I Reject You

So recently a number of my friends have been saying things like “are you dating anyone?” Or “What about you, Helen, are you seeing anyone?” To which I reply, “are you joking?” Then they blink at me, wide-eyed and cartoon-like “what? Why not?” “Because I’m fat,” I say. “Oh, that doesn’t matter,” they say. Mind you the people who are telling me this are thin and attractive. Their next line is always “have you tried online dating?” Now it’s me who looks at them wide-eyed and blinking? “Are you mad?” I say. “What?” they say, “Everyone does it now.” “I’m FAT, ” I say. “That doesn’t matter,” they say. Again, thin, beautiful people telling me it doesn’t matter. Last week three different people told me I should try online dating.

Maybe they were on to something. Why not give it a shot? Sure, my friend, M, cautioned me by showing me the photo she had saved to her phone of the man a dating site had said was her perfect match. He was so incredibly unattractive that someone actually thought the picture must have been PhotoShopped to look so bad. Still, there is the off chance David Tennant has dumped his baby mama and is currently trolling eHarmony for a fat girl from the States (can you say green card?) in which case I'm in! And if no one responds to my profile, well then I can answer honestly when people ask me if I’ve tried online dating and say “yes, I have. No one picked me.” Because that, of course, is what happens when you’re fat. No one picks you. My thin, attractive friends tell me I have a pretty face. “Doesn’t matter,” I say. A man will pick a thin girl who looks like she’s been repeatedly hit in the face with a shovel over a fat girl with a pretty face every time. Trust me. I know this to be a fact. My friend J actually said to me once: “I met a girl. She’s butt ugly. She looks like she’s been repeatedly hit in the face with a shovel, but she has a good body so I’ll probably call her.”

So, in spite of M's caution, I spent the better part of my day filling out the preposterous million question profile on eHarmony. Am I vivacious? I asked my friends. Should I call myself “somewhat” attractive? What are four words you would pick to describe me? What are five things I cannot live without? (Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, small batch Bourbon, Champagne and coffee--hey at least one wasn't alcohol,right?) Speaking of booze, the questionnaire wanted to know how often I drink. Does several times per week make me seem like a raging alcoholic? I wonder if there are people out there looking for a fat drunk woman who watches Doctor Who? OMG. After writing that sentence I realize I wouldn’t date me either. Anyway, I completed my profile, uploaded a picture of me holding a glass of wine (because honestly, that’s what I look like most of the time) and waited. Not for long as it turned out. Apparently, I had thirteen new matches right away!

Wow! This was exciting! Until I looked at them. These guys made M’s perfect match look like a Calvin Klein model. Seriously. I’m not joking. Not only were these guys all way older than I am (that’s what I get for saying I like wine and travel, I guess), but they were all extraordinarily unattractive. Now before you tell me how shallow I am let me say this. I am female. Therefore, I am often attracted to men who do not fit in the standard “good looking” category. If a guy is smart and funny and even reasonably okay looking, I’m capable of developing a crush on him. If he’s a bit nerdy, it’s entirely likely I will. I am not overly concerned with looks. Once again, I am fat so being overly concerned with looks would be hypocritical at best. Plus, like most women I know, I'm more concerned with personality. What I’m saying here is that even though my standards are fairly low, these guys were even lower. Of course the very best part of this story is that not one of these fair fellows has tried to contact me. That’s right. I have been rejected by thirteen of the most heinously unattractive men in Los Angeles. I’ll bet at least one of them has saved my picture to his phone and is, even now, telling his friends “can you believe eHarmony said this horror show was my perfect match?”

Once Bitten Twice Shy

So I’m at a party the other night and I get bit by a mosquito. Not generally a big deal except in this case my arm turned red and started swelling. Turns out I have a staph infection. The doctor said: “ we don’t want it to go into your joint and you'll lose your arm.” Notice my use of quotation marks. These are the actual words he said. WTF? Let me get this straight? I could lose my arm from a mosquito bite? Are you kidding? I could lose my arm because I went to a party? The thing is, I rarely go to parties anymore, seeing as how I hate people and all, but this one seemed like it would be relatively benign. After all, it took place at a lovely Beverly Hills home and was attended by quite a few people I know through work. Mostly professional types. You know, relatively normal upstanding citizens. Sure a lot of them were therapists, but it still seemed pretty safe. This is where I get the death bite? Are you kidding me? When I was in college I regularly spent my time at a place called Mondo Condo. Imagine if you will a house inhabited by four to five (sometimes more) males of the twenty-something rock musician persuasion and one bad ass Doberman Pinscher (Belvedere, you were the best). Imagine there are parties every weekend and most weeknights. Imagine they don’t even own a vacuum cleaner or cleaning products of any kind. And let’s face it. These guys wouldn’t have bothered to use them, if they did. The most they could manage was shoveling out the empty beer cans once in a while. Whatever you’re picturing in your mind, the Condo was worse. Much worse. I am quite certain one could have easily contracted typhus, the bubonic plague, gonorrhea of the throat and the Hantavirus within ten minutes of arriving. Not only was the place a festering cesspool, but most of the people hanging around were some form of derelict, addict, criminal, scumbag or ne’er-do-well (God, I miss you guys). Now add to the mix massive quantities of alcohol and various and sundry illicit substances. Yeah, that was the Condo in all its glory. I spent countless hours at there. Most often about ten beers into an all night drinking binge and rarely in complete charge of my faculties. Clearly “safety first” was not my motto back then (ah…to be young and foolish again). The fact that nothing bad ever happened to me there (hell, from what I remember—and it is a bit vague in patches--those were some of the best days of my misspent youth) is nothing short of a miracle. Which I guess makes getting a staph infection while attending a genteel Beverly Hills soiree some sort of Karmic joke. And The Universe laughs at my expense. Again.

OLD

I found a grey eyebrow hair. FML. That is all.

The Joke's on Me

Even as the specter of the Botox needle hangs over the vertical canyon running between my eyebrows and legions of creams and potions appear to have met their Waterloo in the battle against crow's feet, I woke up yesterday with a pimple the size of a volcano on my forehead. I thought the one benefit of aging would be the end of acne, but no. Tell me the Universe doesn't have a sick sense of humor. I dare you.

Turn Left

Nobody said it was easy. I didn’t think it would be this hard. Some drivel from Coldplay which seems to be running through my head a lot recently. I’ve decided I don’t really like Coldplay anymore so I honestly can’t tell you the context for the line, but I’ve decided it resonates with me because it applies to my life. Seriously, is life such an epic struggle for everybody or is it just me? An informal survey of friends would suggest I’m not alone in feeling this way. It’s not that life is a struggle in the sense of something truly catastrophic happening *frantically knocking wood.* Sure, plenty of wicked crap has happened to me, like most people, over the years. People die. People dump you. People stalk you. People rob you. All traumatizing events, to be sure but when I look at my life overall I’ve been pretty lucky as far as big problems go *maniacally knocking wood.* Not to mention that you find ways of dealing the big things. For whatever reason, things we imagine will undo us usually don’t. It’s the small things that get you. Life will beat you down with a host of petty annoyances and minor disappointments. If those don’t get you, the tedious, day-after-day grind will. I feel like I struggle just to get through each day. Except Wednesdays, of course because Wednesdays have Glee and Glee makes me, well, gleeful!


The struggle goes something like this: Wake up. Curse the fact it isn’t Saturday (unless it is Saturday in which case do a mental happy dance and go back to sleep). Drag self out of bed. Get ready for work. Feed monsters. Go to Starbuck’s to spend 20-30 minutes writing because if I don’t schedule it, it doesn’t happen. Dreadful commute to dreadful job. Dreadful job happens from 9-5, but often keeps happening after 5. A day in the Pit of Despair generally consists of being disregarded for long periods of time interspersed with being treated with the type of disdain generally reserved for dog shit on someone’s shoe. Occasionally you will be on the receiving end of a tantrum thrown by one bitch or another. Last week’s bitch was named Jon. At some point I finish work and go to the gym (yea me!). If it’s Tuesday or Thursday, I shower and head over to the clinic where I see clients. My clients are infinitely more sane and pleasant than 99% of the people I work with at The Pit of Despair, btw. And yes, they are mental health clients. Drive home. Feed monsters. Eat dinner while watching something on TiVo. Attempt to sort mail and banish chaos. Wash dishes. Collapse into bed and brace myself for it to start all over again in a few hours. I often get Saturdays off which means I can clean, run errands, study, do laundry. Or sit in catatonic state. I seem to go with option two more often lately. Sundays I’m back at the clinic. There are also various meetings and trainings thrown in here and there for good measure (and to ensure I have no time for a life) and I’m working on a fundraising event right now. Fundraising, btw, is a living nightmare, but that’s another blog.

Like most of my friends, I look around and think Wow…This is not what I expected my life would look like. I realize I’ve made poor decisions in life to get to this place. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I was giving $20 blow jobs to fund my crack habit or anything. I tend to be motivated more by fear than anything else so I cling on to bad jobs, bad people, etc . for far too long. We often look at people who engage in a lot of high-risk behavior (the $20 crack whore, for instance) and think “well, things aren’t going to work out for her.” I think the same is true for the people on the other end of the spectrum who don’t engage in enough risk. If you play it too safe, you’re going to miss out on opportunities. Being too wedded to a sense of security can keep you stuck in a job that has long since stopped being a good fit for you. It can keep you in relationships that are no longer functional. Sure it can keep you from getting hurt, but it can also keep you from getting what you want. We settle for less than we deserve because we are afraid to do anything else. A friend and I have been desperately trying to figure out the exact moments in which we turned right instead of left in our lives (referencing the episode Turn Left from Doctor Who series four, of course). I think the answer is we didn’t turn right at all. We just kept going straight. The person motivated by fear doesn’t pick a new road. They stay with the road they know--straight ahead, no chancing turning down a side street. Something bad could happen on a side street. The only problem with just going in a straight line is, eventually, you run out of road. And whether you hit a wall , fall off a cliff or just get stuck in a big muddy field, it’s not pretty. Eleanor Roosevelt said "do one thing every day that scares you." I've been experimenting with this idea and you know what? I think I'm going to take that next left and see where it takes me. I'd say it couldn't be any worse, but I'm not stupid enough to tempt The Universe that way.

David Tennant Comes to NBC!

Finally some good news for a change. David Tennant is set to star in a comedy pilot for NBC titled Rex Is Not Your Lawyer. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8339796.stm
Not only does this mean we have something to look forward to once his final Doctor Who episodes air early next year, it also means Mr. Tennant will be spending a substantial amount of time stateside if the show is picked up. I've been thinking pretty seriously about finishing with Los Angeles, but since this greatly increases the chances that David Tennant will show up at my local Starbucks soon, I guess I'm going to have to stay a while.

Money and Happiness Revisited

The idea that money can’t buy happiness has come up again recently. I’m not really sure how this idea ever got so much traction in our society. I personally think it's absolutely absurd. Now if someone said money doesn’t equal happiness, I could agree with that. I don’t believe that money is either necessary or sufficient for happiness.

I know that money isn’t necessary for happiness because I grew up watching Little House on the Prairie. They didn’t have much in the way of material things and certainly they were happy. Not to mention some of my happiest moments in life have cost little, if any, money. If you ever have the opportunity, try this: some summer day get an old inner tube and float around in a lake. If you do have money for a cold beer, take that with you (you may not want to drink too much, the whole drowning thing is not conducive to happiness generally). This ranks fairly high in my happy moment memory bank and was virtually free. You probably have similar memories: the perfect sunset at the beach, a rainy day curled up with a cup of tea and good book (which you presumably borrowed from the library) ---you get the picture. I think we can agree that money is not necessary for happiness. Next we must ask if money is sufficient for happiness. Well, we’ve all read the tabloids, right? Apparently the rich and fabulous are not always happy. Having yet to experience being rich and fabulous I’m tempted reserve judgment, but I think we can be safe saying money is probably not sufficient for happiness.

Now we turn to the real question though. Money may not equal happiness, but can money buy happiness? Of course it can! Money doesn’t just buy material things (though it does and they can be lovely and often make me quite happy. Not a day goes by that I don’t thank God and Steve Jobs for my iPod). Money not only buys things, it also buys experiences. Experiences, the little moments in life, are where we find our joy. Yes, many of the best ones are free, but some of the best ones are most certainly not. Many of the most amazing moments of my life cost quite a bit actually. For instance, one year ago today I was in Stratford-upon-Avon where I saw Patrick Stewart and David Tennant perform Hamlet. Not only was the play, which I had the good fortune to see twice, brilliant beyond my expectations, but the entire trip was a little festival of happiness just for me. I happen to love England and Stratford is one of my favorite places on earth because of my long-time super geeky devotion to all things Shakespeare. This was my third trip to Stratford, but my first time going it alone. I did not miss having company. Being on my own felt like the ultimate indulgence. For me being in England is like wrapping myself up in a fuzzy blanket and sitting in front of a fire. On my very first trip I found myself overwhelmed with emotion because of the illogical, yet unmistakable feeling that I had somehow come home.

Last year’s trip was one of the best trips I’ve ever taken anywhere and I was happier those few days in Stratford and London than I’d been in a long time. Fast forward 365 days and I’m at work in the Pit of Despair, feeling oppressed and miserable. The difference? Money. Quite simply I don’t have the money to do many of the things that give me the most pleasure in life including travel. The more money a person has, the more choices they have for how to spend their time and how to get the most enjoyment out of life. I’m not saying one can’t be creative and find ways of enjoying things for less, but I believe the bottom line is that many of life’s greatest pleasures (for me the list includes travel, education, wine, fine dining and theatre) are not free. This does not even take into consideration the obvious fact that, if you have enough money, you can buy your very freedom--freedom from the job you need, but don't love. I've come to realize it is an absolute truth that money can buy happiness. And a Marc Jacobs handbag.