When I Grow Up

I recently received an email from a San Francisco woman in her late 20’s who was dumped by her boyfriend, also in his late 20’s. Apparently said boyfriend was freaking out about the looming inevitability of turning 30 and was choosing to eschew all forms of responsibility and commitment. She told me his friends were rowing this same same panicky boat and were engaging in some pack behavior of maturity regression.

What can I say? People fear turning 30.

I wish I could say it was just guys who did this sort of thing (because they are awful) but girls do it do (because they are also awful). People do massively stupid things when they’re scared and to many, turning 30 is magical divider between carefree youth and being a grown up. Except it’s not.

Receiving this email coincided with my 32^nd birthday, an occasion on which I woke up possibly still drunk from the night before.

Hurray for maturity.

From what I’ve seen, people handle turning 30 in one of three ways. They either:

1) Ignore it– the adult thing to do

2) Freak out and binge drink –the Amanda way of handling it

3) Decide it’s absolutely time to grow up, and go on a hysterical search for a husband/wife and means of reproduction-–what I like to call, the desperate to not die alone tactic

All of this got me thinking about my own fear of commitment. I once decided not to get a goldfish because of the level of responsibility it required. But then again, I’ve never dumped anyone because they represented being an adult. I think I would have to date an adult for that to happen.

The thing is, I’m actually not bad at responsibility. So why have I been fighting it?

The same reason this girl’s boyfriend was fighting it. It’s scary to admit that you can commit to something, even if it is just a goldfish. It means that sometimes I have to put down the tall boy of Bud Light (don’t judge me), put on my big girl panties and do things like deal with family emergencies, help my friends through hard times and finally go to the grocery store so there is more to eat in my fridge than an apple and ketchup.

Lesson learned: While dating someone who isnt’ ready to be a grown up can be frustrating, you’re better off with someone who’s on the same page, they’re less likely to run away. And also, I might finally be ready for a goldfish.

Greener Grass

Recently, I’ve heard about several rather heinous people finding themselves in relationships. One of these people being a Jersey-dwelling “celebrity” that, despite my best efforts, I somehow still know about.

My friends constantly tell me that I “can’t” be jealous of these relationships because A) the guys are probably gross, and B) I could be in a pointless relationship if I chose to be, but I didn’t want to settle.

This response only pisses me off.

It’s true, I don’t want these guys. Some of the women I know who manage to find themselves in relationships are horrible human beings. And any guy who is looking for verbal abuse and being subjected to hours shoe shopping wouldn’t pair well with me anyway. (I shoe shop a lot, I just prefer the company of women for that.)

It’s also true that if I wanted to still be in a relationship with a perpetually-stoned baby hater or an unemployed, blind albino, I would be. I didn’t settle because frankly, I would rather be alone than be in a relationship that’s miserable. These guys were clearly not right for me.

The crux of the matter is that it’s just plain unfair. You can do everything right and think you’re with the right person, but it’s the braindead orange monsters who end up walking down the aisle.

While I am by no means under the delusion that life is fair, it would be nice to see the snarling bitch from my past fall face first into a wedding cake. Maybe, just for once, things could even out.

Lesson learned: Nice guys may finish last, but so do nice girls.

Rent-a-Husband

Last week, a friend of mine came up with a business idea called “rent-a-husband.” This wouldn’t just be fixing things around the house. Rent-a-husband could also stop by to open jars, take out the trash, snake a drain, etc. I scoffed thinking I could do all these things for myself. Having lived alone for most of my adult life, I like to think of myself as being fairly self-sufficient. I’ve learned to open my own jars, kill my own spiders and I have a step stool to reach those high shelves. As much as I’d like to have my own live-in handyman/boyfriend, I like to do these things for myself, which would negate the need for a rent-a-husband. In fact, I rarely ever ask for help when it comes to fixing things around my apartment, despite the fact that I don’t know what I’m doing.

Case in point: I’ve decided to move to a new apartment and am in the process of cleaning up my current residence. The only part of the apartment that I’ve actually damaged in my three years tenure is the wand control on my vertical blinds.

I decided I would fix this myself.

Getting on my step stool I reached up, trying to figure out how the piece fit in with the other piece and made the thingy work. (Yes, those are technical terms.) Even on my stool, I can barely reach the rails for the blinds. I reached, and I pushed and I poked at the ceiling with the wand control, and I still could not get it to fit correctly into the slot.

So what does a girl who refuses to ask for help do when she can’t fix a set of blinds?

She squirts super glue up into the rail and smashes the wand into it to try to make something stick.

And that is how I super glued my fingers together and half the blinds to the wall.

Lesson learned: Even independent single women need help. I wonder if rent-a-husband would know how to repair a set of vertical blinds?

Homage to Turkey

Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday. Some might say my excitement over it borders on obsession. I begin planning my menu two months in advance. This past weekend I jumped into a freezer case at the grocery store to wrestle out a turkey, fully aware of the spectacle I was making of myself trying to lift a 21 lbs. frozen bird into the shopping cart. Thursday morning I will get out of bed at 4:30 a.m. to begin making everything from scratch while also whipping up a batch of bloody Marys. And by 9 a.m. I’ll be tenderizing (or drunkenly beating the crap out of) my turkey before stuffing it, tossing it in the oven and starting on side dishes and a plethora of mini desserts.

Why am I so crazy over a holiday whose origins began with land invasion and smallpox?

Because modern Thanksgiving fosters, nay, celebrates several of my biggest vices: eating too much, drinking too much, football and napping.

It also allows me to fulfill my overwhelming need to feed people. I constantly feel like I should be preparing some sort of food, no matter where I am. I’m practically the witch from Hansel and Gretel who fattens people up in her gingerbread house.

And finally, Thanksgiving doesn’t require a two-month, party-filled prelude that smashes obnoxiously romantic commercials, movies and TV shows in your face. No one says “It’s OK if you don’t have a date for this Thanksgiving party.” Frankly, it’s not a sexy holiday anyway. Who gets all hot and bothered by stretchy pants, food babies and the inevitable heartburn?

It’s simply a day to be thankful for what you do have, to drink like you don’t have to work the next day and then slip into a coma as the sounds of football blare from the TV.

Lesson learned: On Thanksgiving, there’s no need to worry about who you’ll impress, what you look like or if anyone will be calling you back the next day. I like to think of it as my dating day of rest.

Picture Perfect

I was recently contemplating taking a sabbatical from online dating. While the barrage of misspelled emails and inappropriate propositions are flattering, they also get a bit tedious. However, the morning I made this declaration of going on hiatus, I received and email from the people at Match.com telling me I had a free subscription.

I couldn’t possibly turn down free, even if it meant a few more months of online sexual harassment. I reopened my profile and began sifting through the gentleman that had “winked” at me and in this process, I noticed a common theme running among most of these guys: their photos are freakish.

Match offers up some pretty decent guidelines about what types of photos to post: clear, (clean), recent and decent. No prom pictures c.1998, no obscure art photos and certainly nothing that resembles and Olan Mills serial killer-esque family photo.

It appears that none of my matches bother to follow any these guidelines. Perhaps they laugh in the face of all advice? Why else would they post five blurry camera phone photos of themselves standing in front of their bathroom mirror?

Other great photos on Match I’ve seen:

• One guy posted 20 photos of himself in a fencing tournament. Yes, fencing, the Dungeons and Dragons of sporting events. He also sported a slicked back George Carlin ponytail: Follicle death up front, party in the back.
• Photos of the Grand Canyon. I’ve seen at least three guys who have done this and I have no idea why. It’s not that I would doubt that they’ve been there. It’s a fairly popular tourist destination. And if I wanted to see the Grand Canyon in a profile, I would go to the Arizona board of tourism.
• Family photos where they are one of the blurry heads in the background, but you have to guess which one.
• More blurry bathroom camera phone photos, but this time topless. I love a man who shows me his armpit hair before we’ve even met.
• And a lot of Fabio-style lounging on their side giving me their “sexy pout” face.

Perhaps I’ve had the fundamentals of marketing drilled into me for too long. If you’ve got five seconds to make someone interested, shouldn’t it be something better than a photo of the top of your head taken from your phone?

Lesson learned: First impressions online are still first impressions.

Smurf

When I was in college, I agreed to let my roommate set me up with one of her childhood friends. I had met him once at a party and he had asked her to arrange a formal introduction. I wasn’t entirely enthused with this arrangement since I found him to be less than appealing in our initial encounter, but first impressions can often be wrong. Just not in this case.

My new prince charming had decided to get his hair done in honor of our date and arrived with his hair carefully sculpted into a smurf-blue Mohawk. Even at 18, I wasn’t enthused with crunchy blue hair, but I shrugged it off and walked with him to his car. Along the way he let me know he had also dyed his pubic hair to match the Mohawk, just in case I was “into that.” I asked him if this was because, like a smurf, he was diminutive in size. He assured me that he wasn’t slouching and was indeed six feet tall.

I could tell from that moment that we weren’t going to work out.

Smurf decided to whisk me away to a small Mexican café not far from my dorm suite. It was quaint, romantic and classier than I would have expected from him. Perhaps I was being too judgmental. When our food arrived, he compared the appearance of my meal to excrement and went on with this in some detail. I lost my appetite.

The rest of dinner conversation was a lot like a job interview administered by a confused golden retriever. He was enthusiastic, and totally unable to understand me. He asked me how well I did in school. I told him I had a 4.0, which prompted him to ask me if I wore glasses. Fortunately, my ability to think and show up to class had not impaired my eyesight. He asked how many siblings I had and then concluded that my lack of siblings made me an only child. I merely nodded at his expanding skills of deduction.

Somewhat befuddled by my reluctance to let him grope me once we got back to the car, he backed his father’s BMW into a pole. “Um, I think the car’s OK. Do you want to go to gravity hill and make out?”

Tempting my blue-haired friend, tempting, but I think I’ll opt for going home.

When I ducked away from his outstretched tongue at my door, he shoved his way into my living room, sat down and lit up a joint. He wanted to wait for my roommate before he left.

Being too tired to care, I locked myself in the bedroom and fell asleep. The next morning I found him curled up on the couch, roach in hand, and his blue Mohawk awkwardly folded to the side.

Lesson learned: Blue hair should be left to old ladies.

Collateral Damage (CD)

Last week, I was inspired to look through some of my old CDs from high school. What can I say; I felt it was important to drown myself in nostalgia. One of my favorite CDs from c.1994 was Hooverphonic (who doesn’t love techno pop from Belgium), which I discovered was missing. After some pondering, I remembered where it had gone: one of my ex-boyfriends had it. He “borrowed” it before our break up and never returned it.

For those of you who grew up before the mighty MP3, this was fairly common after a break up. For many years, CDs and their predecessors the cassette tape and 8-tracks, were considered collateral damage. They were an acceptable loss that you either replaced or forgot about. In theory, you would have held onto several of the exes CDs in compensation, but for me, this was never the case. Over my dating history I have lost 33 CDs and gained only two. And I don’t really consider Evanescence to be a great gain.

As you can see here, there is a significant loss over gain in my CD collection. (Which has been collecting dust in my closet for the past 5 years).

CD loss has made me a huge fan of the MP3/iPod. It’s revolutionized my breakups. No longer do I have to search through dozens of jewel cases to realize that my CDs are now being used as coasters on someone else’s coffee table. Of course, what happens if I let a future ex borrow my iPod?

Lesson learned:  Keep your friends close. Keep your music collection (and hair care products) closer.

SPF

If you are single and live alone, you are probably aware of the phenomenon that happens within your refrigerator. I am, of course, referring to SPF, otherwise known as Single Person Fridge.  SPF happens because, despite my best efforts, I do not know how to grocery shop for just one person. I go to the store with the best intentions and buy fresh, healthy food only to see most of it rot after the first four days. After two weeks, I’m left with shelf full of condiments, two mismatched beers and pickles.

See exhibit A:

Don’t get me wrong, I love to cook. (And I’m actually quite good at it.) I also have an overwhelming need to feed people so I frequently force feed my friends some of my culinary concoctions. But for the day-to-day, with no one else to cook for, I’m left with a lot of random odds and ends.

Let’s look closer at what has survived since the last grocery trip.

Condiments

Apparently, I like salad dressing. There are five bottles of it in here. I do not remember the last time I actually made a salad.  I also have PB&J, mayo, ketchup and not one, but two types of mustard.

Things that are not a condiment and no related to making a cocktail include minced garlic, half an onion and coffee creamer.

Let’s also not forget the door to the refrigerator is filled with six different types of hot sauce, because apparently I feel everything needs a sauce.

I don’t dare look in the crisper because everything I put in that drawer is never seen again.

So because of SPF, the end of the week usually leaves me at a loss for what to eat for dinner. I was too lazy to actually go to the store so last night’s dinner consisted of a spoonful of peanut butter and a pickle. Protein, vegetables–all in all a well rounded meal.

Lesson learned: Dating is a difficult and often frightening endeavor. It is not nearly as frightening as my crisper drawer.

Long Distance Flirting

A friend of mine asked my opinion yesterday about a guy who emailed her. She lives in Texas. He lives in Louisiana. Her aunt thought they would hit it off and set them up via modern technology. (Amendment: my friend let me know that she was not set up by her aunt, it was her great aunt. Her 85-year-old great aunt.)

This guy lives 436 miles away from her. So how on earth are they supposed to cultivate a relationship? I’ve seen Catfish. I know what could happen!

“It’s not like he lives in China,” my friend reminded me.

But for me, the whole reason to date is to have someone who can enjoy a beer with you after work, grab a late dinner spur of the moment and go with me to work events so people stop giving me those pitiful looks that say “you must have something wrong with you since you’re 31 and single.”

I think I just want a trophy boyfriend.

Anyway, this morning I got the first even hint of interest on eHarmony in over a month from a guy in Laguna Niguel. That is approximately 55 miles from my house. And I consider 55 miles to be long distance.

Do I blow him off because of the distance? It’s not China.

It made me think that, gasp, I might have to leave the 10 mile radius in which I travel in order to meet someone. Perhaps the future Mr. Amanda does not live in the family-filled suburb that surrounds  me.

On the other hand, gas is really expensive and I’m not sure I can afford long distance love at this time.

It’s a conundrum.

Thirty-Something

This month, I leave the realm of just being 30. Now, I’m actually in my 30’s. And yes, still single. Despite this forward march toward spinsterhood, I’m not upset about being a year older, which is somewhat surprising considering how hard I took turning 30.

The night before my 30^th birthday, I drank far too much, and apparently, went out to eat. I woke up no longer in my 20’s, with barbecue sauce on my pillow case, pork in my hair and a food wrapper clutched in my hand. (I was told later I went out for ribs.) This was not a dignified step forward into adulthood. When I looked in the mirror that morning, all I could see were smears of barbecue sauce, mascara halos around my eyes and a few small lines across my forehead. I burst into tears and went back to bed.

I’ve had people tell me that they either had a hard time turning 30, or they had a hard time turning 31, and I think maybe my barbecue sauce coated distress at aging has passed. There are things I know now that I didn’t know in my 20’s and in retrospect, I am thankful I stayed single to experience them.

There are things about dating in your 30’s that are great. I have more confidence in me. I’m less willing to compromise on my values to appease someone else. I’m a far better bartender and I’m able to hold my liquor better. I’m also surer of what it is I want from life, and it’s not what I had convinced myself that I wanted when I was growing up.

The downside? The vast majority normal men in their 30’s are married. It’s true. There was a mass exodus from singledom to the alter around 28 years old when everyone decided to couple up or perish. And frankly, if I’d had the opportunity, I probably would have joined them. Of course, now they’re all reproducing and I’m somewhat glad I don’t have that level of responsibility on my plate, at least not yet.

Lesson learned: Everything happens at it’s own pace. I’m 31 and single and finally, I’m OK with the way things are. Incidentally, I’m also waiting for the first rounds of divorce among the 30-something men. I’m pretty sure they’ll be potty trained. (see: Tea and Pee)