Hot People ARE your friends

Well, I finally got that label I was after.

Friends.

I saw it coming; I'm kind of an expert at it now. The key is to listen for two words: interesting and fun. Death. Knell. These words are instantly translated in my brain to "I like you, just not in the way where I want to make out with you or rub up against you or touch your boobs." This is unfortunate, because I really enjoy making out, being rubbed up against, and having my boobs touched. On the other hand, I also like having friends...and could probably use more of them. If I had more, I might actually believe that I'm interesting and fun.

And that's my problem. I don't really believe it. So, when I meet other people that I think are interesting and fun, I feel as though I have nothing to offer them, and, more often than not, self-fulfilling-prophecy myself out of the relationship.

In the meantime, because I don't like being alone (more friends might help with this too, hey?), I just go crashing into anyone that shows the slightest bit of interest, hoping that one of these days, something will stick. This always results in regret, which makes me feel even less interesting and fun.

Sigh...

Ok - who here is sick of me waxing philosophical about myself? I feel like I've been acknowledging my shortcomings for long enough, and not just a few friends & acquaintances have grown weary of it. To you, and them, I apologise. Let these be days of action. And let interesting and fun MEAN interesting and fun, and not just code for friendzone.

Hot People Clutch and Shift Gears

So, I may have been a wee bit dramatic last time about the world's flatulence, and more particularly, where it's been directing it. I think I really just had a whole bunch of reality check all at once and it was, as always, particularly unpleasant. I've always really enjoyed living a fantasy life.


Much of my non-work attention has been placed directly on my romantic life lately (yeah, still having trouble with that boys thinking I'm fantastic does not equal hotness deal), but I've gotta say, it's been making me kind of sad lately to focus so much of my time on that. Most of the men I've made friends with here are either taken or explicitly not interested in me, and even my attempts at booty calls with old guy friends elsewhere have turned into EPIC fails. But while all of this is kind of sad for me, and probably really entertaining for all of you, I've realized lately that I should be paying more attention to my (non-relationship-related) wins.

Case in point, I just graduated. And not only did I graduate, I did it with first class honours. And I won an award of distinction, presented to me by Halifamous person, Alexa McDonough (she shook my hand!) I don't know what makes me distinct (well...I don't know WHICH of my distinctive qualities was the winning one), but hey...sweet.

And I learned that I'm one of very of few of us graduating who has a job she's REALLY happy doing, and lives in a town she's REALLY happy with (for serious, move to Northern Ontario. Do it.) When I learned how many of the girls graduating were still looking for jobs, or were working in jobs outside of the field, it was like a huge pat on the back for me that I've managed what I have.

Most notably, plan ab-tastic has been in full swing for about two months now. A bunch of my friends made a point of telling me how fantastic I look. While my appearance wasn't the only "hot" quality I had originally been aiming to improve, I've learned that I respond really well to positive feedback, so it's nice to get that. I've lost several inches since I started sweating my ass off and pumping iron on a regular basis (the gown really shows off the results of all my hard work, no?) and I'm really proud of that - though it would be nice if I had a few pairs of pants that ACTUALLY fit. I can see my obliques now! I can say with relative certainty that plan ab-tastic is at the point of ab-tisfactoriness. Anyway, please keep noticing. It makes me feel like I'm ACTUALLY succeeding at this hotness thing, which makes me want to keep doing it.

After returning from my grad, I went to a fashion show put on by my personal trainer, featuring a bunch of ladies from our local ladies' figure and bodybuilding team (yeah, that's right, Northern Ontario is effing awesome). And while it's not as though I REALLY want to be a figure competitor or bodybuilder (two months of steamed broccoli, raw almonds and plain chicken breast is not my cup of tea, thanks very much - also, no cups of tea, which I cannot live without), watching these ladies, some of whom are grandmothers, strut the catwalk in bikinis looking TOTALLY RIPPED made me feel really inspired (although it might have been a buzz from the wine I drank and the fact that I got to merengue a little). I went on a 30 km bike ride today. Over gravel road. There were three unleashed, angry-looking dogs and a lot of very persistent bumblebees. It was really hard, but I had a new sense of determination that I've been missing for a long time. And this time it wasn't really driven by my sense of revenge, and I think that's a big step for me.

Hot People See the Signs

No, that was not just a reference to another hilariously bad song of my youth (oh...Swedish Pop...so campy). I was back in Halifax over the holidays and over the time I spent with some of my friends I realized that I really do need to be a big girl soon. Last time we chatted, I was talking about how I really need to be a big girl...and I've gotta say, I'm off to a bad start.

Although my resolve to have better taste in music has gone well thus far (I've downloaded all but one of last installment's suggested albums...I'm listening to one now...I am such a hot music-listener), my first instinct when at HMV was to make a beeline for the Glee soundtracks. Not that Glee isn't excellent television viewing...but for serious...how many 14-year-old girls also bought not just vol. 1 but vol. 2 as well? How many? I mean...Finn's just so dreamy, so how can you blame me, but still!?!

But my hilarious taste in music isn't the only thing I've been having trouble shaking. I've spoken a few times about my penchant for debating (and also my complete acknowledgement that it's a sport for NERDS!!!). Without going into the details and the ins and outs of parliamentary debate, it is an activity that has been with me since my first day of frosh week (when I was accosted by a girl telling me I looked intelligent...she had me at hello) and has continued for the last 8 1/2 years. Some of my best and oldest friends were made through this activity and I owe it a lot. Unfortunately, the trade-off that comes with having these great friends is that I find myself the oldest person (by far) at social gatherings, telling stories of debating debauchery past, only to realize that I'm talking about a time when they were still in junior high (and increasingly, under the age of 10...eep). To illustrate, I was invited to an illicit New Year's Eve party. I only discovered the host's Mom didn't know about it the next morning, after a significant amount of destruction had occurred. It's really an "I get older, they stay the same age" kind of thing...which would be find if I was just contributing my time and expertise to the craft of competitive debate. Unfortunately, I sometimes find myself attracted to boys who make me feel, when I think about how old they are, like this:

(Get it...I'm a cougar...hilarious!).

Sometimes, it's hard to remind myself that I am not impervious to the powers of time and that I DO get older, despite my best efforts. Sometimes this results in childish behaviour in hilarious attempts to recapture my vigorous youth, like buying Glee soundtracks, or kissing boys with ABANDON.

My friends say that hot people do whatever they want, and I've gotta say that I definitely wanted to do both of those things. But I also really want to be an adult. Stat.

Last week, these colliding desires faced off in real life. It was kind of messy. I agreed to judge at a high school debate tournament hosted by my old club...you know...just one last shot in the arm. Although many of my very best old friends were there, I found myself increasingly surrounded by people reminding me of how old I was...like...I was alive when the Berlin Wall fell or I remember a time before the widespread use of cellular telephones. Truthfully, they were just being evil. At the same time, I knew that in three days I had an interview for a big girl job.

It was super difficult to reconcile my wish to stay an adolescent forever with my wish to actually grow up and do something constructive with my life. So difficult that it actually made me sorta depressed (and cranky...sorry guys...). At some point over the evening's post-tournament social, one of the party-goers reminded me of something that's just amazing for drowning ones' sorrows. This was my first of the evening:

To be perfectly honest, I don't know how much I had to drink that night, and there are some patchy parts of the evening. We know this is not a completely new phenomenon for me.

I am sure of a few things.

1. I definitely drunk-dialed my Dad's girlfriend. I did this for two reasons. For one thing, I thought it was 12:30 a.m. and not 2:30 a.m. I was wrong. For another, I thought she was out with my Dad and not at home sleeping. Wrong again.

2. Drunk Handsy Miss T made an appearance. My old friends are familiar with her; she's the me who gets in her cups and then puts her arm around everyone and stands too close and leans on people. Especially when they're boys. Typically I just cite drunkenness and an inability to control my extremities due to the extreme liquor-soakedness of the motor control parts of my brain. But let's be honest. I'm flirting. I've always been flirting. I've always known I was flirting. I've just never admitted it. On that evening, though, I was called on it. However, instead of sputtering about how it's the booze, I came clean. I said it was fun. And that it didn't mean anything more than that. And it was true. And super liberating to say it. And I felt pretty smooth (perhaps in real life it wasn't smooth at all...but my memory of it is the most important thing). I feel like hot people are unapologetically flirty, and often without an agenda. Even the grown-up ones.

3. I grossly overused a number of stock phrases. I need to stop saying the following: "You're my faves" (said to anyone who amuses me...pluralised so other faves don't get jealous...whispered to people for extra effect when I really want them to know I appreciate them) and "Fair..." (response to any statement for which I have no adequate response, or any statement with which I disagree but for which am too drunk to formulate an articulate counterargument). I hope nobody was following me around with a tape recorder that night.

I'm not entirely sure how I got home, though I'm sure it was at the hands of a very understanding and benevolent cab driver (or, at least, I was missing a cab-fare-ish amount of cash from my wallet in the morning). I'm sure you're expecting that the next day was distinctly unpleasant for me. Not so. When I awoke, I was, though a little slow on the draw, miraculously unhungover.

I take this as a sign...or a gift...or a gift-sign. That was the last time I am allowed to do that. It was my last hurrah of ridonkulous drunkenness. The powers that be are trying their damnedest to make my coming-of-age as painless as possible, despite my best efforts to make it hurt so bad.

Incidentally, when I did go to that job interview, I did act particularly adult. So adult that they offered me the job. And I'm gonna take it (resolution #2, complete within 20 days...score!). This means another move...but probably not for a few weeks. In the interim, I'm taking this time as a period of last hurrahs. Just as that night was my last night of sloppy drunk Miss T and the Glee Soundtrack was my last bad music purchase, the next few weeks will be spent enjoying the now guilty pleasures of my late teens and early twenties, so I can say goodbye to them in style and embrace my new life as an employed, adult (and hopefully, one day) hot person.

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 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 Get a Little Help from their Friends

I have great friends, who have been here for me through the whole process of singlification and I love, love, love them for it. They've also been really supportive of this whole hotness process and the blog that goes with it. Some have told me that I'm "hot already," but most of them really get that this whole thing is about pushing myself out of my comfort zone and airing my most hilarious dirty granny panties on the line in the process and they're cheering me on and encouraging me along the way.

Case in point - some of my friends were horrified to learn that I was anti-high-heel. They had noticed I rarely wore heels, but since the relative flatness of my soles did not come accompanied with pajamas to class (which, I shit you not, is regular attire for some of my peers), they thought little of it until reading the entry about my sad history with attempts at increasing my altitude.

"Never?" one asked. "For reals?!?!?!?" said another. And finally, "We're going to get you wearing heels!" one of them said. Normally, I would respond with a sound negatory - my feet are my business and I've already decided that hot people can wear cute flats. But since I'm in the process of a major life-change, I told her "Sure, it'll be good for the blog!" and we made a shoe-shopping date.

As we were shoe-shopping, we discussed the many rules of hot heel-wearing. For example, while chunkier heels certainly go a long way to keep your feet feeling like they're on solid ground, apparently, they make your thighs look fat. Obvi! And since I still eat far too many cookies , the skinnier the heel, the better! Also, pointy toes elongate your leg. Huh...who knew? So we decided on a cute black pair and we were on our way.

In order to mark the momentous occasion of heel-wearing (but really because we're all leaving school soon and we wanted to get our drunk on), we decided to get together at my place for some pre-drinks and close out the night with some dancing at a local drinking establishment. My mission for the night - Get these (sock-lines and all!):



Into these:

And keep them there for as much of the night as possible.

Because I can't dress myself yet (at least, not hotly), my friends decided on my outfit as well as my hair. I thought I could do my own makeup, but as it turned out, makeup was actually a three-person job. I've also recently learned that not owning a blending brush is an absolute travesty. I was proud that I knew what an angle brush was, let alone that I owned one - I guess I'm still a young grasshopper when it comes to hotness.

The result of this village-raising-a-child style makeover is that this:

Transformed into this:

In this last one, I'm crossing my legs in front because I heard that would make me look skinnier, or something. I don't know...what are your thoughts? Am I hot yet? I think I still need some work. For example, I've just realized that my only pose is hands-on-hips. Hot people offer variety, I'm sure. At any rate, the shoes are killer.

So after far too much to drink at home, we descended upon the downtown to a local public house where a musical group was set to be playing that evening. We got in for free in exchange for a picture of us to be put up on the establishment's website (which I thought was a good sign on the hotness front) and proceeded to the dancefloor to shake it to whatever the dj was spinning (interestingly, the dj was the dirty cook at an ill-fated soup café at which I once worked...strange career change, I thought). Soon enough, the band was ready for its set - at which point we discovered that this was not a college-rock type band, but a loud metal band. Not wanting to walk to another bar (because my feet were starting to get a little testy with me), I decided that I could definitely shake my ass to a little Enter Sandman and Here I Go Again, if not for its enjoyment factor (of which there was little), then at least for its kitsch factor (of which there was much).

Following that ear-bleeding session, we decided to head up to another rather large drinking complex that's quite popular with the kids in town, because the music there was reported to be a little more danceable - but on the way we met with a pretty awesome street performer, who took requests and played a lot of songs that I really like. When we first happened upon him, he was playing Bust a Move, which prompted me to do my one and only breakdance move on the street (this is something I pull out far too often when I've been drinking - on bar dancefloors, off bar dancefloors, the residence common room, outside Boston Pizza...). Although I have a sneaking suspicion that hot people can control their breakdancing urges, the street performer seemed to think it was good entertainment for other passersby, so that was good. It was good that I liked him too, because one of my friends remembered him from a fabulous birthday where he played a song for her and had a cute dog, or something and she subsequently refused to leave while he was still playing. We therefore spent the rest of the night hanging out with a busker, who was quite lovely and didn't seem to mind that we sang along, even though most of us couldn't remember all the words to anything.

The night did not end with as my friends had predicted, with an impromptu make-out session on the dancefloor with a stranger - but I did meet a pretty cool busker, and danced with a couple of nice young men on the street - although by then I had long switched from the new heels to the flats I had hidden in my purse. So my primary mission was a failure. However, I don't think this is the last time I'll face off with high heels. I'll break them (in) yet!