Hot People Don't Shimmer (At Least...Not Like This)

The daytime high today in my little northern town was 31C and it's still something like 29C.

One wouldn't think that I'd be one to complain. You know, given the fact that this whole blog is about WANTING to be hot (get it? hot. har-de-har!). But it's not just that. Don't get me wrong. I like summer. Summer means that I can swim and eat vegetables that might have had less travel time than I've had in my life and that the days last longer so I'm not suffering from totally unexplainable depression in the middle of February...AND no raised eyebrows at cracking a cooler in the middle of the day BECAUSE IT'S EFFING HOT OUT AND I NEED TO COOL DOWN, DAMMIT. And, given the fact that northern winters boast a chill that literally has it out for you...like seriously, the weather is TRYING to kill you...it's very difficult not to appreciate a little excessive sizzle in your life.

But there's one thing about hot weather that really bothers me, and that is the fact that no matter how hard I try, I ALWAYS look like I'm suffering from debilitating, corpulence-induced meat sweats. Once upon a time, I thought it was because I was fat, but even during my leaner summers I still look like I've been generously greased with a pastry brush. I don't understand how other girls can go through summer looking like beach goddesses with their tans and their sun-bleached hair and their short shorts without the chafing...the awful, awful chafing.

And let's just be clear here, I don't want to spend hours in a tanning bed or bazillions of dollars on just the right amount of bleach (though I could do without the chafing). I'm ok with being pasty and mouse-brown. I'm not ok with looking like a pit-stained fishwife.

Surely there are products and tricks that can help me in this regard. Some kind of grease-removing face wipe? Some kind of maxi-pad for my armpits? Has anyone invented these yet?

Also...my hair has grown out since that picture was taken. What do I do with that? Theoretically, it should just sweep back and tendrils of my naturally curly hair should fall out in just the right places to make me look tousled but not messy, right? RIGHT? THEN WHY DOES IT ALWAYS LOOK MESSY AND GROSS AND PASTED TO THE BACK OF MY NECK ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS?

Dear Blogosphere. Please help. So I can think about what to barbecue.

Sincerely,

Miss T

Hot People Don't Believe the Hype (An Open Letter to E-Harmony)

This isn't my first brush with online dating. Unfortunately, it probably won't be my last either. But I've got a beef that I've just gotta get off my chest.

Dear E-Harmony,

I object to your claims about compatibility. You cannot match people up based on their personalities. At the risk of sounding ghetto, you don't know me. And I doubt you really care to anyway, as long as you can keep automatically charging $30/month on my VISA***. What you CAN do is match people up based on their own impressions of their personalities. And let's be honest, here. I'm pretty sure most people out there, especially the single ones ('cause Lord knows, we're all still single for a reason!), don't have enough grip on reality to TRULY know themselves. The result of this is that the people we ACTUALLY are is almost never the same as the people we THINK we are. Some people THINK they have a sarcastic sense of humour, but a lot of the time, people just don't really know what sarcasm is (except that they're pretty sure it's something that people find funny...and attractive in others...).

Secondly, your *claim* "When attraction is ignited by TRUE compatibility...", first of all, is not even a sentence. (Weren't you founded by a DOCTOR? Who had to go to SCHOOL?? Where you learn how to WRITE SHIT?!?!?!?). But it also requires that the average tv-watching consumer not be duped into thinking you can also guarantee that attraction. I wasn't duped by your slogan with the poor sentence structure, but I WAS duped by the pictures. And I say duped because it doesn't take a genius to know that everyone posts the MOST flattering pictures of themselves and never the ones where they've lost the game of angles. For some reason, the fact that I play the game had no bearing on my expectation of how others will play.

The only thing you CAN claim is that you're pretty ok at figuring out if people will be decent friends. And when people are desperately lonely because they live in brand new towns and don't know anyone except their co-workers and the girl at the express checkout at the grocery store, and because they quit debating because they're old ladies and are missing the National Championships for the first time in eight years and don't know what's happening there because THEIR FRIENDS DON'T TEXT THEM WHEN THEY SAY THEY WILL (ok, I forgive you guys. I know how crazy busy it gets there...I'm just sad and lonely here), making a decent friend should be good enough. But when you also show clips of impossibly beautiful people who are deliriously happy with each other and give people the impression that there was just this spark of love immediately, it makes us believe we SHOULD want more than a decent friend and it makes us sorely disappointed when that's all you can deliver.

So, I wonder, E-Harmony, what do you have to say to me in response? And more to the point, what do you have to say to the poor fellow sitting at home right now who thinks it's just great that he's met a girl that FINALLY he can have a conversation with? And what about the fact that I feel like a complete douche right now because YOU DIDN'T DO THE JOB YOU CLAIMED TO BE ABLE TO DO??? Well, I can find decent friends on my own, thanks. And I guess I can decide who I'm compatible with too. This is what I have to say to you, E-Harmony. Oh, and keep the $30.

Love,

Miss T

***In other news, apparently all those years of having a VISA limit that was exceeded whenever I bought more than a stick of gum has paid off. When I went to the bank to alert them that I was no longer a student, they told me my credit rating was like, A plus plus plus star and now I have more credit than I know what to do with. Hilarious.

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 are Completely Hairless

I waxed my eyebrows earlier this week, although I don't know why I waxed them. First of all, it wasn't exactly as though I had a couple of furry caterpillars crawling across my face in the first place, and secondly, I'm generally not doing anything where the state of my eyebrows really matters. The only men I've so much as SEEN over the past month have either been crusty old (or handsome, but married - OR handsome, but unattractively full of themselves) doctors, gay nurses (I know...not all male nurses are gay...just all the ones I've met), and of course, denim guy. Call me picky, but none of those guys really turns my crank.

Also, it hurts. A whole bunch.
This picture is of embarrasingly poor quality and was taken AFTER the esthetician had moisturized the area, AND I had bussed home. So really, it doesn't give the full picture. However, directly after, I looked as though I had some sort of tribal henna tattoo or cattle brand applied to my face...sort of like this:Now, my face is constantly exposed to the elements. Surely, in all these years of snow and sunburn and expired makeup, I've developed some sort of shield for the pain (And believe me, it was still very painful). But it occurs to me that some women wax other parts of their bodies. They wax parts of their bodies that (hopefully) are not constantly exposed to a constant onslaught of snow and sunburn and expired makeup...parts of their body that are very...sensitive.

The reason I'm so concerned is that beach season is pretty much here and I foresee having problems with "foliage." There's really no good way to get rid of it. I have a problem with shaving...first of all, it's a weird angle...and I don't REALLY want to be fooling around with a razor in an area with which I can't make DIRECT eye contact. There are creams...but again...sensitive area...corrosive creams strong enough to MELT HAIR??? The last thing any of us wants down there is a chemical burn.

So my last choice is waxing, which brings with it a few concerns as well. First of all, it pretty much necessitates that I allow a complete stranger to (A) stare at my "bikini area" (what a great "family-friendly" expression) for 30 to 60 minutes, and (B) inflict pain upon it in exchange for money. There's just something a little messed up about that. Especially since there are only a select few who have seen my "bikini area," and that was under the express conditions that they NOT inflict pain upon it (and for the record, I did not pay them).

I'm also still very concerned about that cattle brand. How long will it stay? How hard will it be to walk?

Obviously, I'm not quite ready for the goo, press and pull down there just yet...but I'm thinking by August, I'm going to have to give it a try. Pain is beauty?

Hot People Don't Eat Cookies

So I went to the mall the other day to buy a skirt because my summer job requires business casual attire, and until lately, I've been erring more on the side of extreme casual attire. Anyway...not a single skirt fit me properly. Not one.

Ok...one did. But ONLY one.

When did I get so fat? I can actually grab WHOLE HANDFULS of flesh from my stomach! It's RIDICULOUS!!! How did I not notice this happening?

One might ask how I could possibly let this happen. Well...I can certainly think of a few culprits (although there are fewer and fewer of them every time I go back to the box...hmm...).

At any rate, I've had a solution to this for some time, my bicyclette. In fact, I had resolved to ride my bike more often from the beginning of this hotness journey, but it was too cold, or my bag was too heavy that day, or the roads were covered (I shit you not) in SHEETS of ice. There's always SOMETHING.

Case in point: I'm injured right now. Seriously. Here's how it happened: I was coming out the library to catch the bus home (it was sunny that day...so I'm not sure what my excuse was for not riding my bike...), only the bus had already arrived when I got out the doors. This usually means (and it did that day) a one hundred metre dash in whatever unsuitable shoes I am wearing. So I ran. But when I was almost to the bus stop, the bus started driving away. "Fine," I thought. I just stopped running and decided to wait for the next one. Except then I noticed that the bus was slowing down. The bus driver was looking at me. The unthinkable had happened! A bus driver was being courteous to a passenger who had been a few seconds late for the bus (I've seen some drivers actually shake their fists behind them as they drive off into the sunset while some person who is clearly late for a job interview or the birth of their firstborn child kicks at the dust left in the bus' wake). So, not wanting to spit in the eye of unprecedented generosity on the bus driver's part, and in order not to delay the bus any further, I started running.

So, here's some important information. It's just turning into spring in Eastern Canada. This means that EVERYTHING is wet right now. This also means that the chances that I was standing in a flat of mud when the bus slowed down were very good. As it happened, luck was not with me.

So, I started running...or rather I started doing that thing the Road Runner does when it's winding up to speed away from Wile E. Coyote because I couldn't get any traction in the mud. Unfortunately, instead of speeding ahead in a blur onto the bus, I did a faceplant into the mud. The immediate result was that I was covered in mud and had to spend the rest of my day until I got home several hours later covered in a thin layer of muck. The end result is that I REALLY hurt my ankle and knee - injuries made inexplicably worse by a much less exciting bathtub cleaning incident a few days later. Seriously. I'm limping.

All this being said, hot people definitely can't grab whole handfuls of flesh from their stomachs (perhaps from other parts of their persons, but not stomachs), and the longer I stay off my bike, the more handfuls there will be. I cannot let my unending ability to come up with excuses (real or imagined) not to exercise to get in the way of my hotness. Therefore, in the spirit of bullheaded ambition, I'm going to ride my bike on Monday, come hell or high water!

But perhaps not if it's raining or something.