Online Dating: Plenty of Awesome

Online dating. It's been years, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I gave it a shot. I went on Plenty of Fish today determined to find someone's profile to make fun of, but when I looked at the few who appeared at the bottom of my screen, it broke my heart instead. How can you mock someone trying to find love? There ARE some hilarious ones though. One of which, was MINE.

Because really, what is a blog for if not to publicly and anonymously humiliate yourself for the sake of entertainment? You're all welcome. I'm DYING to show this to K, because it is ironic how much he fits what I wrote:

I snort when I laugh
I'm looking for a best friend first who makes me laugh until my cheeks hurt, who will sit in the corner of a bar with a pitcher of beer between us, slinging off-color jokes back and forth or discuss philosophy over four cups of coffee each until we've forgotten what time it is. I'm 24, a graphic designer with a childlike optimism looking for someone soft-hearted, intelligent--even dorky--and cute. I'm definitely a smartass, but compassionate. I love a man with a sense of humor who can carry on a stimulating conversation. Send me a message, I'd love to hear from you. Photos appreciated!

Stifle your giggles, bitches. This baby snagged me a perverted cop, a law student, a leather-clad furniture designer who may or may not have been gay, and a good man seeking a tender girl.

To say my dating life pre-K was interesting is an understatement. Thank GOD I found what I was looking for: a man who will dress up like a giant carebear for me.

Here we are, carrying on a stimulating conversation and discussing philosophy.

Black Friday's Most Irritating Customers

I'm not going to say who dragged who to Joann Fabrics Saturday, but somehow K and I ended up there with 2 overflowing carts in an astronomical line to check out. I know it's Black Friday weekend and everyone is all bah humbug and gimme gimme gimme, but I didn't expect the line to be as bad as it was.

There were 2 registers open, and we were lucky enough to end up in line directly behind the two worst people you could ever imagine being behind: Calculator Lady and Change-Counter / Price Check Man.

I swear this stuff writes itself. There we were in line, watching the syncronized shennanigans happening simultaneously on the two only open registers. The looks on the faces of the cashiers said it all, as their eyes traveled from the man counting pennies to pay for his nutcracker to the grumpy customers piling up in line.

Of course it was a huge sale day, and with modern technology being as unreliable as it is, Calculator Lady didn't trust the number the cash register came up with and decided if you want something done right, you have to pull out your pocket calculator and count that shit yourself.

Change Counter Man got half way through counting when he realized he had snagged the only nutcracker without a price tag, and requested the cashier abandon her post on the front lines and dash through the store to find one that did.

She returned minutes later to a grumbling crowd only to have the price come up differently than it had originally and Change Counter Man had to start at the beginning, quarters first.

When they finally paid for their items, Change Counter and Calculator Lady strolled out of the store taking their sweet time. I'm convinced they were in on it together and probably rode the same cab from the same apartment complex. They probably paid for the fare in change, too.

Biebsgiving

Tomorrow will probably look a lot
like this, with or without the carebear
costume. I haven't decided yet.

J-Biebs is on the radio with a new hit, and guess what that means? It's HOLIDAY time, y'all!

You know what I'm going to do this weekend? Eat a shit ton of turkey and mashed potatoes, puke and rally, then eat more mashed potatoes. After all, isn't that what the holidays are about? Stuffing your face?

We're having Biebsgiving here at our house again this year, which is a very grown up thing to do, and we are totally grown ups. Since I am culinarily challenged, K will be doing most of the work while I take the credit.

Juuust kidding. I can't take credit, because everybody in this family knows that I can't cook. But he really does do most of the work. I'll probly just spend the day tracing my hand making construction paper turkeys.

I hope you guys have an awesome turkey day, and remember who we should all be giving thanks to this year. The Biebster.

Badonkadonk

For years, I've been digging through the S-M-L bins at Deb, pretending everything didn't fit like a shrink-wrapped baby tee. It was only about a year ago at the ripe old age of 27 that I broke down and admitted that I couldn't shop in the Juniors section at Kohl's anymore. (Denial, anyone?)

I'd cry into my Big Mac the entire ride home, lamenting about how many zippers I'd broken in the fitting room. Until I found my mecca. Lane Bryant, my favorite store ever. And it's not just because they told me I'm a D-cup, when I've been wearing B's. (Because that's the one good thing about putting on a few pounds, y'all.)

Smiling cashiers open the doors in unison with unjudging eyes and chubby angels sing hymns from the rafters that sound like hugs from Jesus. It is a refuge from the restrictions of 5-7-9 when I've had too many Kalteen Bars, a safe haven for curvy chicks everywhere.

They welcome you in with a knowing smile, and you can leave your fears of a sob fest nothing-fits shopping trip at the door. I had no idea what I was missing. It was love at first sight of being on the "small" end of the LB size chart.

It's about damn time they made clothes for women with badonkadonks.

Selena's puppy ate some rocks.

The hottest breaking news this week? Selena Gomez's puppy ate some rocks, y'all.

Whomp, whomp.

I'm one of the biggest animal lovers you'll ever meet and I hope the little guy pulls through his rock-removal surgery, but I just have to ask--WHY is this top news? This is kinda like the time J-Biebs got a haircut and it made front page news.

Guess I should get a more reliable news source than Perez Hilton.

What the hell is an 'awl?'

I am one proud lady today, kids. I successfully hung shelves and towel rods in our bathroom.

The house is solely K's (he owned it before we met), so since I moved in I've treaded lightly in my redecorating. I didn't want to move in and tear everything apart. (I already had one Pougar and 4 giant carebears with me--that's enough to drive anyone crazy.)

This week, I ordered shelves for our bathroom all on my own. They got here, I assembled them myself and I was SUPER fucking excited to put them up. Then I freaked. I panicked and decided to wait until K got home. I was afraid of putting holes in the walls, and I didn't want to hang things crookedly, because if anyone would notice--it's him.

After staring at the assembled shelves on the floor for two days, I got BRAVE. I said fuck it, marched upstairs with my tools and stood in the middle of the bathroom with my hands on my hips. The shelves came with these little plastic anchor thingys which I had no idea how to put in the wall. So I googled that shit. Thanks, naturalhandyman.com.

Once I figured out what the hell an 'awl' is, I took a deep breath and pounded the first nail into the wall. Two hours (and two cramped hamstrings) later, we have SHELVES!

Look at me, using tools and shit.  I'll be building houses in NO TIME.

Hold the fucking door, please.

I was raised in the midwest. With manners. Napkin-in-your-lap, please-and-thank-you, the whole nine. I even attended a Miss Manners seminar when I was 12. It was the longest and most horrific day of my life. The only thing I remember from it is the rhyme to remember how to eat soup: "little ships go out to sea, only to return to me." Good thing I've carried THAT with me and don't eat like a tyrranosaurus.

But I digress.

This may be why, when a lady failed to hold the door open for me the other day, I screamed after her: "THANKS FOR HOLDING THE DOOR!" And exhaled a silent "BITCH" under my breath. I might have been angry, but I wasn't about to get into a Jerry Springer brawl at a rest stop.

But seriously?? I hold the door open for EVERYONE. Even if it's an awkward couple of steps before they even REACH the door. Men, women, children, monkeys. Doesn't matter. I hold the door.

This particular day I was exiting the rest stop with two full drinks in both hands, a purse on one shoulder, and keys draped over my arm. This lady went through TWO sets of doors, slamming BOTH in my face. I had to kick them open like Chuck Norris after her selfish ass made it through scot-free.

I wanted to punch her square in the shnoz.

What the hell is wrong with people? Didn't your mother teach you ANYTHING?

Ya'll lookin like SNACKS.

"Giiiiirls, ya'll lookin GOOD. Ya'll lookin like SNACKS."

I've been out of the dating game awhile, it seems. Because it appears that this is the line young gentlemen use to woo potential female suitors these days.

I was walking down the street with my girlfriends when a group of guys yelled this out at us.

Snacks? Like Twinkies? Pringles? Cheetos?

The cheese that goes CRUNCH?

I'm not sure whether it was meant as a compliment or an insult. So thanks? I think?

What the hell happened to the dating scene since I've been outtie? Or has it ALWAYS been this way, and I was too drunk to notice? I'll tell you what--I'd rather be at home watching Lifetime Original Movies ALONE than catering to someone's primal vending machine desires.

The Proposition

A guy at the bar on Saturday leaned over suggestively and whispered that if I ever wanted to leave my boyfriend, he'd be next in line. I pulled away from him quizzically, wondering if he was serious and took careful inventory of my life.

K drives me crazy sometimes. He really does. Xbox, dirty socks lying all over the house, and saying the word 'retard'... makes me want to chase him down and beat him over the head with a nerf bat.

But when I got home from our girls night yesterday and saw him standing in the driveway, I looked into his eyes and had the sudden, almost uncontrollable urge to full-on sprint across the driveway, jump into his arms and hug him. It's this feeling I can't describe--like a candle lit from the inside that tips over at the sight of him and warms my entire soul. It makes me glow.

After all of the heartache in my life, I never thought I'd ever feel this way about someone, and it brings tears to my eyes when I realize how incredibly lucky I am. Some days, I want nothing more than to be as close to him as possible and just breathe him in.

This man is my world. We share a home, a life. He made me believe in love again, made me trust again. He gets my jokes, he balances me out. He knows how to calm me down when I'm flipping out. And he dressed up as a giant carebear for me. He's more than my boyfriend, he's my family.

So my answer to the random stranger who propositioned me was a knowing smile and a shake of my head. He just didn't get it. And maybe he never could. There's just no room in my heart for anyone else.

Slow Motion Tango

There are moments in your life that emblazon themselves in your memory. A painful one of mine popped up unexpectedly this morning on my way to the gym, to a Taylor Swift song. I remember it so vividly: the moment I saw my ex with the other girl. My entire life came to a standstill and crumbled into pieces in front of me.

My girlfriends and I were home on Christmas break; we went out to a Canadian bar where we could legally drink. We were laughing, dancing, doing shots... I remember being intoxicatedly happy. My roommate, Kirst, spun me around the dance floor in a sloppy tango, prancing me from one end to the other. I threw my head back in laughter, and people parted ways for us to charge through.

She went to dip me, and that's when I saw them. The crowded bar seemed to dissipate, and everything began to move in slow motion. I stood frozen, still holding Kirst's hand, the look on her face revealing that she had spotted them before I had. Her eyes dropped, she clenched my hand. They were standing at the bar, he was buying her a drink. I watched him laughing and smiling at her as my heart shattered into a million, billion pieces on the floor.

For a moment, I considered charging them and throwing the drinks they had just bought, punching him and slapping her. But I couldn't bring myself to move; I was cemented in this spectatorial position.

I couldn't feel my heart; my arms were numb. I felt as if I was sinking into quicksand, watching my life crumble in front of my very eyes. And as I grabbed my coat and walked out of the bar, supported on each arm by my very best girlfriends, I took one last glance at the two of them and didn't shed one tear. He never even knew I was there.

This shit just writes itself.

Seriously people, this shit just writes itself. Saturday, before Carebear-Palooza, K and I were having a leisurely breakfast downtown. We returned home to finish decorating the front yard, when an elderly lady walked past us on the street and said "did you hear that someone robbed the bank?" We nodded; it was local news and everyone in Stars Hollow knew about it. "No," she said, "They robbed it AGAIN. Just now!"

My mouth dropped in disbelief: we were JUST having breakfast next to the bank! But more importantly... who robs the same bank TWICE? In ONE WEEK?

K: "How stupid do you have to be to rob the same bank AGAIN? These people must have serious problems."
Me: "...Or they're incredibly SMART. Because they have successfully robbed a bank 2 times without getting caught, and I have successfully robbed a bank no times. Who's the winner there?" (Granted, I'm not wanted for armed robbery, but it must have been a hell of an adventure.)

I cannot fucking WAIT to read about this in the police blotter. We are bound to be in morons in the news, AND I'm willing to bet there will be an overhaul of the Stars Hollow Police Dept, too. You can't make this shit up if you tried.