was actually wearing, I more than recognized that if she wore my shoes, she would likely kill herself. Mine were a little bit higher and hers were clearly purchased at a clergy outfitter. In a way, I sort of envied hers…other than the difference in color and heal height. My feet were actually killing me after a few hours on the hard cement floor. I looked into my bag! I was pretty proud of my bag actually. A friend of mine once said, “If I ever get stranded on an Island and I’m allowed to have one thing, it would be Calia’s bag.”…It’s true. I have an extra pair of sensible shoes (and by sensible, I mean a 2 ½ inch heal instead of a 4 that I would start an evening in), a grounding adapter (you never know when you’re going to get somewhere and have only an ungrounded power supply), an extra pair of stockings, small screw drivers (cause everywhere I go, someone’s glasses always break), a needle and thread (I can actually sew buttons on the guy’s suit coats while I sing), and a toothbrush….Oh yeah…and a juice box and a piece of chicken in case I get hungry.

The night was a huge amount of fun. Every party has that girl who has a formal gown on – and giant tattoos all over her….um…honey?…Do you want to borrow my coat to cover those things up? I mean…why did she even bother doing her hair in an up do? It would’ve been fine if you had just spiked it up with dippety do and worn ripped jeans and a biker jacket. As a matter of fact, I probably wouldn’t have noticed you as being out of place at all! People were wearing their strapless dresses. Strapless is hard to pull off! Your posture has to be just right and many people who only dress up for a formal event once a year, have apparently never worn shoes before! Careful about the manly walk in a gown! I worry about these things myself. I am very careful to hold the right glass and stand and walk correctly depending on my outfit….other than the relentless jumping in high-heels!…uncool…but extremely fun!

Oh well! All in all…I like to be prepared for anything. I’m sort of the MacGyver of singers. If something needs to be reset, I can pull out my earring and reset it. If I break a heel on my shoe, I can set it with a tongue depressor and super glue. I don’t like to be caught off guard! I like to do this when I go out too. It’s best to always get ready for the day before you leave the house. You don’t want to meet “the one” and have his first and lasting impression of you to be, “Wow! What a mess!”…a good lesson to learn! ...Shoes, screwdrivers, stockings, benadryl, a good hair day ...and this lamp! That's all I need! I mean... Shoes, screwdrivers, stockings, benadryl, a good hair day, this lamp,...and a spare hard drive...That's all i need!...

Oops...Almost blew up my house...

I suppose I have an issue with not wanting to bother people…which is actually, ironically, in direct opposition to how many people I actually bother come to think of it. If I have a cough, I’ll wait until someone has to pick me up off the floor and take me in an ambulance to the emergency room. If I smell gas, I’ll wait until the house explodes to call for help. I’d hate to say I had an emergency and have it just be some silly thing…well…I had been smelling gas for quite awhile and finally decided to call the gas company. They put me through to the emergency line and sent someone right out. Apparently, it was blowing out of my gas fireplace into my house….oh…oops…Good thing I hadn’t lit that candle today for some strange reason. He turned it off and told me that I needed to contact my plumber…uh…Plumber?…I don’t think I have a plumber. Although I did have my toilet snaked out once when I accidentally flushed a disposable toilet brush head down…but I’m pretty sure that my dentist actually did that for me. (He had an issue with his son flushing matchbox cars there for awhile and owned a professional toilet snake….and note to self: “disposable” is not the same as “flushable!”)

Strangely enough, my family was never the “plumber” type. If a toilet stopped working, my father would have a custodian at school seal off the room and build a new one. We had these quirks across the board though. If a “check engine” light came on in the car, he would just cover it with duct tape. I don’t remembering it being much of a problem though. If people were getting things fixed every time a light came on, we’d all be waiting at home between the hours of 7am and 6pm every single day of our lives! I’m with my Dad on this!

Anyway…the gas leak…according to the gasman, my house could’ve gone up pretty easily at any time. Hmm…I asked if he had anyway of giving me a good timeline on this? I wasn’t worried, but I would like to get my piano, one of my favorite pair of shoes, and add a few things from my bedroom laptop to my backup computer that I keep in my trunk first. I decided to find someone to fix the fireplace instead. I was so excited to have heat again but 5 minutes after he left, both of my downstairs smoke detectors were screaming. Of course it took me about a half hour to notice cause I just thought it was the alarm on my biological clock that I have been ignoring as an annoying drone for a few years now. I should’ve known though. These smoke detectors chimed at a completely different pitch than that one. I finally got them to stop after about an hour of their relentless screaming, each one seemingly in competition with the other to get a dining room chair thrown at it!…Part of me wonders if I should just take the batteries out the next time I need heat?…but then again…maybe they were trying to tell me something?…

Maybe the lesson for me here is that alarms go off for a reason. Ignoring them and then wondering why you’re sitting in a pile of rubble playing your piano, whether you’re enjoying yourself or not, may not be the best way to take a proactive stance on the situation. Besides, I was planning on renting this house out and buying a new one with someone one day....One that had enough rooms in it so that we didn’t necessarily have to see each other every single day! …I guess the alarm could’ve just been telling me that if I do rent the house out, I should likely rent it to someone with useful, manly skills who won’t call me when he has a gas leak!…cause I’m probably not the best person to call….apparently warnings are “not the boss of me!”

No question? No Answer!

I have come up with a simple solution to a modern day problem! When receiving a text, if the person hasn’t asked a question, then no response is required. I have learned that many people just text random people when they are desperate to have a no strings connection to make them feel good in the moment. I don’t believe that this is calculated, but whether it is or not, it is obvious! There are so many broken people out there who are requiring external validation that it makes it difficult for some of us to understand why they are contacting us if they aren’t interested. We start to think that they must like us and want a connection to us. This is usually not the case at all. For the most part, they are just looking for whatever attention they can get in the moment. We can easily be fooled into thinking that someone we are seeing is into us when we are getting short bursts of correspondence from them. The thing is that if they were really into us, we would be getting more than a random sentence at the end of the evening that says, “I hope you had a good night.”…uh…I guess that means that we’re together right?…um…no. It means that the person did something else without you for the entire night and wants to make sure you go to bed thinking about them so you’re not gone someday on the off chance that you may possibly be the last person in the world to date!…So what’s the response to “I hope you had a good night!”??…The response is nothing. No question! No answer! A better text on the person’s part that would require an answer would be, “I hope you had a nice time to night! I missed you. Can we do something together tomorrow?”…Anything short of a question mark with something leading towards possibly talking in person or maybe even meeting in public should be met with no reply!…There are a few exceptions to the rule however. For example: “What are you wearing right now?”…This can be an innocent question if the person is on his way to pick you up to go to a formal event and he wants to pick up a corsage for you to match his tie….If it is a random text at 3 in the morning, this is the exception to the question mark response rule.

U B4 me - X-ept after 3

…The way I like to handle this one is to simply wait to respond to it until the next day at around 7am with a polite, “I’m wearing sweatpants and I’m on my way to the gym! What are you up to?”…You will find that unless the person is really interested in getting to know you, he will have little interest in knowing what you’re wearing while he’s asleep.

Following this simple question mark rule when corresponding through text only (since the person is likely afraid of intimacy or quite possibly already dating someone else), will make your life a lot easier. You won’t waste an incredible amount of time trying to figure out if that person is interested in you. They aren’t! They likely won’t ever be! They think that their mother would like you and they probably should like you too! But THEY DON”T! oh well…no question! No answer! “Do you like me?”…ah the question! “eh…you’re better than nothing I guess…”

Leave something unsaid...

There’s something to be said about not having the last word. I have noticed that I have this issue. It’s not that I’m compelled to one-up everyone, it’s just that sometimes people set up a joke for me so perfectly, that I can’t resist the next line. It just seems logical to me and somehow comes out more quickly than my brain can stop it! I was thinking about the fact that I have this issue in all areas of my life. If I open a box of cookies, I can’t eat one cookie. I need to finish the box and throw it away in one sitting. I don’t like anything left “open.”

I have a friend who can open a bag of M&M’s and eat one and fold it back up and put it away for later….OH MY GOD!…even thinking about that makes me nervous! How could one M&M do anything for anyone? Is she freakin’ kidding me?…One taste of an M&M would have me driving to the store for another bag so that when the bag I was eating on the way was gone, it wouldn’t leave me wanting more! Needing more, or a lot of something provides the end of the story…or at least I’ll pass out once I get too tired to eat anymore of my endless supply of M&M’s (cause I have my driver’s license and stores are open 24 hours a day! It leaves endless possibilities unless there’s a state of emergency or something!) In fact…that’s why they are called M&M’s…you never hear anyone say “Hey, Pass me an M.”…even more, I have a feeling that it is a bag of M’s that you are meant to just eat all in one sitting. Possibly to be clear, they should just melt them together into a bar so people aren’t confused. My poor friend who thinks that one ‘M’ is the proper etiquette would finally be clear. You don’t just eat half of a candy bar…though I think it may have a suggested serving size written on it…a candy bar is likely 7 or 8 servings in the scheme of the food pyramid with Chocolate being at the top of it. The strange thing is that I’m not even a chocolate person. So many women crave it. Not me. I suppose I crave “a lot” of something…I just have no idea what that something is. (don’t tell anyone, but I suspect they call it Obsessive…whatever though. You don’t die of anything until you’re diagnosed with it!)

Oops…Apparently I got hungry during this entry and started rambling about food. I guess what I was talking about was allowing other people to have the “joke.”…I know…sometimes they aren’t quite as funny as the one that could come right after theirs... but…I should just say it in my head once in awhile. My laughter might even help to show the other person that they made a funny and stroke their ego! I’m going to try it. Especially with guys! The funny girl never gets the guy! I’m going to just smile and giggle at their jokes so they feel appreciated. Being too “with it” as a girl, sometimes is a huge turnoff!…Starting now, I’m going to play “without it!”….As a guy told me once, “I don’t need a smart girl. I could always read a book later or something!”…(another reason why I’m building an ark…)