i think i may have overshot it at the library.

a letter to will.

Dear Brother,

You were right when you said Sunday night that it seemed like I’d been falling apart lately. I think I am. There’s been a lot of stuff going on in my head and I just don’t really get it. Or know how to handle it. Or have the ability to. You were right also when you said that I need to focus on me more and less on what others think of me. And I’m trying. Really, I am.

But there’s stuff going on I can’t talk to you about. Like that thickening? Yea, that thickening really bothers me. Still. And I know I went to my doctor and he said some mumbo jumbo I didn’t get but what I did understand is that he thinks it’s a result of my surgery. So I stepped it up and I got an appointment with my regular doctor in a week. Hopefully she can check it out. Because the doctor saying that if it still bothers me in 3 months we’ll schedule a mammogram? Yea, that’s not all that comforting. I’m 24 years old.

And then there’s the fact that while this is going on, that while I’ve been visibly showing signs of being upset, I feel like I’ve begun realizing the people that are there for me. And while the roommate can pretty often drive me up the mother freaking wall, and while half of the time (or more than half) I don’t listen to what she says, I’m well aware she cares enough to say it. It all takes me back to that time in college when college bff Lauren and I got in a big fight and we were still trying to be “friends” one night without having “the talk” while we were drinking. And we went into our favorite Saturday night stays open til after midnight bar and proceeded to argue. Leading me to leave and get Other Brother to pick me up. And nobody called to find out where I’d gone. Or how I’d gotten home. Or if I even had. Do you see where I’m going with that? That I apparently need people to check on me. It makes me feel loved. And yea, I get that. I get that I’m needy.

Let’s talk about your fiance’s bachelorette weekend. Brother, I LOVE your fiance. I do. She is wonderful. She is everything I ever wanted you to marry. But her friends? Her friends are brats. Her friends that for years left the two of you out. Her roommate that has been consistently rude to her. Her non-bridesmaid who I actually heard saying that she disliked me. I have to go spend hundreds of dollars and a weekend with them? I know you understand this. How do I know? Because you don’t like them either. And I know you keep saying that Fiance wants me there and she’d be upset if I didn’t come. But really, would she? Because they’re her friends. So I don’t think it would faze her in the least.

And the fact that Mom’s response to this is that if I don’t like these people at all something is obviously wrong with me? And that if these people that have affected me over the past few months don’t like me, again, something is wrong with me? That doesn’t help. Focus more on me, you say? This is a part of me. These are the things I deal with. This is my life.

LA Emily told me last night over and over again that you cannot be the supporting actress in your own life. Something clicked when she said it because I feel like I am. I have been out of college for 3 years. I have been working (basically) the same job. And I am making nothing and going nowhere and today I felt it. Today I had to take vacation days for going home to meet the cable guy. Am I kidding? No, no I am not. AND I AM SO OVER IT. So over it. Other Brother called as I walked out of the office tonight and guess what? Don’t think you can guess? Well, try. Oh yes. Yes I fucking started crying AGAIN. Worried about the drought conditions in South Carolina and Georgia? Have no fear, Kristin’s Floodworks are here.

Focus on me. Focus on me. Focus on me. Here’s what I think. I am so full of hope. Hope that this guy’s gonna be a nice guy, be everything he says he is. Hope that this friend is gonna be a good friend through thick and thin. Hope that this job is gonna get me somewhere, someday. Hope that this day is gonna be a good day.

I am over hope. Hope gets me nowhere but hurt. And disappointed. And I’m sick. And tired. I am so over it. So over.

I will not be the supporting actress in my own life, Brother. I don’t want to be passive. (I don’t care what my New Year’s resolution was.) Nor will I be quiet. I will not allow myself to have my ass kicked over and over and over again.

Now let’s talk about the good stuff. My love life. I know, it makes me laugh even saying it. About as much as it made me laugh when you jokingly asked if you needed to include “And Guest” on mine and Other Brother’s invites. Here’s what I’m thinking. I know, I know, I don’t have a lot of dating experience. I mean, I’ve been on dates, yea. But experience? Pssh. It’s funny, though, because I remember when I started college, you were a big senior there and I was about to go into my freshman year and Mom told me that you had expressed to her how you really wished I’d had a boyfriend in high school so that I knew what I was getting myself into in college. I think you were scared maybe I’d do something stupid. I don’t think you ever realized that that lack of a boyfriend compounded by you and Other Brother being everywhere I was on campus made me terrified of guys. Absolutely terrified. I didn’t want to date them. I didn’t want to hurt them. I didn’t want to hurt myself.

The funny thing? This kind of goes hand in hand with something the roommate and I were talking about tonight. I’d run into a guy in the lobby today that I knew. We were standing there talking and apparently he took something I said and interpreted into that I was hitting on him. Um, he so does not know me. That is obvious. Because do I hit on people? I think not. Aside from McHottie. Sometimes. Shhh. And have I mentioned this guy was old? And bald? And married? (And apparently full of himself?) Um, so not hitting on him. Not even close. But the point is, I am not a go-getter. I am, here, the supporting actress. I don’t float around. Or sleep around. Or sleep at all, if we’re being really honest. Brother and sister here, you know. So I don’t get it. I don’t “get” people.

Last night I helped fill Lake Hartwell with a little more water as LA Emily told that I should procure the book “Why Men Love Bitches.” I didn’t quite tell her I’m having a hard enough time getting through “Be Honest – You’re Not That Into Him Either” but, I digress. Is it that much to ask that I want a nice, normal guy who loves his family and his friends and God and his work and me? Um, really? That much? Because I know he exists. How do I know? Because there’s you.

At lunch today a coworker told me that I am looking too hard for the “normal” guy. The outdoorsy, good time boy. I mean I don’t think it’s really as simple as that. But it scares me to think that He is not going to be anything like what I think, right now, I want. But then again she also told me I totally go for the wrong guys. And that is why I am where I am now. How crazy is it that as careful as I am with guys, as infrequently as I have true crushes, that statement is as true as it is? That I can go so wrong?

So yea, I’m falling apart. All around me anvils are dropping and that’s upsetting. (And painful, as you can imagine.) But I’m getting it together. Because tonight? Tonight I was driving home from a meeting listening to Britney (shut it and don’t judge) and this one song came on and I was stuck due to a train and I just started jiving. Arms waving, legs kicking. When my guy best friend in Asheville called and I told him this he may or may not have called me crazy but, damn. It felt good. And if I have to do that every day for the rest of this year, I will. I will dance at every stop light if I have to and sometimes in between. And I will smile at the woman next to me that’s looking over at me like I’m crazy. Because I will get out of this. And I will learn from it. And I will shine. And I believe that because I know you believe it too.

And Brother? I love you. Thanks for listening.

Love,

me

happiness is a destination that's hard to find. may take some time.

“It scares me. But then I get this feeling, simple but exalted: He’s just like me, just with different details.”

Melissa Bank, The Wonder Spot.

I was sitting there at Harper’s last night, picking at our appetizer, listening to 2 of my close girl friends talk about life and work and frustrations and their relationships. They asked me how my week had been and I went through it. Drinks with an old friend on Monday night, drinks with a boy from high school Tuesday night, a phone call just before I left to meet them for supper from Monday night boy asking me to dinner tonight (Thursday).

“And what’s going on?” they asked me, looking curiously at my face. They have known my every move over the past few months and so they were expectant. They know almost every detail of me.

“It just isn’t there,” I told them. “With either of them, with anyone, it just isn’t there. I mean I keep trying and I’ll keep trying. But that doesn’t make it any easier. The fact that I have a bar I’ve set and I know [he] exists and I’ll wait around til it’s the right time and I’ll give it a whirl with others in the meantime. I mean, that’s all I can do, anyway.”

I am waiting on time.

“I wish we could keep on forgetting to remember ourselves.”

Julie Buxbaum, The Opposite of Love.

Towards the end of dinner the mood changed as one of the girls looked to me and said, “Kristin, I want to ask your opinion.” She started telling me how she had told the other girl on their drive over from their side of town what her thoughts were on that girl’s relationship and the way her boyfriend treats her and what she interprets as to his intentions. 2.5 years into a relationship. He is 33, she 26. He makes promises and doesn’t keep them. He yells at her. He hangs out with her 1-2 nights a week. He is secretive and defensive and rarely invites her out with his friends if even ever. He is rotten but he keeps her. He says he loves her. He says he needs time.

Time.

Who am I to offer advice? Who am I to say “leave him” or “give him an ultimatum”? Who am I to know or to understand or to be able to put myself in her shoes?

Who am I to be anything different? And who am I to not acknowledge that like all females, I understand what it’s like to be glued?

“It wasn’t torpor that kept her – she was often restless to the point of irritability. She simply liked to feel that she was prevented from leaving, that she was needed.”

Ian McEwan, Atonement.

deep shit.

Sometimes I start writing and I think no, no one wants to read that. I mean, I don’t want to read that. I don’t want to be reminded of when and why I was frustrated. When I let that get the better of myself. When I failed me by constantly tripping (in the metaphorical sense).

Jill Davis wrote in the book Ask Again Later that “when pressed to tell people how I got myself into my current nepotism-gone-bad situation, I like to describe it as a mini-breakdown. The prefix makes all the difference. It makes it sound more like a vacation than a condition best treated with medication and art therapy.”

What Davis inferred is that these events are slight. What is left to interpret is that these slight events might also be frequent. And what is yet indeterminable is that there might be a potency dissolved.

I would describe what I have been feeling these past few months as something very different from a breakdown of any sort. And yet, I would like to encourage that something potent can arise from my own thought processes.

I like to be in control, but yet I don’t. In a way, I think it’s more that I like to be anticipatory. As in, I like to walk into my Monday morning staff meeting, blinded by the herd, yet well aware of what the bossman is going to say, what he will ask me about. What my needs are for the coming days. When things go awry in that conference room with any member of my department I think it should be simple to reconvene, readdress. When things go awry elsewhere, I think that should be the case too. In relationships. In friendships. With family.

Last night I sat in the house of a friend after consuming a supper that I think even the word divine would undermine. I told her of the mini (there’s that word again) epiphany I’d had on the 30 minute drive over where I wondered if I could just eradicate all those things (people) in my life that have caused me either recent stress or frustration – have found their way to consume my thoughts in some way that makes me feel a loss of control – and what it would feel like. As if I could put them all into one Outlook file and I could get an assistant with a name like Louise from St. Louis and she could magically make them disappear so that I would never have to see them again. What would that be like, I wonder? Not having to anticipate, or to wait, or to wonder, or to hope? How would that feel?

In Stephanie Klein’s memoir Straight Up and Dirty, exposing everything behind the curtain of divorce and the [dating] years that followed for her, she wrote, “I still love to love my friends, but I punctuate those moments with solitude.”

I imagine sometimes that solitude would be really wonderful if you had nothing to fill your mind during that time. The staring into space – blank space – would be kind of grandiose. Like sleeping, dreamlessly, through the night. There’s solitude that’s alone time on the couch on a Friday night with Splendor in the Grass playing, a box of tissues to erase any Warren Beaty/Natalie Wood induced tears, and perhaps a new bottle of OPI on the table for the purpose of the aforementioned art therapy. Of course, an open bottle of wine goes without saying.

And then there’s solitude that’s filled with a little hoping. A little curiosity. A little wonder. And then maybe some more waiting. For time to speed up.

One of my best friends just had a baby. Another had to take the red eye from LA, after having only been back there about 36 hours after returning from her Christmas visit home, to arrive at her father’s hospital room and to hold her family’s hand as he went through open heart surgery. A third and a forth wrote me off in some form, to some degree, on what they would, I imagine, argue being a direct result of some unlikable aspect of my character. A fifth hurt me beyond words through directness and yet I was left to cope headstrong. A sixth first made me laugh, then made me smile uncontrollably, then had me wait, and then left me to doubt.

I understand that the transition of friendships over time is the process of being. That change is a part of life. That we grow and we become something so far from what we were in our twenties and our thirties and what not. That new people and different places shape us. But have you ever felt a big gaping hole in your heart because of it?

currently on repeat.

I know it’s Friday. And I’m tired. And I’ve misplaced my dignity (yet again). But do you ever have those things you can’t get out of your head? Like that one really good joke that’s the only one you can remember and it’s the one you always tell. Or the book that no matter what you read, is the one you base every decision off of because you are Becky Bloomwood. Or that guy you crave, that haunts you. The one that prevents you from dating anyone else because they just don’t compare.

Or maybe the song you can’t get out of your head.

This is how it seems to me
Life is only therapy
Real expensive and no guarantees
So I lie here on the couch
With my heart hanging out
Frozen solid with fear,
Like a rock in the ground
Whoa, but you move me
You give me courage I didn’t know I had
And you move me
And I can’t go with you and stay where I am
So you move me
This is how love was to me
I could look and not see
Going through the emotions,
Not knowing what they mean
And it scares me so much
That i just wouldn’t budge
I might have stayed there forever
If not for your touch
Whoa, but you move me
Out of myself and into the fire
And you move
Now I’m burning with love and with hope and desire
How you move me
You go whistlin’ in the dark
Making light of this, making light of this
And I follow with my heart, laughing all the way
Whoa cause you move me
You give me dancing and you make me sing
You move me
Now I’m taking delight in every little thing
How you move me
Whoa you move me
Whoa
(garth brooks)

check yourself.

I am watching Oprah right now. Christina Applegate is the guest of honor. Breast Cancer is the theme. My mom is standing in the den folding laundry while Molly, our 2 year old chocolate lab, barks at her side.

At the commercial, Mom looked at me.

“I was watching Oprah 6 years ago,” she said. ”And this girl was talking about her cancer. She described it as ‘a thickening’.”

“And I thought,” she continued, “Oh shoot.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks.

“You started this,” she said. Referring to the tears.

A few hours before, when the credits started rolling on Nights in Rodanthe, Mom had looked at me (with those tears dancing lines down her cheeks) and said, “What is wrong with you!??”

I’m going to quit reading these Nicholas Sparks books before I see the movies. Because 1. I get blamed for knowing the depressing ending and not warning people ahead of time and 2. they always do a disservice to the book.

UPDATE: They just showed a clip of the woman Mom saw in 2002, before she was diagnosed. “It’s been 6 years,” the woman said. Her cancer has since spread to her lungs and her brain.

the one where i might sound whiney.

“You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip.” J.M. Barrie, rectorial address, May 3, 1922.

Last night, after I had been to the gym, and after I had gone to Publix for bananas and sushi and a thing of black bean & rice soup, and after I had gone to the library to return what was due, my mind started whirling. Lately, I’ve been finding that it goes everywhere and nowhere at the same time. That my face is solemn but my mind is oftentimes spinning with thoughts and I don’t know where to land. Like doing a sit spin on the ice, never knowing if I’m going to fall on my arse or pull myself back up. That’s where I’ve been.

Sunday night, Mr. Perfect got in my car and we drove out to the tennis courts. We were out there playing, a big group of us. And he said something to me. I don’t remember what it was or what it was about or why. “Have you ever seen Juno?” I asked him. “No,” he said, holding his racquet in hand and looking over at me. “Well, remind me sometime. You need to watch it. Because I think what I just did was give you the stink eye,” I told him. “I call it the evil eye,” he said.

“You’ll forgive me, won’t you?” He asked me a moment later as I walked onto the court next to him. Whatever it was, it wasn’t serious. “Someday,” I told him.

As I pulled away from the drop box outside of the library branch last night, the one Mr. Perfect had told me to go to because it was closer to my house than the one I’d gone to last week, I thought about him in comparison to Lucas in Names My Sisters Call Me. Because, God, there was something just incredible about Lucas.

“What I don’t undersand is when your decision to keep things from me became my decision to break up with you?”
Megan Crane, Names my sisters call me.

When she hurt him he wasn’t going to leave her. He wasn’t going to walk away and maybe if, one day, she figured out what she wanted and he was still single and she was still single, they’d end up together. He wasn’t going to go confront the ex-boyfriend that was still throwing her off-kilter and tell him to stay away nor was he going to feign surprise that seeing your ex throws you off kilter. God, he was real. Maybe just a little surreal.

He never walked away. Or turned his back. He carried her. (Literally.) And he listened to her. And he asked her what she wanted.

This morning I got out of bed at 5:45. I turned on the light and got dressed in the clothes I’d laid out on top of my running shoes on the floor. I walked to the refrigerator and got my water out. I left the house and I drove to where Mere is house sitting. I went to the back, to the room above the garage where their gym and 3 flat screen tvs are, and I worked out, by myself. And back home, after I’d taken the dog out and shed my sweaty clothes, and after I’d restarted the dryer with the clothes from the night before that were still damp and checked my email from my laptop, I got in the shower. Somewhere in the process, in my own monotony, in the silence for which was only interrupted by a few grunts from the elliptical and a “hey toddy” or two or ten to the dog, I found myself thinking, riveted by my own thoughts. Thoughts I’m sure many have had. Thoughts that I guarantee are so regular it’s a wonder they stayed with me so long.

Do we ever really meet “the one”? And what if we miss them? I was reading The Opposite of Love not too long ago and there was a part in which the narrator was speaking to a group of women at an old folk’s home/retirement center and they were saying, many of them, that they’d never met their “one.” No, their husbands hadn’t been it. And one was, in fact, still waiting. Another more prolific member [of the book club of which these women within the book made up] told them that she hadn’t realized her husband was it until after the hard times and after the good times. And after the children and the grandchildren. After old age had eroded them and she could look back and say, with a sigh, “We survived.”

What if we’re too scared to ever take that leap, to ever try and see – is he the one? What if our one is busy trying to make someone else his or himself theirs? And though he knows us and he sees us and he thinks of us, he’s not giving up on that someone else just yet.

What if God’s plan just leaves me, sitting around waiting for a Lucas? Sitting around waiting for someone to take a chance on me.

getting somewhere.

Yesterday morning I sat at lunch with my parents at the club. The sun was out and Mom was talking to some friends as the waiter came around with the bottle of wine Dad ordered. When he got to me, I declined.

We rose to fix our salad. Mine of lettuce, cheese, bacon, and egg with a little bit of vinaigrette. The conversation flowed with my parents and my dad’s best friend and his wife, who had joined us. Next it was time to fix our plates for a main course.

I got a slice of meat, rare. And there were some scrambled eggs. I got them in there for the protein. Then the green beans which looked delish. And lastly, a little bit of some chicken and a little grouper. I avoided the carbs. The grits, the potatoes, the bread. The things Mom didn’t really point out to me as she served herself in line before me.

When it was time for dessert I remained seated. “You’re not going to get any?” I was asked. “No.” When Mom came back to the table with her key lime pie she looked at me, “You don’t want any?” “No,” I told her. “You told me no sweets.”

“Well will you go get me something chocolate so that I can have a little bit of each?” She asked me.

“No.”

As we were leaving someone whispered into my ear. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you look thin.” “Thanks,” I told him.

“Are you coming over?” Mom asked me. “No.”

When I left I went and ran errands. I went to the sports store to get overgrips for my tennis racquets. I went and bought a couple of cds. When I got back to my house I changed clothes and headed to the gym.

There were just a few people in there. Me, on the stair stepper, a guy on an elliptical, someone working the front desk, and a trainer with a client by the free weights. I did the stair stepper the way the trainer I met with Saturday morning would have been proud of me for. Then I sat on a bike to ride while reading Names My Sisters Call Me, which I would finish later in the evening.

When the trainer finished with the girl, then at the weight machines, and went to walk downstairs with her, he tapped me on the shoulder as he went by me. “You on weekend duty now?” He looked at me as he spoke, turning his head as he walked. “Trying for every day duty,” I replied.

In my peripheral vision I watched as he headed back upstairs a couple of minutes later, coming past me and walking behind the counter to fix a smoothie. I could smell the aroma of fruits as it punctuated the room.

As he walked by me again, he tapped me on the shoulder once more. “You really come here every day?” His lips turned upwards as he asked. “I’m trying to, yea. I’m on a mission.” A mission, at the moment, involving sweat emissions down my face. “Well you look good,” he told me.

And suddenly I felt good, too.

the perfect smile: only show your top 8 teeth.

Last night I lay in bed silently professing my love for Michael Phelps. As he finished his 400 individual medly, as he stretched in my background, I finished reading Straight Up and Dirty.

I read a part in the book that seemed eerily familiar to me.

“Are you, are you happy?”

“I am today,” she said.

Maybe that’s what really mattered? Living in the now, and all that crap about the past being over? The future hasn’t happened, and today is forever? These aren’t the kinds of statements that belonged beside question marks. (stephanie klein)

I listened, at the same time, as they spoke of Phelps on television. Of his competitiveness. Of not only his body type, digitally replicating his arms and his legs and showing each and every one of his measurements, but of his drive. His discipline. His knowing of his own self. When he needs to rest. What he needs to eat. How he should care for him.

I like to think he’s humble. And maybe a little overwhelmed too. “A normal bloke from a different planet,” is what they’re saying about him. I like to think that he is an example of knowing what makes you happy and doing it. And becoming the very best.

My therapist told me I need to learn to love myself. It sounds easy enough, but really, how do you just wake up one day and learn that? It feels like something you should just do involuntarily, like swallowing or blinking, but now I have to work on it. It feels so forced. I mean, I know I went to a good school, and people tell me I’m smart and creative, but I don’t KNOW that. I don’t know how to make myself feel that. (stephanie klein)

When my mom asked me if I was happy, it’s easy to come up with an expanation as to why not. Why I’m allowed to not be happy. Why it would be understandable to the outside.

I have never beat the odds. Never done something remarkable. I have never been the best at anything. And I am not.. a survivor. The truth is.. I feel unaccomplished. I feel like sometimes I am a disappointment to myself. Like while I know I went to a good school and I got my degree, not only do I often feel like I’m doing little with it, I feel like I didn’t learn enough from it. I feel, sometimes, very much like a failure.

I was on a mission. I had to learn to comfort myself, to see what others saw in me and believe it. I needed to discover what the hell made me happy.. Mission impossible.

When did figuring out what makes you happy become work? How had I let myself get to this point, where I had to learn me..? It was embarrassing. In my college psychology class, I had studied theories of adult development and learned that our twenties are for experimenting, exploring different jobs, and discovering what fulfills us. My professor warned against graduate school, asserting, “You’re not fully formed yet. You don’t know if it’s what you really want to do with your life because you haven’t tried enough things.” Oh, no, not me..” And if you rush into something you’re unsure about, you might awake midlife with a crisis on your hands,” he had lectured it. Hi. Try waking up a whole lot sooner with a pre-thirty predicament worm dangling from your early bird mouth. (stephanie klein)

I’ve signed up for classes. (I have no idea how I’m paying for them.) I’m trying to expand my reading list and read with a fury. (I’m reverting to college days spent on the bike at the gym, book in hand.) I’m trying to figure out what I can do, for the moment, for me.

Before I’d tucked myself in last night, under the watchful eye of Phelps, I had gone through my mail and found a church bulletin I hadn’t read yet. On the front was a note from our senior minister.

I want to share with you some thoughts about where true happiness can be found. According to Robert Spain in his book, How to Stay Alive as Long as You Live, there are at least four ways to find genuine happiness.

1) Discover the seeds of happiness within you. There is nothing external that will bring you happiness. There are surface joys – a touchdown by your favorite team or a gift from a friend, but these are surface joys. Happiness does not come from anything that happens to us, it is within us – inner peace, contentment, love. We need to discover those seeds of happiness within us.

2) Germinate the seed of happiness through purposeful living. Living without purpose is like playing golf without a green or hole. Seeds of happiness are germinated through purposeful living. What is you rpurpose? Do you have a mission? Where are you going? What gives you meaning? The seeds within you are waiting for an answer.

3) Nurture the seeds of happiness by giving yourself to others. There is no happiness for those who live only for themselves. Real living comes as we give ourselves away. Giving does not have to be extraordinary: it can be working with a worthy cause, performing a needed service, or just helping another person. True happiness comes from the knowledge that we are of some worth to the world.

4) Build a relationship with God. The climax to happiness is a life centered in God. Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks of this water, will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water I will give them will never be thirsty.” Happiness comes only when life is immersed in a right relationship with God. In Jesus Christ we can live abundantly and that is happiness at its best.

things a man shouldn't say.

Friday night I believed I had successfully avoided Cute Boy and his desire to “meet up” and have a “repeat of last time.” I’d been at the lake all day at El Boss’ house and then gone with McHottie and wife and precious baby boy to a friend of ours’ house on the other side of the lake to hang out for a short while. I’d passed the “time you need to call if you’re making plans.” And I thought this very thought as I drove the hour drive from the lake back into town.

I called my originally scheduled dinner plans and we met up for sushi. “This guy had wanted to meet up tonight; he’s in town for business,” I told her. “But I just don’t like him. I mean, he’s nice enough. But no. And let me tell you the thing about him that really cinches it. Every time we pick somewhere to go eat, he rubs his belly and tells me he’s got to watch his figure.”

Case in point #1: [We're in the car. I'm driving because his is packed with stuff as he is headed out to his farm afterwards.]

Cute Boy: “You pick where we go. I picked last time.” It was a bbq place, btw.

Me: “Okay! You want a hamburger?” All boys like hamburgers. EVERYONE likes hamburgers.

Cute Boy: “Come on! I’ve got to watch my figure..” AND HE WAS SERIOUS.

After finishing up our sushi at Friday’s dinner, the originally scheduled dinner friend and I headed to another bar/restaurant to have one more drink before we called it a night. We walked into the rooftop bar, spent too much time getting one drink a piece, and then joined the crowd in staring up at one of the multitude of tvs hanging up, showing the opening ceremonies. “We need to find a seat,” my friend told me, after a short while. I began looking around.

In the midst of my seat searching to tv watching neck exercises, I heard a stool being pulled out and almost tossed, ever so slightly, my way. Someone’s offering me a seat at their table, I thought to myself, before realizing it was none other than the Brett Favre look-alike, Cute Boy.

I think this is when the word flustered comes into play. But I mean, there they were. Two available stools in the middle of this crowd. So we sat.

Shortly thereafter a bartender showed up to ask if we wanted drinks. Cute Boy ordered some kind of light liquor concoction. “What’s wrong with your beer?” I asked, pointing at his full glass, while sipping from my own.

“Gotta watch my figure,” he told me, hand to belly. NO LIE.

It was shortly thereafter that we left.

Last night, as I was reading from Straight Up and Dirty by Stephanie Klein, a book that had me laughing out loud at both the doctor’s office and the gym yesterday, I found myself laughing again.

He ordered his burger well done, which meant he was terrified of death. Why else would you char a perfectly good piece of cow? After submerging the patty in a swamp of Dijon mustard, he removed the bun, placing it on his pristine bread plate. Would he butter it first? I’m afraid not. His bread plate was his discard station, housing all the unwanted food objects from his main dinner plate. This made me think of a child. “Mommy, eww. Take it.” A child would whine, unable to eat his dinner if a pickle touched his burger. Christian had pickle issues and then some.

“What are you doing?” I asked in a voice that definitely conveyed disgust.

“Dahling, carbs are the enemy.” No, I thought, you, my friend, are the enemy, your own worst enemy. He was a thin man with a thin frame, and he wouldn’t touch a carb. I imagined a life with him where he’d eventually refuse to dine out and insist on eating chicken from a can. He then began to cut his burger into manageable bites, all at once, like a mother cutting her child’s lamb. He was such a Mary.

This is where I need to stop. If you’re a man watching your weight, counting those carbs, do it off peak, please. While dining with a lady, if you happen to eat your burger without the bun, anticipate “visions.” The visions flashing before your date’s eyes are not of pectorals or biceps. Here’s what she sees: you double-knotting laces, you racing to the bathroom after sex to clean, you holding surprise inspections of your children’s sock drawers. All that from a missing bun? Oh yes, because chances are a man who kiboshes the carbs is also quite inept in the bedroom. He might as well just order the fruit plate for dessert.