No Babies

Sometimes I'm not the one sending drunk text messages.

Him: When I'm 30 will you have my kid?
Me: What?
Me: No!
Him: Why not?
Me: Because I'll be 24?
Him: So?
Me: And I probably won't want kids then...

But really, this guy would actually probably be down with the Sunday-Dinner-Daddy situation.

A different conversation:

Him: Are you pregnant?
Me: No.
Him: Are you sure?
Me: Yes.
Him: You're kind of religious, right?
Me: Not really...
Him: Well if you were pregnant...
Me: Dude, I'm 20...

I'm not going to write out the rest of that conversation. 1) My mom would cry. 2) I have no reason to believe that I am, or soon will be with child.

Dudes are so weird sometimes.

Also, baby related - my sister's due date was this paste Monday. The baby is still in her belly. And I spent last Wednesday with my 6 year old nephew, who is great, but I am so down with not having one of those for a very long time.

Airport Departure: Part 3

At four o'clock in the morning the last thing I want anyone to do is talk to me, let alone have anyone "joke" with me. No, absolutely not. I haven't eaten anything, I didn't get a full nights sleep, and it sure as hell was not in my bed. I swear, if someone so much as looks at me the wrong way this morning, I am going to punch them in the face.

(I don't actually ever punch anyone, but I say that a lot. It's cathartic.)

I don't hate this person from Richmond, but I would never have chosen to travel with them on purpose. Last night he went on about how I look for dramatic situations to place myself in as to keep myself amused. This is not true. This shit happens. For example, the absurdity of the past twenty-four hours. He misinterpreted me from over a year ago, I hate it when people claim to "hate drama." No one "hates drama" because their lives would be fucking boring if there were no shred of drama in it.

Anyway, I am fully capable of reflecting on my life all by myself and last night's psychoanalysis was unwelcome, but mostly because of the person it was coming from. I almost wish I had cared enough to return the favor.

Today's security line was nonexistent. We got here over an hour ahead of time, and there was no line. There was not a single person ahead of us. Do you understand? I waited in a line yesterday that was like a mile long, and today, NOTHING. At least I still have internet access and can vent uninterrupted without anyone telling me to feel better. Everyone needs to vent, and yeah, I've vented a lot, but would too in my situation, or want to, or maybe not. Maybe you're a better person than I am. Maybe. I doubt it though. If you had spent twelve hours in an airport yesterday without the promise of going anywhere, you would probably hate everyone within sight too.

In the mean time, this is kind of making me feel better.



My flight leaves in less than an hour. I will be home, to my empty fridge and overflowing recycling in about six hours!

Airport Departure: Part 2

After waiting a few more hours, a friend (frenemy? acquaintance? we are incapable of being nice to each other) from Richmond showed up. And guess what?! He was stuck too! Yay!

Then. THEN! A friend (ex-ish) showed up from DC. I haven't spoken to him for a couple of months. Or, I should say, he hasn't spoken to me because he's been in Mexico, or Austin - his family lives here, but they are from Mexico, and he's been with them for various reasons and kind of disappeared. The last I had heard was a letter, a note really, about how he was sorry, but had stuff going on, here is your Magnetic Fields ticket. So, seeing him was completely unexpected.

Everyone was flying out of Austin, to Atlanta, out of my gate. Including Louis C.K. He was shorter than I had though he would be, but cuter, too.

I made more calls, caught up with my sisters, and boy 3. And then after being told that there were no more flights leaving for Atlanta until tomorrow morning my Richmond Friend told me he was getting a room at a nearby hotel and that if I didn't want to stay at the airport I could crash there. Whew!

Unfortunately, my dad called...again. And then my mom. Both felt the need to berate me for "staying with a stranger," I'm not sure where this idea came from, but I was tired of dealing with them and so I hung up. They have called since and left messages that I have not and probably won't listen to. To them I will be perpetually twelve years old.

The hotel had a "happy hour" with free chips, dip, veggies and beer. It was everything you needed to throw a shitty party, but it was free and I was hungry. And after making my roomie watch Gossip Girl we went to Denny's. Denny's. That family restaurant that I associate with drunk assholes in the old part of Woodbridge off Route 1. Well, they have one here, and it was just as shitty, but they had milkshakes so I was fine.

Now, I have a bed, and a wake-up call for 3:45 am. Hopefully, I'll be at home by noon tomorrow. I will be home, to my apartment in twelve hours! TWELVE HOURS! I love Austin, but I love my bed more. Goodnight!

P.S. Just got a text from my dad: "R u safe call me"

P.P.S "Call me when you get this message:

P.P.P.S "Where r u and who r u with?"

Maybe I'm not twelve, maybe sixteen and staying out past curfew.

Shitty People

I am decluttering the clusterfuck that is my life. This mostly includes reevaluating relationships that I have, thought I had, and/or ended.

You may recall a certain Couch and Mr. Potato-head. Couch has decided recently to be an asshole, make new friends and abandon old ones, in short he is turning into one of those party people. I find it pathetic, and he doesn't like feeling judged by me. Which is fine, no one likes to be judged by their friends, but if someone is truly a friend, I expect them to be, in the words of Lester Bangs, "honest and unmerciful." (Yes, I just made an Almost Famous reference, and yes, I am uncool.) So, I haven't seen him in a couple weeks, so I guess he's hanging out with his new friends in new, trendy places. I am uncool, so I will be staying at the old places with the townies and regulars who are all as uncool as I am.

Mr. Potato-head. Oh, Mr. Potato-head. He has done this really obnoxious thing over the past few months where, if he sees me, or hears about me being somewhere, he feels the need to text me. I ignored it for quite some time. And then when he almost ran me over a few weeks ago, I started entertaining him by responding. He texted me in what I can only assume was a drunken state and acknowledged this fact. He did not apologize for it, just acknowledged it, which is to be expected from him as he doesn't not properly apologize for anything.

I crashed a party at Mr. Potato-head's house on Friday. I didn't think he'd be there, and he wasn't because he spends about as much time out of Richmond as I do. But seeing as his all of his roommates saw me, he of course mentioned it on Saturday. Please note, that while I find situations like this entertaining, I typically avoid them as to avoid seeming spiteful. I am not spiteful, but a party is a party and no one really gives a shit who's there after the cops show up.

Anyway, he's been trying to convince me to see him for awhile now, and I keep refusing. Until Saturday evening. I woke up from a four hour nap, hungry, and with a body that was punishing me for combining-things-that-ought-not-to-be-combined, and I texted him, and told him that he could meet me at Chipotle in ten minutes or Sunday morning for breakfast. He agreed to breakfast at 10:30 am.

I suppose I was overwhelmed with the Christmas Spirit, or some other bullshit, but I was feeling nice.

I arrived at 10:40 am. And after a series of text messages where Mr. Potato-head told me that I was being unreasonable and stubborn, I ate, and left and he did not come. Because, he had yoga, and friends in town, and wasn't at home, and had to run by his house and drop off a key, and if I could wait until one, he could meet me, and traffic is bad anyway, and he wanted me to change my plans to suite his schedule. I probably would have met him later, had I not had plans. But I like having plans, though I am not the most punctual person, this is something I am constantly working on, but if I don't have plans I am always willing to make plans. Because I am awesome and uncool and OCD and slightly paranoid.

So, he doesn't show. I should have known. But I think he gets it now. I think he finally understands that I think he's an asshole, and that I feel completely vindicated in saying so after each time he has failed at redeeming himself.

And I'm not stubborn or stiff, I'm merely decisive and tired of people treating me badly. And can maintain my dignity while eating breakfast alone at a table for two in a full cafe. Breakfast was delicious, by the way. And I had a boy who let an entire bottle of Dr. Pepper go flat for me because he listens to me and takes note of the small things that make me happy, in DC. There were also Wes Anderson films and making fun of GW girls. And what started out as a shitty Sunday turned into a Funday with someone who treats me very, very well.

Good riddance to shitty people. One day, when I am president of the world, I will have a special place for them, in Southern California. And Minnesota.

Mr. Potato-head

So, this summer has been fun…ish. Totally. Funish. So fun that I am spending a Thursday night in my room with a flat bottle of wine and Florence and the Machine. I have turned my phone off and closed all the doors and have decided to address two of the male species. First, Mr. Potato-head and second, Gray.

Dear Mr. Potato-head,
As a rule I am usually a fairly easy person to get on with , given that whoever the other person is willing to deal with all my opinions. They usually are, but you, you have this thing where you like to address all of them and then tell me why, in your opinion, they aren’t valid. Most people take them with a grain of salt and don’t think any more of them.
It is my ability to be incredibly direct and honest to a fault that allows people to either love me or love to hate me. You, supposedly found yourself in the former category. I like these things about myself and find that in my being direct I don’t feel the need to deal with others’ inability to be direct. You are one of those people. As you may have noticed I have not talked to you for the past two weeks.
It is your complete dishonesty and indirectness that allows me to write you off without feeling the least bit sorry. Now, now, I have been more than accommodating over the past year in listening to what you had to say for yourself, I gave you who knows how many chances to redeem yourself, and you failed miserably. What’s more, is that you failed in being a friend. I may have wanted you as a significant other at one point, but that time came and went quite some time ago. Why you could not find it in yourself to be a friend is beyond me as I went out of my way to be yours.
Lying. It is not something that I choose to have as part of my life. Now, given I have lied before, to my parents. But you and everyone else for that matter will find that lying is not something that I do to anyone I know well or care about. I cared about you, and to a certain extent I trusted you, and you had to go shit all over it. You lied about petty, little things, that should not have mattered. Who you were with, where you were, etc. I was not your girlfriend, I didn’t have ulterior motives. I am curious by nature and don’t find it intrusive when I ask my friends what they’re doing. If anything I’m hoping that whatever they are doing is more exciting than what I’m doing and that they’ll invite me to join them. If you were say, driving to Roanoke to fuck your ex that isn’t my concern, but don’t claim to be hanging out in Richmond. Small things have a way of floating to the surface.
The majority of my close relations have encouraged me to do this for a long time. Some though have excused YOUR behavior, saying that it’s only because you’re so young. That’s correct, they wrote you off because you were so young, and for the most part they regard me as fairly precocious with my heart at the root of all that I do. You took advantage of that. And it is for that, that I am choosing to not include you as a significant part of my life.
Unsurprisingly enough, you have not offered an apology. Though I did ignore your calls and gchat inquiries. I wasn’t away, I didn’t have my phone turned off, I choose to ignore you completely, because I am tired of putting too much effort in to relationships, let alone platonic ones, where the other person simply doesn’t give a damn. And despite your words, yours actions have always spoken louder.


-ap

Duh.

Yesterday I got a call from an editor apologizing for all the confusion lately and with permission for first dibs on events that need to be covered in the near future. Of course, this was after I sent an email and refused to deal with a certain level of unprofessional behavior.

This person and I are also fairly good friends and we bicker like your grandparents. My sister, April, has been encouraging me to write them off for months and last night when I told her the good news she had an epiphany.

"Amanda, you're going to make it...."

"I know."

"You're ruthless..."

"I know."

I'm not blogging about you...

The past few days have been spent crying and eating chocolate pastries. Pathetic, but delicious.

Last night I got home from work and was naturally very hungry. I thought that I had and Amy's frozen something in my freezer, but I was wrong, so I ordered pizza. Not just any pizza, my favorite pizza. Greek pizza WITHOUT black olives from Bottom's Up. I like black olives, just not on pizza - I have a thing about combining different textures. They told me it would be about thirty minutes and asked if I could meet the driver outside as they were very busy. I agreed, and when he arrived I quickly signed the receipt and went up to my room. Upon opening the pizza I started crying, they had included black olives. This really is nothing to cry about, and I considered picking all the olives off, but... have you ever tried picking olives off anything? It's difficult. So, I pulled myself together and called them back and asked if something could be done. I felt bad about this, but I had had such an awful day, and wanted what I wanted. The manager said he would have another pizza sent over and that it would arrive in about thirty minutes. I suppose I didn't say anything because he asked, "Ma'am, are you there? Is thirty minutes okay?" Yeah. "Are you okay?" I started crying again. I mean it really is ridiculous, right? I tried telling him that I was fine, but he didn't believe me, obviously I wasn't, so he offered to throw in a six pack, which would have been lovely if I didn't live in the dorms, so when I said no, he insisted that something else could be done. So, I got a brownie sundae. Score! The pizza man heard me cry, on the phone. He heard me explain what an awful day I had, and was genuinely interested. It's easy to fall into thinking that people really don't care about others, but then someone like Ricky manages to changes that and show some humanity.

Now, I would appreciate it if someone would explain to me why boys are so awful, always trying to do the practical or logical thing. It seems to me that feelings have never allowed me to do anything practical or logical. Though I have learned that more is accomplished if I keep my mouth shut than go off. And I think that boys in general are fairly lucky that I am not the hitting kind of girl.

Today was not any different than the past couple of days, and this whole "friends" thing is silly. There comes a point where being friends, at least proper friends isn't possible. This becomes particularly difficult if two people are stubborn. I am a feeling person, and even if I don't like my feelings, I deal and they either go away or they don't.

I have been waiting for these ones to go away, they haven't. I'm pissed.

But at least when I'm pissed I can come home to FRESH FLOWERS!

Yesterday when I got back from class, Jessica had left a small bouquet of Spider Chrysanthemums and a note. Have I mentioned that I have the best roommate ever? Because I do. I don't think she realizes how happy that made me yesterday.
And today after an outing that was less than stellar I came in and checked my mailbox and in it was a card from my daddy and a package notice. I went to the housing office to pick up my package. A large, green, ProFlowers box. Inside were a dozen, long stem, red roses, for me.


I seem to have some pretty good friends, they make up for all the boys I know needing man lessons.

Thanks guys, I love you.