2. Good friends who are throwing me a happy hour tonight whether I want it or not.

3. Silver white winters that melt into spring every year, eventually. It’s good to remember that.

4. Surviving the worst few months of my life last fall.

5. My mama.

6. The New Yorker; I forgot I subscribed on my iPad and now I have months worth of back issues to read. Awww yeah.

7. My cheap, funky, badly lit yet brightly colored apartment. It’s still me, for better or worse.

8. Rainbows over the Caribbean in January.

9. Humboldt Fog cheese.

10. The Hitachi Magic Wand.

11. A much, much less stressful job.

12. Salma Hayek’s honey-scented shampoo.

13. Naturally curly hair (that I just cut off to the nape of my neck. Hello, semi-annual birthday panic!)

14. Finding storytelling on stage this year; I love it so, so much.

15. Iced venti skinny lattes with two Equals.

16. The farmers market right outside my front door, which opened last week.

17. Getting closer to my dad’s side of the family over the past few years.

18. My daily Notes from the Universe.

19. My beautiful city, where I have lived for 20 years (!!) this August.

20. Every single awesome person who expresses general surprise when I tell them how old I am. I’ve been telling people at work I’m turning 28 and they believe me. Man, if I were only 28 I’d be so proud of my life right now.

21. Apple fritters, one of which I am having for breakfast shortly as a birthday treat.

22. Pencil skirts.

23. On that note, I recently started having some of my stuff tailored and OMG it is life-altering. (See what I did there?)

24. Frightened Rabbit. I saw them play my favorite song this week and man, I love those hot Scots.

25. My sister, who moved here 15 years ago this June. I never would have made it without her.

26. The new fad for ramen noodle restaurants. Noodles FTW.

27. My excellent medical benefits. The pharmaceutical industry and I salute them for supporting both of us.

28. The Roku I got for Christmas, which allows me to watch Netflix and Amazon videos on my TV.  House of Cards, yo. House. Of. Cards.

25. A couple more years of fertility, please God.

26. New Orleans, my spiritual home. (Though it does beg the question, why are all my spiritual homes so hot and humid when I am so adamantly an October person?)

27. Discovering that I can wear contact lenses. I don’t know why I denied myself the pleasure all these years.

28. My new hipster glasses. (That’s not me in the picture, though I do feel a kinship with her and  her “natural” red hair.)

29. All of you who read this blog even though I am a terrible poster. I have so many blog posts in my head, you guys. Don’t abandon me yet; I will be back, swearsies.

30. Still grateful for men and their delicious pheremones, despite that fact that they are not paying enough attention to me.

31. Dresses from eShakti. Game changer, seriously.

32. Kiehl’s musk oil, which makes me smell like someone I would definitely want to sleep with if I had a penis. HELLO.

33. Capital Bikeshare and not being afraid to use it. I’m so happy every time I get on one of those babies.

34. Pedicures and eyebrow waxing, the lazy woman’s salvation.

35. Finally conquering, once and for all, the nicotine monkey on my back.

36. Drinking on rooftops in the sun.

37. Figuring out who I am and what I want a little more each day. I used to be really impatient with this process, but now I understand that it never ends, and that’s a good thing.

38. The chance to keep doing it better and better.

PROMPT #1: Tell a story about a time you got drunk before you were legally old enough to do so.

We used to go to Mr. Henry’s on Pennsylvania Avenue. It was just a few blocks from my dorm, and in 1993 your student ID was the only ID you needed to get in. Student IDs did not have our birth dates on them, just our social security numbers. Student IDs from other universities were, it was rumored, not accepted. We figured somebody had to be in bed with the cops somewhere for this to work, but as long as it kept working, it was all good.

Mr. Henry’s stunk like a bar should. Hard-drinking undergrads and certain types of degenerates had spent years smoking cigarettes and spilling beer on the floor to achieve that stale, sour funk that set my shoulders at ease every time I walked through the door (I was a bar kid, remember.)

Mr. Henry’s had 2-for-1 pitchers, hummus served with plenty of pickled things (which is how it should be done) and a jukebox. Each time we went to the bar, we weighed our beer options very seriously. Should we get the Miller Lite or the Michelob? What about the Busch? I think I like that one better. Finally, the waiter — what a tortured soul he must have been, though I bet he got laid a lot — leaned in and said, You know all this beer is really shitty, and we just give you whatever is most convenient, right? We were humbled, our fledgling grown-up alcohol opinions made small. But fortunately, it turned out that “whatever was convenient” was also delicious, or at least did the trick.

I smoked Camel Lights back in those days. If you wore flannel shirts, ripped cords, and Doc Martens –and straight girls did back then, I swear to god — you couldn’t also carry around a girly silver and white pack of Marlboro Lights, like some Wet’n'Wild acolyte with mall bangs. (I had recently been that girl and was eager to get away from her. I bought my first flannel shirt –brown and yellow, at my first Banana Republic — before I even went to sleep that first night in my dorm. It cost me my whole first week’s “extras” budget. My roommate let me “borrow” her Docs and I wore them every day for years. As long as I’m confessing my sartorial sins, I also had a pair of oversized, ripped up farmer’s overalls that I wore with Docs and pigtails. If you’re still willing to be my friend, I’ll tell you the worst of it: I wore patchouli. The 90s were a difficult time for many of us.)

Back at Mr. Henry’s, patchouli was one of the more pleasant smells. I don’t ever remember sitting at the bar, or making friends with anyone at nearby tables. My friends and I were in our own little world. We played the same songs on the jukebox every night — No Rain, Brown-Eyed Girl, Only the Good Die Young.

My first winter in DC was wet and windy and freezing. In Ohio, we had bad weather too, but you only had to walk in it long enough to get to your car. My freshman year was an endless slog through slush, made even more miserable by inadequate footwear and scarves and coats that reeked of stale tobacco (what was I supposed to do, wash them?)

And then came the MLK weekend snow storm/ice storm/snow storm combo that crippled the city for nearly ten days. We’d only been back in class for a week, so had no real work to do — and no email, remember, so professors couldn’t really get to us to change that. We were packed three and four and six to a dorm room without cable or internet. There were brownouts. And nowhere to go –the news reported that all non-essential businesses were closed by decree.

But we knew one place that seemed to be above the law. Fortified by the thought of the steamy warmth and possible hummus at Mr. Henry’s, we bundled up and slip-slided across campus in the waning light of a below-zero January day. Cars were stopped and abandoned at odd angles all over Foggy Bottom. Tree branches, encased in ice, cracked and boomed and fell every few minutes. The inside of my nose froze before I’d made it a block. None of us could stay on our feet for long, and there was no foothold or purchase to steady ourselves against because everything was frozen solid.

As I always do in times of physical and meteorological peril, I thought to myself, What would Pa Ingalls do? If I’d had a horse, I would have killed it and crawled inside for warmth — but I didn’t have a horse, and by now the dorm was as far behind us as the bar was ahead. (Three blocks,)

We trudged on, and when we rounded the corner onto Pennsylvania Avenue, winded and chapped and snotnosed, past the shuttered TGI Fridays (cowards), there was Mr.H’s, lit up like the gates of heaven, bumping some Billy Joel on the jukebox. Those pitchers of Miller Lite/Michelob/Busch had never tasted so good, and we got extra pickles with the hummus. I could have spent the rest of my life in that warm cocoon.

But even establishments that are open illegally have last call, unfortunately, and so we were thrust back into the rude world just before 3 a.m. It was so brutally cold the air entering my lungs felt like sharp needles of ice. The beer made us more graceful in our attempts to remain upright. Another snowstorm was just starting, even though it seemed too cold for that; tiny soft flakes glimmering past the streetlights to land in a world of white.

In the empty, snowy quad, our voices echoed. We were cold and giddy and completely hammered. One plate of hummus and pickles shared among six people isn’t really a solid platform for the 18 pitchers of Whatever’s Convenient we’d subsequently put away. When I saw that open field of snow in the middle of the quad, untouched in the moonlight, I went for it. I clambered over the frozen snow piled at the edge of the path and onto the once-and-future grassy area, turned around to face my friends who were slide-stumbling down the path behind me, and shrieked, I’m going to make a snow angel!

Nooooo! They replied in unison. But the die was cast: I had thrown my arms up and back already and lost my footing. My spread feet slid right out from under me and I leaned back into it, cracking my stupid drunk head onto six inches of ice barely concealed by a scant layer of snow.

Turns out snow is not that fluffy.

The echo my head made was still reverberating around the quad when I came to, stunned. There seemed to be a lot more stars in the sky than there had been.

“C, what the fuck, are you OK?” my roommate asked, kneeling by my side. In retrospect, it was a little bit her fault because I was wearing her Doc Martens. She shook her head. “I’m from Miami and even I knew that was a stupid thing to do,” she said.

We were still frozen in the next morning when I woke up in my top bunk. I was always happy to make it through a night without my Sid Vicious poster* falling on me in my sleep. Everyone was hungover, but my headache felt more noble and worthy somehow. For a moment at least, I’d tried to forge a commonality with the angels. Why, I was practically a performance artist! I wore the goose egg on my head with pride that week. And the next. Hurt like a bitch when I had to put a snow hat on though.

*Undermine their pompous authority, reject their moral standards, make Anarchy and disorder your trademarks, cause as much chaos and disruption as possible, but don’t let them take you ALIVE.” We all had this poster, yes?

Did you know that handling externally imposed stress is not one of the life skills at which I excel?

My old boss called me today at 6:45 p.m. and when I picked up the phone she said by way of greeting, “So how’s that work-life balance deal working out for you?” And the thing is, hearing her voice made me miss her terribly. I dawdled answering her questions, trying to keep her on the line. I made her say she missed me.

That is not our normal mode of interaction.

I saw the IO for he first time since I moved into his office building today, and it was strange and awkward and unenjoyable. Now you don’t want to hang out with me, now that you’re the only friend I have for miles and miles? Of course.

Messaged briefly with the Office Crush:

OC: “Things aren’t the same around here without you (crying emoticon ) (and I actually think crying men are really hot, situationally)

ME: “Ha ha etc…Well, don’t forget about our happy hour”

OC: <crickets>.

They both hurt my feelings, which means my feelings need to go back into hiding for a while. I cannot have them getting messed up right now. I am always screwed on the risk/reward ratios; how could I have forgotten that? Nothing ventured, nothing ripped up and tossed back at you haphazardly, full of holes.

Ever since I had that terrible, awful, bolt-from-the-blue onslaught of depression this summer, I worry about it constantly. Every little mood alteration terrifies me — was that it? Normal stress or end times? Am I legitimately tired and cranky from life or because my brain is out to get me yet again?

I have been trying and trying– yet again — to keep things moving. I have been ferociously (for me) social. I make myself get up and walk around outside during the day. I signed up to do three shows and take a month of classes. I’m fixing up my house: throwing away furniture and negotiating new floors. I got contacts, finally, and bought sexy new glasses to boot. I have been flirting like crazy.

Saturday, I had a panic attack, out in the spring sunshine surrounded by happy Washingtonians on patios. I was listening to my sister and her friend chatter brightly about the boys they are dating. Suddenly I knew I had to get out of there, and I bolted, forgetting that I was their ride. It was embarrassing  and infuriating, and it knocked me out for the rest of the afternoon. But then I went out that evening and met a friend and acted (I believe) normal and sociable. Monday on the phone with my mom, I started laughing too hard, hysterically, recounting something that wasn’t funny at all, and laughing like that made me me begin to cry for real, like…well, like some kind of crazy person.

These are the top three things I fear for myself: That I’ll never fall in love. That I’ll never have a kid. That my brain chemistry is going to unravel me down to a pile of dirty string at some point.

My sister says that once you have lived through a time of big emotions, you wear a groove in your psyche that stands dangerously empty. So the next time you get stressed out — a new job! some minor boy trouble! a bout of intractable insomnia! — instead of having your extra feelings splash safely out of your brain pan, they find their way back to the groove and get all stagnant and moldy and stanky. To combat this phenomena, you have to burn those feelings out out out all the time. She does this by staying in motion, ceaselessly.

I used to sit down in the outfield during kiddie softball games and make letters out of grass, then turn those green letters into words because I missed my book. That’s one of the most encapsulating anecdotes there is about me.

I’m not saying anything terrible is happening. No one is worried yet. I’m just saying I’m not very happy and extremely hypervigilant about it. I’m saying my feelings are getting hurt by things that should breeze on by me, and I’m snapping at people who don’t deserve it (and, in all fairness, a couple of jackholes who do) and I don’t like that.

I’m saying I can tell by my new boss’ reactions that my face is betraying me; it takes a lot of effort for me to keep whatever I’m feeling from being written right across it, bold as paint, and I lose control when I’m overwhelmed. I’m an open book, for better or worse. (Exhibit A is in your eyeholes right now.)

I’m saying that Saturday’s panic attack — the first since last summer — felt like a big step in the wrong direction.

Occam’s razor says when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. The simplest explanation is always the most plausible. I just got a new job! I can’t get no satisfaction from men! The polar ice caps are melting at an astonishing rate, and my family honestly believes this is due to perfectly natural temperature variances!  Who wouldn’t be a little blue, in that situation?

The truth is, though, I’ve been to Africa. Those herds of zebras are something you never forget.

Did I tell you about the time a woman I’ve known casually for years and years but never really talked to told me she’d been reading a blog and couldn’t help but think it was mine? (It was.)

Or — and this is a good one — the time someone emailed me to say that she recognized one of my commenters as the person she regularly sat next to in yoga class — IN ANOTHER COUNTRY?

I mean, I’m not exactly Dooce as far as traffic is concerned. But it is a small, small, small world.

And that’s too bad, because if it wasn’t I could tell you the MOST AWESOMELY OUTRAGEOUS work stories ever, and we would laugh and laugh together, and oh that would be so nice, because left to my own devices I have not been chuckling.

Whoops. disregard that exclamation point. It’s not that kind of update, sadly. (Did I ever tell you I used to have a boss who considered herself the world authority on all things grammar and style, and she called these –> !!!! <— “explanation points?” I’d say it drove me crazy, but it actually gave me a warm, glowing feeling of smugness that helped me survive some very irritating days.)

Anyway!

First, a big thank you for your cheerleading and suggestions in the comments and on Twitter. They totally got me through my last day of work, especially when you-know-who decided to telecommute that day.

AS IF. Like my plans mean NOTHING.

So, at around 1 p.m. I messaged him on our interoffice IM client. (I thought that seemed like a reasonable amount of time to wait, and I very carefully did not do it on the stroke of 1, because I didn’t want to seem like I was plotting, you know?) (AS IF.)

ME: Well, I guess xyz will never get done after all since you’re not here.

WC: I’m not there now, but I may show up when you least expect it.

ME: (inside my head) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (WINNING!!!)

ME: (in real life) good. you definitely should not miss my going away happy hour at the crappy corner bar

<insert a little blah blah blah and time passing>

WC: hey, something’s come up and it looks like i’m not going to make it in there after all (frowny face) i’m sorry. have fun though.

ME: (day ruined even more than it already was by all of the WORKING MY GOD THE WORKING)

(i let a few moments pass, because I’m suave)

(and because I was on the phone with my sister plotting next steps)

ME: boo

ME: raincheck? (let’s pause a moment to recognize my extraordinary bravery)

WC: sure.

WC: but the raincheck cannot be cashed at the crappy corner bar. (DOESN’T THAT SOUND PROMISING?)

ME: ooh, good point. you pick then

WC: (nothing about this ever again, including when I saw him in person on Monday)

Because that is how it goes, you guys. I’m a 37 year old woman who hasn’t been on a date for 18 months. I just blogged the only interesting IM conversation I’ve had in eons — and it wasn’t really that interesting. If that’s not the lamest thing you ever heard, may I suggest that you stop speaking to the person who told you the lamer thing, because that person is a hopeless loser.

Pot, kettle, etc. Soon I will just put one of these over my head because why not, that’s why.

The thing is, I really like the OC, with his twinkly eyes and general good-person vibe. Now I wish I hadn’t talked about it so much because it made it worse. (On the other hand, I think talking about the IO has really dampened my ardor.) (I like to talk a lot.) (But I can be companionably quiet and peaceful too! Call me?)

I NEVER meet anyone I like. EVER. And when I do, they do not even care. That’s how the dating game works, I know. It’s a numbers thing, happens when you least expect it, when god closes a door my finger usually gets smashed, etc. But oh, I am so, so over it. My poor little emotions and hopes are so fragile, and they just get more tattered every time I take them out.

But I can’t quite get over wanting it to work out somehow, someday, some way. That’s too bad, because I wish I could just pack them away in a charming wooden chest for my sister’s future children to inherit.

***********************************************************************

But the struggle continues, for now at least.

There is a new Find Me Some Lovin’ or Die in the Attempt plan that has kind of been in effect for a while but is now, like, WAY in effect.

Background: Some complete asshole explained a theory of tipping to me long ago that blew my mind with its preposterous, pompous, epic shittiness. He said that he always went into a restaurant with the intention of tipping 20%, but as the meal went on he deducted points for every transgression he perceived. Minus 1% for making him wait for a menu. Minus 1% if the pacing is off. Etc, etc, go jump in a lake you miserable bastard.

But! I have adopted this strategy for my love life, to help me stay focused and on course.

To maintain the proper attitude, every day I wear a cute outfit. I use shampoo and body oil that cost too much money but smell really, subtly good. I apply my makeup with a great deal of care. I wear Spanx every day. EVERY SAUSAGEY DAY. I wear my hair down, which used to only happen never because it is very hot and wild. LIKE ME. (Except I am also warn nurturing loyal etc.)

And I enter every encounter I have with a man with the 100% assumption that we will fall in love/fall into bed, and then I deduct points from there based on applicable factors. Every barista, every guy standing next to me at a crosswalk, every man I pass in the hallway at work or sit next to in a conference room — I smile and smile and toss my hair, merely as a starting point.

Then, I start tallying up deductions.

–Wedding ring — automatic fail. Fake smiles only for you, and I will not fall into the trap of mirroring your body language. No.

–Too old — my daddy issues are well documented. Next.

–Halitosis — not an automatic dealbreaker, but a serious, serious deduction.

–Overbearing blowhardedness–Fail.

–Drunk–probably not.

–Rude to anyone ever –see you later.

–Unattractive — this could cover a lot of ground, but is also easily overlooked in light of other positive characteristics. I’m much more interested in what my gut tells me than my eyes.

–Asshole –Internet, it is here that I must confess something. I like nice guys. I’m attracted to men who are soft, and emotional, and I get irritated with women who get irritated with these kinds of men. I PREFER them. My kingdom for some emotional availability–even if your emotions are only available to you right now, at least you have recognized that they exist. That puts you light years ahead of 75% of the other men on earth.

But I also have lately recognized that I have kind of a thing for really smart assholes. Not overcompensators or meanies, but guys with just a little…edge. A flash of steel. I think it brings out my competitive side. Or some even more interesting side.

So, deductions for being an asshole, yes, but I can no longer say that it’s an automatic fail.

Note, I am not looking for reasons to judge people harshly. I’m only trying to practice The Secret, and put out in the universe what I want to receive — possibility and hope and even just casual flirtation. I want to keep my eyes peeled for every opportunity, and be receptive to all possible chances, so I can  fall in love before the stress of this job kills me.

Is that so much to ask?

Part of me believes that everything –EVERYTHING — in life is about timing. That a person with whom you could have been best friends, or lifetime lovers, might simply pass beneath your radar if you meet them at the wrong time. This is especially true in dating. I think there was no way on earth Lieu and I could ever have worked. He was just too damaged at the time I met him to do anything more than take take take.

Thus, the woman posed with him and his children in his current profile picture on Facebook, which I saw for the first time at midnight last night after strenuously not looking for seven months, is not a better or more worthy person than me. She merely has better luck. Most people do (in the global 1% we all dwell in, at least.) She probably also has a graduate degree, and a controlling personality, and a history of never doing anything interesting nor wearing eyeliner. Whatever! I FEEL FINE ABOUT IT SO DON’T ASK ME.

Where was I again? Right.

So, in my last post I confessed my terrible dilemma about that one guy, and everyone judged me because it is horrible. Believe me, I know this. From now on we shall call him the Inappropriate Object (IO), so that we don’t give his name any power. (In real life, he shares a name with my best friend, so I never ever say it aloud anyway, because ick.)

I said I felt the click when I met him, and I did. BUT. What if the click isn’t so much about him as it is about…me?

You know how it is when you start dating someone that you like, and all of a sudden you start getting all kinds of male attention? We tend to say that it’s the glow of new love. But maybe it’s just because you’re throwing off all of this sex energy all of a sudden — because of the phase of the moon or the phase of your menstrual cycle or some kind of pollen-driven psychic shift that hasn’t been pinpointed — and New Guy You’re Dating just happens to be the first lucky soul to pick up what you’re laying down.

I’m saying that maybe we are all essentially like those fish that release their gametes into the water and wait for babies to grow. Sperm meets egg because they happen to be in the same place at the same time. There’s nothing cosmic about it (excluding the effect the moon has upon the tide.)

I’m saying that maybe we are all surrounded by opportunities for love and affection all the time, and that we just have to be in the right frame of mind to see them.

I’m saying that it’s mostly about pheremones and hormones, and mine are going CRAZY for the past couple of months. At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet and a freight train running through the middle of my head whoa whoa whoa I’m on fire, etc.

I’m saying that there is another man who has caught my eye, and we call him the Office Crush. He is adorable. He is appropriate (except for being seven years younger than I am.) He is creative and quiet and bearded. He sits next to me, and I am always aware of him. When the IO calls me (a dozen times a day) I stop thinking about him as soon as I can and turn my thoughts to the Office Crush. I keep scented lotion at my desk so I can smooth some on before I step into the Office Crush’s office under some trumped-up pretense. He intrigues me. He asks me for input on things that do not require my input at all, and I lean way over his monitor to give it. (That is how one flirts when impeded by office furniture. I think. I’m a bit rusty, what with the no dates for 18 months.)

And after tomorrow — my last day at my current job — there is no reason why I should ever see or talk to Office Crush again.

I am terrible at knowing if men like me. Whatever I suspect, I can always talk myself into the opposite. I have tried and tried to send every signal I can to the Office Crush, and sometimes I think he really is picking up what I’m laying down…and sometimes I think he’s just a polite person who has decent social graces. We are, after all, colleagues.

So, tomorrow. Should I:

a) Keep sending out strong psychic signals and hope he responds by suggesting we do something outside work.

b) Take it upon myself to suggest that we do something outside work. (“We should get drinks some time.” Or “We should hang out some time.” Or “We should make out some time.”)

c) Leave him a note to find on Monday. (“I’d like to hang out with you outside work. If that sounds like fun, here’s my email address. If not, that’s okay too.”)

d) Stop thinking lascivious thoughts about my male colleagues at the extraordinarily paranoid and litigious corporation where we work.

e) Die alone and be eaten by cats. Even though I don’t like cats. (I think he has cats.)

Advise me, please.

BOOM — do not mess with me, mean people. And darling universe — I appreciate the endless job opportunity you send my way, truly. Can we barter for a fertile man now?

The job story is actually a long one, full of coincidence and serendipity, but the upshot is that it’s a totally different job, team, building, etc. at the same company — and the intuitive TOTALLY predicted exactly how it would all go down (and when) at our June meeting. (In the linked post she correctly predicted the circumstances of my LAST new job. She’s coming to family Easter to read all my girl cousins.)

So, obviously, with all of this good fortune, I’m a disaster. The work I’ll be doing sounds great, but my current boss assured me that I’m making a “terrible, disastrous career move” and I must say she got in my head a little bit with that. I never wanted a career, as we have discussed — all I ever wanted was a man and a baby. I want to make them macaroni and cheese. That is the sum of all my earthly desires. And yet, I apparently have a career that I haven’t been able to ruin, and I do really enjoy spending the money I make there on plane tickets, so I guess I need to keep…not fucking it up.

With that in mind, here is what I’m currently worried about vis-a-vis the new job.

Being the new girl. I JUST got over being the new girl, who comes in early and stays late and can’t find the bathroom and has no friends. I HATE being that girl. Now people come and ask me for advice, and I know things, and I am sometimes seen as a subject matter expert! Little old me, from Ohio! I mean, it’s expertise no one cares about, really, but still.

Being underqualified. Hey, did you know that I’m insecure about my educational background? Have I ever mentioned that 27,000 times? True story. I will say that I gave the best answer yet as to why I don’t have my undergraduate degree during this interview process, and I even believed it while I said it. And yet. Casual conversation has subsequently revealed that many (and perhaps most) of my peers in this new role have their MBAs, and so I just ride my insecurity dragon around all day now. His name is Sturmunddrang-on. Giddyup.

Setting poor boundaries. I have learned a lot about myself during this process, and one major lesson is that I am an absolute whore for feedback. It’s like I don’t have whatever it is other people have inside them that allows them to maintain a fairly steady vision of who they are. Where my keel should be, there is instead a big sucking hole that must constantly be filled with other people’s positive feedback. Absent this feedback, I am paralyzed with despair. When I’m in a situation for long enough, I can build a network that can keep me afloat without drowning everyone else — but accomplishing that was harder at this job than it ever has been before. I’m afraid that I will lose sight of myself entirely in my desperation to make new work friends in this new job, and man, people who do that suck. But I was so, so lonely last year. I dread living through that again.

Bad company. I do have one friend in my new building. He’s the one person most responsible for curing my work loneliness, and he is the last person at the company — and perhaps in the world — I should be seeing more often. Because, of course, I am completely crazy about him, and (of course) it absolutely, positively cannot and will not ever be because he belongs to someone else. I guess we can just assume that every three-to-five years when I feel that instant, elusive click with someone I’ve just met, that person will swiftly be revealed to be THE MOST DESTRUCTIVE POSSIBLE OPTION.

So, not to spoil my next several dozen blog posts or anything, but I think I have to tell him that we can’t be friends any more. (We are strictly 100% above-board friends, nothing more, except in my feverish brain.) And then he will ask me why! And I will tell him I love him! And he will be amazed and say he had no idea (unlikely)! And that I have thoroughly misunderstood everything and that in this context, “wife” really means “cousin” and that subsequently there is no reason why we can’t now ride off into the sunset and/or TAKE OUR CLOTHES OFF IMMEDIATELY! OR he will have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, be completely horrified and offended, everything will be more awkward than we can possibly imagine, and I will die of discomfort and stupidity. One of those. (Note: There is no “other woman” option for me, I promise. And I keep telling people that to help me stick to it, because this has weakened me.)

And of course, failure.  I gave such amazing interviews, you guys. Even I loved me for a couple of minutes there. The match between what they need and what I do comfortably and well seems almost too good to be true. They are genuinely excited to have me…so now I am going to have to do all this work all the time, and frankly, all I want to do for the next few months is sit in the sun, go to the pool, write, and find someone to have sex/fall in love with. That’s all I EVER want. I’m a simple person. I prefer snuggling to strategizing. I can’t help it.

Is that enough of a catch up for now? I also need to tell you about:

1. My trip to New Orleans where I hung out with the adorable Slauditory
2. The six days post-New Orleans during which I vomited every hour and laid on my apartment floor alone and prayed for death, and how great that experience has been for my mental health.
3. My new contacts and how it apparently was not merely the glasses that were preventing people from falling in love with me.
4. How I am desperately trying to turn my overabundance of sexual energy into something positive.
5. What I said about my education situation in that interview — I need to record that shit for posterity.

Don’t let me stay away for so long! I get sad and stupid.

Actually…

“Meets expectations.”
Why not just kick my teeth in?
So much more direct.

If hating feedback
Is a crime then lock me up!
But please be gentle.

Your opinion of
Me is now inked on my soul
Forever. So thanks. 

There once was a hedonist named C
Who loved to be creative and free
She was emotionally fragile as glass,
And the corporate world kicked her ass.
Now she cries at lunch in the lactation room on floor three.

You get the point. But I won’t post it, because I like you and I don’t want you to suffer. And becuse it made me sound like a douchecanoe.

I’ll just share the denouement, which is easily expressed without all the whiny shit: I cannot abide being criticized! If people don’t love me completely, I think they hate me — and not only that, but that I am inherently, entirely hate-worthy, and everyone can tell!

I understand that some people can hear criticism of themselves and their work, thoughtfully consider it, and pick and choose which elements to internalize. Have you heard of these people? Have you ever seen one? Please send pics ASAP. And ask them if they like me, or LIKE me like me, or just respect my work. I need them to pick at least two or I get weepy.

As my boyfriend Tony Hoagland says in a poem I love very much:

There are some people, unlike me and you,
who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.
Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha

Guess who was skulking outside Starbucks before six this morning because I woke up at four a.m. worried that I would not be ready for my eight a.m. meeting? It’s like there are poems ABOUT ME. Or not. Whatever.

To paraphrase a friend of mine who has had the misfortune to hear me discuss my work angst at length: “I hope your literary or stage career or something takes off soon, because hearing you spouting corporate jargon is so weird and creepy that I kind of feel sick when you do it.”

Thank you!

Today, the copy of Personal MBA that I ordered for myself so I could sound smarter in meetings arrived. I’d forgotten that I ordered it, and the fact that I was excited when it arrived made me think I may also be forgetting who I actually am.

So, to untangle these two messages: mediocre review makes Ciara sad. Yet a few work things and some work people make Ciara happy, occasionally. Or as happy as one can be in a building one must badge into twice (at a minimum.)

Blechh.

************************************************************************

On a  completely different note, I saw Marc Maron perform last weekend. He was fabulous, as always, and his warm-up guy, Mike Lawrence, was hilarious as well. He tested pickup lines on the audience, and this is my favorite, which I have repeated 157 times in the past three days:

“I’m bisexual, so I’m straight enough to notice a beautiful woman, but gay enough to treat her like a human being.”

**************************************************************************

In other news, my apartment is a wreck and every day I have big plans to post something here and every day I fail. Maybe dislodging this bit of work phlegm will clear the way.

Goal for the day
Have lunch with my friend. See my Monogamous Non-Sexual Life Partner (MNSLP) Montana and his boyfriend, who are also in Philly from DC for the weekend. Eat a fancy dinner. Go to bed by ten because I fucking hate New Year’s Eve.

How the day actually went
10 a.m.
My sister and I depart for Philadelphia

12:30 p.m.
Arrive at home of excellent Philly friend, Frankie. She gives me almond croissants, purchased early that morning from the best bakery on the planet because she knows that I would walk over broken glass for those things and she is cool like that.

1 p.m.
Lunch with my sister and Frankie. I have a pork shoulder sandwich with all kinds of crazy stuff on it,like cilantro mint pesto and  neon-purple violet mustard. I drink a Pimm’s Cup and a Mummer’s Punch, because consuming various mixed drinks early in the day is always a good choice.

3 p.m.
Check into my itsy bitsy, overpriced hotel room in Center City. I usually stay with  Frankie in South Philly, but I know that privacy is crucial to achieving my dream of being asleep at 10.  That’s why I paid so much for this crappy room; it’s an investment in a well-rested January 1, insurance against having to touch a stranger at midnight. Worth every penny for that peace of mind! (THIS IS CALLED FORESHADOWING.)

4 p.m.
Basking in some unstructured time and the glow of those two drinks, I decide to go shopping around Rittenhouse Square.

4:30 p.m.
I hate shopping, Rittenhouse Square, this stupid city, and myself. I cry in my room (good thing I have it!) for an hour, making sure to achieve maximum eye-swelling in the process. I use nearly a box of tissues, strewing them about the bedside as though my ladies-in-waiting will remove them for me.

5:30 p.m
Time to meet Montana and the boyfriend for pre-dinner cocktails.  Crying girls are Montana’s kryptonite, a worst-case scenario that can strike without warning, leaving a vast swath of discomfort in their wake. There’s a chance I would have subjected him to my despair anyway, because life partnership has risks as well as rewards, but his boyfriend’s presence saved us all from such a fate. (I want the boyfriend to think I’m normal.)

Joy of joys, there’s a special on pomegranate sangria! I drink five (5) (cinco) (cinq) plus a beer for good measure. I feel much better!

My sister shows up with a Person of Interest who lives in Philadelphia (she’s like a sailor, keeping kissyboys in every city just in case.) I want her to marry this guy — he’s in a soccer league! he volunteers! he’s Irish! — and while I don’t think that will happen tonight, sadly, his presence is a good sign that I’ll be free to abandon her before midnight for the comfort of my hotel bed.

Someone passes around his iPhone so we can look at Christmas pictures. Don’t scroll past the sagebrush pictures, he instructs my sister. Within seconds, she gives a little shriek. I went too far, I went too far, she says, shaking her head. Moments later, I too scroll too far. I nearly break the phone in my haste to GET IT AWAY FROM ME and sit with my eyes closed for ten minutes, trying to rewind my life back to the happy Christmas pictures. Every time I look around the table, I just see naked people.

I don’t think I know what sagebrush looks like, my sister says mournfully. But I never saw any damn sagebrush. I don’t think there was any.

8 p.m.
All the boys have left. My sister and I passive-aggressively argue about where to eat dinner. In the interest of family peace, let’s just say we agreed and then hugged. Aww.

9:30 p.m.
We meet my sweet cousin Caitie (who looks JUST LIKE Katniss Everdeen) for dinner at a raucous Mexican dive in South Philly. I drink several? hundred? blood orange margaritas and eat a field’s worth of corn chips. I must have eaten other things too. Things are a bit fuzzy at this point.

INTERLUDE
I used to drink a lot in my bar days. I would stay out until sunrise, boot and rally, drink to cure hangovers (daily), wake up in cabs I couldn’t remember getting into — all of your basic pre-alcoholic behavior. Then I stopped, and started working in an office, and contained such foolishness to the occasional weekend. For the past five years or so, I very rarely have more than one or two drinks at a time. My goal is to never have another hangover again, nor to be in a bar past midnight. I mostly meet this goal. Fun Ciara hardly ever makes an appearance these days, for the good of mankind and my liver. But when she does…

11:30 p.m.
I cannot wait to get back to my hotel room and play Scrabble on my iPad. I brought my fleecy socks and everything. It’s going to be awesome. Caitie-niss is even going to drive me there. I win 2012.

11:31 p.m.
Montana texts me and says I should meet them for a drink. I decline. He insists. I demur. He starts using exclamation points. Come on! We’re at a piano bar, and there are other girls here! You will love it! Come!!!! And you know, life partnership has its demands as well as its privileges, so I ask Caitie to re-route.

11:36 p.m.
Text from Montana. We barhopped! Meet us at this address! I figure we’re close enough, and get out of Caitie’s car.

INTERLUDE
Friends, I have spent a lot of time in gay bars all across this city and our great nation — New Orleans, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, San Antonio, Boston, San Francisco (oh jesus that one was bad), Denver, etc., etc.. I have stuffed money into the socks of naked dancing men. I have casually conversed with my boss in the flickering light of the porn movies playing on multiple screens. I have karaoked. I have politely, and with a straight face, ordered a drink called a “fistfuck.” It had lots of whipped cream. I’ve had my breasts manhandled quite inappropriately, because certain gay men think that’s an okay thing to do. (And because my breasts are awesome.) I even made out with a gay man once, in a bathroom stall in a filthy bar at the dark end of Bourbon Street. And you know, I’ve enjoyed it all. I roll with it. I wish the ladies’ facilities were a bit more moderne in some of these establishments, but as I like to say, a beer’s a beer and lots of my friends are queer so that’s why I’m here*.

11:42 p.m.
The street to which Montana has directed me is actually a dark, narrow alley. Nothing appears to be a commercial establishment. Halfway down, hooded figures are gathered near a door, wreathed in mist. It could be a bar, or a death trap. I put on my city walk and stomp on down. There’s no way I’m spending midnight shivering alone on a street corner; terrible karma. As I reach the shadowy figures — turns out they’re just dudes smoking — a door opens, emitting a blast of music and warmth. Everyone I see in this brief glimpse is a fat man with no shirt on.

11:43 p.m.
I text Montana. Did you bring me to a leather bar???? Come get me.

He did. He does.

11:44 p.m.
It’s jockstrap night. There’s a kind of dungeon in the basement where some people are licking other people’s boots. A large man in a tiny rubber suit wanders around, alone. Montans’a boyfriend shows me where the nearest ladies room is as soon as I arrive. (This is the most chivalrous thing it’s possible to do for a woman in a gay bar.) I have a long chat with a muscular man who wants to be called Baby Bear.  He asks me to slap his ass. I do. There are, of course, no other girls there. Montana and I have a very intense conversation about elementary school standardized test scores. His boyfriend and I mourn the old Pop Stop at 17th and P, where I used to study in college (1993!) and drink iced mochas until my eyeballs jittered. (There were no laptops! Can you imagine?) I hug a couple of hairy strangers at midnight, and drink seven? teen? Yuengling, which in Philly are called simply “lagers.” Knowing this improves my self-esteem. A lovely time is had by all.

2 a.m. (whaaaaat?)
There isn’t a cab to be had, so I start walking home. This is a great decision, because I have no idea where I am or where I’m going, I’m totally hammered, and my phone is about to die. Luckily, everyone else in Philadelphia seems to be in the same predicament. Drunk people in Philadelphia seem drunker than drunk people in other cities, somehow. I like that about them. Also, is there a non-slut-shaming  way to say that all of the women were dressed like whores? Because they were, but I myself was wearing a(n accidentally — see 4:30 p.m. above) very short skirt and vivid purple tights, so I like that about them, too. The whores, I mean.

2:30 a.m.
Back in my hotel room, I congratulate myself on sobering up by walking home. Brushing aside the sodden tissues from my earlier crying jag, I slip into bed still wearing my tights because I’m no longer agile enough to take them off. I call my sister, or so she tells me later.

5 a.m.
I wake up. Why? Oh, that’s right, so I can puke all over the bathroom like some sort of fraternity pledge who’s been hazed. My purple tights do not lend dignity to this occasion.

11 a.m.
I wake up with a blinding headache and mop up vomit with the hotel bath towels. Am I really ready for parenthood?

11:30 a.m.
In the shower, I discover that there is no conditioner, only shampoo+conditioner, which is a vile substance that should be banned. This is my number one pet peeve when traveling, but I am too poisoned for tantrums. I just comb some lotion through my hair listlessly. My whole body hurts.

11:59 a.m.
This hotel room looks like Hunter Thompson died in it. I stuff every awful thing I can into plastic bags and leave a $40 tip.

1 p.m.
Mummer’s Parade! Because nothing says “soothing hangover remedy” like freezing your ass off at a parade. We get a great spot, right next to the speakers, because of course. I sip diet Coke and  pray feebly for death.

3 p.m.
House parties with warm rooms and amazing food and my sister’s Person of Interest (or as I like to call him, my brother-in-law.) People start talking about rent, and I begin to ponder moving to Philly. Maybe I will live after all.

7 p.m.
Couch, pajamas, Sons of Anarchy on Netflix, happy.

They say how you spend New Year’s Eve is how you’ll spend the year.  That means that either I will spend the year overeating, trying not to stare at half-naked gay men, vomiting, and suffering in the cold, OR that I will spend it surrounded by people I love and having random adventures that are completely unexpected. And I mean, everyone pukes once in a while, so I choose option B.

*I have never said this, but will begin to do so immediately.

It started, the racing heart and shallow breath and goosebumps blooming up and down my arms and back, about twenty minutes in to my frantic internet trawling. A shooting…in a school…twenty-eight people…oh no, an elementary school; these were babies. I don’t know why it comes and goes like that; sometimes, I hear a tragic news item, or an anecdote about a crime, and I feel the normal levels of sadness and anger that we all feel. Sometimes, I can’t breathe or stay warm and my skin prickles and burns with misfired adrenaline. These days, I don’t see mental images of the shooting that happened at my house the way I used to, but the pure trauma of it is still inside me, and it leaks out, poison, on days like this.

I have been, in the most literal sense, terrorized by gun violence. I cleaned blood and brains off my front porch and didn’t sleep through the night for three years afterwards. Just typing that sentence, nine years later, yields uncontrollable tears. It was the worst thing that has ever happened in my life. And, my god, I’m not even the actual victim, who lost his eye and part of his brain. His key was in the lock — the lock to my house, where my sister and I were sleeping. Nothing — NOTHING — was between that armed, amoral boy and me.

E. was not the first person this 19-year-old shot. The shooter was wanted for another unprovoked attack, where he shot someone else, also in the face. Before the police could question him about either case, he was shot and killed. He lived a block away from us.

This gun violence is happening all over, all the time, to the point that none of these shootings ever became even a local news story.

There have been 31 school shootings since Columbine. That doesn’t include the other recent mass shootings, at an army base, in Aurora, Gabrielle Giffords.

Yet somehow the conversation about gun control has been so thoroughly co-opted and politicized that even I — liberal, loudmouth, political me, who knows the mingled odor of gunpowder and blood — don’t speak up about this issue. I’ve internalized the idea that gun control is a hippy-dippy fantasy on par with raising genderless kids and living off the grid dressed in homespun hempen clothing.

I like and respect Obama, but when I saw him weeping as he spoke today I thought: Buddy, you SHOULD be crying. If I were president of a nation where 17,000 people were killed by guns each year and I had done nothing to stem the tide, I’d be crying too, out of remorse.

But the time when we can be comforted merely by grieving and “processing” has passed.

I will no longer stay silent out of misguided respect for my friends and family who own weapons for hunting or personal protection. I don’t care about anyone’s attachment to a 200+ year old amendment that has clearly outlived its usefulness. I don’t subscribe to the paranoid notion that our government will don jackboots for the pleasure of stomping us all if we’re not armed to the teeth. I don’t think you should be allowed to own a gun the same way I think you’re a bigot if you don’t support  marriage equality. For me, these things are incontrovertibly true, not matters where every opinion must be equally weighed and polite people can agree to disagree and move on to discussing the weather.

Today, I watched and read and cried. I despaired  – and prayed, in my secular way — for the families of those babies and school staff at Sandy Hook Elementary. I donated to the Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence and blew up my Facebook wall with a barrage of posts I know pissed off some of my loved ones. I reclaimed my voice, in honor of the dead in Newtown, and Aurora, and on the streets of DC. In honor of the wounded man on my front porch, and even of the dead 19 year old who has haunted me for the past nine years. It may not elevate the national discourse or comfort the bereft, but it’s something to hold on to on the next time I unexpectedly lose my breath.

“It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.” –Mahatma Ghandi

First, I made a holiday newsletter generator for single people. I think you will like it. My results are in the comments. Do it do it do it and post yours too. I had this idea last year, but was overcome with laziness before I completed it.

YOUR HOLIDAY NEWSLETTER GENERATOR

Second, please join me in fondly remembering Christmas Cards for Single People and Christmas Cards from Ex-Boyfriends. I was going to do new ones but you know, some things just don’t need improvement. Or I can’t figure out how to improve them because I used to be funnier than I am now. One of those.

Finally, I made real crafts, and I manipulated some friends into helping me.  As you can see, we wound up with quite an assortment of ornaments. (All of mine were boring and badly executed DC flags, similar to the second one below and coming soon to a tree near you if we know each other in real life.)