mostly probably

Week 2 of my dating resolutions brings a second date. This one occurred last night, and I went with a boy we will call Gil. We will call him Gil because that is his name and readers of my other blog (who are, by extension, also the only readers of this blog) know him probably quite a bit better than their own mothers.

I will not give a rundown of the date because I choose to talk about something else entirely today. Know that it was mostly very typical of other dates (and antidates) that Gil and I have been on together. Namely, the following things were involved: lots of laughing, Gil dancing, Gil saying wildly inappropriate things that leave me thinking, “Where did you even come from!?”, and pizza. One of the things we love about Gil is that hanging out with him almost always includes pizza. The guy gets me.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to reflect on this relationship with Gil, and I have come to the conclusion that no girl ever wants to admit about herself. Girls like jerks. We don’t like to admit that we like jerks, but we do. Give us a challenge. We like guys who challenge us. I submit that, for how much we complain, we actually like guys who don’t return phone calls. We like guys who are emotionally distant or otherwise unavailable. We like guys who flirt with every other girl in the room, including your best friend, and more or less dismiss you. We like halfass answers, meaningless compliments, and the making out that’s all dressed up as “I really care about you,” when what’s underneath is, “You don’t mean enough to me to take you out to dinner first.”

I never understood that until yesterday. For three months, Gil has made me dinner, written poetry, done me too many favors to count, run errands with me, given me sincere and genuine compliments, and after all of that, I thought, “Thanks, but no thanks.” It wasn’t until he finally got fed up with me, until he went and saw a movie with someone else that he promised to take me to, until he stopped returning my phone calls, until he told me that I was being mean and annoying, that I finally turned around and thought, “Yup. This could work.”

In relationships, I have always thought that all that fluff was just there to make you feel uncomfortable, or that guys just do that until you’re together and then it’s done. Well, it was too much for me to handle. And at the end of last night’s date I had an epiphany. Girls should expect that. There are worse things to feel uncomfortable about than a guy telling you that you’re beautiful. If a guy wants to kiss you in a crowd of a hundred people, you probably don’t need to throw a fit. You could be with one of the guys that on the surface you want to be with–the one who has already kissed a good 73% of the crowd.

Anyway, so this blog isn’t really funny, and it’s not meant to be inspiring. I guess what I’m saying is this: Guys should stop being jerks and girls should probably start giving a little more credit to the underdogs. You know, the guys who like girls but mostly sit on the sidelines wondering how all of the guys who secretly hate women are the ones with so much apparent success in their love lives. Treating a woman well does not (usually) give them the wrong idea. Sure, it might make her uncomfortable at first. In that case, buying her pizza is always good advice.

I went on a date with this treasure of a boy, who we will call FunkyFresh, a couple of months ago. He gave me a hat, and whenever I have been given a hat on a date it has been because things were going pretty well. So things were okay in my estimation, despite all of the offensive things I had said over dinner:

• Congratulations on getting into the Masters program at [that University]. I have serious problems with [that University], and here is why it is the most worthless institution possible.
• I only say the F word when I am talking to customer service people. And then it usually flies out randomly.
• You’re doing your Masters degree in Linguistics? Why would anyone do that? As a recent graduate from a liberal arts program, I have to tell you that Linguistics is probably the most boring topic ever.

We went out twice. You could consider it three times if doing a huge favor for his roommate, and then eating copious amounts of pizza afterward counts as a date. (Answer: It does.) Even after three dates, I just wasn’t feeling it, and felt pretty strongly that he wasn’t getting the magical feeling either. So who cares? I got a sweet hat out of the deal, and when he tried to get it back from me on Date(ish) #3, I refused. It was a present. Nobody likes an Indian-giver.

So when I talked to him a couple days later to ask him if he wanted to hang out one day (read: not to ask him to marry me, or even go out again) while I was in town, he said he had other plans. Sweet. No need to have further discussion. But he called me later that day to say, “I have bad news and good news.”

Me: Okay FunkyFresh, give me the bad news first.
FF: Well the bad news is I don’t want to see you anymore.
Me: Um. [A series of confused expressions as I tried to figure out why it was necessary to tell me this.]

And then the good news.

FF: The good news is… I’m engaged!
Me: Um. [More confused expressions as I tried to figure out why he apparently thought this was really hilarious, and why I would care if it were true.]
FF: Just kidding. The good news is that my roommate wants to go out with you.

So there is an inherent lesson to be learned from this experience. Actually, I like threes, so I’ll try to think of that many.

1. If you go out with a girl twice (or thrice, depending on what you consider a date), it is not usually necessary to call during one of your breaks at work to break up with her. She probably had no idea you were dating.
2. Playing the switch off to your roommate-slash-friend-slash-anyone-else is definitely not cool, especially when your roommate-slash-friend-slash-anyone-else doesn’t have a car. It doesn’t help if roommate-slash-friend-slash-anyone-else is a pompous jackass.
3. If someone gives you a hat, never under any circumstances should you give it back, even if it sits in your storage room collecting dust. That way, if the guy ever comes back for it, you have a response as to why you’re keeping it: I consider it my douche fee.

Let’s add a fourth. No one should go out with a douche for free. Personal motto.

(The picture used in this blog is of me demonstrating what I look like when I don’t want to look like I have ten chins, so excuse the weirdness.)

The Dude. We will call him the Prey. A 28 year old Caucasian male who hails from Colorado, the Prey and I were set up by my friend Michelle, his sister-in-law (his brother’s wife).

The Date. Dinner at Charley’s Grilled Subs (which, regrettably, I am told is not as good as the Denver Charley’s) was followed by an improv comedy show at Comedy Sportz. High points include:

• I exhibited great restraint by not demanding a cup of lemon wedges to make my water taste less like water.
• I also showed great restraint and self-control not eating more than he did. Ladies don’t eat.
• I managed to choke down a whole cup of water without mentioning that I firmly believe that restaurant water causes Hepatitis C a good 97.12% of the time.

The Determination. Four and a half stars. ComedySportz is more enjoyable in Utah than it was in Portland, which is the only other time I have ever seen a show. No Brittany date is possible without a serious dating faux pas (or several):

• In my true character, I may have mentioned to this very outstanding and righteous individual that seeing people get wasted amuses me a great deal.
• I also may have brought up my frustration regarding the absence of eggs in my finches’ nestbox.

Possible Repeat Date? If he calls requesting a second date and/or more inappropriate Brittanyesque sarcasm, I am happy to oblige.

I feel like dating is some sort of hazing ritual. There is no form of torture greater than being asked questions like, “So how many brothers and sisters do you have?” and “What kind of music do you listen to?” repeatedly throughout the evening.

I like to go into my dates thinking that this person is already in love with me and has been, in fact, for quite some time. Maybe this is why most of my dating relationships end in disaster or, as is the case in most recent months, never actually begin at all. I should probably stop initiating dates with people I just met five seconds earlier with things like:

• Hi, I’m Brittany. My birds refuse to mate with each other! Frustrating! (This is indeed very frustrating, a fact you would understand if you had a barren finch.)
• Hi, I’m Brittany. When was the last time you dropped the F bomb in earnest? (You may learn from reading this blog that I have an inexplicably strong affinity for the F word.)
• Hi, I’m Brittany. Let’s get this thing done. I have a strict 10 p.m. bedtime. (This is true. I usually take my laptop to bed at 10 p.m. and then stalk my dates on Facebook until wee hours of the morning.)

So that’s a brief rundown of how I date and how I do things. I have lofty ambitions for this blog that include guest bloggers (dates and boyfriends past, huzzah!), annoying nicknames for all of my dates, extensive essays on various uses of the F-word, and an eventual book deal. But for now, we’ll stick with Date Week #1, which takes off tomorrow.

Date well and prosper, sucka!

I don’t usually write anything meaningful in this blog. Like ever. So indulge me for just a moment while I talk about what we discussed in Institute (or the “Toot” as I have heard it called). I am taking an Old Testament class and we’re talking about the creation, right? Well today we talked about the fall all being part of the plan, yada yada yada. I never really thought much about that before. But it seems very significant to me that the choices some people make, no matter how “wrong” or “bad” they may seem… are often life changing, truly, but very rarely all that wrong or bad. Adam and Eve lived with God in the Garden of Eden. Life was okay. It had become familiar. They weren’t happy because they couldn’t really be. They weren’t sad, either. I’m sure it was just comfortable.

Then the fruit was tasted, and all of a sudden, Eve was having babies, Adam was out working on those weeds, and life was hard. I think all of us know what that’s like. We get into a situation that’s comfortable. It might not be the greatest but it’s definitely not the worst. Then, through a decision we make or someone else makes, life is turned upside down. I can think of situations I have been in where the decisions someone else has made has, in my view of the world, totally crushed me. It destroyed my whole way of living. But I experienced my most sublimely happy moments because I really finally knew what rock bottom felt like. I was able to understand that the choices other people made were not bad ones, or wrong ones. Just different ones that will ultimately carry me to my end goal. Because of those “wrong” or “bad” choices, I was able to experience the very best life has to offer. I couldn’t have done that without first experiencing the very worst.

And that’s all I have to say about that. Today was stressful. That is all I will say about that. I owe many thanks to the Christ’s Church of Scienctists’ marquee that reads, “COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS, NOT YOUR PROBLEMS” for me writing the following.  I have had a rough day, and on the way to the Toot, I started thinking about all the little things I have to be happy about. Here are some things that help me stay sane when staying sane seems difficult:

1. I pretty much live in the ghetto. I love travel, and I love third world countries. I love all the signs in Ghana advertising “iodinatized salt” and menus that serve both holy water and bee-ful or bee-free honey. I love the sign off 27th Street and Monroe that advertises a home for rent: “2 baths and toilets & 3 rooms with sleepbeds.” I wonder how that sign would read if we lived in America.
2. Harrison Boulevard sno cones… uh… yeah, sno cones. Riiiiight. I don’t love sno cones. I definitely don’t love Harrison Boulevard. But it is evidence of a loving God that someone as nice to look at as blonde guy that works at the Sno Shack on Harrison and 42nd Street even exists. Yes, I’ll have a sno cone with more sno cone, please.
3. I have an on-again, off-again relationship with chocolate. On a regular day I do NOT like chocolate. The last time I tried to eat chocolate on a regular day I had five M&M’s and kept wanting to hurl the rest of the day. On stressed out days, or “everyone in my office hates me” days, I use my afternoon break bursting into the bakery next door (and I am not making this up or exaggerating here at all), slam $2 in nickels on the counter and maek odd demands along the lines of: “Give me this much money’s worth in chocolate!” I now have a nickel-free purse, a slightly thicker rear end, and a contented heart full of love for the chocolatiest brownie known to man. Deal.
4. CG just got taken out by the grass ball of doom. My finches are currently in the nest-building process which I am pretty dang excited about. They have a grass ball hanging from their cage and all day long they pull grass out of it to build their nest. Talking about it does not do the cuteness justice. CG is a clumsy idiot and keeps pulling pieces of grass out of the cage and every single time he gets a little too excited about it and falls over.  Harper recently decided that only the fattest and longest pieces of grass will do. Unfo, these pieces do not fit through the door of the nest box so it usually takes her a couple of tries before she is able to maneuver it into the box without falling desperately from the edge. I didn’t know birds could fall. I thought that’s what wings were for. I like when my beloved pets struggle. I’m so good.
5. And if you made it through THAT explanation… five stars. Next up: I have hot friends. Beckie will disagree with me but Bennion is a looker, okay? I have put a picture of him and me on my desktop for no other reason than seeing his face makes me smile. We have established for ourselves a strict no-dating-each-other policy, but really. The boy is nice to look at. So every once in a while I minimize all of my windows and look at that picture and think, “Goodness, I am lucky to be good friends with someone hot.” That is all.
6. The church is true, especially in church buildings. I sat in the Toot building for about an hour waiting for my class to start, and it has a remarkably calming effect on me. I pretty much never feel calm except when I’m at the temple, the church, or the Institute building. Sometimes my house. My house makes me feel pretty good when I’m not seeing spiders. But I may have to talk to the First Presidency about renting a room at the Toot. It’s probably a conspiracy; they keep all the buildings at that “just right” temperature that makes you want to sleep, they are super well-lit, every chair is padded, and then they stuff it with good and lovely feelings. Conspiracy or no… I’m sold.

And that is all the good that is happening in my life. If I could get my finches to have an egg, life would be perfect. But I’ll settle to watch innocent winged creatures land on their faces on the cages wire bottom a little bit longer.

Is it bad to want to move out of your apartment because of spiders? Really, I have never been truly terrified of spiders. I suppose I’m still not. But they give me the creeps, they are disgusting, and they seem to be everywhere in my house.

Seriously, am I wrong to be wanting to move because I found a huge hairy spider in my hair stuff? I didn’t do my hair for three days because I could see it lurking underneath my favorite headband. I finally got up the courage this morning and smashed it to pieces with my favoritest round brush.

Which reminds me. I need a new round brush.

It is by request from a few of my loyal readers to discuss the kiss mentioned briefly in my Peruish blog but I h ave decided that it is not fun to only mention one when I have so many fun and fond kissing memories. This blog could be uncomfortable. (It’s the mood I’m in. For whatever reason, I am watching this while typing it.) It is appropriate, however, that I am watching the world’s most random movie ever while writing this blog. Pretty much every possible memorable kiss I have ever had has had a random movie incorporated with it. In reverse chronological order:

1. Star Trek. Pre-Peru kiss occurred after seeing the new Star Trek movie. It just occurred to me sometime between the time Captain Kirk gets the crap beaten out of him in the bar and when what’s-her-face and Spock make out in the transporter thingie that I was probably going to be kissed that night. It was pretty spesh for all humans, vulcans, and romuluns involved.
2. Arrested Development. It’s only natural that the day I was introduced to the best kisser ever is the day I was introduced to the world’s best TV show ever. (I feel super uncomfortable, Milo’s lover is giving birth to kittens about two feet away at the moment. I’m just going to skip to the next one.)
3. West Side Story. I looked forward to this one for many months. Most of you know I was dismally in like with this specimen of a person. When we kissed on graduation night during the closing credits of this grand musical production, I felt icky. This was surprising because I had been planning the moment for slightly more than a couple days. The score to West Side Story should probably be quite a bit more conducive to a real life score environment. It was not. But I made a pun just now, so at least that was successful.
4. Get Smart. This poor boy (who–as a side note–is very close to being engaged now, so yay!) had no idea what hit him when I kissed him outside my car that night. I think that explains why he really didn’t kiss back much at all. To hear him talk about it later, it seems almost like a reverse situation of the “Wild Hearts” smooch discussed below. In my defense, I think it is a purely fabricated memory to think I might lunge at someone’s face. (Read on and you shall understand.) Karma’s a snot.
5. Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken. I remember the very moment the boy we will call Frankers kissed me. We were at the Glenwood in Provo at Beckie’s house. We were holding hands but we were not particularly close. Sonora was taking her first blind leap off the high dive when Frankers lunged at me. He, of course, will tell you this is a fabricated memory. I assure you it is not. I felt exactly like I had been punched in the face by someone’s face. It probably felt that way because that’s precisely what happened. Bless your heart, Frankers.

I’m trying to think of other movies that have coincided with kisses with boys and come up with nothing. As it turns out, all my other kisses have food memories.

• I have a kiss with Crazyjason that took place over a massive stockpot of ramen noodles.
• I felt stressed out after my first kiss because I had just eaten a baloney sandwich and had baloney breath.
• I think I might be an alcoholic because kissing someone who just had a glass of pale ale is my favorite ever.

I love kissing. The end.

FBR v 3.0 and I in a Peruvian moto! Exciting!

My new favorite, Jessica. Machu Picchu was probably there.

Hey, sweet lovesac. You should have three. Done.

I guess I haven’t written in a while. Thanks for reminding me. Thanks for missing me. I know you did. Here is what I have been up to. I know you care.

1. I got lovesacs. I have been wanting a lovesac in my life. So I got three. Oops. That was an accident, nearly. I can hardly be held responsible. The upside to having zero space in my house for standing or walking around or moving is that there is now more room for snuggling and lazing about and basically being sedentary and worthless. I missed my old life. I wish I didn’t have a job.
2. I wish I didn’t have a job. I want to spend most of my waking hours on my lovesac(s). The nine hours a day I’m at work I’m thinking about what it would be like to be performing my receptionist duties from one of my lovesacs. I don’t think that it would work very well, because sometimes I have to do things that would be nearly (but not absolutely) impossible with a remote connection. Like buy cinnamon rolls from the bakery next door.
3. I think about my blog. I am always trying to think of new and interesting things to put on here, but most of the time, my thought process since being back from Peru has been something like, “I wish I had a lovesac.” This thought was promoted to the grander thought of, “I will look for lovesacs online.” This moved quite quickly up the ladder to, “This guy is selling three lovesacs for a good price and I will con a bunch of my friends to go down and pick them up with me.” This led to feelings of shame because I was unaware picking up lovesacs was a bad Sabbath day activity. I only got them for something to help me feel more comfy while I studied the scriptures.
4. I wish I was in Peru. I am constantly planning my next vacation, which will inevitably be by myself and somewhere less cool. I am still pretty excited about it. I miss Peru though and hanging out with my friends (and their varying levels of… not difficultness… Bennion) and having an incredibad sunburn and seeing llamas. And yelling “POR QUE DIOS?!” in the middle of the city square. Life was much simpler then.
5. I look at my birds. It is odd that I find it so cute when I see little CG the Finch eating seeds and he gets a miniature husk stuck to his beak. Although they are worthless and have not provided me with a single egg yet, I still must look at them and talk to them in an incredibly obnoxious birdsy baby voice every second of the day. From a lovesac.

So now you know what I have been doing. I am still crazy, with a little bit extra crazy thrown in. I still love my birds more than anything ever, and I am sorry Dad, but I am still self absorbed and will probably not ever put objective opinions of anything on my blog. Maybe next time. But mostly probably not.

Don´t worry, I am still in Peru. But as usual, I am jumping the gun and will now blog about my trip as a whole, three days before I come home. It has mostly been good.

Outstanding Peru Moments:

• Bennion peed on one of the Wonders of the World!
• We went on a trek through the jungle. I fell in a hole and got covered in mud. I was carrying a pair of shoes that I bought for this trip three days before we left. They are destroyed.
• On the trek out of the jungle, I fell in a hole and got covered in spider webs. I haven´t found one yet, but I´m pretty sure a tarantula crawled into my backpack and is waiting to kill me.
• We saw spider monkeys and macaws, and I probably could have touched one of them. Best moment of my life ever.
• I saw a boy cry during the bathroom scene towards the end of the movie ¨My Best Friend´s Wedding.¨
• There was that one time when Jessie, Demi, and I left Bennion on his own to get a massage from the supremely gay massage guy. Dot dot dot. Yup. That just happened!
• There was that one time when Bennion had to find a baño ASAP and thought we would wait for him.
• There was that one time when Bennion told all of us he was going to the internet cafe while us girls shopped. This was followed by that one time when we got into the taxi after and none of us even knew he was gone.

Peru Moments I Would Like to Wipe from Memory Forever:

• I was standing on the porch of our jungle cabin and told Jessie to keep watch while I traded my muddy pants for smelly shorts. We thought she was doing a pretty good job until I looked to my right and Bryce was standing there as I stood in my underwear in the wilderness. Good times.
• Separate incident: Apparently, in Peru, when one of your male travelling companions knocks on the door and you´re in your underwear, ¨Hang on a minute!¨ sounds an awful lot like ¨Please come in immediately and talk to me while I try to get dressed!¨ Not awkward at all.
• I am a pretty private person. This means, primarily, that when I use the bathroom I turn the sink faucet on so no one will hear me. All of us weary travellers have had explosive diarrhea since the second day we got here. Everyone within a five mile radius hears that whether you´ve got the faucet running or not. Most unfo.

A List of Items Lost in Peru:

• My hat and half of my underwear supply. (When doing laundry in a third world country, use the hostel garbage can and a sol´s worth of laundry detergent and just wash them yourself. I suspect Peruvian lavanderias steal underwears and hats.)
• Bennion´s electromagnetics textbook.
• My special black hoodie. (Add ¨Bennion running after the bus to get it for me¨ to the outstanding moments, por favor.)
• The world´s largest bottle of water. (With all due respect, this item is not missed. It was not helping Bennion´s excessive use of the baño.)
• Bennion´s jacket. In my defense, he did ask me to hold it for him moments after me telling everyone within earshot that I have a penchant for leaving things places.
• Bryce´s backpack that he then had to run down to the bottom of Machu Picchu to retrieve.
• Jessie´s cell phone. This was not lost. This was pretty much stolen by a spider monkey.
• Within moments after the LAN Peru fiasco of 2009, all of us lost our will to live.

Infamous Peru Quotes of Wonderment:

• Soy monstro! (Peru 2009 theme)
• That is an absolutely fabricated memory. (Bennion´s response to all of the stories I have told about our dating past. All very not fabricated.)
• Well, at least we have TV.
• It´s a good thing Brittany has such a cheery personality.  (See? I´m not a negative, pessimistic brat all the time!)
• Por que Dios?! POR QUE!?
• Ohhhhh, PIRATES!
• There are better ways of getting Hep-C that taste better!
• Elzzzzzzz…
• Uhrrrrr…

And I think now, officially, I am looking forward to being back. The truth is, I kissed a boy the day before I got here. That is a lot of angstiness to carry around with you for two weeks. I miss my ghetto life, my birds, and Chilis.

I miss looking pretty. I smell like jungle poop and look like an Amazonian woman. Granted, I did tell Bennion when he invited me on the trip that I was not going to make any effort to look decent while I´m traversing this third world country, but I am looking forward to wearing my hair down and putting on a dress. Woot.