Powering Through

This past weekend I went on a jaunt with some girlfriends of mine to Port Aransas, Texas to take part in the annual Beach to Bay Relay Marathon.  There are 6 people on a team and each "leg" ranges from 4 miles to 4.8 miles.  I am not a runner by nature. I am not a runner by heart. I am not a runner by my wildest dreams. I am however always up for a good time, which is what this weekend always entails.  Unfortunately, I accidentally missed my pick up ride after I passed off the baton to my teammate and after run/walking for 4 miles to get to her, I started another trek, I finished the race, with a slow and steady pace.  A near 9 miles was under my feet by the time it was said and done and I got to think about a lot of things during that time.  I did not solve the problems of the world, I did not conquer a fear, but I did realize when the choice is to trace your steps to see where you may have missed something, it is better to just keep walking forward.  

Two weeks ago I went on a third date with the fellow from Georgia. By all signs they pointed towards a good date.  Unfortunately I haven't heard from him again, except for a weak response to an email I sent him a few days after our date. I try to be breezey, but 'tis true, when you try to be breezy, you sound calculated.  Well I took the plunge and like I kept walking on Saturday because there was no other choice, I closed him on eharmony before he closed me.  Then I had a realization this morning, as I keep trying to figure out, what happened and why didn't he just say something?  Well, right before I closed him on the site, I took one last look at his profile and there it was in black and white, he wanted "someone who challenged" him.  When I first read that, being the non-genious that I am, I thought that meant intellectually.  That scared the shit out of me, I'm not that smart.  Tis true, I never broke a 1000 on my SAT and I took it twice, I had to work hard in my degree of American Studies and let's not be afraid to mention I had a tudor when I was 4 to learn the alphabet. FOUR....A TUDOR....and I still sometimes have to sing it in my head when I'm alphabetizing!  But it didn't occur to me until this morning actually that what he was saying is he wanted the chase.  Well here's the skinny Georgia, I'm not on eharmony so that I can play hard to get. Clearly.  So I wish you well in your chasing endeavors.

We had good fun on the ride home reading the profiles of potential suitors on the site I had recently been matched up with.  Out of all of them, the one who has reached out to me is Mr. Self Employed. The second multiple choice question he asked me was how trustworthy am I? and the multiple choice questions are:
A) sometimes I'm too naive
B) I trust people and am able to forgive them when wronged
C) I trust people until they prove me wrong, then it is hard to trust again
D) people are dishonest by nature, you need to be careful 

Kind of an odd question, don't you think? Not odd if he is a liar.  I chose choice C.  But I regret that choice, I think I should have stuck with D. 

I had choices range from Mr. Self Employed to Mr. Star Wars junkie and One guy's profile pic was him wrestling a dog bone from his dog's mouth...with his own mouth.  It just keeps getting better and better....I'll keep powering through this, you stay tuned!
 

Anxiety

I have been covered in anxiety for the last 2 weeks. Seriously, it has kept me so warm at night I wake up in sweat.  For two weeks I have worried over a boy, my job, my co-workers, my co-worker's relationships, my dog, my house, birds in my house, birds chasing my dog, my job, a boy, my chimney pulling away from my house, a boy and my life.


My therapist has a saying "is this productive worry or non-productive worry?"  I have a saying too "if you can control your heart and mind 100% of the day then good for you for not worrying your pretty little head off".  There is a trigger in every girl's mind that makes anxiety become at the forefront of all emotions, thoughts and productivity.  When I don't have anxiety about something I can have anxiety about not being anxious.  Do you question why this funny girl is still single?


I wouldn't say I'm over the top but I would say that God has tried inexplicably to give me more worrisome things in my life to take my mind off the little things that I worry about, but to backfire in his face... It only adds to the anxiety, it doesn't actually replace it.  I have tried to think to myself, focus on this, this should be your bread and butter of your anxiety plate.  That doesn't work, it just makes me hungry.


I have now found a bird in my chimney, then two in my house, then learned that my chimney is actually pulling away from the foundation and therefore my house which will cost me nothing short than my first born and yes, yes I did have an emotional collapse when relaying this information on to the nice accounting lady at my office who just happened to drop off my paycheck.  But not 10 minutes later was I emailing back and forth with a friend, every other email I wrote was either about the birds and chimney or this boy not having called/texted/emailed in a week.  Don't you find this a bit odd?  Well thankfully I have some of the best girlfriends a gal could have and they reassure me that I'm not crazy, I'm just a girl.  So everyone I know who has now found a mate and who's houses have not fallen in on top of them has been anxious and obsessive over thoughts.  This is comforting.


You see, my house, it can be fixed, I have a solution.  The situation with the guy, my only solution is to try to not focus anxiety on the confusion of me just being dropped like a bad banana, but that is to focus my attention elsewhere.  So I'm 752 "matches" into eharmony and found 2, count them, 2 guys I was interested in something more than 1 date.  2 in 752???  They call them Matches...I call them "failures"  Those odds are pretty amazing when you think about it.  I don't even have to explain that, 750 guys that I have been matched up with on this dating site that have either not wanted a relationship with me nor me with them.  That's pretty amazing when you get down to it, that's like turning down an army of bachelors as eligible suitors or non eligible for that.  If the glass is half full, I've got pretty good odds, when I say I have been closing them it actually means I have been turning them down, left and right.
Point being, I have a man climbing my chimney right now and another not calling me and 750 not knowing anything more about be other than my name and what I look for in a relationship.  That's more than I can say for some of my college boyfriends.  Irony.


Happy Friday!

The Sauce

You know, I'm no stranger to "The Sauce".  I don't think I am what would be considered an alcoholic, but I have been known to pull some stupid stunts while under the spell of "The Sauce".  Since college I refer to it as being "over-served". Blame it on the bartender, don't blame it on the A-A-A-Alcohol!  It is never your fault, it is never "The Sauce's" fault, it is the bartender's fault.  Sometimes I would be coy and say that someone stole my wallet and forced me to drink and made me pay for it.  NEVER MY FAULT!

Once when I was 20, I called one guy I had a crush on six times in one night and I believe, in one hour.  I learned about drunk dialing that night and future relationships.  Like Tequila Shots and Good Wine...they do not mix.  So I stopped that silly phase.

Then the bastards invented texting. TEXTING!!!  Now I ask, where is the invasion of someone's personal space and time with a few typed out words?  Oh, it is there.  Somehow in my maturity, however, I gained a "sauce" induced filter.  I will do one of two things if I get the urge after being over-served. I will either send a text and immediately delete the evidence. Of which I never forget that I actually sent it, but I do not have to deal with the humiliation of reading said text the next day and finding misspelled words or worse...questions of "miss me?" or confessions like "looks like I had too much to drink tonight".  Who needs to know this information that isn't currently at your side? NOBODY!  The second thing I can do is actually find a little clarity during writing that text and actually not sending it. Sometimes I'll save it to see if it is worth sending sober. IT NEVER IS! Sometimes I'll just stop, mid-incoherent message and see the light of nonsense and put the phone down.  I don't always have this clarity when not drinking, which is clearly ironic.  Like recently, I did not send a text to Georgia when I was drinking, but I couldn't help myself when I was sober.

"The sauce" has brought me a few things in life.  It has most certainly brought me additional pounds in areas like my chin and liver.  It has brought me "really good, deep and meaningful conversations" with new friendships and of course new crushes.  It has brought me totally unwarranted humiliation.  It has brought me bruises.  It has brought me regret. Why do I drink "the sauce" again?  Oh, because when not drinking into a state of bad ideas (which quite honestly, isn't as frequent as this post may sound...:)), I actually enjoy having a glass of wine or an occasional bourbon with my mother and a cold beer on a hot day is something worth bragging about.  But nevertheless, I have often felt like kicking the bartender who served me those drinks and the person who stole my wallet and forced me to drink with my own money, but I do not, without a doubt in my cloudy head, hold myself responsible for any unsavory behavior.  Blame them!  No apologies!

Point Taken

I had the pleasure of going to my college girlfriend's reunion this past weekend and it was amazing!  2.5 nights and 3.5 days with 7 of my nearest and dearest.  We sat around and caught up on each others' lives.  We dished about what we hadn't heard and promised to not let another few years go by before our next reunion.

We spent a lovely amount of time relishing in each others' humility from college.  Statements such as "I DID NOT" and "WE HAVE PROOF" were mentioned a few times.  Statements like "I can't believe you forgot that" followed by "I can't believe you remembered that".  We laughed until our stomachs hurt and ate until our stomachs hurt and drank until well....our stomachs hurt.

This was a weekend of gathering new information and relaying the old.  Yup, nobody was spared- the spinsters, the wives & the mothers were reminded of the days of shot gunning beers & picking up strangers on the streets of New Orleans, Destin, Cabo, New York, DC, Austin, Hawaii and Vegas, I believe that covered the gamut of our travels in college and random love interests.

On the first night out at this beautiful hill country ranch we went to bed around 1AM on Friday night and were ready for a beautiful day exploring the bright lights of Fredericksburg, Texas on Saturday, bright eyed and bushy tailed.   How could we have waited all these years to get together for a fun weekend away and gone to bed early?  Well, when 5:00 AM rolled around, while in a hot tub on the side of a hill and all the problems of the world had been solved on Saturday night - we had made up for lost time.  

When Sunday came around and I personally looked like I'd been rode hard and put up wet (it's a Texas phrase, don't get dirty on me) and I made myself get sick so I could make the 4 hour drive home, I was thinking, "man, I'm too old for this".  When I went to bed at 5PM on Sunday and struggled to get out of bed on Monday I thought, "geez, I'm too old for this".  When Tuesday rolled around and I slept through my alarm I thought, "goodness, I'm too old for this".  When Wednesday rolled around and I over snoozed my alarm I thought "Dear God, POINT TAKEN".  There is a reason we wait a year or more in between reunions with college friends.  

My college friends will be there for the rest of my life, but when we get together, no matter the strides, the weddings, the careers or the number of the babies...we can't forget we all did our first keg stands together, we endured road trips, broken down cars, broken down hearts, fraternity parties, bad clothes, worse decisions and we would always wear our "bad idea jeans" together.  We all think "if we did it before, we can do it again".  No keg stands this weekend, our backs are too weak now to do them, but 15 bottles of wine, 2 cases of beer and a set of margaritas split between 7 girls (preggers wasn't drinking)...we learned something.  We have more sophisticated pallets, we can hold our liquor better than when we were 21, but we are, without a doubt, no longer in our 20s.  We get it, POINT TAKEN!

We enjoyed our time together. We cried a little in laughter and a little in strength.  It is these girls who have seen my heart break over and over and helped me deal with some of the toughest decisions I have ever made, that each of us have ever made.  I'm proud of these women I call my friends. To the girls of PFLAG, may you know how much of a chunk of my heart you have and I blame every bit of my bad ideas - turned into amazing stories from college, on you.  The University of Texas at Austin brought us together, but it was laughter that keeps us strong!  xoxo

To close or Not to Close

Tis the question of today.  Recently I found myself playing the field, more than I have ever played it actually.  On date number two with the boy from Georgia as we were leaving I looked up only to see the Cheap Auditor Missionary (CAM) guy walking in.  I held my head down so he wouldn't see me.  Not because I was embarrassed by who I was with, quite the contrary, but I was concerned about the feelings of this guy I had bought coffee for once (let me remind you, that purchase wasn't intentional).  I contemplated closing CAM on eharmony. I hadn't heard from him in a few weeks.  Our last phone conversation was 30 minutes of painful.  His appreciation for deafening silence on the other end of the line is actually painful for me to witness.  But I chose not to close, like I said before, he was my project.  I wanted to be the one who brought him out of his turtle like shell.

Anyway, I went on a drink date with someone new last week, hence playing the field.  Trying to keep my options open while not putting all my eggs in Georgia's basket.  I surprised myself by having a great time!  This guy was funny and I was 100% myself on this drink date, I think because I wasn't really into the idea of going in the first place.  We talked about bad dates we had been on which I started out with "Oh, I can only think of 1, really" and then an hour and 6 bad date stories later, I realized, I was verbalizing the blog.  I was interested by this guy, I thought we had a great time, I was ready to tell the world, "It's my turn to choose".  

and The world said back to me this morning "Bullshit".  He closed me on eharmony.  So I have to wonder why? Was it the story about the date with the 41 year old that turned him off?  The fact that when we discussed kids and we were both in the same boat called "if I meet someone I want to have kids with, then I will.  Until then, I'm not yearning for one". That would be a ridiculous boat name, by the way.  But when I topped off this conversation with "my biological clock isn't ticking, in fact, it's kinda drunk".  He laughed, but who wants to actually date someone who's biological clock is emotionally drunk?  The fact that he closed me doesn't bother me, it wasn't there for him, however, what does bother me is the next person he goes out with he will refer to our date as the "girl who's clock is drunk".  That's not how I intend to be remembered or make an impression.

So in retaliation of this guy closing me (eharmony by the way has removed the "select which reason" section from closings, so I feel i have no actual "closure" with him) I went ahead and closed the Project too.  I feel a little empty inside that I couldn't give him a reason, but I'm freeing him to be someone else's project, someone else can buy him coffee.

So the field I'm playing now is me back on one base with one pitcher (I do not speak baseball, but I'm trying here) and I'm playing for Georgia still, which is great.  This guy makes me laugh, laughs at me, is clearly smarter than I am, but is still open to me, no closure yet.  Stay believing in me readers....I may muck this one up one day too, but rest assured, I have learned to refrain from calling any of my "clocks" drunk!

Happy Thursday!