Tag: MLlove

Chipmunk Cheeks

My face is hella swollen today from my wisdom teeth surgery, especially my right side. I look like Eddie Murphy in meet the Klumps.

It’s weird how my self esteem dropped and it’s literally upsetting to look at my face.

Josh took me to lunch to get out of the house. I had a scarf wrapped around my face because I felt so hideous, but he was sweet about it mostly haha. It was nice to see him and get of the house, plus he got a free lunch as a veteran which was pretty cool and it was nice to honor him.

Pet lovers take note

My friend Griff from my old improv group wrote this amazing eulogy about his 23 year old cat, Zsa Zsa,  that just passed away the other night.  I found it so touching especially the part I bolded below that really captures why I got my dog. 

A quick backstory on Griff –  he is such an interesting guy. He’s 6’6 and slim. He has a bushy beard and wears his hair in long Native American style braided pig tails. Griff is a graphic designer who used to be a tattoo artist and he is covered in tattoos. Griff at first glance could come across of scary or intimidating  but anyone who knows him isn’t surprised that he would write such a beautiful and heartfelt ode to his cat for all his the internet to read.  I should also note that Griff is now a dad to a 7 month old little girl who I hope will help gill the void that losing Zsa Zsa has created.  

I want to thank everyone for your kind words and sympathy. They mean so much to me in what is and will continue to be a ridiculously difficult time. If you let me take up a few more inches of your newsfeed I will write more clever and/or comical status updates shortly, but ZZ was very egotistical, as many of you may know, and it would be a disservice to not expound on her existence just a little bit more.

Zsa Zsa was more than a pet. I’m sure most of you can relate. Sometimes, a creature walks into our lives on four legs, that is as much friend and/or family as any human. You laugh with them just as easily as you would a drinking buddy and cry with them with full the confidence that they understand and are sympathetic your pain. Zsa Zsa easily met those qualifications and yet somehow managed to go a bit further. For years I tried to categorize ZZ’s relationship to me and didn’t really have success until I read Harry Potter, specifically, when Horace Slughorn teaches young Tom Riddle about Horcruxes. 
“A Horcrux is the word used for an object in which a person has concealed part of their soul.”
Zsa Zsa was my Horcrux. 
She was 20 pounds of my soul living outside my body and wrapped in calico fur. I don’t feel like I’m able to breathe as deeply as I could 18 hours ago. I feel slightly translucent like Marty McFly playing guitar helplessly as Biff dances with his mother at prom. 
I feel so mortal.
This is something I say that not to express how shitty I feel now but I say it so that you understand how amazing I felt while she was here. 
Zsa Zsa gave me about a decade more than any cat should have to give. I hope she knew that I loved her as much as a man could love a cat. I hope I gave her a good life. 

As I laid my head on her weak body and listened to her heart give its last beat and feel the last gasp of air exit her. I was flooded with the memory of why I wanted her in the first place. I got Zsa Zsa because I wanted to take care of something. Many times when that dreaded feeling of numbness and escape would fall over me, Z would be there. She would need me to feel and in that moment, I would need her too, because she was the only one that could make me feel anything. That was her job. Her job was to let me take care of her. Her job was to sit there and be lovely.
No one has ever done a job as perfectly as Zsa Zsa did hers.
 

One last time, on a keyboard soaked in my tears, I want to thank you for reading this eulogy I write for a very small creature that was such a large part of my life.
R.I.P. Zsa Zsa Speck. You are missed.

Golf Pro

Last night I went on a 2nd date with Josh, my chivalrous guy from Sunday.

We went to this place called Top Golf which is a driving range sorta. It looks like a driving range, but there are targets on the green and there are different games (sort of like darts) that you can play. There also is a bar and restaurant. Thursdays have a sangria special!

I wore my cute bright plaid shorts to hopefully help me channel my inner golfer. I was a pretty terrible golfer, BUT Josh was quite happy to teach me. Like full on got behind me multiple times to help with with my form and swing – I never had a boy teach me a sport before it was like being in a movie.

He also thought I moved my hips too much so a few times he would stand behind me holding my hips so they’d be stable. I was too distracted by his hands on my hips to really make any of those shots do anything substancial. 

Regardless of my less than stellar golf skills it was really fun and Josh is super entertaining.

Despite yesterday being a rest day I burned some major calories:

  • 1.5 hours of golf
  • 10 minute end of date mini-make out session…YUM!

Weekend in Review

This was a weekend of FUN, FITNESS, FOOD, and FELLAS!

Friday: After work I had pizza and beer with my cute college friend. Sadly a couple-friend of his joined us instead of dozens of hot runner friends like him. Regardless it was really fun to talk college, running, life, as well as innocently flirt.

Saturday: Woke up at 6:45am for a 11 10 mile training run, my first double digit run since the LA Marathon. Thankfully it was 68 out and overcast which felt great. I finally went on the awesome Mount Vernon trail and really enjoyed my run. Great splits and I found my stride (Bonus my heel spur wasn’t acting up). I was supposed to do 11, but I was crunched for time. Pretty much changed from one set of running clothes to a new set (sans shower) to head into DC with my HUNGOVER roommate for a Scavenger Hunt/Challenge/Race. We covered over 6 miles during the race itself (my legs were not happy with me towards the end). We had strangers take pics of us doing things at various points, so sing to people, and my poor roommate took one for the team and let me spray vinegar into her mouth from several feet away so she could spit it in a cup as part of the challenge. Considering she already puked once that morning, I don’t know how she didn’t right then and there. Took a post run/race shower/nap. Went on a second date with a guy I saw last week for dinner and drinks. We did get yummy Thai food and find a cool hidden speakeasy bar, but I wasn’t feeling him – he came across as boring and clumsy (he spilled on himself twice). I ended up obviously dodging a goodnight kiss which he called me out on via text later – oops! 

Sunday: I was supposed to have brunch with my friend Beth, but she cancelled due to being hungover from a Bachelorette party. I have been messaging with a guy on OKC for a few weeks while he’s been out of the country for work and he got back Friday and mentioned he didn’t have plans Sunday. So I randomly messaged him to see if he was still free and we made plans for a mid-day brunch. I had a GREAT time. First of all he’s 6’3 (I am such a height snob, but I’m the first to admit it so that makes it okay). He’s really outgoing and talkative and INTERESTING. He was telling me about all kinds of things I didn’t know about  – from technology to stocks to Walk Disney. He also dropped a bunch of casual compliments or casual touches. After brunch we went for coffee and he introduced me to the clover coffee at Starbucks – I LOVE COFFEE, how did I not know about this. He was such a flirty smart ass, but then also extremely chivalrous. He opened doors, pulled out my seat and at the end of the date HE TOOK MY HAND AND KISSED IT. I blushed like a schoolgirl a bunch during the date, but I thought I was going to melt right there. It was so unexpected, but really cute. And for those of you keeping count – this was 1000x better than when a former flame awkwardly kissed my arm at a football game a few years ago. He followed up with texting me last night to make plans to hang out later this week. We’re going to an indoor driving range with a bar that is pretty popular in the area and I’ve been wanting to go. 

PS – All the fellas had J names to make things extra confusing:  Friday-Josh, Saturday-Jack, Sunday-Josh

Ok I need to go cry into my lean cuisine, I’ll talk to you later

Me to a friend over facebook chat about birthdays and being single. Not completely true, but not completely fictional either!

For Chrissakes, There Is Nothing Wrong With You: A Dating Manifesto

VIA:  http://jezebel.com/5904952/for-chrissakes-there-is-nothing-wrong-with-you-a-dating-manifesto

As modern ladies of marrying age, our trusty inadequacy paradigm has always gone something like this: “I’m too fat for the men I like.” “I’m too ugly to get married.” “I’m too old to find a guy.” Blah blah blah, fart, repeat, dead (the lifecycle of the human woman). And lately, this other sort of protest-too-much inversion seems fashionable: “I’m too smart/too pretty/too successful/too interesting/too funny/too outspoken to bag a man!” No matter what or who we (hetero) women are, we are always too something for men. Isn’t that just fucked? Because to be “too” something implies that there’s a something else out there to aim for. But there isn’t. IT’S A TRAP.

We constantly frame ourselves as outsized or undersized from every angle—and we either use our inadequacies to punish ourselves (too fat! No cookie!), or wear them like some crazy cold-comfort security blanket (you’re my real boyfriend, sarcasm!). So couldn’t we just call bullshit on this entire idea and be, I don’t know, people? People who don’t exist “for” men? Whose lives aren’t upended by the latest terrible “too”-ness we read about inCosmo?

We have to quit defining ourselves solely in relation to dudes. Like, “I am not me—I am some imaginary man’s imaginary perfect 10, plus 50 extra pounds, minus a 20-inch waist, plus a threatening commitment to feminism, minus any desire to pretend to care about bike polo! That’s me!” No, that’s not you. That is a weird monster you made up to torture yourself. I try to remember (and it is hard sometimes—real talk) that I’m an actual human being, not some math equation that can be solved by triangulating all of the nearest boners.

Because here’s the thing, sister-bros. It’s a fucking con. The longest long-con of all time, maybe. Stop trying to be what men want you to be, because men are lying to you.

Any man who is a person wants to be with a woman who is a person. Attraction isn’t intellectual, it’s involuntary—and if men really only wanted to squirt their penises inside of silent supermodels, then regular people would be extinct. But look to your left. Look to your right. Regular people in the house!

Fundamentally, men are attracted to the exact same thing in women as women are in men: Confidence. Self-assuredness. Agency. Knowing who you are. But it gets sticky, because confidence is also the opposite of helplessness, and a lot of men (insecure men) need women to be helpless, because helpless people aren’t in charge. And people in charge want to stay in charge. And the people in charge are men. (To be clear, I’m talking in broad, sloppy, systemic generalities here—not saying your dad is secretly trafficking lady-slaves from Belarus or something. You know what I mean.)

And on top of that, because attraction is involuntary, admitting genuine attraction to the people we’re really attracted to relinquishes a huge amount of power. It’s terrifying. And when the people you’re so terrifyingly attracted to don’t even give a shit about you? QUICK, TELL THEM THEIR CALVES ARE TOO HEAVY.

It’s basic beauty myth. All the faux-evolutionary excuses people give for modern beauty ideals (gigantic boobs means more milk for cave-babies! A tiny waist means a bigger uterus!) are garbage. I mean, have you seen “conventional attractiveness” lately? That shit’s gone off the rails! Here is what I will cop to in terms of our primordial human standards of beauty. To bag an early-man, you probably needed:

1. Most of your limbs.
2. Minimal open sores.
3. A baseline level of health and robustness to be able to care for a child and/or defend it from lions.

Ombre hair extensions? Doubtful. Being “too interesting”? Fucking no.

We, as women, go our whole lives believing this lie that all we have to do is to stop being too fat and too flat-chested and too bitchy and too uptight, and then the perfect dude will finally love us forever. But chasing that stupid phantom doesn’t make us necessary—it makes us disposable. It makes us powerless. Because we’re not people anymore, we’re holes. Miserable, back-stabbing holes.

There’s this dumb, deathless stereotype that women only chase men who don’t need them—but, um, that’s because everyone wants someone who doesn’t need them. Everyone wants someone who doesn’t need anyone! The only people who actually should be helpless are babies, and who wants to fuck a baby? Not me! (Pro tip: If you just yelled “Meeeeee!” and high-fived yourself, call the cops.) Co-dependence is not hot.

But what’s needier than turning your life into one endless Sally Jesse Raphael makeover episode? What’s more helpless than carving yourself out of some dude’s janky old rib? That is the opposite of finding an actual person who might actually love you. So stop it. You are not “too” anything for anyone. Be a person. Hang out with people. Do what you want and you’ll get what you want. Giving up on other people’s expectations isn’t settling—it’s demanding what you fucking deserve.

Airplane Guy

Quick update.

I’ve been busy getting settled, so busy I nearly forgot to contact Lucas aka the guy I met on my flight back in January. Well that’s not completely true. I wanted to text him after my first day of work, but that seemed too eager, so I decided to wait a few days, and then got so wrapped up in everything I didn’t think to text him.

So imagine my surprise when I get a text from him yesterday after work calling me out for moving up here and not getting in touch with him. It was sarcastic and I loved it. We ended up texting most of the evening. I’d love to have FIRM plans with him, we alluded to things, but I want him to make the move. 

I like forgot how giddy he makes me. 

Upon reflecting on Lucas via my journals last night – I realized that yesterday marked:

  • 1 year since I ran the Talladega half marathon
  • 6 months since Wiley and I officially broke up
  • 5 months since Wiley told me about his new girlfriend

It’s crazy to read back on my journals and see where I was and now how far I’ve come. 2012 has been a great year thus far and I’m excited about what’s still ahead!