Category: Call Me Crazy
Wherein I share my particular psychoses. Mostly food stuff, but also other crazies.
Protected: I Was Following the Pack, All Swallowed in Their Coats
Protected: July Patron-Only Post
Protected: April Patron-Only Post
Protected: September Patron-Only Post
Protected: What a Difference a Year Makes
The End of Retrobruxist Fridays
It’s been a terrible day. In fact, it’s been a terrible week.
So I did what anyone would do: I googled ‘Amy Scott mugshots’ and reveled for a moment in the notion that, as bad as shit is right now, at least I’m not one of those Amy Scotts.
I started Retrobruxist Friday a year ago, and now I’m done. This was fun, but I don’t think I have more than one good post per week in the archives, so.
This last round is all good ones though:
Three years ago, I wrote a letter to my grandma, one heck of a woman.
Two years ago, I learned in a very difficult way exactly what fight-or-flight meant.
One year ago, I got mostly naked on the internet.
What you might have missed on Fat CrossFitter: I wrote what I thought was a funny story about how I became a stark-raving-mad, premenstrual mess who made histrionic mountain insults out of perfectly reasonable, helpful, and well-intentioned molehill comments, but it got interpreted by people I care about in a whole nother way, so I took down the post.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t write about people anymore—not my students because I’ll get fired, or people I know because I might hurt their feelings, or online dating prospects because I’m never putting myself through that bullshit again. So I think we all know what that means.
I should probably get another foster dog.
Comparatively (and by that I mean, at least we’re not in prison) happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.
The Light, the Heat
A while ago, my friends were trying to teach me how to make eye contact with people I don’t know, like at bars and parties and stuff. (IT TAKES A VILLAGE, PEOPLE).
They said:
- Look around.
- If you catch someone’s eye—someone you think is attractive—hold his gaze.
I said, “How long? Like one-Mississippi?”
They said a few Mississippis.
I said, “Then what?”
They launched into some complicated instructions about looking down, or away, for a few seconds and looking back.
With a half-smile. I forgot about the half-smile—the half-smile’s important, they said.
If he’s still looking when you look back, it’s a good sign.
I tried, but I kept forgetting to do step 1.
Occasionally, I’d stumble into step 2, and
I asked my friends how to do the whole eye contact thing, if I can’t fucking do the eye contact thing.
“Alcohol,” they all said. Blech.
That’s the problem with being a compulsive overeater. My drug doesn’t make me want to take off my pants and rub up on somebody.
My drug makes me want to take off my pants and watch Orange Is the New Black on the couch with the dogs.
That Was Unexpected
Back in April, I over-drafted on my checking account. No big deal—I transferred money from savings and paid myself back at the end of the month. But it was kind of a shock. I hadn’t over-drafted since high school. My fear of scarcity is significant, so I always made damn sure I lived below my means. I was frugal. Thrifty. Cautious.
Except that wasn’t true. For one year prior, I had been spending like somebody else. The bitches I was running with liked to go out to eat, so we did, sometimes twice a week. I bought a new car and chose the 3-year 0.9% financing option, thus my payment was very high—literally three bucks less than my mortgage. I was getting highlights every eight weeks and Brazilian bikini waxes every five.
I wasn’t being frugal, thrifty, cautious. I was not living below my means, and I over-drafted.
*****
For about six months, I tried to break in a pair of flats. I’d wear them for about 30 minutes before hot spots would erupt on my big-toe knuckles. A week ago, my co-worker asked why I was hobbling, and I slipped a gimpy foot out of my shoe and showed him my raw heel. He said, “Yeah, I’d say those shoes are definitely too small!”
I said, “No, they’re not too small. They’re a size 7. I wear a size 7. I just can’t seem to break these ones in.”
But when he walked away, I thought, “Wait. Are they too small?” I went to DSW to see if I could find some cheapo flats to replace them. Found some Rocket Dogs with pointy toes, and guess what.
I’m not a size 7. At least not in pointy flats.
Despite a heaping pile of evidence to the contrary, I believed—so hard—that I had a size-7 foot. It’s who I was.
Except I wasn’t.
*****
If you had asked, I would’ve called myself a people person. I have some social anxiety, yes. Strangers scare me, but I have friends. Lots of friends. I do things with my friends. All the time.
But then a few days ago, my friend checked in on Facebook at a coffee shop with my other friend, and the same synapse in my brain that fired when I over-drafted went pew pew pew.
See, I don’t do that—invite a girlfriend to meet me for coffee. I have gaggles of folks over for a fire pit. I arrange river tubing trips. I plan and attend parties. I also get up on stage and tell stories—personal ones! Like that time I got a Brazilian bikini wax. And that other time I got a Brazilian bikini wax. I told 200 audience members about confessing my long-held feelings to a guy and him saying (more or less), “Thanks for sharing.” I even put my shit out here on the Internet because I feel like my shit is often other people’s shit, and it might make us all feel better to know there’s somebody whose shit is our shit.
I don’t invite a girlfriend to meet me for coffee though. I don’t seek out one-on-one experiences. I haven’t had a best friend, other than my sister or brother, for an eon, and even with my siblings who I’m fiercely close to, sometimes it’s easier to tap things out here and hit Publish, rather than tell them to their faces what I’m feeling.
Why is it so hard for me to be intimate, to be vulnerable, to be calm—shit, just to be—with one other person?
I’m not a total and complete moron, and it dawned on me a while ago that making it to my age without ever having a relationship longer than six months probably meant less about the variables and more about the constant.
But I didn’t get the scope or depth of my intimacy issues until my friend checked in on Facebook with our other friend at a coffee shop.
RetrobruxOMGSchool’sOutBvvvvvvvvvvt
SCHOOL’S OUT. SCHOOL’S OUT. SCHOOL’S OUT.
Also, I QUIT MATCH.COM. Wahooooooooooooooooo!
I’ll have to find my man some other way. Thinking I might build a trap.
With all my dating woes, people frequently ask what I’m looking for in a man, and remarkably (considering how generally wordy I am), I’ve never been able to put it into words, you know? I mean, I want funny, but funny’s not enough, as evidenced by a recent two-date sequence. He has to be physically attractive too, but my taste in what’s physically attractive is (1) not all that conventional (I ain’t got no problem with bald, and sometimes a big nose just works) and (2) varies widely (lithe rock climber, sure; Viking with a mead gut, also good). He should be smart but not an übernerd. Kind but not a pansy. I don’t know. I DON’T KNOW.
But then yesterday, I was stopped at a stoplight, and I saw this.
Pretty sure I could be down with any man who says, “Amy, you and your parts come first.”
Thanks, Sport Durst.
**********
Three years ago, I discovered that I was NCGS. That’s like NCIS but infinitely less badass.
Two years ago, I was unsure of everything. Man, things don’t change much.
Any dude who wants to get with me must be definitively pro-gay, as I learned a year ago.
Some of the things you may have missed on Fat CrossFitter: I was OK with scaling. Then I wasn’t.
Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.