20-Something gets her haircut: Dubliner Man Crush returns

Life is weird. It’s just plain weird.

Friday night I met up with my bestie, Amanda, and a mutual girl friend we had when we lived together in Fremont. The two of us haven’t seen her since that time approximately four years ago, so it was a bit of an exciting girl reunion.

After getting my haircut, I bused my way to Ballard to meet up with them at The Matador, which was insanely crowded—standing room only. We squeezed in at the bar, drank a couple glasses of wine, and then decided to move on down to a *hopefully* less-crowded bar—The Ballard Loft. Another couple glasses of wine there, and we were sufficiently buzzed. Our old girlfriend decided she had to venture home before things got too out of control (a good reason why I don’t live somewhere as far away as Lynnwood. Who wants to miss out on the chance to get recklessly out of control?!), and soon it was just the two of us in the bar.

Amanda decided it was time to mingle since she’s single and “just wants to feel the weight of a maaannn” on her. I sat awkwardly at the bar while she eyed and made a flirty comment to a tall, dark and handsome standing behind us. I glanced behind me to check her target out, and noticed that the short, dark and handsome standing next to her tall was non other than Dubliner Man Crush. And we caught eyes.

Fcuk. Fcuk. Fcuk.

That was an embarrassing and totally awkward little attempt at dating—and it’s never fun to be reminded about how you were completely rejected after shamelessly throwing yourself at someone. *Cringe.* Even if he did try to make up for the rejection later.

I tried to hiss the details to Amanda to explain how uncomfortable and mortified I was, but she was unfortunately unaware of the story since she was living in Canada at the time and only interested in flirty with the target. So, I did the only thing that seemed logical in my mind—I downed the last of my white wine, straightened my clothing, took a deep breath and repeated, “It’s not that bad, it’s not that bad,” and turned around to approach the group.

The whole interaction was pretty uneventful, albeit awkward—especially when his friend asked how we knew each other, and we kinda both nodded to “through a friend” and he said, “Uh, we sorta met cause we both used to get our haircut at the same place.”

And here’s the weird part—if you’re not familiar with the story, I kept running into this guy at my hair salon. I mean like totally weird run-ins. He was always there, getting his hair cut when I was. And then I wouldn’t make an appointment for three to six months, and the one day I decide to go in—there he is. At the time, I was convinced it was fate.

So why do I think life is so weird?

Because the last interaction I had with him was sometime last February, he moved to Texas for a couple months, and then the night I ran into him again, is the ONE night I got my haircut in nearly SIX months by the same stylist. It’s like all our life cords are attached or something.

Now if that isn’t totally bizarre, I don’t know what it.

Currently Feeling: Disappointed in The Glitter Sale.
Currently Anticipating: Date night at the 20-Something “The New Vintage” wine event tonight!
Currently Reading: “Fieldwork” by Mischa Berlinski.

Love Quickie

At the bottom of my lovely little cherished Glamour magazine, I read this:

“Recent surveys show that being funny is the #1 way most men and women attract a partner.”

Which I’m totally attributed to this entire little dating mishap. Whew…now that THAT was solved, on to bigger and better things!

Currently Anticipating: Finally getting my hairs cut off tomorrow. My haircut has NO shape and has been driving me nuts!
Currently Feeling: Like I pulled something in my neck. Argh!
Currently Reading: The “Women’s Health” subscription someone anonymously and randomly purchased for me, sent to my attention at work. Are they trying to tell me something?

Man-in-Uniform Syndrome

Last night I walked to one of my neighborhood’s most spectacular Thai restaurants with my new roommate. What better way to get to know each other than over plates of Phad Thai, curry and peanut sauce? Cold fall days spent inside with good food is the perfect recipe for conversation.

Inevitably, the topic of men came up. I asked about her most recent relationship and if she’d ever been in love. She rattled off a short list of guys who hadn’t worked out, but went into a little more detail about a doctor she dated while training as a nurse. Whooo… total Grey’s Anatomy style. Now this is getting good. Apparently they had kept it quiet from the people they worked with at the hospital (hello, Meredith and Derek?!), and suddenly he broke it off one day without an explanation. Two months later he came sulking back to “clear his conscious” and explained that he’d been cheating on her and had gotten another girl pregnant. When she finally came clean to some of her coworkers, their response was, “Ew. Why did you date him? He dates a lot of nurses.” (Just like McSteamy?)

She vowed to me that she’d never be so stupid and naive. And admitted that part of her thought that just because he was a doctor and a professional, she didn’t think he was capable of such childish and thoughtless behavior.

Man-in-uniform syndrome.

I thought about this on my way into work this morning. Nearly every day (unbeknown to my boyfriend), I drool over all the men in their pressed business suits, coordinating ties and shiny shoes. A certain best friend of mine drools over guys in a construction uniform, but my weakness is definitely for a man in a business suit. “Oh, if only my boyfriend came over every night, and I had to loosen up his tie a little bit,” I often think to myself.

Another case of man-in-uniform syndrome.

Just because these men are “business professionals,” tied up in shiny business suits like my own personal walking Christmas gifts 365-days a year, doesn’t mean they’re incapable of cheating, lying, thieving and all other general sinning. But somehow, their suits make them seem so.

So, I’ll take my man for now, who I know is good on the inside, even if he is suit-less on the outside.

Currently Feeling: In need of a weekend at home.
Currently Anticipating: Girls’ night tonight with Becca, Amanda, and the Dolphins.
Currently Wondering: Why did the dragon have to show up?

A post in which 20-Something sums up Old Balls

Once upon a time – let’s say in my “early 20s” – I dated a 35-year-old man, which my friends now refer to as “Old Balls.”

Thirty-five now, perhaps now so old. But, 35 then was 11 years my senior, and probably a little shocking to some. Who knows, I was trying on dating older men for size.

For the most part, it was kinda fun. He was a Patrick-Demspeyesque with salt and pepper hair and a British accent. He called me up for dinner and drinks nearly every night, and he didn’t play the usual cat and mouse dating game.

But then I’d have my “20-Something, You’re totally bat-shit” moments. Like when he hadn’t ever heard of Sublime, (HELLO! Clearly not in my generation.) Or when he did this kinda dorky sway thing the elbow jives while dancing, (Oh, so 1980s). Or when he gave me the thumbs-up (Sorta like a history teacher or your creepy older uncle, or something worse). And then there was the absolute worst–one time he actually put classical music on right before coitus, and I was reminded of that episode in SATC when Samantha broke out in opera crescendo. Gak. I’m from the generation where we put on R. Kelly’s “Bump and Grind” or some good ole’ LL Cool J!

These are just some of the moments that made me say, “Oh this really just isn’t for me.” But, I was just too caught-up to recognize it quick enough and express it. Or too young. Who knows. But it wasn’t long before he did.

He explained to me one night how isn’t “wasn’t working out” and he’s at an age where he needs to “think about settling down” and find a “life partner,” which more or less wasn’t a 24-year-old girl who drank six nights a week and couldn’t even utter the word marriage without upchucking the beer she just swallowed.

So, eight months later he was engaged to a Russian chic that he met on Match.com, and now they have a little Piroshki in the oven.

Guess he wasn’t joking.

Currently Feeling: Like my boyfriend is the greatest.
Currently Anticipating: Last kickball game tonight and beers at Lenny’s!
Currently Loving: This scramble thing I just bought from a little place in my building.

A Comment From My Boyfriend

When he saw me before heading out to dinner last night:

“You look cute. You look–clean.”

“Clean” is not exactly the adjective you want a boyfriend searching for when he’s trying to figure out why you look better than all the other 100 times he’s seen you.

Currently Feeling: Stuffed. Yuck. I hate going out to lunch at work!
Currently Anticipating: Walking Greenlake with Larisa tonight.
Currently Hating: That they might shut Pandora radio down!

You Can’t Be Crabby When You’re at the Beach…

…but you can be cold!

After Luke & Jana’s wedding Friday night, Baby Daddy and I drove to Ocean Shores to stay at his family’s condo on the beach.

I’ve been to the Oregon and Washington coast a handful of times in my life, and nearly every time it was freezing cold with grey skies. One would think that the hottest weekend in Seattle (up to 100 degrees) would mean that it would be at least a little sunny and warm on the coast. Nope. We drove through town after town with stifling weather, and it seemed as soon as we neared the limits of Ocean Shores, the weather changed to grey, cloudy and windy.

But, we made the best of it–seafood meals with his family, plenty of dips in the hot tub, an early night in, snuggling under a blanket on the couch with the gas fireplace, saltwater taffy and fudge of course–and a sand castle, made from scratch!

Walkin’ to the beach with our pail of sand-castle-makin’ tools…

Carefully sculpting our walls and center fortress…

We dug out a moat…

…and stuck crab claws we gathered in the moat’s “water.”

Ta da! Claw Cast

Super proud of our homemade sand castle…

…even if we wouldn’t have won any contest with it and are huge dorks, it was still fun!

Currently Feeling: Really unmotivated to finish this pro bono copywriting project today.
Currently Anticipating: Black Bottle for a dinner date and wine tonight!
Currently Loving: The quiet office today–my whole team is gone!

The One After You

In bed, Neil asked me if I’d ever been close to getting married.
I told him a little about Chris: He’d grow up in Manhattan, gone to Brown, and worked as an advocate for homeless people. I said that we’d been engaged for three weeks when I decided not to go through with it.
“Why?”
“I saw that getting married wasn’t going to change anything,” I said. “It would just be more of the same.”
“Which was…?”
I said, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
He said, “So, you don’t regret it?”
“He died,” I said. “In a car wreck.”
“Jesus,” he said. “When?”
“About a year later.”
“That’s so sad,” Neil said, holding on to me.
He fell asleep, and for a long time I lay there. Then I got dressed and went downstairs. I poured myself a glass of wine and took it outside to the little porch.
There was a nice moon, not full but fat, and it lit up the apple trees and the petals underneath.
I smoked a cigarette.
What I didn’t tell Neil was that I always thought I’d wind up with Chris, even after we’d broken up, even after he’d died.

Adam had gone with me to the funeral. It was crowded, as a young person’s funeral almost always is. We sat in the back, where it was hard to see and hard to hear.
I was looking at all the women. I could only see them from behind, but I studied each one, their hair and backs. Their necks and shoulders. Their arms. I found myself thinking, You? Did he sleep with you? Here I was at his funeral, overwhelmed not by grief but jealousy.
Reading my mind, Adam told me that whoever these women were they hadn’t meant anything to Chris. “They were just keeping your seat warm,” he said.
As a procession, we walked to Central Park, past the carousel to the field where Chris had played softball on Sundays. There was a metal can of his ashes, and Adam and I each took some and scattered them on the mound. As a joke, I said, as I had a thousand times, “Tell me the truth: You don’t think Chris and I will ever get back together, do you?”
Adam laughed, and so did I; he hugged me, and then I think he knew I was about to cry because he said, “Oh shoot, I think I got Chris on you,” and dusted off my coat.
Adam and I were walking to the Boathouse when a woman stopped us. “You don’t know me,” she said. “I’m Myla. I was the one after you.”
Once she’d gone, Adam said, “See?”
It didn’t make any difference.
The part of my brain that made no sense at all didn’t believe Chris was dead. He’d switched hospital ID bracelets or charts with another patient. He’d tied sheets together and lowered himself out the window. I looked for him, like he was a fugitive in hiding. A hank of blond hair, a jean jacket, and I’d think, Chris.

I’d always thought of him as the one who got away, but right then it stopped being true. I knew that if Chris walked across the moony grass and up to this porch and proposed again I would say no again.
I wondered if he was here—that is, everywhere. I imagined that he was. I imagined him saying, Who’s the guy inside?
As though he had, I made my voice as kind as I could: “He’s the one after you.”

Pg. 275-276, “The Wonder Spot,” Melissa Banks.

Love is in the air… well, for me at least

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I feel sorta silly happy today, which is quite the change from my usual complacent attitude in years gone past. I have to say, Valentine’s Day when you’re single really sucks. You can’t help but to feel slightly down about not having someone to spend the day with. Even if you’re completely satisfied and content with your relationship status, there’s just something about Valentine’s Day that puts singles in a 24-hour funk. Trust me, I’ve lived it for at least the last four years.

But, I guess life is always in a constant state of ebb and flow. And this year it’s my turn to have a special someone on Valentine’s Day—someone who’s gone above and beyond to make me smile. Not only did I receive a more than generous birthday present, which was supposed to be “half my Valentine’s Day present cause he wasn’t going to be here,” and a cute Valentine’s Day card in the mail (a couple week early), but I had a beautiful vase of red roses delivered to me last night. Baby Daddy is officially the first man to send me flowers on Valentine’s Day, which is all I’ve ever really wanted. To top things off, my phone rang late last night and his cell phone number in Dutch Harbor popped up on the screen. He finally arrived back in port last night after three weeks at sea. And boy have they been a long three weeks—no contact, nothing. Only two brief 15-minute conversations. I’ve felt distant and disappointed every time we hang up. It’s really hard to maintain a long-distance relationship when you can’t even talk to each other to stay up-to-date on the little things that happen daily. As cheesy as it sounds, it was just really nice to be able to wake up and hear his voice this morning. So, I get to talk to him all day today and for the next three days, and he’ll get to pick up his Valentine’s Day package and letters I’ve sent him. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

To round out my reasons for feeling silly happy—I’m spending tonight with a group of some of my very best friends, including a great friend who’s flying in tonight from L.A. All of us will be heading to Sunset Bowl in Ballard for inexpensive drinks, trashy karaoke, free bowling and cheap thrills. I’m very excited to celebrate with a group of people I love from the bottom—stretched to every inch—of my heart.

So, Happy Valentine’s Day, my dearest friends. If you’re feeling a wee bit down, read my post here, and it should uplift you just a bit. And if you’re feeling loved, well, there’s really no better feeling in the whole wide world.

Currently Feeling: SO relieved that Mike has already caught 2/3 of his fish quota and should be back early March instead of late March!
Currently Anticipating: Going out tonight with all my dates, and spending the weekend with big J and my lil’ sis.
Currently Loving: Being really cheesy and wearing red hearts and lipstick today.

Some Postman is Grooving to All Our Love Letters

Last night I received a card in a pink envelope, sent to me from Alaska, with a cute little crooked heart drawn on the front.

Sarah took the words right out of my mouth, “That heart is the cutest thing ever,” she said as she handed me the envelope. “I don’t think I’ve seen anything more boy.”

I smiled and nodded, and finished my dinner before going into my room to open my letter in the privacy of my own thoughts.

Even in these times with email, Blackberries, Facebook, text messaging and MySpace, there’s just something really special about receiving a letter, snail-mailed, in someone’s handwriting.

I can only hope he thinks my hearts are just as cute—the round, girly ones in pink and red—when his captain brings him his mail. Lol.

Currently Feeling: Like. Time. Is. Dragging. On.
Currently Anticipating: Watching the rest of Season 3 of Lost so I can get caught up for the premiere!
Currently Hating: Achy bodies, headaches and coughs.

Late afternoon, at the coffee counter

I just ventured over to the sink and coffee area in my office to rinse out my Tupperware from my lunches in the last couple days, (a rare occasion that I get around to this before they’re so crusted and moldy that it’s more beneficial to just throw them away) and to grab a late afternoon cup of coffee.

An elderly lady who I’ve never seen at work before, probably in at least her 60s, approached the sink just as I did.

“It’s about that time of day, huh?” she said to me in a cute little old lady voice, in reference to washing our lunch dishes.

“Mmm hmm,” I agreed and moved over to pour myself a cup of coffee, only to find the carafe was empty.

Argh! I swear this happens to me at least three times a week. Three years out of college and two years past my days as a barista at Tully’s, and I’m still making everyone else’s coffee. Common courtesy, people!

“Well you got here just in time to refill the coffee!” she exclaims.

“I know; lucky me,” I replied. “It is my opinion that this should be done by the person who used the last of the coffee.”

“Yeah, but I bet it was a boy, from what experience tells me…” she said with discern as she walked away.

I laughed. We never will lose that cynicism for the opposite sex, now will we?

Currently Feeling: Impatient sprinkled with a few drops of relief.
Currently Anticipating: Girl Power Hour tonight at Solo.
Currently Listening To: Mike’s techno mix he made for me.

P.S. I updated my link lists to be alphabetized, and my blogroll includes a couple more blogs I’ve been reading lately…