Hot People Can't Eat Just One

If I was going to pick the psychological disorder I'm most likely to suffer from, I'd probably pick depression nine times out of ten. My last post, I thought, was a pretty good illustration of that (thanks, to my commenters on that one, btw. Nearly all the kick in the ass I needed. Plus this one, which pretty much pulled me up out of it.) Regardless of whether or not I ACTUALLY suffer from depression, this post is about what I think I'm not. I don't think I have an addictive personality. I don't think I have any personality disorders. But a sober(ish) inventory of my life this past weekend suggests to me that I'm both an addict AND a hoarder.

Problem 1

I'm addicted to having things to do. There, I said it. I know. It's a problem. Most of you are probably reading this thinking that I'm crazy (actually, that's my point...); having things to do is totally normal. I'm not going to go through the laundry list of activities I've engaged in over the past few months (because I've done it many, many times already). But I've said yes to so many things that,

a. in order to do my taxes and spend some time with my parents I spent approximately 11 hours in a car, 5 having dinner with one parent, 2 having a fight with another parent, 3 hours doing my taxes, and only 6 hours sleeping so that I could be back in time on the same weekend to rehearse with some vocalists whom I was accompanying in the local music festival. Please note the car to sleep ratio there...

and,

b. my involvement in so many activities in the last month or two was so intense that more than one person thought I might do actual physical harm to myself in the completion of these activities.

So...maybe that's not normal. And though things are winding down for the summer, I don't find myself completely ready for relaxation, beaches and drinks like this:

(even though my boyfriend has admonished me and instructed me that I am not permitted to participate in any sort of extra-curriculars until September). I'm actually getting kind of anxious. Surely, here's JUST ONE MORE THING I can do or get involved in. A community garden? A book club? A quilting class? ANYTHING?

I've taken up crafting to fill the void. And to further illustrate my pathological need for things to do, let me describe my latest crafting venture. I had decided to make flower brooches for my mother and my boyfriend's mother as a belated Mother's Day gift (yeah, yeah...this "things to do" kick also means that I'm chronically late with EVERYTHING). It's pretty, and that's all that matters. See? I had none of the materials or tools necessary for this job. The result was that after work, I went racing to three different stores to get all the materials I needed. Despite the fact that I live in a reasonably well-appointed town, amenities-wise, there was one item I couldn't find. This resulted in massive panic, manifested by a sweaty-browed, arms-flailing sprint to my favourite yarn shop to inarticulately gesture and holler for the missing item. She didn't have it and that was a DISASTER (though totally understandable, because the missing item wasn't yarn, which is what she sells).

The point is, even when my "thing to do" isn't a previously scheduled, organized group activity, I WANT TO DO IT RIGHT NOW. I need to have my fix. See? Problem.

Problem 2

I cleaned my bedroom yesterday. Not even my whole apartment. Do you know how many empty, opened envelopes I found in there? More than one. Like, a grocery bag full. WHY? And hole- and run-ridden pantyhose? Like, a MILLION PAIRS. I don't even remember when I decided that the best course of action for both of these items was to let them lie (on the dresser, on the floor, IN THE BED[?!?!]) rather than toss them directly into the garbage. Because that's what both of those things are. Garbage. Similar items include safety pins, hair elastics, hairballs (helpfully placed in the middle of the bedroom floor by my cat). See? Problem.

Does anyone know of a detox/intervention program for loonies with my kind of problems? Anyone? Yeah, thought not. Anyway, I figure I could quit anytime I want. I just have to subscribe to cable television again (because its hold is WAY more powerful than any community garden committee), and develop a further hoarding habit for attractive containers and dust bins. See? Problem solved.

Hot People Don't Smell like Failure

I wish I could say my absence from the cyberwaves has been a result of my having reached my goal. I wish I could tell you I was superhot and I haven't been blogging because I haven't NEEDED blogging. However, saying any of those things would be a whole bunch of false.

I've been absent from the cyberwaves because I've been hilar-busy. And I've been absent from the cyberwaves because, honestly, I've been feeling like a big pile of turds recently. A big pile of failure turds. I have failed at being fit, I have failed at doing more, I have failed at doing less, I have failed in a house, I have failed with a mouse, etc.

And I have failed at writing actual words...to the point where my father points my failures out to me. (Normally, I wouldn't "out" an anonymous commenter, except that he already outed himself in the comment.)

...And that really is the last straw. I am nearly 30, and there are still numerous things that I can't do without my parents. This, above all, makes me feel decidedly not hot. Though I have a pretty reasonable income, I still feel as though I need to ask them for permission to do things from time to time...like take vacations with money that I legitimately earned and saved. Hell, I can't even string a sentence together without some input.

Now, I don't really know what to do about it. I've tried gently suggesting that I don't need their help. I've had screaming fights that, I think, more than gently suggest that I'd like a litte breathing room. But that's a thing I fail at also. I find it difficult to suggest to the people upon whom I was so dependent (for more than a quarter century) that I don't want their help anymore without feeling like a complete ingrate or a tantrum-throwing two-year-old screaming "No! I wanna do it."

But it's that attitude that's gotten me to this feeling of a big giant, steaming pile of failure-turds. My unrelenting attitude of doing everything that's offered to me that I have the slightest inkling that I might want to try has resulted in my having succeeded at only a few of them (since, you know, I can't be amazing at everything...like hot people would be). And now I feel like I'm frantically treading water and my limbs are burning with fatigue and all I want to do now is drown in my bedsheets. Sigh.

Hot People Plan for the Future

Ok, before you start thinking that my penultimate post actually had some truth to it, stop panicking (like I would be). It's just that it's January, folks. Time to evaluate the past and plan for the future, hotness-wise.

It seems I was once again a steaming pile of failure at keeping my New Year's resolutions for 2010. Of the 5 that I had made, I managed to ACTUALLY only keep one - be employed. I've already discussed my feelings about plan ab-tastic and how it will continue into the future, but the remaining ones were sorely neglected. I can neither speak french fluently, nor reliably play any songs on my guitar. And though I downloaded all album suggested last year, and enjoyed them, I still have a soft spot in my heart for the truly terrible. Matchbox 20 and Hootie and the Blowfish still command a few bytes of space on my ipod.

But instead of abandoning these resolutions and languishing in my continued failure at being hot, I've come up with a cunning plan for this year's resolutions. I had some drinks with a few friends just over a year ago, and one of them finally said to me, "You know, the only thing that all hot people have in common is that they mostly just do whatever the hell they want." As a result, I've come up with 4 new resolutions that will catapult me, hopefully by January 2012, to a state of extreme hotness (or, doing-whatever-the-hell-i-want-ness). They will also, I believe, help me achieve those failed resolutions from last year as well.

1. Drink more. I have a two-pronged attack here. First of all, drinking more really means drinking more things that I like (and consequently, less of what's just ok). So, no more Rye & Diet Coke at the dance club in town just because it's an easy thing to remember. 2011 will usher into my life more wine, hard cider, and vodka/soda/lime. Prong two will involve making more cocktails at home in an effort to find my own signature drink. Plus nothing's hotter than a well-stocked bar, no? My liquor cabinet already features 4 different kinds of scotch. What else is a must-have, I wonder?

2. Eat more. This may sound counter-intuitive; just work with me here. I've spent much of the last year almost literally run off my feet. As a result, I make very few of my meals at home. As a further result, I have no leftovers to take to work. And as a concluding result, I frequently eat gross microwaved dinners for lunch, thus consuming pounds and pounds of salt and chemicals on a daily basis. So when I say eat more, I actually mean eat more FOOD. Like, food in the Michael Pollan sense of the word. This will be difficult, since, as I've mentioned, I'm pretty much run off my feet. Sooo....

3. Do less. The last 10 months, since moving to Northern Ontario, have been a massive exercise in insinuating myself upon the community. I did this by not saying no to anything (except the pipe band...and a few dates). Unfortunately, when you say yes to everything, people continue to ask you to do things, and you are often expected to continue to say yes. And the result is that you have NO TIME TO MAKE FOOD OR SLEEP OR WASH YOUR UNDERWEAR***. When all of these things happen at the same time, the result isn't hotness, as I'd hoped. It's usually that you walk around like a cranky-faced zombie all the time. Therefore, I've resolved to commit to only 3 regularly scheduled weekly events at a time, and will evaluate one-time offers on an individual basis, giving preference to those things that I REALLY REALLY WANT TO DO (I'm looking at you, dragon boat festival). Hopefully, this way, I'll have more time for cooking real food, doing real exercise, and wearing clean underthings.

4. Do more. I know what you're thinking..."isn't that in direct conflict with resolution #3?" Well, no. This one is about something different. In searching for that quest for hotness I've really had to consider whether an item or an activity was generally regarded as hot, or if it made me feel hot when I had it/did it. And when I considered it, I generally found that when I felt hot, other people found me hot as well. The necessary conclusion here is that I should do more things that make me feel hot. Like this:

<---- And also ziplining. And also skiing. And also making brownies. And since I've set aside time by doing less, I should have more time to do all this stuff. In conclusion, I'm a genius and I'll be hot in no time.










SERIOUS FACE -->


***Note: I've not yet worn dirty underwear. I HAVE stayed up till 3 a.m. doing laundry on a weeknight so I wouldn't have to wear dirty underwear though.

Hot People Keep on Truckin'

So yeah...things have been going pretty well, lately. Things going well is awesome for me...but I feel as though it's way more awesome for everyone else when things are going wrong. Because wrong usually means funny. And funny means more people are reading.

On the other hand, this "Don't Analyze, Act" deal has been working out for me. And I feel like that's going to mean more ridiculousness is on its way. I'm joining a running clinic tomorrow. That's probably going to mean a lot of doubled-over pain. Same with the weight training clinic I joined last week...with all the bodybuilders in town. It's like...8 bodybuilders and me....with 1/4 the weights and 1/16 the attitude. I'm planning on playing basketball this year too...which I haven't played in over a decade. I think things can go very wrong there.

At any rate, I think the blog is still a useful tool for me - it keeps me motivated, even if it doesn't always keep you laughing. For example, the plan ab-tastic countdown is on - I only have 74 days left. That's going to mean loads of hard work in the next ten weeks. I also have yet to learn to play the guitar with any REAL skill, or speak French without the aid of an alcoholic beverage. So there's still loads to work on...and fail at.

And if all else fails (or wait...fails to fail), I just got a kitten. I promised myself (and therefore, you) that I wouldn't be that person who writes about how their pets are retarded, but he is kind of...special. He specializes in running into things headfirst. Like, today, he jumped headfirst into the toilet. See? Special.

Hot People Like Diet Cherry Cola

I've had two things on my mind lately. Well...three things...but the third one is really more of a private conversation than a public mind-drool, so I'll wait until the time is right for that one.

1. Stuff that I want.

2. Stuff that I like.

So, I had a wicked jones for a diet Dr. Pepper tonight.

***This is not the point. This is that thing I do where I talk about something mundane and then relate it to some deep part of my internal being and then blow everyone's mind (or, maybe just mine)

Anyway, I had a wicked jones for a diet Dr. Pepper tonight. I was eating some homemade shortbreads (be jealous!), and they were a little too short for the hot weather and I needed to wet my whistle with something other than expired milk. As I walked over to the Mac's, I thought the good Dr. might have a delicious blend 23 flavours that would do the job. I was really hoping one of those flavours was aspartame. Unfortunately, Mac's milk could not deliver. I knew I was asking too much; who am I to think that I should be able to get a calorie-free beverage in my preferred flavour at the only retail establishment open after 10 p.m. four nights a week? I'm currently drinking the full-sugar version, which is, as we speak, boring tiny holes in my teeth and then somehow depositing the excavation materials on my waistline.

The same thing happened when I tried to make hot artichoke dip a few months ago. Canned artichoke hearts? Hilarious notion! I had to settle for hot spinach dip. It was tasty, but not exactly what I was looking for.

Ok...so, what I'm getting at, is that this town just doesn't seem to deliver on exactly what I want. I can get what-I-want-adjacent, or two complementary halves of what I want...but never the genuine article, it seems. And I think you know what I'm talking about here. I've been pretty relationship-focused lately. Even when I let good ole rational brain in to say something cogent about trying to make friends and have a good time, underneath it all, I'm really hoping that every interaction I make is going to lead to something lasting (by this, I mean, more than a few weeks) and, let's face it...coital.

Alas, I recently came to the conclusion that this isn't going to happen. At least, not in the foreseeable future. All signs point to the apparent reality that I have entered a period in my life that I've lovingly monikered the ERA OF EFFED UP PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS. A bird's eye view of my recent dealings with the opposite sex will show you this: it's LIKE we're dating...except we're definitely not dating. This is despite the fact that sometimes their self-described physical type looks an awful lot like me. This is despite the fact that sometimes their self-described personality type sounds an awful lot like me. And for a long time, this was really confusing to me. WHY would people more or less describe me, to my face, as the kind of person they really want to date, if they don't actually want to date me?

So, on the weekend, a friend of mine clarified it for me. I described one of these effed-up platonic situations, and he said, "Huh, so you're the incase of emergency, break glass girlfriend."

And then the lights turned on. And suddenly, I was enraged. I am the safety girlfriend. When all other options have been exhausted, they know I'll do a reasonable job as a pinch-hitter girlfriend. And that's why these dudes keep dangling carrots in front of me and then pulling them out of my reach just before I grab onto them.

On to the stuff I like. In particular, I mean stuff I like about me. I've been thinking a lot about that question my friend asked back when I couldn't cry (Problem solved, btw. This song did the trick. Bawled my face off).

I think it's an important question to be able to answer. So important that I was discussing it with a few members of my family. My mother disagrees. She thinks that people shouldn't be able to answer that question unless they want to admit they're full of themselves. In fact, her response was so visceral that she had to get up out of her chair, to illustrate that she hates people who haven't got a problem saying "I am SOOO great! I LIKE myself! I'm good at walking (she marched on the spot to illustrate this point), and I'm good at smiling, and I'm a good person!" And frankly, I think I wouldn't like them either. Because I'd be jealous of them.

But that's because I'm not very good at smiling. Observe. (In the interest of full disclosure, the drink beside me is mine. And it was tasty. The bottle of pills is not mine. That's cat medicine. I don't know how it tastes).

Seriously, though. I'm already full of myself. I have almost 100 pages of text broadcast through cyberspace devoted wholly to myself. Wouldn't it be great if that full-of-myself-ness had a positive spin to it?

So, instead of thinking of all the things I don't like about myself (like my smile, and my acne, and my fat ass, and...wait, right...that's what I'm NOT doing this time), I really should think about the things I like.

So, at first I thought I liked the fact that I'm 100% genuine. I do not know how to bullshit. But then I remembered how my 0% bullshit policy gets me into trouble A LOT. So, I scratched that idea. Then, I realized that the thing I like best about myself is the fact that I'm pretty effing resilient. I've had a lot of shitty life, and a particularly bad run the past few months, but I keep getting up and coming out swinging. I like a lot of other things too. I'm looking pretty curvy these days, and I have really nice eyes. And hair. And boobs. (Please ignore the mess on my coffee table. And my shitty furniture)

Ok - back to that back-up relationship thing. Yeah, that makes me mad. And I'm realizing that I ought to like myself way too much to be THAT girl. So, while a small bit of me still burns a candle for some of these dudes, when and if whatever emergency arises and they decide they want to break that glass, I've gotta think long and hard about whether being behind that glass is EXACTLY WHAT I WANT.

And in the meantime, I'm going to have to resign myself to going without exactly what I want. I can compromise on my chilled cherry-flavoured cola beverages every once in awhile, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to compromise on this anymore.

So, good sirs, I am pleased to be friends with you. But there's no need to continue to lead me on. I'm going a different way.

Hot People Win, Even When They Lose

I've been noticing (mostly because it is completely obvious) that the growing up/goodbye to my youth process has involved a lot of "one last debate tournament"s. I know, I know. Nerdz!

But for serious - debating has been an invaluable and defining part of my life for almost a decade (yipes, I'm old!). Many readers will know this, but my main focus is actually judging the debates, and I've gotten pretty good at it over the past few years. So this past weekend, I was strong-armed at the last minute by some friends to judge at a pretty major tournament. Although geographically, I found myself in Toronto, I also inexplicably found myself (metaphorically) in a place called, by those in the know, the bin. The bin is where the bad debates happen - the ones devoid of reason, organization or articulation, let alone any sort of panache. It's a place I haven't found myself in a few years, and I've gotta say, it put me into a bit of a tailspin.

First of all, I've had some...exchanges...with a few of the people in charge. It was almost as though they were holding something against me. Like perhaps I had written some scathing and untoward things about them on a public internet site or something...hmm...so for a while I thought it was just vengeance.

Here's where, in retrospect, it gets a little cringe-worthy and unattractive. Soon after I came to my senses and decided nobody could be so petty (right?...nobody would be...) as to seek vengeance for a blog post from months ago in which all parties (except myself) remained more or less anonymous, I started to have a small (Seriously, it was only tiny. And I definitely kept it to myself as well...) personal crisis about my skillz as a debate judge. There might have been some moist eyes threatening tears at a few moments. This is cringe-worthy for two reasons:

1. Who likes emo-girl traipsing around like a 17th century poet? I don't. I'm pretty sure I could have dealt with things a little more gracefully (although shit, I saw some bad debates this weekend). For example, I might have avoided referring to the complete injustice of my shitty weekend to everyone I met, or at the very least avoided opening every conversation with that topic. I might also have opted NOT to require everyone to list my accomplishments at top volume, in unison, before I unlocked the door to our accommodations and allowed them to enter.

2. It points to a greater problem with my life. When someone gets uppity because they've lost a debate, I go on an oft-ranted tirade about how the outcome of a debate round has no bearing on real life and nobody in real life is going to care whether you won your fifth round at the 2007 eastern invitational. Despite this firm belief, I've really made debating THE major priority in my life and I've done it for too long. Although my success in the field of debate judging (which, frankly, only a select few would even count as a REAL success) has served me well, it has been something I've cultivated to the exclusion of all other things and I think this is a little bit alarming. Like, I used to be good at other shit. I used to be an awesome lip sync artist (at high school dances, with my thumb-rophone), and I would kill at trivia contests (Reach for the Top FTW!) but I haven't done either of those things in like, forever. In conclusion, I really need to diversify my talent portfolio. Learning to be a french-speaking guitar hero is obviously already on the agenda...but I need to think of some other things to incorporate into my life so I can one day be awesome at them. Ideas? Anyone?

On the other hand, my relative abandonment of all reason and sense of purpose meant that, on balance, the rest of the weekend was pretty awesome.

First of all, I learned that I am effing amazing at playing damsel in distress (it helps when the distress is real). A number of dashing young men came to my aid. I think I only paid for half my drinks and I wasn't allowed to leave the dancefloor (in fact, I was forcibly removed from areas not technically dancefloor on a number of occasions). I also had one of the nicest and least "pressure-y to do more" makeout sessions I've ever had, and that was really refreshing.

Secondly, I drank my face off. The results of this were epic (although, recognizing that I already used my last chance to drink stupid amounts of alcohol, the hangover on Sunday was just as epic). I definitely danced like a rockstar that night. I also definitely fell out of a bunk bed. The resulting bruises (reflecting the pattern of the carpet) and rug burn are totally badass. My successful attempt at mounting the bunk bed ladder post-fall without the help of my two very concerned friends was just as badass. And I definitely spent the rest of the night spooning my friend's girlfriend to avoid a second fall.

In conclusion, while daytime Miss T wasn't very hot at all, I feel like my Saturday night was burning up just a little (at least, I felt sorta hot...). Now, how can I keep that fire ablaze?

Hot People Are Impervious to Diversions

Ok - Plan Ab-tastic is not going well so far.

The plan involves a two-pronged attack. The first prong is to be unapproachably attractive. I am not faring well on this score. Perhaps because I am less interested in boys of all shapes and sizes (I prefer now to focus only on boys of SOME shapes and sizes...), I find myself more attuned to the things that I do not enjoy about my physical appearance. I know I've complained about my complete and utter corpulence in the past, but the saga continues. I've also noticed that my face looks as though it belongs to the greasy boy from your grade 7 gym class...you know the one...he sort of lurked in the corner and ALWAYS dropped the basketball at crucial moments. It's kind of peeling AND acne-covered. SO fetch.

Also, there's my teeth, which I've noticed more and more of late. Let me tell you another hilarious story of my youth. Once upon a time, when I was seven, my family and I were driving home from the our friends' house in the early evening as the moon was rising. You know how the moon looks extra-huge as it's coming up? Well, we thought we wanted to make that magic last as long as possible. As such, my mother suggested we abstain from turning the lights on when we got home and instead go directly to the kitchen (which was on the moonward side of the house) to watch it continue rising.

Until I was in my early twenties, my Dad kept fish. For as long as I can remember, there has been some kind of fishtank in my house. For much of my young life, there was a gigantic fishtank in the front hall. As you may recall, fishtanks are made of glass, and are therefore more or less invisible in the dark. As you likely won't recall, the gigantic one in my house stood at about mouth height on a seven-year-old. And on that particular night, when all the lights were off, and I was (a little strangely) excited to see the moon rise from the back of our house, I ran directly into that fishtank, mouth-first. The direct result of this was that I broke my front tooth in half. And as if my front tooth had not suffered enough violence, it was broken again the following summer when my brother hit me in the mouth with a paddle. Because I was singing too much, or something.

As a result, one of my front teeth is made mainly out of amalgam. To my extreme dismay, almalgam stains easily and is impervious to the work of all whitening toothpastes, as well as the bleaching power of any white strip I've tried. In conclusion, it is at least two shades darker than the rest of my teeth. It makes me not want to smile, especially for photographs, and as the Little Orphan Annie taught me in that seminal musical starring Carol Burnett, you're never fully dressed without that. Lord knows, there have to be SOME photographs of me where I'm not in SOME state of semi-undress...so I'd like to fix my smile.

I feel as though ALL of my problems would be solved with the proactiv solution and Zoom whitening. Unfortunately, both of those things cost oodles of cash, and frankly, my Visa situation is more dire than the last time I mentioned it. Therefore, I will soon commence scouring the internet for home whitening and acne removal solutions. This will definitely not be a recipe for disaster.

Prong two of Plan Ab-tastic is to divert my attention away from boys. Because they ALWAYS make me sad. Always.

I've tried to do this by distracting myself with other things. One such potential distraction was also an on-the-fly attempt to inject some culture into my life; I got rush tickets to the Nutcracker ballet (could I just say, at this point, that $11 rush tickets are a perk of being a student that I will sorely miss once my current student card expires. SORELY). The Nutcracker is a holiday favourite, with music that is beautiful AND familiar, a story that is a timeless classic, and ballet, which is always fascinating to watch, especially when you're a person who can't actually touch your toes without bending your knees and grunting. Despite all of these things, I couldn't help but be distracted by the bulges in the male dancers' tights. Yeah...I spent most of the night staring at their junk. Or marveling at just how tight the tights were across their bums - seriously, I could differentiate between individual gluteal muscles.

So...after a week and a half, I am failing on all fronts. However, I just bought new pants, and they fit marvellously. This may be just the morale-boost I need to plough forward. We shall see.

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 Remember the Important Things

Ok - so I may have to take something back I said in my last post. I've had some fun in New Brunswick.

But here's the thing - I have the capacity to drink like a sailor. This does not mean that I drink like a sailor every day (because I do not). Nor does it mean that I should exercise that capacity every time the opportunity presents itself (although I do perhaps a little too frequently). It's amazing, though, what a little liquid courage will do for you (or in Saturday's case, at least a bottle and a half of wine's worth).

As we all know, I have issues with meeting people. When sober, the idea is enough to make me stay home and watch chick flicks. However, recent reports suggest that drunk Miss T was dancing up a storm with half of everyone at Le Club (I'm being French again...can you tell?). Obviously, meeting people was not an issue for me last Saturday. Some girls from work that we happened to meet there even commented on it. They suggested they didn't know I had it in me. I didn't know I did either. In fact, I didn't know I had it in me until my roommate informed me sometime midway through Sunday afternoon (post-four hour nap).

It is very important to note, though, that I distinctly remember most things about the night - the IMPORTANT things, I should say. I have no idea how we got from my roommate's sister's hotel room to the bar, but I definitely remember dancing with this man.

I have no idea when or why we left this bar to go to another bar (actually I do - it had to do with a med student my roommate met and wanted to introduce to her sister), but this remedy to a garden-variety high heel problem (see, I'm not the only one who can't hack it!) was imprinted in my memory long before I turned on my camera midway through breakfast as a means of not falling asleep in my Banana Blast pancakes.

I do not remember that the band was awful, but I do remember that some creepo followed us from the second bar back to the first in the hopes of winning the affections of one of the twins..."whichever one was single". Charmant. Good hair, though.

And I do not remember how long it was between when I wedged myself between two men at the bar (very proud of myself for this courageous move) in an effort to make new friends, and when one of them found me on the dance floor. But I do remember that I felt pretty effing awesome to know that he was looking for me, and I felt really retarded every time I asked him what he did for a living...I think by the end of the night we had reached a total of seven times.
Do you think it affects my chances at a coffee date later? Hope not.

***Also Happy Birthday to my cousin, who may not be reading this, but turns 19 today and gets to enjoy all that night life has to offer.