Hot People Just Look Away

So, I've been pretty busy with my last few days of work (It's my last week! As of tomorrow I will be, for the first time, legitimately unemployed)...so I've let the exercise slip a bit. Also, I like to do it outside, and it's effing cold out, which has made even the outdoor WINTER sports unbearable.

One of the INDOOR exercises I've taken up this year is something called Zumba - I think it's supposed fuse Latin rhythms with easy-to-follow steps so working out can FINALLY be fun. And for a long time, I thought it was fun. I thought it was fun because I was in a big room with a bunch of forty-ish women who weren't really that fit (you know...the one I'll be when I'm forty-ish) and had little to no sense of rhythm and couldn't really follow along with the steps (in their defense, the instructor is pretty terrible at calling out the steps ahead of time, but still...). I had rhythm, and my hips were shaking...I thought I looked like a hot mama...especially in comparison to the forty-ish crowd.

But last week, my Zumba class was moved to a smaller facility. Not only was I hampered by the fact that someone with no rhythm (and therefore no way for me to predict whether their next step was going to be on my toes) could bump into me at any time, but there were also two large plate-glass windows at the front of the room. They were surprisingly reflective. This allowed me to see exactly what I looked like in my work-out gear, shaking my hips and trying to keep up with the delayed step calls. Hot it was not. To call it spicy would be laughable. After that, I spent more time worrying about how I looked than actually getting a great workout and having fun. Zumba was ruined by a window.

But that's not the only time I realized that I'm not so graceful when I'm being active. My uncle and cousin and I went ziplining for my birthday (btw, this is SO fun. Do it. Go out and do it now. Stop reading! [ok, don't actually stop reading...]). It was like flying - you're suspended over the tops of trees by a piece of cable. Birds look graceful when they're flying...why shouldn't I?
This looks pretty epic, doesn't it? Upon closer examination, though, THIS is what was happening:


















Is that a sweater around my waist? A particularly wide belt? Is there some kind of canvas netting in the harness? Please for the love of GOD explain this picture!!!

Nope. That's my midriff. It's hanging out like a pre-teen at recess.

ALL of the up-close pictures are like this....feet ungracefully flexed and belly-button out to wink at everyone. Fan-effing-tastic.

And this made me think of all the things I really enjoy doing for exercise...and then it made me curious about how I looked doing them. Apparently, I look reasonably ok doing the "light" setting for DDR:


(Yes, that is the world's fattest cat, of World Weekly News fame. She lives in my house)

But increase the difficulty, and you stop being able to tell that the thing I'm dancing to has a beat.



It's especially attractive that I'm continually adjusting my bra straps. If only this habit were limited to vigorous exercise...alas...

Pilates is just as bad (if not worse). Observe:





My favourite part of that is the extreme panting at the end. I am out of breath due to the exertion of a single sit-up.

So, I think it's obvious that exercise has got to be a major part of Plan Ab-tastic. Otherwise, I'd have to starve myself such that the fat surrounding my current abs dissolves...and I have a wealth of theoretical knowledge explaining to me why THAT's a bad idea. But the glimpse I caught of myself in the plate-glass window has me worried...what if all those times I danced like nobody was watching, somebody actually was watching? I don't want to be some stiff-hipped girl with her midriff hanging out!

I need brain-bleach. Stat.

Photography and Cinematography courtesy of my 13-year-old cousin.

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 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.