Delayed Like a Flight at Christmas

This date with Montana Guy is never going to happen.

I'm so annoyed that something that I wasn't even sure was a date in the first place, and wasn't even sure I was that interested in going on is turning into such a colossal pain and waste of time.

Three times we've made plans to get together on a certain day.

Three times I've kept my schedule open and mentally prepared myself for all the rigors of First Date Conversation® .

Three times I've sat around wondering when exactly he's going to call me, since I've obviously got an entirely different idea in my head as to what "convenient and appropriate" calling times are.

I almost want to employ the three strikes law here, but my stupidly guilty conscience doesn't want me to.

But at what point does it just become too ridiculous and not worth it? The first time we were supposed to go out he cancelled because a new job came up. (He's a writer of some sort and gets random freelance jobs occasionally, at least that's the impression I've gotten.) The second time, I was intending on trying to double-schedule him with The Kid until I got tired of waiting for him to call. When I called him to beg off the date, he said that he was going to have to cancel anyway. That assuaged any guilt I had over wanting to hang with The Kid instead of going on the date, but it also irritated me that he was cancelling for a second time. Then, last night, I lay in bed (because I'm a pathetic old lady and I go to bed at 9), wondering if he was ever going to call. Finally he did call, but only the cancel once again. This time, instead of trying to reschedule, he said that he would call me when he knew how his schedule was going to be a bit better.

Is it even worth bothering any more? I honestly don't know. I don't want to be rude about it, but why is there any point in trying to date if you don't even have time for a quick coffee?

Lyrics of the Day

"When you said you needed me, did you really need me or was it just someone – oh, you’d take anything. Am I first on that list of yours, or am I second, or third?" The Good Life Inmates

Key Points

Something is telling me that it's time to go. And it's not just the little voice in the back of my head that has been dying to get out of LA for months now.

I am an extremely responsible person. I pay my bills on time, I balance my checkbook, I never lose anything, I always keep my appointments, I'm always on time for work. You wouldn't know this about me by the way the end of last week went for me, and I'm pretty sure that it's a message that the Universe is trying to send me.

Every morning as I leave my apartment, I check my pocket to make sure that I've got my keys with me before I close the door. Every morning they're there and I go on my merry way. Friday morning, I shut the door, then checked my pocket for my keys - only to find that, for the first time ever, they weren't there. They were still sitting on the table where I throw them every day and I had instead picked up my spare pair of sunglasses and slipped them into my pocket.

On Saturday morning, I woke up far too early filled with anxiety over the grocery shopping and house cleaning that I absolutely had to get done. I got out of bed at 8:30 am, after a mere 6 hours of sleep, and ran around town before getting to some serious cleaning. It was after I ran a bunch of errands that I realized that the part of my keychain that contained my mailbox and laundry room keys was no longer attached to the rest. I tried to swing back by the parking lots I had been in to see if I could see where I had dropped the keys, but to no avail.

Sunday morning my pager went off at 4:30 am, after I had been in bed for only 3 1/2 hours. I went to work, left, and crawled back into bed at 5:50 am. At 6:1o am, my pager went off again. I cried, got out of bed and went back to work. At 7:30 am, when I was halfway home again, my pager went off for a third time. It was nearly 9:00 am by the time I got back to sleep.

Between the Universe's obvious message that I need to move the heck out of my apartment and the fact that work has got me a hair's breadth from burning out right now, I'm realizing that it's really time for me to make a change. As much as I want to leave, I've spent this first month of 2007 procrastinating and waffling and having second thoughts about whether or not I'm ready to go. I've been in LA for over 5 1/2 years now and I'm quite comfortable here - I could stay forever in this imaginary land I live in and wake up one day, single and 35 and wondering where the last 15 years went. But that's not what I want. I want to move on and move forward. I want to see what and where and who else is out there, in the great beyond that is everything north and east of Southern California.

Most of all, I want some time off. I want to go to Montana for more than a week and hang with my family and my friends and my home state. I want some flexibility in my working life and I want to meet some guys who never have been, nor have ever wanted to be actors.

Lyrics of the Day

"I think that I'm just tired, I think I need a new town to leave this all behind." Augustana Boston

Etiquette - Revisited

During the seemingly endless string of delays that seems to be surrounding my possibly-impending date with Montana Guy, I have been thinking a lot about dating etiquette again. I don't know if this is due to the fact that I maybe might possibly have a date in the near future or not - but a thousand thoughts have been swirling around in my pointy little head.

When I embarked on this dating adventure initially, I promised myself that I was going to honor the Gods of Dating Karma™ by doing the kind and honorable thing whenever confronted with the need for politely rejecting someone. I told myself that no one likes the brush-off method and that people would rather just be told straight up that I'm not interested.

But was I wrong?



I was reading in another blog recently that not responding to an email from a party that you're not interested in is the best way to go. That no one wants to receive a "thanks but no thanks" email back and that they'd rather get nothing at all. I always thought that I was being considerate by sending a "no thanks" email, but when I thought about it more I realized that I received more negative responses to those emails than I would have received had I done nothing at all.

Then today, in my state of mild boredom, I was reading over Constant Dater's old posts and found a particularly interesting one featuring her take on dating etiquette.

Constant states that it's perfectly acceptable, nay, preferable for someone to use the Unreturned Phone Call / Email as a method of getting the point of rejection across. And you know what? At this point, I'm inclined to start to agree with her. I don't know if anyone remembers this rejection, but it still breaks my heart every time I think about it.

So is she right? Is that really the best way to go when matters of the heart are concerned? What do you guys think?

Lyrics of the Day

"Manners, ain't nothing wrong with having manners. Show respect and some courtesy." Third World Manners

Small, Small World

On Friday night I was supposed to go out with a bunch of old friends (including The Figa Master and The Monster) as Part One of Two last hurrahs with The Monster before she runs off to Europe to teach hot guys how to speak English. The Sister had the night off and decided to join, as she hadn't hung out with me in a long time.

Long story short, things didn't work out quite as planned. As in, the guest of honor ended up bailing out at the very last minute.

But we went ahead and had some fun anyway.

We were at the Cabo Cantina, a place that we went to a ton over the summer, but haven't been back to in quite a while. Possibly we hadn't been there since this night (see #4 under "yesterday's points" for the event).

As per usual, you cannot go anywhere in Hollywood (if you've lived here as long as I have) without running into people you would never expect to run into. The Sister started saying that she thought she recognized this guy across the bar, but couldn't figure out who he was. Then she noticed that he seemed to be saying the same thing about her, so she was sure she had to know him.

Imagine our surprise when we realized that it was these guys (+ a third guy that we met that weekend). We hadn't heard from them in months (though I have been MySpace friends with The Filmmaker since last I posted about him).

After many a 2-for-1 margarita and some much needed catching up with some of my girls (notably SJP, back on holiday break from her Harvard exploits and LAJ, who has an Irish Boyfriend now - could I be ANY MORE envious?), The Sister and I ended up wandering to another bar with The Filmmaker and the third guy, Old Blue Eyes. The four of us were maybe a little intoxicated and we may have made complete fools of ourselves dancing around in the bar, but we had a hell of a time.

Actually, the time we had was rather...

Legen...

Wait for it...




Dary.

(Seriously, watch that video. This is quite possibly my favorite sitcom to hit TV in the last 5 years. Maybe more.)

Anyway, we had an insanely good time. And I have to admit that when I didn't end up hearing back from The Filmmaker way back in August, I felt rather rejected. But on Friday night, I totally won. I won so much so that the boys called The Sister (for she had given Old Blue Eyes her number) on Sunday to see if she and I wanted to meet them for drinks.

Lyrics of the Day

"She gives me a hug ‘til our hips are flush, she says, 'Boy, we’ve hardly kept in touch – it’s time for catching up.'" The Good Life Notes in His Pockets

T.M.I.

I have this inexplicable habit of sharing too much information with [relative and complete] strangers.

Now I don't mean, "Oh my god that Thai food gave me the worst diarrhea!" kind of T.M.I.

I mean that I randomly launch into stories that no one needs to know, with no prompting whatsoever from the conversation or situation at hand.

Just today I heard someone in the hallway mention a 9-volt battery. This seemed to remind me that this was the perfect time to share details of my recent struggles to maintain the battery-powered operation of my stubborn parking lot gate remote with my student and the person I was servicing at work this morning.

Did they care about my battery-operated remote control?

Of course not.

Does that stop me from sharing the story in its entirety?

Of course not.

And, embarrassingly, this is a habit that most certainly extends into my dating life. It tends to work (somewhat, at least) in my favor on first dates, as it allows me to refresh the conversation at will if it seems to be flagging. But at many (okay, well, most) other times, it merely strikes people as odd or possibly even annoying.

Tonight, the person most annoyed by my habit was Me. I was stumbling through my first telephone conversation with Montana Guy as if I'd never talked on the phone with anyone as long as I'd lived. It wasn't nervousness, not really, as I'm not even sure this guy is a realistic romantic prospect. It was something else altogether, that I'm really just now realizing.

I'm RUSTY.

I haven't had a New Prospective Date-type interaction in quite a while now. Being that I've been unsure whether this was going to be a date anyway, I had not mentally prepared myself for the call that I had told him to make tonight.

Whether or not I made a total ass of myself (though I am leaning towards the fact that I did), the tentatively planned date for tomorrow night is a no-go. Montana Guy just got a new job and needs a few evenings of adjustment before he's going to be available. He suggested this weekend, but I'm completely swamped (with plans to be disclosed at a later date in this space). So we're setting another tentative plan for next week, depending on how the rest of this week works out for each of us.

Then we can see just how much inane information I can disclose before he runs screaming for the hills.

Lyrics of the Day

"I feel stupid, but it's something that comes and goes. I've been changin', I think it's funny how no one knows." Matchbox Twenty Mad Season

Complacency

Every Monday I hate myself for coming to work all exhausted and sometimes mildly hungover.

Every Monday I swear that the next weekend I'm going to lay off the highly caffeinated beverages and/or alcohol early in the day so that I can truly get a good night sleep and be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the next busy Monday morning.

Every Monday I marvel at how stupid I must be to be doing this over and over and over again.

And yet, every Sunday, I can't help but perpetrate my cycle one more time.

With it being the football playoffs this month, I've spent a good chunk of the last two weekends in front of various TVs in various places glued to some really exciting game action. But I'm always paying for it on Monday morning.

Today I'm thinking about boys. Boys and dating and the future. You see, I'm starting to feel like a short-timer here, because I'm really hoping to move out of LA in the near future. Knowing that I'm going to be leaving soon does two things: it gives me lots of hope for future relationships and dating experiences in friendlier dating pools and it makes it pretty dang difficult to focus on trying to meet anyone here in this City of Lost Cause Dating.

I do have the date-type-thing with Montana Guy looming on Wednesday night, but I'm not even sure I find him attractive, so it really could add up to nothing but a couple of hours feeling homesick.

There is another reason that it's becoming ever-easier for me to be complacent about dating.

It's The Kid.

When you have a fairly regular source of no-pressure, no-worries male affection, it's hard to want to get off your butt and do all that horrible date-y stuff. It's so much easier to hang out with someone that you already know, even if you don't have particularly romantic feelings for him. And right now what's going on with The Kid is just so easy, it's hard to want to do anything that takes any effort at all.

Lyrics of the Day

"I'm calling out; I don't really care for your city anymore. I spend the night; I lay awake and miss you when you go." Tegan & Sara Monday Monday Monday

Where Have I Been?

Where have I been?

Work.

Really.

I don't know what has happened in the past week (actually, I do, but for the sake of my colloquialisms, let's just pretend that I don't), but things have exploded and gone insane and gotten all out-of-hand in my little corner of the professional world. I've been doing the work of a person-and-a-half all by my little lonesome self and it's got me exhausted beyond belief and more than ready to throw in the towel.

I haven't even had time to dutifully pursue terrible dates with poorly-matched men on the internet.

I have, however, made a tentative date with Montana Guy for next Wednesday. Now here's the question though: is it really a date?

He contacted me solely on the grounds that we're both from Montana, and that's pretty much all that we've talked about in the handful of emails that we've exchanged. When popping the actual "do you want to get together" question, he actually said that we should get together over coffee to talk about home.

So is it a date? What do you think?

Here's to Me, Mrs. Robinson

A disturbing pattern has emerged in my most recent romantic exploits.

This is something that I've actually struggled with for a long time and something which I've found it hard to explain or understand. But as of late it's been more and more obvious that this pattern has reestablished itself in my life in a big way.

I have this thing for younger guys.

I know that "age is just a number" and blah, blah, blah - but when you're in your mid-twenties, younger guys are really young. They're just out of college and still trying to figure out their lives, their paths and trying to tell their heads from their backsides. It makes for a rather ill-fitting relationship. I would know. I've been here before.

The stranger thing about the whole debacle is that the younger guys seem to know this, to sense this thing and they flock to me.

On Christmas Eve, The Sister and I went out (something that has been a tradition for us since we became Of Age) and at the bar I picked up a completely adorable boy. And I do mean boy. He was 22.

Obviously, The Kid is younger than I am. That's why I call him The Kid. Though he's not quite as frighteningly young as 22.

Last Friday night I was in San Luis Obispo with my family and we were all out at a bar celebrating my fabulous cousin's birthday. A 22-year old came over to our table with his sights set on me. I may have accidentally run-off and left The Sister with him. He referred to her as "Baby Girl" for the rest of the night.

On New Year's Eve, Red and I threw a little shindig at her house which ended up being pretty much the two of us and 15 or 20 guys. I have way too many male friends. Sometime after midnight, one of the late additions to the party tried very hard to get me to make-out with him (something I was definitely not interested in doing by that point, I really just wanted to go to sleep). He was about 23.

I was complaining to Red about this recurring problem and she said to me that she was always going after younger guys when she was in her twenties. She said that it's quite obvious what's going on here.

Younger guys aren't ready for a relationship, most of the time. There for they pose no threat to my crippling fear of intimacy and commitment.

And I had been foolish enough to start believing that I was moving past that.

Lyrics of the Day

"Hide it in a hiding place where no one ever goes; put it in your pantry with your cupcakes. It's a little secret, just the Robinsons' affair. Most of all, you've got to hide it from the kids." Simon & Garfunkel Mrs. Robinson

Happy New Year!

And all of a sudden, it's 2007.

What could be in store for us?

Lyrics of the Day

"So this is the New Year and I have no resolutions." Death Cab For Cutie The New Year