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.

Hot People Never Experience This

My life is a disaster, I've decided.

I was out of town this weekend for a conference (truthfully, I was away this weekend for a debating tournament, but I was trying to deflect my nerdiness...and upregulate my togetherness). There are several reasons I found myself at this tournament.

a. I suggested, months ago, in a drunken stupor, that I would go, despite never having seen that particular style of debate and not having a place to stay.
b. I went to a local friend's party, and not knowing anybody, played wallflower for much of the night. Therefore, I missed my friends.
c. My friends reminded me, again in a drunken stupor, that I had said I would go. Therefore, I felt guilty.
d. I thought there might be dancing, which none of my friends in Ottawa seem to like to do.

Although the weekend was a success from a "winning stuff" standpoint, it certainly was also riddled with DISASTER on the hotness front. Here's what went down:

I was staying with a very good friend in the city while my friends from Halifax were staying in a hotel. We all (the whole tournament) planned to go to a bar on Friday night, but when I got there my friends from Halifax were nowhere to be found and were not answering text messages (as it turned out, the phone had died...forgiveable...I suppose...). Luckily, my friend with the spare futon happened to be there and I enjoy his company very much. He had previously been speaking to a friend of his, and we were introduced upon my arrival.

As we know, I'm TERRIBLE at making conversation with strangers, so this was a significantly high stress situation for me. However, the conversation flowed easily with only a moderate amount of SoCo and Coke (don't judge me! the bar didn't have Strongbow and I panicked and blurted out the first drink I saw) to grease the wheels. Huzzah, I thought! I'm getting better at social situations!

Fast forward to the following night, after a hard day of watching debate rounds, eating banquet hall chicken and cake, and making my friends feel bad for bailing on me the night before. We're headed to a bar that is so effing crowded that I actually can't walk without stepping on people's feet. In the shuffle I lose my friends, but the friend-of-a-friend from the night before happens to find himself at the bar next to me. We took up our conversation where we left off. I couldn't believe how developed my skill was at talking to semi-strangers..."I'm winning this hotness thing!" I thought to myself (since hot people aren't aloof and awkward in a corner, right?).

I should state at this point that I really hadn't any agenda for the weekend aside from hanging out with my friends and possibly shaking it a little in my swank dress after kicking off my heels (since you know I can't hack'em).

But THIS is when things get weird. Midway through a reasonably good conversation, all of a sudden he stops and there's this pregnant pause. And when I say pregnant, I really mean laboured. This was clearly a pause he wanted me to ask about. So I did. When I asked what was up, he responded that he was wondering if he should "prioritize his relationships".

Ok...W.T.F? Obviously, that pause was having twins it was so pregnant. And obviously I was meant to ask what THAT meant too. Then he went on at length about how he flirts with everyone (truth...) and doesn't really know why and perhaps he should just focus on hanging out with friends and having a good time with them. Being a supportive co-conversationalist, I responded by saying that we all think with our cocks (pardon me) sometimes (admit it, truth). Then he started asking me about why I was single, and what exactly caused me to be single and what kind of thing I was looking for now. So I told him my stock-answer about what went wrong, and then I told him I wasn't looking for anything too serious these days - although I certainly wouldn't turn down a few dates if they were offered by someone interesting.

His response to this is that I'm "girlfriend material" and lists a bunch of qualities I have, including "dignified" and "professional" (?!?). At first I'm thinking "Wow, great compliments, stranger-dude!" but as the list goes on, I realize that something's not right. Who tells a girl that she's dignified? I suddenly realize the horrible truth. I am being let down easy. The worst of it is that I am being let down easy from an expectation I did not have. He's turning down a proposition I did not make. I'm being pre-dumped!

Quel horreur! I don't even think I have to tell you how depressing it is that I can get dumped without even trying to hook up. It's pretty sad. I neither know what I was doing to give the impression that I was interested in something more than a stimulating conversation (because mixing up libido and conversationalism could get awkward FAST), nor do I know WHAT IS SO WRONG WITH ME THAT MY TOTAL LACK OF A CHANCE WITH SOMEONE MUST BE MADE CLEAR BEFORE I'VE EVEN THOUGHT ABOUT MAKING A MOVE???

Gah...so now a guy who wasn't even my type and I wasn't really that interested in has made me into this totally depressing bitter person who shoots dagger eyes at strangers if they seem to be in a relationship (because obviously people in love are the enemy [seriously, I think this old man who was kissing his wife goodbye in the mall yesterday thought I was going to mug him or something]). This will obviously increase my social capital immensely. My furor is compounded by the following "compliments" I got from my real live friends (truth):

"Wow, you actually look good tonight...and what I mean by that is that you look better than you did yesterday"

"Your hair looked nicer yesterday"

"How much do you weigh? I want to feel better about myself."

Also, there was no dancing to be had all weekend. Balls.

Hot People Aren't Hot (Messes)

Do you know someone that has an innate tendency to draw awkwardness from far and wide?

For most of my friends, I'm that person. I don't understand how I can possibly do it so regularly, but I certainly manage.

Here's a little background on my current living situation: I'm boarding with an uncle and his family (including my thirteen-year-old cousin) on the outskirts of town while I intern at a hospital on the other side of town. As you know, it's a long bike ride. So, sometimes, I take the bus.

This means that I occasionally (or frequently) need bus tickets. Anyway, it was a Saturday, and I just happened to need bus tickets for non-work-related reasons - I had a social engagement that evening and since I could send a cab driver's child to a reasonably priced technical college for the fare value to take me from downtown home, I opted to take the bus. Unfortunately, I was out of bus tickets. My cousin also needed bus tickets, so I told him I'd drive him (in his mother's car) to the drugstore to pick some up. On the way there, I also remembered I was fresh out of a few other things...you know...deodorant, conditioner, prophylactics...

So when we left the car, I mosied on over to the requisite aisles - Hair Care, Personal Care, Family Planning, assuming my young companion had gone straight to the cash to pick up his tickets. It wasn't until I was holding the box of condoms that I noticed he'd been following me the whole time. He had a deer-in-the-headlights look. I'm quite sure that even my THOUGHTS were in slow motion..."Noooooooooo-o-o-o-o!!!!" We headed to the cash in silence, purchased our tickets and my sundries and went back to the car. Once there, I felt I needed to make this a teachable moment, so I turned to my cousin and explained to him that I didn't have a particular purpose for the condoms (except that at some point they would be used for that which they are meant), I just wanted to be safe, because you never know what's going to happen, and you don't want to find yourself without them when you need them and...

"Please, just stop talking!!!" he pleaded.

"I don't know how!!!" I exclaimed.

It was terrible. And I was sober. I can't count the number of times I've gotten the awkward turtle at alcohol-type parties. I'm pretty sure I had an argument a week ago with a friend about how he met his girlfriend, despite having only met her myself a few hours previous. At Thanksgiving this weekend, some of my family members wished fervently for personal eject buttons after just about every sentence I uttered (although, I think to a certain extent they'd made their beds and I just jumped on them and threw the pillows around, figuratively speaking...they know who they are...).

The point is, I can't stop myself. It's like crack or pizza or Glee. If there's a dime-sized opportunity to be awkward, you can be sure I'll wriggle my fat limbs through like a wharf rat in grocery storage. How do I stop this madness??!?!?!

Hot People Don't Have Bad Hair

I often find myself torn between what is hot NOW and what will make me hot IN THE LONG RUN. My hair seems to have found itself in this sort of epic battle royale at the moment.

My entire life, hair-related angst has sent me into near catatonic states on an extremely regular basis. When it is curly (as it is naturally), I imagine that it kind of resembles an impressionist painting - you know...it looks nice from about ten feet away, but when you get up close to it, it's basically a mess (or at least, that's how Cher Horowitz would describe it). This "mess" problem was mitigated somewhat by the discovery of a $3 curling creme I found at the grocery store that works a ZILLION times better than anything I've ever purchased at a salon (for 5x the price), but when it rains (as it seems to be doing ALL THE TIME these days), it still definitely looks more Claude Monet than John Frieda. The advent of the ceramic straightener was a terrific boon to me. All of a sudden, if nothing else, at least my hair could be hot. Except of course, again, when it rains. Then it just looks like I rolled out of bed and forgot to brush it. At that point, there's really nothing for it except to resort to an "I-give-up" hat or pony-tail holder, lest I be forced to walk around in public looking like Eraserhead.

Much of the art and science of my hair has to do with the cut, and getting a good one isn't easy. My stylist in Halifax was fantastic, but since I don't live there anymore (and neither does he), obviously I can't get cuts from him. Instead, I was referred to the stylist of a friend. This woman works out of her basement. This was obviously my first red flag. The last time I got a haircut in somebody's house it was free and it was done my friend who cut my hair with her kitchen scissors and decided to give me baby bangs without taking into account that they might curl up when my hair dried. The previous time before that, it was for my prom, and the woman curled my hair, then decided one side was longer than the other, so she CUT IT AFTER IT HAD BEEN CURLED to even it out. My experience of home haircuts has been fabulous, you can tell.

Anyway, this woman had a sort of salon in her basement. Her dog kept us company, and she spoke like a sailor. I can see why a spa setting was not a good fit for her. However, the cut she gave me was fabulous, despite my concern about the venue. Truly now, if left to its own devices, or straightened, my hair can certainly add to my hotness (or at least, it is hot on its own).

Unfortunately, there are a number of things that get in the way (yes, that battle royale I referred to in the opening paragraph!).

First of all, I'm pretty sure most hot people are gainfully employed. I'm interning with the food service management of a local hospital. This means I work in a kitchen and consequently wear a hairnet all day. All day. As a result, I seldom bother with my hair because even if it did look fabulous nobody would see it all day. Also, the hairnet has a tendency, by the end of the day, to flatten residual fabulousness so that even seeing people sans 'net after work means my hair won't be amazing. It's a difficult choice to make: continue with an internship that will lead to future employment, or have fabulous hair EVERY SINGLE DAY?

Secondly, hot people are fit (or are, at least, trying to be). I'm still cycling, only now I've parlayed my leisure activity into a handy way to get to work (I say handy...it actually takes me upwards of an hour and a half to commute each way). Unfortunately, I've moved to a city FULL of cyclists, which means that on an almost daily basis I am reminded of how very BAD (read: painfully slow) a cyclist I am. I don't mind it when twenty-somethings zip by me because I assume a. that they have schmancy bikes that I don't have and b. they've been cycling for YEARS and I've only been doing it for a few months after YEARS of neglect, but when OLD MEN are zooming past me I start to feel a little demoralised. However, I press on in the hopes that it will contribute to my goal. But, I find that the combination of bicycle helmet and sweat-inducing cardiovascular activity ALSO results in a coiff that resembles the helmet for hours after its removal. Très chic!

So this is obviously a conundrum that has taken up a significant portion of my thinking time. I think I'll probably stick with being "hot in the long run," but this WILL mean endless complaining about the state of my hair in the meantime. Fair warning.