A Few Tricks, But No Treats

Each season has it’s own distinctive features: crisp air, burnt orange colored leaves, these are the tell tale signs that it is Fall in New England. Fall is my favorite season, and ok, perhaps I’m a closet leaf peeper but I do love taking a drive and seeing how the foliage has begun to change color. One of my favorite photos of me as a child was taken when I was around the age of 2 and I’m laying in a pile of leaves the same color as my hair. Perhaps fall is the season for redheads, if nothing else it provides the perfect complementing backdrop for us.

Fall also means Halloween – one of my favorite holidays. Halloween is a time to give girls the get out of jail free card to be out in public dressed in as little clothing as possible and not run the risk of being shunned from decent society. I have always been a fan of dressing up; I think I’m an actress at heart (minus the talent); there is something so appealing in being able to slip in to a character unlike oneself for a while. I saw my costume this year in a store window and had to try it on, it was perfect and I couldn’t wait to wear it out.

My friends and I planned on hitting up one of our regular haunts because they were having a Halloween party. There were some great costumes there, and it was enjoyable to walk around and have people recognize whom I dressed up as. At one point a woman dressed as Dorothy made eye contact with me, pointed, smiled, and yelled “Alice!” From there we bounced to another bar so we could meet up with other friends and dance the remainder of the night away. It was there that I realized I’m old.

I gave the bouncer my money and walked in to a swarm of grown ups trying to mingle with the coeds in a vain attempt at clinging to their younger years while the coeds were too busy getting drunk and looking for a hook up to notice the people who could be their parents watching them. The place was hot, further encouraging the shedding of layers of clothing; but what was worse was the smell – a cross between a dirty bathroom at a truck stop and a locker room. Sounds like a great place right? At 26 years of age this should still be my stomping ground yet I felt like a square block being forced in to a round hole by a toddler not understanding that the two do not belong together.

So I danced, biding my time until the lights would turn on shocking people back in to reality and perhaps embarrassment once the harsh light showed them that the person they’ve been flirting with all night is more beast than prince(ss). I began to survey the room like I always do in a crowded place, looking for familiar faces and taking in how other people are interacting. I don’t like crowds; people make me nervous especially social situations like bars where you have no personal space. It takes me awhile to feel comfortable and I much prefer being the wallflower than the center of attention as much as that may go against my only child ways.

What struck me was the attire some women were in, particularly a cowgirl who chose to wear chaps with only a pair of navy boy shorts with white stars on them underneath. Yes, that’s correct… she essentially was at a bar in her underwear – isn’t that a recurring nightmare for some people? What topped it off was her stripper like dancing that she continued to do with her friends and a male cowboy. Now I’m all for showing cleavage and wearing pants than show off my butt – yet parading around in a bar with my butt cheeks hanging out is going too far. Perhaps she took a wrong turn on her way to Mark’s Showplace and ended up there, or perhaps she’s just a slut. Her attire and antics made me feel so old though, along with causing me to be slightly uncomfortable with her dancing near me.

I did have an amusing moment when heading to get a drink at the first bar I ran into a couple I dog sit for… yes, now they’ve seen me running around a bar in a Halloween costume. :-) It was nice though, I’ve dog sat for them for years but haven’t actually seen them for I think around two years, we talk via phone and email and I know the code for their garage so there hasn’t been a need for face-to-face interaction. They’re cool people who greatly deserve to be parents, it’s a shame that the adoption process is depriving them of that as they enter in to year two of trying to adopt – but that’s an aside.

In the end the night didn’t go as I had hoped, it was an ok time but nowhere near an amazing night. I think I looked hot as Alice but there were no treats at the end of the night for this girl. I partially feel too old to be hitting the bar scene in a costume as the 21 year olds are out in fashion and acting in ways that shock me. However, I still wish that Halloween came more than once a year so I might just have to start throwing a costume party or two during the year just for fun.

"You Know I'm No Good"

So I had a nightmare last night that all of the guys I have slept with were actually friends with each other and compared notes on how I was. That would be scary, makes my skin crawl... I like to have a clean slate and to not have to deal with the past.

On another note I think that it should be illegal for people to make dresses that only a contortionist would be able to zip up themselves.... not all of us women live with someone to zip them up. I was trying on dresses for the holiday company parties season and found two that I was in love with and made me look like I had a perfect body... they fit... like I could reach behind and connect both ends of the dress with a little room to spare yet try as hard as I could, I could not them zipped up completely I'd stop at 3/4 of the way done. How the heck does that work?

It reminds me of the Sex and the City episode where Samantha could not unclasp her bracelet.

Relationship Purgatory

I have come to realize over the last year that while I may not have a lot of relationship experience under my belt, that I am an overly caring person who has the tendency to put myself out there 200 % when I care about someone. That carries over in to friendships as well, in many cases I feel that I give far more than I get in return. But this is particularly tricky when it comes to guys and dating. I am the girl who will remember the little things you say about that killer meeting you have next week and who will send you an email/text wishing you luck on said day. I will bake you cookies if you've had a stressful week in hopes that they will bring a smile to your face. The problem lies in that in most cases I end up being the one trying with a guy who is doing minimal work and that is not fair to me nor does he deserve to be treated so well.

I like to think of myself as quirky rather than crazy, but I do know that I am an amazing women who has some emotional hangups and short comings, but who in the end, will make a great girlfriend. To those who can't see that? Well I feel sorry for you 'cause you're missing out on what could be a great story.

My history with men has more holes in it than swiss cheese that generally follows the same timeline - I meet a guy, we hang out, things happen and then it's over before it began and I'm stuck waiting a long time before another opportunity comes my way. For a cute girl I've had far too many dry spells. I am that little puppy in the window wagging her tail looking at you with her big brown eyes begging you to give her a good home where she will be loved... or maybe that's a bad analogy.

For the most part there has been a huge difference between the type of guy I say I'm looking for and the type of guy that I end up with. This became very clear to me at the beginning of the month. I have had this aversion to older men, I think because I do not want to acknowledge that I am now officially, a grown up. I have tended to go for younger guys or ones my age and every time wondering how they always turn out to be idiots and I end up alone. Not this time, I have seen the light of going after a guy who is a little older than me (I'm talking a few years not "you could be my daddy" older); guys who are in their late 20s/early 30s are finally starting to have their shit together. This bodes well for women since most of us are tired of games and guys who like to act like they did back in college forgetting that was years ago.

We're going to call this guy Benedick (as in Beatrice & Benedick not Arnold); he is someone who came in to my life out of the blue and who something clicked in me before I knew anything about him that made me have a need to get to know him. I'd like to think that there might be potential there - he is someone who I think I have a decent amount in common with, but more importantly, is someone who would challenge me to expand my horizons and continue on the path of personal growth. Yet he's keeping his cards close and I don't know much more than that he's attracted to me.

Then there's The Wanderer... he is someone I never expected to hear from again yet I have and while he is not someone I can see myself with nor someone I'd want to date he's the one who is trying to see me again and saying all of these amazing things. In the end The Wanderer is neither here nor there.... he's a cool person but not the right fit for me.

The problem with The Wanderer is that he is making the questions I have about Benedick all that much more obvious. I'm not looking for Benedick to profess his undying love for me... all I'm really looking for is "you're amazing and I would really like to spend more time with you and see where this can go, I'm interested in you and being in a relationship with you" or something like that. :-)

Another issue is that I have never been good at sitting back and waiting for things to happen naturally - I am an only child of the 80s... I need instant gratification. But I also know that I play with the line of being "that girl" and I do not want to be her because she does not end up in a happily ever after story.

So in trying to not be "that girl" I end up in relationship purgatory - the place where you end up investing time in a guy that you are not sure what his intentions with you are. It's a place where you wait for 3 things to happen:


1. You wait for him to turn out to be more interested in playing mind games with you and you call him a jerk and move on.
2. You wait for him to finally disclose at least part of his hand and he eventually opens up to clue you in to where his head is at. This can go two ways and one ends very much like the scenario above.
3. You wait and wait and neither of the above happen so you get fed up and walk away never knowing what really happened.


I think I hate the dance more than anything - I just want to know where I stand but I know I cannot ask. Purgatory is not a fun place, and guys wonder why girls act so crazy - it's 'cause y'all put us in to this position of emotional unease where we have nothing to go on so we are left to over analyze our own thoughts and actions until we can no longer sleep at night. I get that it's a power struggle... you do not disclose your intentions or feelings knowing full well that this ensures you keep the upper hand. It's just not nice is what I'm saying.

However, in the end there is not much choice I have in the matter. So until I am clued in I will remain in purgatory blogging away trying to make sense of things. I pray I will not be stuck for too long.

Vanishing Act

I will be the first to admit that the majority of women have a tendency to forget their regular life once a boy works his way in to the picture. Life becomes all about said boy and friends are left by the wayside. While I have never turned my back on my friends, I am not completely guilt free. If a boy has caught my attention he tends to be my topic of choice so my friends are forced to hear all about him and my theories about what is happening.

I had hoped that this was a trend that would fade away as my friends and I entered in to the world of mature dating (if there even is such a thing), but that is not the case. There is a very valid reason why single girls secretly wish that all of their female friends stay single... that way they will never be forgotten about.

Being a lifer in the single world it seems sometimes, I have been the forgotten one too many times. So here is my suggestion to everyone out there: make time to spend with your significant other, and time to spend with your friends... keep these more or less separate unless you can socialize with both easily without making your friends feel like they are crashing your date. In other words, don't invite one of your female friends out knowing she will be showing up alone to then leave her surrounded by strangers so you can have time with your boy. It's a little rude, then again I don't think the majority if Americans know what manners are anymore.

The thing that baffles my mind is that these girls seem to so easily forget a very simple fact - that boy they are all about? Yeah his chances of staying in the picture for the long haul are slim to none. Common sense would be then to not ignore your friends since they are in your life for a lot longer than that boy.

Or perhaps I'm just crazy and my way of looking at the situation is entirely wrong. But I sincerely hope that if I become one of these girls, that my friends will give me a swift kick in the ass.

"Love Song For No One"

Every once in awhile you encounter a piece of writing that sheds light on yourself and becomes something that will stick with you forever. Sylvia Plath wrote “Mad Girl’s Love Song” which I studied in college is one of those pieces. Plath repeats one line over and over again in the poem, “I think I made you up inside my head.” I know that I have been guilty of this, be it a complete fictional person or taking someone in my life and creating a story around them that is more to my liking than reality.

There’s a safety in living inside my mind because there, I can control all factors and am never thrown a curve ball. In my head I get the guy, and he is perfect for me. Reality is generally on the other side of the spectrum… I may get a guy, but he rarely turns out to be anything more than a loser I should never have wasted my time on to begin with…. A certain guy who flirted for a while, said all the right things, and turned out to have had a girlfriend the entire time comes to mind as a perfect example of my luck. The luck of the Irish is the unluckiest kind.

Yet living in my head means that there is no physical contact and I crave that more than most things. The soft grazing of fingers across my forehead pushing my unruly hair out of my face, a hand on the small of my back while in a crowd keeping me close so I don’t get bumped in to, the millions of small gestures that mean so much more than the one making them will ever know.

I was asked this weekend how I could be single. Why am I still single? I hate that question, regardless of the vain it is meant in, it implies that I am defective, clearly there must be something wrong with me or else I would have been snatched up by now and living happily ever after. In some sense I am defective, I live too much inside of my mind, which causes me to be misunderstood, or for me to get blinded by what I want to see versus what is actually in front of me. But in reality I want to find love so much it hurts, I want love more than most single girls in their mid 20s and yet I keep shooting myself in the foot to spite my face in my hunt for it.

There is a reason why there are so many poems about girls in love where their sanity can be questioned. We are driven there by the games that men seem insistent upon playing. I will never understand why a guy cannot be upfront with a girl about his intentions or what is running through his mind about her and if there is potential there or not. Sure, I don’t want a guy who proclaims his favorite movie of all time is the Notebook, but I wouldn’t mind one that tells me what he thinks of me.

Yet if we bring up the topic too soon we become “that girl” and no female wants to be her so we allow ourselves to be mentally tortured by the thoughts running rampant through our minds because we don’t know what the great guy we went on a date or two with is thinking. I am quick to judge and have never been known for my patience… if I am in to a guy, he’ll know it; I just wish that the guy could do the same. But they never do because there is power in their games, they know that by remaining closed off they ensure the girl will spend double the amount of time thinking about him, analyzing his every word with her girlfriends and will be putty in his hands. It’s just plain cruel.

Right now I’m a little confused and I’m trying to just let the cards fall where they will, but I’ve never been very good at letting things happen on their own time. I have two doors in front of me, behind one is someone who has paid me so many compliments that I never hear but there are more negatives than positives in that situation. Behind the other door is someone who is closed off but who has helped to fill in a large piece of the puzzle of what I am looking for in a man and is someone I think I could really like.

I swear, when it rains it pours… I’ve been joking with my friends about how I should really write a book for I have some great stories to tell about the situations I tend to get myself in to. At least those in my life can count on me for a good story every now and again.

Yet I am still writing my love song for no one, the person I have either not met yet or don’t know has those feelings for me. And yes, I am directly referring to the John Mayer song (lyrics posted at the end of my ramble). Mayer says, “I’m jaded I hate it” as am I… I am not saying I want to change my last name any time in the near future. Please, I’m a product of divorced parents; I’m far too cynical about love and marriage to want it all now. But I am tired of being alone and cannot help but to think that perhaps I am doing something wrong.

The more I think about it though the clearer it becomes… I’m not so much tired of being alone as I am tired of being confused by silly boys. Does that make me a silly girl? I know that I am temperamental and often times irrational, but I do know that I am worthy of an amazing man; guess he just needs to hurry up and get here.



I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

"Mad Girl's Love Song" - Sylvia Plath

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Staying home alone on a Friday
Flat on the floor looking back
On old love
Or lack thereof
After all the crushes are faded
And all my wishful thinking was wrong
I'm jaded
I hate it

I'm tired of being alone
So hurry up and get here
So tired of being alone
So hurry up and get here
Get here

Searching all my days just to find you
I'm not sure who I'm looking for
I'll know it
When I see you
Until then, I'll hide in my bedroom
Staying up all night just to write
A love song for no one

I'm tired of being alone
So hurry up and get here
So tired of being alone
So hurry up and get here

I could have met you in a sandbox
I could have passed you on the sidewalk
Could I have missed my chance
And watched you walk away?
Oh no way

I could have met you in a sandbox
I could have passed you on the sidewalk
Could I have missed my chance
And watched you walk away?

I'm tired of being alone
So hurry up and get here
I'm so tired of being alone
So hurry up and get here

I'm tired of being alone
So hurry up and get here
I'm so tired of being alone
So hurry up and get here

You'll be so good
You'll be so good for me
Oh You'll be so good

“Love Song For No One” by John Mayer