Quote of the Day: F. Scott Fitzgerald Edition

In the course of packing, I found a bunch of old books today, and when I say "a bunch"  I mean boxes and boxes.  Way too many boxes.  (Friends of the Library, here I come!)  It's entirely contradictory to efficient packing but  I couldn't help but flip through a few of my old favorites and found this little gem highlighted in my copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise:

“They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.”

 

 

Anna’s Top 3 Worst Online Openers of All Time*

Some situations in life are just inherently uncomfortable.

 Say “yes sir” to a ma’am on the phone.  Oops.

 Introducing yourself to someone…for the third time.  There’s nothing quite like that quietly irritated “we’ve met before” to make me squirm. 

 And then there’s writing a blind email to someone whose profile you saw on an online dating site which in my opinion,  re-writes the book on uncomfortable.

The initial “what’s up” email requires you to cautiously express interest while simultaneously conveying your hardcore awesomeness to a complete stranger.  It helps to be funny, or witty, or both and you have to do it in no more than five sentences.   To helpfully add to the challenge and discomfort as you try to compose this tidy little manifesto, the site chimes in occasionally with helpful little tips like: “your future match is 72% more likely to respond if you don’t use emoticons!”  (And while I’m on that train of thought: eff-that!   I’m an over-emoticon-er and it’s best that people know that up front.)

 My point is that writing an opening email is wicked awkward.  Some people are better than others, most of us do our best, and then there are those certain few rock stars who just close their eyes and swing for the fences.   Most of them get a little leeway just for the effort but from time to time, some are just down right spectacular in their horribleness and so in reverse order I bring you: 

Anna’s Top 3 Worst Online Openers of All Time*

 
#3: dunno wut to say.  Chat?,, text my cell: three5 2, 77six seventeen 2 six. (numbers have been changed .)

Wait…what does this even mean?  And who writes a phone number like that?

#2:  I may not be Fred Flintsone but I bet I can still make your Bedrock.  Email if interested.

Two things, first: Ew.  Second – did you just quote Young Money at me?

 

#1: Knock, knock, knock.  Is the sweet princess home?

As much as I wish that I were kidding on this one…I’m not.  I don’t think I could have made it up if I tried.  Some poor, unfortunate gentleman caller actually tried this, which in turn required me to call upon all of my self-control to keep from vomiting on my laptop.  The fact that this even got thrown down in writing begs the question: has this particular brand of patronizing, infantile nonsense work for him before? 

 

*And by "of all time" I mean the 6 months that I spent on Match.com

 

 

 

The rant I'm too frustrated not to post today

Bye bye love, I'll catch you later

Got a left foot down on my accelerator

and the rearview mirror torn off

I ain't never lookin' back and that's a fact

 - JoDee Messina 

I love the morning light in my parent’s house.  Admittedly I don’t see it all that often; I’m up quite a bit before the sun on weekdays and it takes a lot more than pretty light to pry me out of bed before sunrise on the weekends these days. But that’s neither here nor there.   All of the living areas and most of the windows in the house face west, and so the morning light in the family room is clear, diffuse and greenish-blue. I think that it’s the trees.

It's my last weekend in the house and I got up early this morning to lay on the couch with a cup of coffee while the sun came up.  I will miss the windows and the trees, especially early in the mornings.  It’s okay though because I know that I’ll  get to see it again.

I am excited to move; to quote my Mama: forward ever, backwards never.  And there’s so much going forward that I am excited for: to live with my Meredith again (let’s hope that we don’t drive John nuts), to be closer to school and to have roomies again.  I have loved (loved!) living alone but I’ll admit that it probably won't hurt for me to have just a little bit less solitude in my life.  It also doesn’t hurt that future roomies are both gigantic smartie pants’, can you say free homework help? J

Still, as I start packing and getting ready for the move I can’t help but remember moving in. There’s a certain amount of sadness in it, there always is when dealing with extinct dreams.  I am relieved though to find that there's only a little bit of sadness, I finished mourning the death of the hopes and dreams went with that relationship a long time ago.  The more I pack, the more I find that while I am not sad, I am pissed.  My Mama has always been pretty strongly opposed to that word.  Adverse enough that I’ve spent the last twenty minutes trying to come up with less vulgar, equally as accurate word and I have failed.  I can’t avoid it: I am pissed.  

It doesn’t escape me though that when he packed up and went away, I was here helping him.  I made it easy for him to leave yet here I am, packing and dealing with the things that he left behind. What's left behind you ask? Almost every single gift I gave him over our five year relationship.  Nothing quite like packing to know exactly what was left.  I get not wanting to keep things but have the decency to take it with you and dispose of it yourself.  

More than anything though, I’m pissed that I wasn’t smart enough to charge him rent.



 

QotD: true story

I don't like studying.  I hate studying.  But I love learning, learning is beautiful. 

- Natalie Portman

 

Such a true story. 

Quote of Day: Art

Lately, the idea of uniting artistry with science has been my jam.  Not really in the arts in medicine kind of way where you stand in the hallways playing a lute and bringing colored pencils to the hospitalized masses; there's definite benefits to this but it's not what I'm all about. 

I've always been a liberal arts kind of girl but in recent years I've spent more time with science.  I love it exactly for it's science-y-ness but I can't help but see the art and beaty within it as well.  Probably why I love this quote so much...it's what's getting me through this week though, as a reminder of why I started down this path in the first place.

"Nursing is both scientific and artistic.  I seek to combine science with humanism…Nursing is a therapeutic interpersonal process…Nursing is a scientific discipline that derives…its practice base from scientific research”

Adventures in Speed Dating

It was one of those days when I was "busy" in the way that only someone standing around watching other people doing stuff can be. I've never really understood why they like me to stand there and watch them infuse drug. I mean, I can tell you the drug infuses at a rate of 480 with set volume of 50 (and now that I write that I'm not even sure that is accurate) but I can't tell you what that means, how it was calculated or why it's right. Yet they want me standing there all day "just in case." If there's a grammatical emergency I can help you, anaphylaxis or malignant hypertension, not so much. It's why I'm going to nursing school, but that's neither here nor there.

So anyways, there I was, busy watching other people be busy when a nurse on the unit, we'll call her Lori (mostly because her name is Lori) asked if I wanted to go speed dating. Now before you start judging let's clear up two things: the event would be free for me to attend and the day before I had found out that my ex-boyfriend was legit dating someone new. So stop judging.  However, in the very least I did  learn a few things:

Lesson #1: Couples and Married people think that Speed Dating "sounds like fun.

It’s kind of like how camping sounds like a hoot until you do it in Florida in July.  I do appreciate though that when I call them and say “I’m going speed dating!” they find a way to put a positive spin on it. They are very good friends. So while tomorrow I may try to convince you that I'm living Sex in the City, Gainesville Edition, there’s no question in my mind: love that person sleeping next to you and appreciate that you came home to them instead of going out speed dating.

Lesson #2: I am the asshole 29 year old who went to the 35 to 45 year old speed-dating group.

I found myself guiltily telling a series of lies, each one more egregious than the next, in order to atone for this.  Are you really thirty-seven?  I WORE SUNCREEN BITCHES!! I TAKE EXCELLENT CARE OF MY SKIN. It's  not exactly an unforgivable transgression, and I can always take some comfort in knowing that in fifteen or twenty years I'll be the 44 year old woman at her third round of speed dating thinking "that bitch is SO not 37." And I'll be right. It’ll serve me right for my assholetry.

Lesson #3: Going to the wrong age group means you meet people who are waaay too old for you.

Duh right?  Still, there was one guy who was marginally nice. He was charming(ish), good looking and had the ability to hold a reasonably entertaining 5 minute conversation. (It’s deceptively difficult.) Yeeeahhhh…his daughter is only three years younger than me. So there I was in the wrong age group and wondering if I can put a comment in my "no thank you" box that says "you aren’t repulsive but I'm a dick who came to the wrong age group and you could have begotten me with your first wife."  I went instead with a classic no thank you, it just seemed simpler.  

 Lesson #4:  Speed Dating is like a goddamn firing range.

 5 minute conversations, over and over, and over…and over again. Delivering the same less than cleaver platitudes: I got my master’s degree in secondary education because I thought I wanted to teach...until I started teaching!  Or, “wow, working with" cancer patients must be tough?"  "You know, it’s like any other job, good days and bad days."  After fifteen or twenty of these you can only wish that you were on the business end of a firing range.

Lesson #5: Ain’t nobody got time for this shit.

Free or not, chances are it won’t be happening again.

The Nurse Boom and Banana Farewell Tour

Nurse Boom and I went down to Orlando about a month ago for a weekend at the Annual ACRP (Association for Clinical Research Professionals) to get our learn on.  While not intentionally planned as such, it was a well-timed farewell hoo-rah as we've been conference going buddies for almost five years now.  Much like I already miss seeing her face every morning, I will miss the funsies of going to conferences together. 

Okay, so it's not a picture from the conference but still: Boom and Banana!



Before I get to telling you all about the impressive swag that we acquired there (and it's worth waiting for, I promise), we went to a keynote speech by Charles Sabine, a news reporter turned Huntington's Disease advocate.  His speech was, for lack of a better word, outstanding and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.  Mr. Sabine's family has been ravaged by Huntington's Disease, a hereditary disease that causes nerve cells within the brain to degenerate, resulting in debilitating physical deterioration and dementia.   It's a terrible disease for which we currently have no preventative or curative intervention.  Mr. Sabine has watched his father and uncle deteriorate and die from it, he is currently watching his brother deteriorate rapidly and he himself will someday soon begin to experience its symptoms and inexorable decline.  It is an area in which clinical research is much needed, hence why he was in Orlando talking to us.

If I related to you all of the things that he said (which are continuing to resonate even now), we would be here all day.  I'll spare you and just throw out there that which struck me as the most powerful:  the complete uselessness of defining a disease as incurable.  (The following is essentially a paraphrase of his speech this morning, a thing that I think he might be okay with if only because it might make 18 more people in the world a little bit more aware of this terrible disease.) Most illnesses and conditions that affect us are incurable: the common cold, influenza, depression, chronic cancers, heartbreak.  We cannot cure these things but rather, we’ve learned to ameliorate their effects, to minimize the lasting impact that they have on our lives.  Beginning a person’s experience with this disease by telling them that it is incurable does them a great disservice, it removes their hope.  Hope is what pulls us through the darkness, it what makes us look for something better and it’s what all research is built upon.

It's just a thought.  A thought that makes me proud of the very small part I got to play in heme-malignancies research over the past five years.  Thanks Universe. 

Now on to the swag!



ACRP swag 2013

That's a grand total of four bags, two t-shirts, three stuffed animals, two coffee mugs, two water bottles, a calculator, six pads of post-its, a medical dictionary, a calculator, three mini bottles of cetaphil body lotion, four pen sized hand sanitizer dispensers, three car iPhone charger, a desk iPhone holder, luggage handle, a ruler, a snap bracelet and five squeezy "work missile" balls.  Impressive huh? 

We also did some old-school Tebowing;



and even made some research-y friends:

 

So far as farewell tours go...it was pretty darn awesome.  I love you Nurse Boom! 



Ever wonder what $30 cat treats look like?

A couple weeks ago Murry staged yet another Great Esk-ah-PAY!

Around three in the morning after the Great Financial Aid Meltdown,  I woke up to the distinct: ka-thump, ka-thunk, MEROOWWW of a liberated cat.  Stumbling out of bed, I was fairly certain of what had gone done and when I turned on the kitchen life my suspicions were confirmed: while participating in overly-exuberant communications with a local ruffian (I'm pretty sure Mom jokes were slung and my honor was impinged) Murry knocked out a window screen and cavorted off into the cold, dark morning to defend my reputation. 

What. A. Dick.

What?  Did you want to read your homework?

 

I went outside to knock the screen back in (we can't bet letting Joe Lewis out or nocturnal Florida wanderers in) and after doing so,  stood around calling his name and shaking a bag of treats in the hopes that I could bribe him home from his adventures.  Then I realized that I was standing in my backyard at three in the morning in my underpants calling my cat to come home.  This may in fact be an all-time low for me, which if you’ve been around the last few months you’ll know, that’s saying something.  However in my experience, early morning all-time lows are just the universe’s way of saying: GO BACK TO BED. 

So back to bed I went and not surprisingly, Murry made his way home all by his onesies about three hours later.  Tuckered out and inordinately sleepy and lazy:  

so very sleepy at 8 am

still...can't...get...up...at 5 pm

Yet he seemed no worse for the wear. 

Ha. 

True to form, that pansy-ass stinker is just not tough enough to be an outdoor adventurer.  I thought that maybe we’d manage to skip making traumatic trip to the vet, but three days  later and a mere four hours before I was supposed to leave for a conference in Orlando, I walked into the my closet and was greeted by a very squinty and (I assume) rather uncomfortable kitty.

what?  this is how my face usually looks

One Friday afternoon emergency trip to the vet later yielded a diagnosis: an upper respiratory infection requiring antibiotic eye ointment and fancy-schmancy, immune-system boosting kitty treats.  I blame the esk-AH-pay.

Ever wondered what thirty dollar cat treats look like?

 

Voila! They have an appetizing chicken-liver flavor and appealing fish-like appearance.  I'm sure that it must be the fish-like appearance that makes them so schmancy. That and the sprinkling of essential amino acids to encourage cellular repair and health and well-being! 

So, two weeks and yet another show of amazing friendship from the amazing people in my life later(three of whom rallied like champs to get us to the vet and to give Mur his twice-daily eye ointment I was in Orlando,) we pulled through. 

At first I was tempted to say that my plea to the universe for life to get just “a little bit easier” had gone unanswered.  Then I thought about how generous people were YET AGAIN with their time and support and I remembered that good friendships trump circumstantial challenges every day of the week.   

Meredith, Andrea, Kristin and Erica…I am SO GRATEFUL FOR YOU! 

It was a very good day..

I started and ended my day today the same way: dancing to terrible pop music in my bathroom. 



Yup.  Today was a very good day. 

The Great Financial Aid Meltdown of 2013

I wrote a blog the other night about the no good, very bad, terrible day that I’d had.  You’re welcome for not posting it, I re-read it this morning and the melodrama just about knocked my socks off. 

 

As much as I love the challenge of trying to do something new, the other night things got just a little too hard.  Across four (yes four) ever growing to-do lists and with time ticking down to the start of summer, the weight of going back to school was feeling a tad too heavy.  Then the University of Florida struck again and I suddenly became unwillingly intimate with the new regulations guiding student loan disbursement.  I know that to get something, you need to give something but … well, I hadn’t factored in how hard loans are to get when you’re working on your second bachelors. 

In an act indulgence that typifies exactly how charmed my life has been, I gave into the overwhelmedness (is that a word?) and took a seat on the cool kitchen floor to let myself have a good wail.  At first I thought that maybe getting it out would make it feel better, so there I was, hiccupping and wallowing in snot on a more than slightly dirty kitchen floor (sweeping isn’t at the top of the Around the House list) and asking the empty air around me when things might get even just a little bit easier.  Not a lot easier but maybe just a little bit easier once in a while.  Sitting there alone I remembered what I always seem to come upon when I let myself go to pieces like this: this act of indulgence doesn’t in fact make anything feel any better.   

The thing is, I pretty much had a default “person" for most of my life to default lean on when things got really hard. (What?  Is that not what boyfriends are for? Could, in retrospect, this dependency (reliance?) potentially account for my singleness?) And so in that moment on the kitchen floor I gave myself an ultimatum: you need to pull yourself out of this – think a goddamn happy thought. 

And what did I come up with but burritos.  Mother effing burritos was the best happy thought that I could come up with.  So I shook myself and had another go: the incredible variety of burritos available.  And guacamole. Straight up pathetic (and perhaps a little hungry) but there I was, smiling through the tears.

Admittedly the smiles were weak and ultimately I had to call in the big guns and sent a “please help” text to Club Fun who pointed out: just need to get to tomorrow, because sometimes tomorrow is when it gets just a little bit easier. 

So while I’m not there yet, I am learning to pull myself up when I’m struggling and stalled but as long there are burritos and good friends in the world it truly does feel just that little bit easier that I need.   And Club Fun was right: the next day I found my way and it felt, just that little bit easier. 

Simple Joys

It's dumber than sin but it's quite possibly the best thing that's happened to me so far this week:

I particularly like T-Rex and Kangaroo.   And no, I have no idea why they're drinking out of sippy cups, but it's brilliant.  

Maroon5 me on a desert island with Adam Levine please!

I developed my first rock star crush five years ago at a Foo Fighters concert in Tampa.  Before the concert I'd limited my crushes to pretty boys like Leonardo DiCaprio, Matthew Fox and Freddy Prinze Jr.  I blame private school. I went in to the concert a mediocre fan (at best) and left with a raging desire to jump the dirty, probably a little smelly, long haired gremlin who had just sung an acoustic version of Everlong.  Nothing quite like watching a man smoke a cigarette through a nostril right before killing Monkey Wrench to knock the private school out of the girl. 

Yes Please

Well shove over Dave Grohl, I have tired of how stubbornly you have remained happily married (because clearly it's your married status that makes you unattainable), and you've been replaced by the single talented new man of my dreams: Adam Levine. 

Two weeks ago, on an afternoon coffee run at work, my friend Christine was all: "hey, I have an extra ticket to Maroon 5 on April 1st, do you want to go?"  And I was all: "do bears poop in the woods?"  I make it a personal life policy to never miss out on concerts, especially when nice people invite you.

So my badass self said "eff it!" to work and stats class (and by "eff it" I mean that I requested the day off from work in advance and emailed my teacher ahead of time and apologized for missing class; there's only so much private school you can take out of the girl.)  Two words: worth. it.  We were crazy close to the main stage (thank you Christine!) and wicked close to the floating, mini-stage.

 

So here's the thing about Adam Levine, he's way less dirty than Dave Grohl (I know, but bear with me) but the guy has charisma just pouring out of him.  Apparently I'm a crazy commie, hippie, socialist-Marxist for having missed this before now but I'm a better late then never kind of girl.

Adam Levine's butt...because I can't help myself

I took several minutes to tear myself away from taking pictures of real-live-Adam-Levine booty, but when I did I realized that there was surprisingly little security between me and Mr. Lavine.  So little in fact that one good jump and I could have turned a visual, auditory treat into a much more hands on experience.  In my head I was all:

YOLO!!

Unfortunately, the same common sense of reality that tells us "only send a nudie pic if you're REALLY sure you don't want to run for public office" told me that however absent security seemed...they're sneaky mother fuckers who'd probably manage tackle and cuff my ass faster than a fat kid (me) can eat a doughnut.

I immediately regret that decision

So I did the mature thing, considered how getting arrested for assault could seriously derail my current life trajectory and decided that a little Adam Levine sweat probably wouldn't be worth it. Plus they'd probably make me wash my hands then it'd all have been for naught.   And so the list of things that by not doing in my early twenties, I've officially missed the boat for, gets one item longer.  The nose piercing and pink hair is probably for the best, not tackling Adam Levine? Le sigh.

Never the less, Maroon 5 (the whole band) is amazing live.  Neon Tree's opened and if nothing else, you should go just to see their drummer. She not only kills the drums but manages to sing at the same time.  It's one of the more impressive things I've seen in my concert going life, that girl is amazing. It' was a great night and it goes down as one more great memory for the books. :-)

Scars

A quote of the day donation from Mama K:

"It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars."

Garrison Keillor

 

Thanks Mama! 

Sad Week

There's a photo-blog that's going around the internet where man documents his wife's (ultimately loosing) battle with breast cancer.  If you haven't seen it, you can find it here.  It's stunning.  The photography alone is beautiful but the emotions, the struggle, the pain and the sadness that so many cancer patients and their loved ones experience, it breaks your heart and it took my breath away.

In some ways the quiet, heart-wrenching sadness of this blog seems to sum up this past week at work for me. People tend to assume that my work is sad when actually that is more the exception than the rule, so I'm not sure why this week at work has felt so sad to me when nothing particularly sad has happened.  

I've started changing gears at work, moving from acute processes that are terrible and impossible to deny but fast, to more chronic processes like myelofibrosis and multiple myeloma that are just as terrible but slower, different.  The early stages of these chronic diseases can be a little ambiguous, patients overall feel fine and they can pretend that it isn't happening, that they aren't sick. I don't want to call it false hope but there's a hard reality that comes with chronic illness. I guess this week I learned how difficult it is to be the reminder of reality.  There's only so many times you can be asked "how long will I need this treatment" and wait for it to hit home when I have to say: until it stops working.  I know that I am far from the only person saying this. I'm often in the room when they hear it from their doctor, but I'm also the easiest person to get on the phone and the person with the time to say it over and over again.  As many times as they need to ask it, I will answer it. 

Over the past five years I've seen a lot and I've learned a lot.  I'm sure that  I'll learn how to do this too.  I'll learn how to do this and I'll even learn to find the honor in it.  This week though I'm still learning and I'm a little overwhelmed by the sadness. 

After a week like this I need a ticklish baby penguin named Cookie, and thanks to the miracle that is the internet, I have it!

 

http://youtu.be/Wz92ANMTR2M

 

 





You can't win if you don't play

As I’ve started to put the past 6 months down in writing,  I've started wondering: why in God’s name did I decide to venture into online dating again? Writing things down can make me overly introspective at times which is either an excellent reason to keep blogging, or a truly stunning argument for stopping all together.  Hindsight isn’t 20/20 unless you bother to look back over your shoulder though, so I’m going to go with the former and just keep on, keepin' on with this whole blogging business. Seriously though, I really started to wonder, what actually started all of this?   Then it came to me, one word: Stefan.  Stefan (pronounced Stef-an, not Stef-ahhn) was my  A&P 1 teacher this past summer, upon whom I developed The Biggest Crush.  (Don't worry Mom, I promise this isn't as questionable as it seems, keep reading. :)). 

I was a little bit nervous to go back to school las summer.  School in general doesn't make me nervous, but facing down the very same science classes that I so successfully avoided during undergrad and graduate school made my tummy do a little flip-flop.   So imagine my pleasure when on my first night of class, uncomfortably wedged into a right-handed desk I found that I was to be taught by my own personal version of a bad boy: an incredibly attractive, slightly nerdy and British. Yes please.  

So in order: physical attractiveness is one thing, and a great thing at that but all on its onesises it can get old pretty quick.  Add intelligence (I like 'em nerdy) and kindness and now you've caught my attention.  Add in a passion and love for teaching and well...do you like beavers?  Cause DAAAAAAMN.  (Sorry, I just had to do it.)  This was certainly not part of the plan when I registered but suddenly in addition to trying to memorize the whole of human anatomy in 8 weeks I also had to find time each night to alternate  between paying attention and mooning.  Life's rough huh? 

So when did I revert back to being a pre-adolescent girl you ask?  Probably about the same time that I stopped sleeping and started drinking Diet Coke and eating Sour Patch Kids for dinner on the reg. Seriously though, Stefan totally joined in on my Sour Patch Kid consumption most days before class. That's right, we bonded over sour chewy candies. Boom.  With such a solid basis upon which to place my confidence I decided that it was time to take a leap: I was going to ask Stefan out.   What? is that not a logical next step?!  Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?   He’d laugh in my face, call me fugly and walk away?  Well yes, that would be crushing, embarrassing and mortifying, but if fear of that worth never knowing if our Sour Straw QT was simply congeniality run amuck through a caffeine induced haze or a little bit more more?    Nope.  

So as the semester drew to a close I plotted my moment of probable humiliation.  How does one ask out their teacher after the end of the semester without coming across like a total crazy? Not possible.  So rather, how does one ask out their teacher after the end of the semester in a way that leaves some shot of success?   A work email takes a borderline inappropriate message and turns it seriously inappropriate and, if misconstrued could also potentially threaten his professional livelihood.  I wouldn’t take too kindly if someone did that to me even if they were as charming and delightful as I, and so this left Facebook.  Even in retrospect this makes me queasy. 

So, the day after grades were submitted I sat on my couch in my favorite sweatpants and lucky gator t-shirt staring at my computer, reminding myself that expressing interest in a person is a compliment which, even if unreciprocated, is generally still flattering and as such appreciated.  Anyone with manners can figure out how to reject you kindly via an email.  Right?  And please oh please oh please don’t let him call me fugly.  

So I did it.  I sent the darn message and asked my former teacher out to coffee or a drink.  Then walked to the bathroom and vomited.  Seriously, it was that bad.  Bad enough that I might put it down as one of the bravest things I’ve ever done.  I’d  generally rather risk bodily harm before rejection and yet I faced it down with the hopes of spending time with someone smart, interesting and (it has to be said) oh so pretty. 

And you’ll never guess…he was flattered and but that for the distance he’d love to.  The distance you ask?  Yeah...the kid got deported back to England.

Ain’t that a bitch? (Either that or a REALLY good lie to get out of telling me that he thinks I'm a hose-beast.  I'll take it either way. )

So there it is: I had a crush.  The universe reminded me that there are really smart, funny and appealing guys out there and that the only way to find out which ones they are is to go and find out first hand.  I find being alone to be entirely delightful (nobody to interfere with my string cheese eating or West Wing watching!) and hugely preferable to being with the wrong guy, but what about the right guy?  There it is: what about the right guy?  That little thought rankled and rattled around my brain for rest of the summer until once again, my period of perseveration ended in an abrupt decision and action.  You’re never going to win if you don’t even play the game.  

 One act of bravery (and yes, I consider asking out my very recent A&P teacher out on a date to be brave) inspired another act of bravery.   My first act resulted in an entertaining pen pal and drinking buddy if I ever happen to be in England, what would my second act bring?  

Song of the Day: Outloud

Dispatch first sang this sound acoustically at a Hurricane Katrina benefit several years ago and when you listen to it with that in mind, it's beautiful and not just a little bit sad.

 

Quote of the Day: It's Hard

"Getting where you're trying to go, it's bloody hard work and only one word really matters — and that's surviving."

- Richard Branson

 

 

 Amen brother.  

Quote of the Day: Belive in Dance

"I stand for honesty, equality, kindness, compassion, treating people the way you'd want to be treated and helping those in need.  To me, those are the traditional values.  That's what I stand for.  I also believe in dance."

- Ellen DeGeneres

Let's Talk Ground Rules

Confession: I joined Match.com.  Okay fine, I tried to join Match.com once and it didn’t go well so I took a break and then nine months later I joined it for real. True story.

The first time that I tried to join Match was after maybe three months of singledome when I was in the “my life is over and I’m never going to meet an interesting guy ever again” place.  It was an odd place, one with lots of Popsicle’s, Netflix and no small amount of emotional cutting. Surrounded by popsicle sticks and fearing permanently cherry stained lips, I turned to my friends for support and advice.  This, was  a terrible idea.  I don't know about your friends but sometimes my friends give me great advice, other times they tell me to join Match.com.  

Thankfully, dating websites seem prepared for this exact situation and in order to weed out emotional train wrecks (ahem) they require prospective members fill out a very snazzy questionnaire intended to assess emotional stability.  Tricksy questions such as, “what do you like to do in your spare time?” (Sit on the couch, watch Gossip Girl on Netflix and drink red wine?) and “How important to you is it that your potential match wear deodorant/ have basic social skills/ not be married/ have a job?” (Hint: when your answer is one big…meh…that’s a bad sign.)  Thank GOD this super dog sniffer of a survey was filled out before actually signing up for or paying for anything.  And so, abundantly aware of my overwhelming apathy towards members of the opposite sex, I closed my laptop, grabbed another fudgsicle and went back to my solo couch party.  I wasn’t there yet.

Four seasons of Grey's Anatomy, two semesters of nursing school pre-reqs and one MAJOR crush on a certain A&P teacher later – my super friends struck again.  This time I found the wherewithal somewhere within myself to care a little bit more about the bar against which I measured my potential suitors and embraced the idea of trying something new.  This brings me to my first line of defense.

Criteria for which you get ex-nayed / considered on first look:

1.       Gratuitous shirtless selfies.

I don’t think that this one needs an explanation.

2.       Any reference to wanting “like, not a supermodel or anything, but you know, someone who respects their body.”

The want to be attracted to one’s partner is implied in the whole “more than friends” situation and a need to turn the implied into the overt is distressing in and of itself.  Add in the idea that anyone not meeting a certain physical standard (one that I assume is most likely stereotypical and unrealistic for the likes of me) is lacking in respect for their body?  No thank you.

3.       Any reference to needing an “active sexual relationship.”

Vomit. 

 

4.       Current relationship status of anything other than single, divorced or widowed.

What else is there you ask?  What other status could one reasonably put on a dating website profile? It’s not normal, it’s not reasonable and it’s certainly not very smart but you could also choose: separated.  I can hear your collective gasp and please rest assured that I share your horror.  Take a breather dude, it’s okay to be alone for more than a week.

5.       Substitution of single letters and numbers for full words and/or refusal to abide by basic mechanical writing principles.

U for you.  4 for four.  B4 for before.  All caps, no periods, no commas?  You don’t have to have a Pulitzer Prize but Microsoft Word has an outstanding spelling and grammar check system.  Use it.  Please.

Add in the basic safety rules (no identifying information, no at home pickups and providing a friend with my password to the oh so handy Find My IPhone app) and you’ve got yourself a blind dating ball game. 

You might be wondering why I’m telling you these things.  Perhaps if you are in an established, loving relationship you might be thinking, "that sounds fun!"  Trust me, this ain't Sex in the City and in the coming posts there will be moments (trust me) where you ask yourself: “what the hell kind of criteria is she picking these guys with?”  In retrospect, perhaps I ought to have made more rules, but then again, what's the point of stepping out of your box if you're just going to box yourself back in with rules? 

So now you know that a.) I'm super lame and b.)  that it is with these rules in hand that I embarked upon an entirely hilarious, occasionally humiliating and entirely surreal six months of online dating. 

I'm back!

Have you missed me?!  I hate it when my life gets so nutty that I can’t and/or don’t want to write anything at all, much less proofread it for spelling and grammar errors and post it on the internet. With the addition of classes these last nine months, my life qualifies as beyond nuts.  Add in that there were parts of my life that I felt as if I shouldn’t be posting on the internet that it got difficult to write and I just threw in the towel for a few months. How do you write about your life when you feel obligated to hide parts of it? 

I’ve been single now for almost a year and a half and up until this point, I’ve refrained from posting the more entertaining aspects of this single life because a certain ex-boyfriend was still a friend and I worried about inflicting unnecessary hurt or sadness.  It might be my blog and the internet may be a free forum but those of us who post our lives for all to see are still responsible for the things that we put out into the world.  I know that I’ve unintentionally hurt people with things that I’ve written and so I try to ask myself before I post: is it kind? Kindness isn’t a very a tall order especially when its someone you care about and I wanted to take whatever road would keep him in my life as a friend. You can pick whatever road you want but when it gets rocky you may very well find yourself walking down it alone.

My personal road got REALLY rocky last month.  I’m sorry to be vague but you’re just going to have to trust that about a month ago my life got turned upside down and at times I’ve had to look reeeeally hard just to recognize it.  I am rarely, truly down for the count but I have been and as I’ve been climbing out of the valley, I’ve had to face some very real truths. 

Truth: There’s nothing like being truly down and out to find out who your real friends are.  It’s nuts (or insanely lucky) that I saved this lesson for 29 but there it is.  A few people who I previously considered to be “true blue” have somewhat disappointingly faded out but far more heartwarming has been the so very many people who were there before I even thought to ask and haven’t budged since.  It’s challenging at times not to focus on the losses (hey, it still stings) but since we are speaking of truths:  losses notwithstanding, I am beyond blessed to be surrounded by amazing people.

Truth: Once somebody shows you who they are, what their priorities are or what kind of friend they are, no amount of arguing or trying to make them feel bad for letting you down will make you feel better.  There are certain things that can’t (or shouldn’t) be unseen and there comes a point where you should just walk away.  

Truth: this might be redundant but it bears repeating, I have SO MANY amazing, wonderful, warm, loving and supportive friends.  With an arsenal like that, it might hurt to walk away from the not so great ones but it’s not hard.

Back to my point: I am free from my emotional obligations (both real and imagined) to hide my okay-ness (or not so okay-ness as the case may be), AND my classes this semester are not quite to all-encompassing as they have been in semesters past.  So, what does all this garment-tearing, tear-soaked, soul-searching mean for you my loyal readers who have been suffering in the silence of the last six months?  It means the return of…..dating stories! Okay fine, it just means the return of the blog period, including some dating stories here and there.  They’re being told a little bit in retrospect but don’t you worry, time may dull the pain of loss but it certainly has not dulled some of the more fan-damn-tastic details of the last six months.