Hot People Don't Have Tails Between Legs

Just needed to share this. I am too stupid to live.

I apparently don't know how to read the diagrams on fax machines. I subsequently sent blank faxes to a number of establishments last week, including one that was meant to inform my university of my intention to graduate...on the last day they were accepting those forms, as well as my national professional association.

A consequence of this is that I spent part of today being blisteringly rude to a government phone centre employee.

We're off to a great start this year, aren't we?

EDIT:

While faxing the back side of the forms was a huge idiot-head move on my part, apparently my school lost $65 that I paid to them with my Visa. Best. School. Ever.

Hot People Don't Seethe: The Disaster Continues

I think it's fair to say that I've been having a rough time lately. At the time of my last post, I felt shittier than I've felt in a long time - all my fault and my inability to keep the physical and the emotional separate. I learned a good lesson there, I thought.

So, on the advice of a number of friends (but mostly because of my hands-thrown-in-the-air attitude about my inability to keep things casual), I DID set up an online dating profile. My mother told me I was crazy, but many friends and relations said that this was a totally normal thing to do and some even cited their own relationships as successes of the online dating world. I had every reason to believe this was a valid avenue for seeking companionship with a reasonable probability of success.

I posted some relatively cute pics of myself, I thought. This one shows my sweet side (I Heart EVERYBODY!!!):

This one shows my classy side (cuz classy chicks wear fake pearls they bought for $7.49 at Bizou):

This one shows my outdoorsy side (cuz outdoorsy chicks stand near lakes):

I wrote an honest, charmingly self-deprecating, and somewhat funny blurb about myself and thus opened the floodgates for the sea of date requests from eligible bachelors that awaited me.

I should say that I expected this sea of date requests because my father once tried the same dating website and received approximately 200 contacts in the space of two days. Why should I be any different? I'm young. I'm moderately attractive. I can spell and write in whole sentences. I'm no middle-aged man with a mustache and an acrylic sweater, but I thought I'd do ok.

"Ok" is not the word for how I did. I might use the word "poorly," though. In the space of a week I received only four contacts. Of these, only one person had all of the following winning qualities:

1. The ability to write in full sentences with moderately good spelling.
2. A lack of inane interest in my tattoo history (I have none, for the record. No piercings either).
3. The appearance of not being morbidly obese (In my defense, if the site's body description "a few extra pounds" was actually used properly, i.e. in the case of ONLY a few extra pounds, I wouldn't be so quick to judge).

So we chatted this week. He said he was intrigued by my profile and thought we had a lot in common. He asked what I did for fun and I told him I was relatively new in town and didn't know what the cool kids did for fun here. He said he'd be happy to show me. I said "how about next Saturday?" and he said "Awesome, what time?" and I said "How about 5:30?"

It is currently 7:00 p.m. on Saturday and (unless I am concurrently blogging AND dating) I am obviously at my home computer, (not obviously) wearing my pilates clothes and drinking a pre-mix cosmo. Short date, you ask? Not so, I reply. 5:30 a.m., you ask? Not so, I reply. So what happened?

Well, I never received a reply to my proposed time and (public) meeting place. So yesterday, I thought I'd send him a quick message to confirm the time and place. And when I hit "send" my computer screen told me he had BLOCKED ME (?!?#$@!%#$!#$%) !!!!

Ok - can ANYONE tell me WTF happened?

My aunt has a theory that he's a creeper and was put off by my suggestion of a public meeting place. I think she's trying to make me feel better about my second pre-dump in the space of a month.

Alternatively, he found something utterly offensive in the following sentences: "Let's meet at the Mackenzie King Bridge entrance to the Rideau Centre. There's a bench there just to the left of the entrance. How's 5:30? That'll give me enough time to get ready after work."

Honestly, I'm not that upset about letting this guy get away. Aside from his obvious douchiness, his pics weren't that good looking, and truthfully, the best I was hoping for was a reasonably friendly first date so I could practice my dating skillz (which I'm guessing are considerably lacking since I've never actually been on a real date before. Truth.)

But let's just talk about online dating in general. In NO other venue can you be so frequently rejected in the comfort of your own home (which I generally like to reserve for non-rejection-related activities). I mean - this site tells you which people have checked out your profile and taken a pass on you, which people you've sent messages to and whether they've read them or not, whether they've deleted them, AND whether they've read and THEN deleted them (which means ALL your written and photographic charms were complete duds). It also comfortingly suggests that you "Find someone else" when you've been blocked.

In conclusion, my hands are now firmly thrown up in the air. I GIVE UP on this coupling shit. I just can't do it.

In further conclusion, I have a new goal. Let me give you some background.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to live to 100. I turned 25 almost a year ago and that birthday, which, without the cupcakes and hospitality of one of my greatest and steadfastest friends I would have spent alone, was one of the worst birthdays in history. Ringing in the New Year is supposed mean new beginnings. The only thing that began in January is a time in my life known by some of my friends as Crisis Meltdown 2009, culminating in February with my break-up. I've had deaths in the family, months of intellectual and cultural lethargy, and of course, the latest work angst. This has been a year-long quarter-life crisis. At the very least, it's pretty fair to say that I've had several misadventures, but this blog has been a great outlet and has reminded me what it's really all about. Hotness.

I think I lost sight of that about a month and a half ago and all of a sudden my primary focus was coupling myself. I'm pretty sure the last few posts have shown just how disastrous THAT idea was. So, new plan.

It's my 26th birthday on Wednesday. I have two wishes.

The first is the fulfillment of my new hotness goal. Up until now, "hotness" was referring to some intangible quality that made me feel awesome about myself. Well, I'm proud to say that I'm ready to stoop to a new and superficial level. I WILL be ab-tastic by the time I'm 27. I want to be unapproachably attractive (as opposed to approachably unattractive...which I guess isn't THAT bad either) - just to spite all those online daters who take a pass on my profile EVERY SINGLE DAY, who have pictures of themselves (or stock photos of anonymous models) with their ripped abs on display AND all those men who would give me fake phone numbers and pre-dump me. Douchebags. I WILL have ripped abs. You WILL bounce quarters off them.

The second is a wish of all my readers (all eight of you...). Make this shit famous. I want it published. Tell your friends. Email it to your entire contact list. Repost it on your facebook wall.

Or at least send me a birthday message.

Hot People Don't Have Crushed Souls or Phantom Appendages

Warning: the following is going to get pretty emo pretty quickly.

Ok - life is a disaster again. Complete and utter crap. While I could handle it if it was just one of the two, having both of the following problems at the same time is uber-painful. Uber.

A. I hate my job. It eats my soul.

I guess I haven't really talked much about my job here, except that I have one. I am a dietetic intern, which means that one day, I'll be a nutritionist. If you don't think I'm crazy enough to want a job telling people how to eat food they don't like, you might be convinced of my craziness when you learn that to qualify as a nutritionist, you must complete 40 weeks of unpaid internship. UNPAID. I'm on my last stint of this at the moment and things are starting to get a little bumpy.

Right now, my actual job description is to complete projects given to me by my supervisor which will increase the efficiency, profitability and social capital of the retail and patient food services at a local hospital. Or rather, find ways of squeezing money out of sick people, hardworking healthcare professionals and taxpayers while at the same time giving them an artificial warm and fuzzy feeling about us. Right now, my functional job description is to do whatever type of kitchen-bitch-work this hilariously understaffed department needs done. This means that instead of doing projects that make me feel like a bad person, I'm pushing trays covered with the food scraps of swine flu patients through a dishwashing machine. So fulfilling. And, of course, there's that hairnet I've grown so attached to.

None of this would be so bad if my boss actually made me feel like I'm doing a good job at any of it. She has two qualities that make me feel like a super-failure pretty much every day. First of all, she handily neglects to inform me of important information regarding the operations of the kitchen or the deadlines by which she would like things completed. The obvious answer to this is to ask a many questions as possible, but when you don't know what you don't know, this gets kind of difficult. It also often results in my being caught having left something out of my project reports because I didn't know that she was expecting its inclusion. Secondly, she provides me with NO feedback unless something is abhorrent to her. I'm sure I'm doing SOME things right, but I'll be damned if I know which things they are.

B. Love hurts.

Recent epiphany: I can't hack this whole "casual" thing. It just makes me so unbearably emo.

After meeting someone I kind of dig, my usual thought process is as follows:

"This is great! No commitments or expectations. This is just going to be casual and won't lead to anything. It'll totally be fun."

After saying goodbye to someone I kind of dig, the thought process has changed slightly:

"That was totally fun, but it was only casual and didn't lead to anything. Now there aren't any commitments or expectations...great."

Of course, I never tell HIM that's how I feel.

In conclusion, I'm totally crazy. And lame. I don't know how I do this to myself, but I form ridiculous emotional attachments to men that give NO indication of wanting to be attached to me (clarification: I mean ridiculous insofar as I've made an attachment. I do not mean ridiculous as in ridiculously emotional, read: stalkerish). This might have something to do with me expressing a desire for nothing more than casual from the outset. Possibly.

A solution-focused person would tell me that the easy mitigation of this problem IS to tell the dude how I feel...but it seems that, nearly every time, I've chosen perfectly to make this effort futile as well. They almost ALWAYS live in a city several hours away from me and (I find out AFTER all offending deeds have been completed) have possible (their words) or suspected (my words) wives or girlfriends, and sometimes fake phone numbers. Although nearly EVERY movie I've ever seen suggests to me that they leave their terrible (ok - probably not actually true) ladies for the star of the show (clearly, this is me), I have a sneaking suspicion that this might be some kind of fantasy created by the film industry to keep women like me unbalanced (see: above contention that perfectly innocent and likely quite lovely girlfriends are terrible) and docile (see: the fact that I do this to myself ALL THE EFFING TIME). They almost always seem to be musicians too, but I think that's another issue altogether.

The result is that I spend weeks (!) being sad about how this completely one-sided relationship doesn't have a B-side, vainly hoping for some kind of contact, because, you know, it might work out between us eventually...see? I don't even believe myself.

In conclusion, I am THIS close to setting up an online dating profile. While some might say this is the last refuge of the desperate and sad, at least everyone's looking for the same thing on those sites (right?), and anyway, I think I've more or less illustrated my desperate sadness in the last several paragraphs. And if those E-Harmony commercials are to be believed, ALL the subscribers are impossibly good-looking. Score! Also, I'm pretty sure venturing into the world of online dating opens up a whole crapload of opportunity for blog-worthy retardedness.

Hot People Don't Get Hurt for the Cause

Maybe this is just me, but it seems like even if I DO get past the pre-dump stage (yep, still bitter about that), something else happens to muck up my intentions for hotness. Including being TOO hot - this tends to cause injuries.

And when I say injuries, I don't mean in the metaphorical sense (although I'm told that, in the metaphorical sense as well, love hurts). I mean everything from hickies to heart stopping.

Hickies tend to be on the less painful end of the romance-injury spectrum. The main thing they're injurious to is your social life. Who hasn't been in this situation: you're having a conversation about current events or bioethics or some such with someone and your eyes suddenly stop on that tell-tale purple-yellow spot. And while your brain is telling you "It's only a bruise...just an oddly placed and strangely shaped bruise due to impact with a..." your eyes are doing their best to look anywhere else. Who also hasn't done a mirror check in the middle of the day to discover a previously unnoticed and exposed hickey, as well as a perfect explanation for why that acquaintance of yours from down the hall suddenly became very interested in the shade of the eggshell latex on the wall and less interested in your discussion of the staff gift exchange? I know I've been there.

Sometimes it really IS only a bruise - but the cause of the bruise is just as "unsafe for work". Luckily, most of these recreational injuries are covered by clothes most of the day - which is good, because if I had to explain every hand-shaped boob bruise I've had - well, that could get uncomfortable. Speaking of which, men: I know they're attractive, but they're not squeeze toys.

The longest-lasting, most visible romance injuries tend also to be the ones that make you the most unattractive immediately after the romantic activities. Anyone ever had makeout-burn? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Perhaps this is just me, but it seems to happen every time I find myself kissing anyone. The next day my face is rubbed raw from stubble and for the next several days my face is basically chapped and cracking and peeling like I have a third degree sunburn. Most recently, the end of my nose got caught in the fray, which means I look kind of like Rudolph the Raw-Nosed Reindeer. Nothing says "you want to see me again" like that, right? Men love girls who can't keep their skin on their face.

And who's not attracted to girls with limps? I guess the limp wasn't acquired so much by romance-related activities as it was in the pursuit of romance-related activities. I may have been dancing a little too provocatively (or maybe just gyrating a little too vigorously) at the Halloween showing of the Rocky Horror Show. I may also have stepped on the rice they throw at the beginning of the movie. That rice may have made the floor more or less frictionless and I may have gone ass-over-tea-kettle and twisted my hip in an uncomfortable manner (and possibly also flashed the underside of my slip to the adjacent audience members). The resulting injury may then later have been exacerbated by other activities requiring stealth and endurance. I now have a very obvious hobble, which is difficult to explain even leaving out that it was acquired in the pursuit of romance, and it certainly does nothing to add to my allure.

So, what's a girl to do? If I dial down the fantastic-ness, I may never get to the romance-related activities that I so enjoy. If I don't dial it down, it's entirely possible that I'll never get past the first activity (and considering the pre-dump a few weeks ago didn't make me feel SO fantastic, how much can I possibly dial it down?). It's certainly a conundrum.