The Final Countdown

I woke up this morning, after having a very peaceful dream to the sounds of the birds outside of my window chirping away. I smiled, sat up and stretched in bed, drew my legs in close to me in their peach colored pajamas, and caught a glimpse of the mirrored closet reflecting me and the view from outside of my window. Blue skies, few clouds, sunlight. I got out of bed and threw open the window and let the sunlight and warmth in to bathe in its beauty.

It was 8:30am. I just quit my job yesterday. I start a new one on Monday.

Throughout a person's lifetime, it is said that we will transition through seven to 10 career position changes, something I'm already well on my way to achieving. When people ask me where I will be in five years, I shrug and smile. I stopped planning out my life after I graduated from college. Prior to that, I knew everything. I knew what I would be doing from the moment I woke up to the last hour before I went to bed. I liked to have a routine and a plan, with goals in the future and steps set to achieving them. School set a nice confine to life and allowed me to live within a time frame of predictability. There weren't many surprises and when they did happen, it threw my schedule into a crux and taught me how to adapt to change, even if I didn't like it.

When I think about my future, I see writing. I see long hours hunched over my computer, typing furiously and gazing out the window with a never ending playlist in the background. I see myself traveling to new cities, exploring the landscape and the world around me with all five of my senses. I see myself laughing mostly, spending time with good friends and family. These are really the only glimpses into my future I get. I'm not the kind of girl who is aspiring to be chained to one place for too long, looking for a husband, children, a home. The only room in the house I see myself really giving great thought to is the closet and just how many closets I can find that hold my clothes! I've always intended to live out of a series of suitcases and be forever on the journey to finding all of the puzzle pieces that make up the girl I am. That, and make out with pretty boys, but who doesn't want to do that in their lifetime?

My roommate referred to me once as "untethered Heather." There's so much truth in that. My future is bright with the written word and shine of a glitzy party dress, but while I see that, I also see how very passionate I am for one day being able to create scholarships in colleges, this dream I have of creating a chain of bookstores modeled after one I used to go to as a child, and to be influential in supporting non-profit causes for children. It has always been my firmest belief to keep both style and substance hand in hand with the work I do. If I'm going to change the world, the change will be to better the lives of others while keeping in tune with creating aesthetically pleasing environments for others as well as myself. One cannot exist without the other. You can't be all work and no play. It leads you to the story of how I quit my job that I'm about to tell you.



It needs to be noted that my tolerance level for bullshit is exceedingly higher than most. I also tend to handle my anger differently than most people do. I've dealt with numerous unfair and outrageous situations and have often been a changed person afterward, more wary and careful to guard myself. All in all, I want to believe in the good, the kindness of people, but I've also known that some people just aren't capable of it. When I'm mad, I won't say it. I tend to look too nicely dressed and just smile at people. After someone yells at me, something begins to snap in my mind and while I won't lash out at that moment, I'm gearing up for a retort in the future. Sometimes you have to pick and choose your battles wisely to leave the right imprint upon that person to never, ever mess with you again.

For the last nine months, the job I had was my battle. My copywriter position. I had the position that advertising majors, PR graduates would easily push me out of the way for. I wrote all day long and received recognition for it. Writing for a yellow pages agency, I was able to use my versatility to translate into descriptions on any topic you could name. Locksmiths, French bistros, novelty stores? Ceiling repair, florists, escort agencies? I did it all and I did it with gusto. My work was often referred to as flawless by the upper management and I was determined to stay one year to get the experience I needed to move on to a bigger company (this one was too small to advance in).

What ended everything for me would ultimately be the upper management. It was the age-old case of CEO's who were all for one and one alone with little to no perks given to the employees. Nobody likes to see this written, no company wants to see their former associate trash them on the internet, but damnit it needs to be said and hey, at least I'm not so spiteful to include their name. Everyone in upper management with that company, from the president to the thorn in my side office manager, was on a power trip 24/7 with no end in sight. They would praise your writing one minute and scream at you to stop talking or else you could see yourself out of the door the next. There was never a "good day", only days where you wondered if the next one was your last. In that way that art imitates life, my life began to disturbingly resemble the film Sucker Punch, in which I was trapped within an awful reality and needed to escape inside of my head to better places, daydream myself somewhere nice to avoid where I was and getting dragged into that damn office where I would have to answer some inane question over a spreadsheet that we already went over four times.

I knew things were ending in December when my supervisor, who is one of my closest friends, quit because she was so unhappy. When she quit, the wife of my boss who also serves as the HR head actually told her that they normally wish people good luck when they leave, but in her case they weren't going to. My hatred for my bosses only grew seismically after this-and not just because at the time they had moved my desk to the corner of the office, alone and cut off from everyone else. All I did was talk. I get it when you talk too much and can't get any work completed, then yes, you need to scale back and focus on your task at hand. But when you get all of your work done on time and are just asking your supervisor how their weekend was and boom! The office manager runs out and bitches at you to be quiet. They moved my desk into the corner "to free up some space" but all of the girls knew it was to separate us. That day was the first, and luckily the last, that I went into the bathroom to cry because I knew it was all downhill from there. I was being punished as though I was in first grade. If wearing hats was allowed, I would surely be slapped with a dunce cap. But I knew better now. Through my tears, I knew they weren't going to get away with this.

I would not go down without a fight.



The endless list of things you couldn't do there was staggering. You couldn't eat at your desk. You couldn't wear sleeveless tops, open toed shoes, hats. You were not allowed to go online to check your email or even upload a picture for your computer desktop. You weren't allowed to talk to your coworkers, about anything. No one in the copywriter department was allowed to take a lunch break together. The bagels ordered on Tuesdays for the department were inexplicably stripped from us by the boss' wife. It was, as I put it in a rather un-PC way, turning into a concentration camp run by a bunch of Jews (the bosses were Jewish).

For the rest of December, I took action into my own hands in the isolated corner of the office, far from my former department. I began to work harder than ever while writing and disappeared into my own mind in a fantastic fantasyland where I was a superhero and flying at breakneck speed in the air, where I was on a plane flying to a new place, where I was laughing and free. I had some fairly regular fantasies swim in my head during that time, some of which were old memories I would rehash. Some of my fantasy sessions included being in and exploring London and various other countries, returning to the winding streets of San Francisco and imagining the life I could have had there that I gave up last May, the thought of seeing my family again (its been two years since we last were all together), and this last one is terribly tragic, but on occasion I would envision my ex-boyfriend from college and I getting back together. Very rarely still, I would even have the Cinderella fantasy that he would magically come bursting through the front door and save me. I used to have this thought about other friends of mine, that somehow they would be able to feel my pain and come find me to save me from this room, with no windows and utter silence for nine hours a day with only the sounds of my white trash office manager, bragging on the phone to clients that she was "seven years sober" and who would casually tell everyone in the lunch room about how she was once arrested for grand theft.

The thing about fantasies and daydreams is that no matter what, they end and your reverie is shattered by the reality all around you. My reality began to change in January when I felt it begin to fall apart all around me. My former roommate quit her job out of the blue in February and declared she would move out, barely giving me and my other roommate time to find a new roommate for our apartment even though she was supposed to find us someone. I began to apply nonstop for new jobs, everywhere and anywhere I could. No time zone could get me out of that hell fast enough and while I looked for a new job, we found a new roommate after countless horrendous interviews with potential girls who were just not right to live with.

You can fight or flight in these situations and while curling up in a ball in your bed is easier, while grief will invade your spirit and suck you free of joy, while you can hope that someone will rescue you, the only thing you can do for yourself is fight. Fight for your dreams, your ambitions and goals, remain optimistic, and never let go. No one will come to you, no one will fight your battle in your place. EVERYONE struggles and hurts and my pain can hardly be compared to the pain of others so I had to keep everything in perspective and live as carefully as possible. Careful to be ready for anything to change in a moment's notice. In my case I could have been gone (literally) from my beautiful apartment and on a plane home to my parent's house before I knew it.

You have to know when your time is up and when it all comes to a head, just what you will do. When the last straw has been broken and when you are no longer skating on thin ice, but drowning in it.

My time came to a head one week ago.



The final two weeks prior to my leaving the company were marked by a series of events. My current supervisor quit, leaving me next to take the seat that four people quit in the span of one year. That evens out to a 3 month longevity, ironically enough the same amount of time before my lease on the apartment would be up. So I could be miserable for 3 months and get rewarded with a resignation or a potential firing. Let it be known, upon hearing that my supervisor was resigning, I mildly considering quitting. I didn't though. My two roommates were the reason I stayed because I loved and cared for them too much to put them, and in the case of me and my other roomie who had just been down that road, through the anxiety and hell of breaking the lease.

The next series of events were my parade of job interviews, oh excuse me, my sick days. In the span of two weeks, I went on four job interviews. That is A LOT in this economy and for each one, I wore my best suit, nicest Calvin Klein heels, and brought in various portfolios and resumes of my work in, determined to wow them over. There is a point in the interview process where you can kind of tell if you're connecting with the people you're speaking with and in my case, I watched three interviews go up in flames despite my best attempts to get the interviewers to smile and laugh and you know, display human emotion. These people literally had no idea just how much they could have saved me from drowning in my reality, but in perspective, who's to say that their "saving me" would have led to a better life? I like to think that by not getting those jobs, it was always for the best.

The last interview last Friday went wonderfully well and I left it feeling very hopeful, with little worries built up that I would not get the position. Because even if I didn't, I accepted early on that everything would be okay. How, I didn't know, but I'd do everything I could to make it better. Thank God for the girls I worked with in my department. They were my sanity, my saving grace. They still are. Something brought us together and I know in my heart it was for the best. There were also five of us altogether, just like in Sucker Punch. Life imitating art once more. Jeez, I need to stop comparing my life to the movies so much.

The catalyst that set everything into motion for my departure occurred before the final interview in the foursome. My former desk in the corner had been restored to a new room, next to a window where I sat with two of my copywriter friends in front of the CEO's office, where the door was always open. The desk was restored in February and sitting with these two girls allowed for me to begin testing a little...something. A trick up my sleeve. My nickname at home used to be "The Instigator" because I enjoyed bringing up topics nobody enjoyed discussing because of bad memories. I also have a terrible habit of laughing when people get into arguments. You can trace this to my early childhood where my parents would find me at their first apartment, pressed up against the wall, chuckling at a fight between the couple next door like it was an episode of The Simpsons.

I began to test out just how much I could get away with talking. Each day, I would be sure to say a few extra sentences, raise my voice a bit louder, with the other girls encouraged to follow suit. I'm a fairly quiet person in general, but this rule, this lack of zero communication allowed, for a former communications major, this put me over the edge. What stemmed from this were the best conversations of your life, the ones you'll remember when your old and gray, because they were from girls fresh from college who didn't mind discussing everything and then some under the sun. We were the left side of the office, the more progressive side that could discuss Russian dynasties, viral Youtube videos on bedroom intruders and leprechauns that "coulda been a crackhead", serial killers, liberal drinking habits, and Katy Perry's tits all in stride. Anything goes and it did, growing all the more louder and louder with every passing day. We all did our work and well so there was no argument for us to not talk if it led to getting everything done in time.

The day my boss broke the final straw, I was wearing my hair in pigtails a la Babydoll in Sucker Punch (consider this the Easter egg of my post) and was excited for the movie to be released that Friday (same day as my final interview). The last words I spoke before the hammer fell were to my coworker, quoting a line from Half-Baked when Dave Chappelle mentions that he's "in custodial management, but a janitor if you want to be an ass about it."

"Heather!" My boss' voice boomed behind me and I turned around in my swivel chair, a half-smile on my face lingering still as he shouted, "You are no longer allowed to talk here! Not before or during work or else you and the rest of you girls," he nodded to the girls sitting around me, "are dismissed and can go walk out the door. No. More. Talking!"

Then my raging bitch of an office manager came right up behind him and announced, "No more talking ladies or you're out." She walked out of the room behind him.

My coworkers and I were unable to speak, we were that much in shock. My friend, A, sitting on my left raised one trembling middle finger to the wall where my bosses had just left.

I saw red for the next three hours until I excused myself to go to the bathroom where I sat on the floor, unable to cry, only able to fight and dig myself the fuck out of this job. I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, where a pale face with blue eyes and red lipstick stared back. She was set. She was determined. She would leave and go somewhere better, where the pay was good, the people could talk, and hats could be freely worn.

I left the bathroom and passed my office manager in the hallway, waiting to use it after me. The look we gave each other was one I will never forget. Worse than looking at a stranger, it was a look empty of every emotion and of being human. The end was fast approaching and we both knew it would be me leaving next, by either getting hired somewhere else, quitting, or getting fired. She would lick the boots of the CEO and his wife if it ensured that she could stay because her employment life was over. 35, locked into a family, and with a criminal record. No matter where I went or the girl I became, I would be free because I would never choose to put myself through illegal activity, even if I could never handle the reality in front of me. That simply isn't how I was raised. I was taught to believe in integrity, honesty, hard work, and never resorting to becoming a second rate version of myself.



After the interview on Friday, I didn't expect to hear back until Wednesday and sat on Monday with the phone in my lap, tucked underneath my skirt so my bosses wouldn't see. (They can't tell me to lift my skirt, a big plus in keeping the phone safe.) I felt the phone begin to vibrate and saw the number for the company appear on the screen. I rushed out of the door and walked down the corridor, closer to the light after the last rainy weekend. Come to the light. So I did and heard on the other end of the phone that yes, I did get the position. Yes, they would pay me what I wanted and yes, I could start on Monday. And most importantly, yes, they were excited to work with me. Just as much as I was with them to manage their social networking process, my new position.

My coworker D was the first to find out because she was just coming out to go to the bathroom when I got off of the phone. "I GOT THE JOB!!" I screamed, delirious with joy and ran to hug her, as she was equally overjoyed to hear the news. I was done. DONE WITH THIS COMPANY FOREVER. The relief and the sudden rush of loads of endorphins overflowed within me until it felt like I might drop from exhaustion right on the spot.

I went back in and told the girls immediately who were all beyond excited for and with me. My office manager, She Who Cannot Keep Her Nose Out of Things Not Her Business, came out and critically viewed me up and down, "What's going on? Why are you smiling so much?"

I grinned extra wide at her, neatly smoothed my skirt, and looked her dead in the eye:

"I'm resigning."

Oh, the look on that woman's face was priceless. Especially since this resignation came one week after my supervisor's. Hehe. HA HA!!! Suck on that, bitchface!

The next day I came in, dropped off my resignation letter to my bosses, ignored their begging me to stay because it was too little, too late (and boy did they beg, those assholes who nearly fired me the week before BEGGED me to reconsider staying in that hellhole), and kept my final day rocking with a sweet playlist of tunes all morning and afternoon.

And I did it all in cherry red high heels.

Cheers to my new job and all those fleeing their awful ones!

Love to you all,
Heather

Closing Your Eyes and Opening Your Mind

It's been quite some time since I last wrote a film review, but for Sucker Punch, the apple of my eye for give or take 6+ months, I'm ready and more than willing to write one.

The last time I was this excited for a movie, conveniently enough, was for director Zack Snyder's Watchmen adaptation, of which I am a huge fan of the comic book. Snyder is gifted with a stylized eye for creating gorgeous backdrops with which one can have a particularly kick-ass fight scene, a sense of staying as faithful to the book's vision as he can, and for giving us beautiful people to look at and in the case of 300, sculpted abs that would make even the biggest exercise buffs pinch themselves and demand more gym time.

Sucker Punch is different in the sense that it isn't based on any comic book adaptation, but rather an idea Snyder had spent the better part of 10 years working on. Originality in Hollywood is becoming a vastly unheard of thing and with bated breath I watched the teaser trailer, the full-length trailer, and followed the media circuit by extensively researching every aspect of the film I could, falling deeper and deeper in love with the storyline: Babydoll, a young girl, is sent to a mental institution by her evil stepfather after the death of her mother. The institution is terrifyingly bleak with no hope for escape and the promise of a lobotomy coming her way. In a manner akin to Inception's "dream within a dream", Babydoll must escape her reality by fantasizing that the institution is a brothel nightclub and further from that, a video game world where she can destroy her demons to receive her freedom.

With every photo of a costume piece donned by Babydoll and her girls, the addition of Jon Hamm in the cast, and the Sucker Punch book loaded with illustrations of set designs I poured over at Barnes and Noble, I felt my excitement building to a boiling point. I was setting myself up to be amazed by this film and trusted that it would be just as strong and tough as it promised me.



*Warning: Spoilers Ahead*

The biggest fault of Sucker Punch is that it is rated PG-13, instead of R as I had been long under the impression it would be. Prior to changing the rating, the film would have been undoubtedly much more gorier and bloodier and would have contained more scenes from the brothel of the girls dancing in their scantily-clad costumes (which having seen the pictures, I can confirm they were amazing). But the biggest downer for me was hearing that they cut the sex scene between Jon Hamm and Emily Browning; Babydoll and her client the High Roller who after exchanging money with the nightclub owner Blue, would take Babydoll's last shred of innocence from her. There was also supposed to be another rape scene, or at least a few implied ones between Babydoll and Blue as well, but sliding into the PG-13 rating cut all of this out and left it for the director's cut DVD.

I know when I say it's a downer for a rape or sex scene to be cut from a film I'm setting the feminist movement back about 40 years, but for Sucker Punch I believe that keeping it would have been necessary to the tone of the film as a whole. Babydoll's future, and the future of her friends, in every reality except for the bad guy video game slaying world, is so bleak and hopeless that even as a viewer you know there will be no happy ending. Even when you do applaud the girls for the few upper hands in the situation they receive, you know deep down that for all of them to survive will be impossible. You keep hoping though, that even in the darkest of days, they will be triumphant and Snyder is usually skilled at darkening the world to the point where you cannot imagine it getting worse. If he had kept the scenes and left the rating at R, I can imagine the film being all the better for it, but since the scenes were cut, it left the movie feeling choppy and with questions unanswered at certain points. Also, early on in the film they make a point to note that Babydoll is 20, which leads me to further push for these scenes to have been included since she is clearly over 18.



Within the first 10 minutes of the film, you meet Babydoll, played by Emily Browning who creates the ultimate in fanboy quivering and pretty China doll fantasies. Babydoll's mother has just died and her death leaves Babydoll and her sister to live with her stepfather who is sure he has received the estate in the will and is shocked to find out that all has been left to the girls. He goes to Babydoll's room to undoubtedly rape and kill her, but she fights him off and he locks her in her room to advance on her little sister instead. Babydoll escapes out the window and reenters the house with a gun to shoot him, but accidentally winds up killing her sister instead and runs away to her mother's grave. The police arrive, with her stepfather spinning tales that she is crazy and with the gentle prick of a needle, a dazed Babydoll winds up at the mental asylum owned and run by Blue Jones (a wonderfully creepy Oscar Issac). The girls at the institution act out their lives to the on-site therapist Dr. Gorski (Carla Gugino, in a series of to-die-for ensembles) but its all certain that nothing will save them in the long run.

Babydoll then falls into the fantasy of imagining the institute as a burlesque house where she meets sisters Rocket (Jena Malone) and Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens) and Amber (Jamie Chung) who are "the main attraction." They dance for gentlemen clients, as taught by Gorski, who now plays the resident dance instructor, and ensure that the clients get their happy endings, so Blue gets his money and can keep running the place. When Babydoll dances, she closes her eyes and falls into the last world, a place where she is fighting off her demons with the help of the Wise Man who instructs her that in order to be free, she will need a map, fire, a knife, a key, and one last mystery object.



Using this bit of information, Babydoll tells the girls in the burlesque fantasy world that she will escape and though Sweet Pea is reluctant, they all agree to come along and help her. Babydoll is apparently an extremely titillating dancer (you never actually see her dance but it is described as "raw" with lots of "moaning and gyrating") so while she dances, the men are mesmerized and the girls run around collecting their objects, a plan that at first suspends your disbelief that these girls could find everything they need in such a heavily-armed place, but then everything comes crashing down when the girls work to get the knife from the chef.



Meanwhile, during Babydoll's dance sequences, she and the girls fight zombie SS officers, dragons in medieval times, and robots on trains with bombs as led by the Wise Man. These sequences are never boring and extremely intense, making the film stronger for it. When things begin to take a turn for the worse in this world, it is reflected in the nightclub world. In reality, Babydoll's lobotomy comes in 5 days from the doctor, and in the burlesque peep show world, it comes in the High Roller as her first client in 5 days. Yet despite these worries, there is really no sense of impending danger, no frantic rush to get the items in time, and no real sense of time in general. When Babydoll near the end of the movie finally figures out what the 5th item on the list is, I guarantee you nobody was shocked to find it out. In fact, I myself kept waiting for the swelling of some sort of friendship-themed music to start up...which lo and behold, it did.



While I enjoyed the character of Babydoll very much and also the characters of Gorski and Blue who turn out to be more than they both seem, I didn't really care for the other girls in her entourage. Sweet Pea (Cornish) has the most defined personality because she initially doesn't want to fight to leave and considers the entire plan a wash, but even then she's dull and doesn't do much outside of look after her sister (which even then she doesn't do well, ahem the scene with the cook and the chocolate). Rocket, Blondie, and Amber are all about as one-dimensional as they come. Even the High Roller, thanks to all of the scenes cut out, leaves Jon Hamm with nothing to do beyond look resplendent in a white suit. Frankly speaking, if you work at a brothel and your first client is a guy as attractive and suave as the Hamm is, you better count and thank your lucky stars that he's going to be the first guy to deflower you.



While it's worth the viewing in theatres, I prefer my Zack Snyder films to be gritty and raw and will be much more fulfilled by the director's cut rated R edition he plans to release. Only then do I believe that the film's tagline of "You Will Be Unprepared" will ring true for me.

Love to you all,
Heather

The Real Community

*As a brief side note before I begin this post, no I did not get hired for the position I went on two interviews for. There are a couple of things I could say about how the final interview went. The question that literally started off with "If you had a magic wand and could wave it over your first day of work..." How I couldn't make the two people interviewing me laugh at all and barely could interpret their facial expressions (though it should be noted, the husband of the husband/wife team looked more amused by me than anything, in that way guys love to smirk at me for not understanding The Ways of the World). How my inner Jiminy Cricket conscience nearly broke a blood vessel when the man interviewing me declared his distaste for social media. How my inner Tim Gunn conscience had to hold Jiminy back from screaming a million reasons why placing working on social media outlets needs to be one of the, if not the, absolute top priorities of a cause-marketing company. Maybe I'll write this out to an entire post one of these days, but ehhh, I'd rather not. It didn't disappoint me to lose the position because I know there is one out there that is just more deserving of having me on their team. I'll find it soon. The End.*



I'm a big fan of the show Community, the one with Joel McHale and Chevy Chase portraying community college students at Greendale Community College. Joel plays Jeff Winger, a disbarred lawyer who needs to get in and out of this community college as quickly as possible to get back to his regularly scheduled lifestyle. While at Greendale, Jeff gets saddled with his study group, an eclectic group of cool weirdos. These members include Britta, the snarky former Peace Corps member in need of direction for her life, Abed, the pop culture obsessed wannabe director, Annie, the studious former Adderall junkie, Shirley, the divorced mother who is an excellent brownie baker, Troy, the former high school QB, and Pierce, the much-older tactless millionaire. Oh, and Senor Chang, the group's Spanish teacher who is forever trying to get into the study group of misfits.

As a former community college student, the show comments on a wide range of school issues, some of which I found relevant to my own experience there, but at the same time there were a whole bunch that didn't tie in with it whatsoever. (The paintball episode, obviously you can't run all over your campus having an epic paintball war though it would make school much more interesting.)

Here are some stories of my version of Community I experienced and how they stacked up against the show, NBC's version of reality.



Imma Get Smart

My views on community college, prior to my attendance, were the typical views of a sheltered young girl who stuck her nose up in the air far more often than she had the right to. When I was in high school and working at Panera Bread, I worked with one of my closest friends at the time who attended community college. The ability to get a student loan for myself without a cosigner had left me with the option of either no school or community college and I made some remark on how "community college wasn't for intelligent people" to my community college friend who by all rights was upset with me for saying something like that when it isn't true. We rounded out the night, silently scrubbing out the soup well, with me wondering if a) I had just lost a really good friend for my mouth's verbal diarrhea, b) the indignation that comedians and generally most people could say what I just said and not face repercussions, and c) why must I be taught a lesson for every little thing I say/do that isn't considered kosher with others?

I apologized. I do get it when I'm behaving like an ass. And just like the time in high school when I regularly made fun of this one guy in my grade for riding the bus after school, I was about to get some fate-approved lessons taught to myself.

Community college isn't a terrible place. Nor is it a place for those who are burnouts or slackers alone. Some of the classes I had I was a regular Annie Edison in, constantly raising my hand to volunteer an answer (the pop culture class that I wrote an extensive paper on the history of horror films). Others I was an eye-rolling Britta Perry in (all math classes, that hideous Zoology course). Still others I regularly napped in (insert class name here if you can remember it). I only went to school twice a week, but it was a full day both days. During the summers, I went 4 days a week and did online coursework. If you ever have the chance to enroll in it, online classes are the shiz. You don't have to leave your home to go to class. You can take a quiz while watching Entourage. Some of these classes even offer online tests, many of those I did with my textbook on my lap, thumbing through the pages in the index for the answers.

I like to think of myself as a "selective learner."



Experience is the Teacher

My foreign language credits rolled over from high school ensured I didn't need to take another Spanish class in my life so I didn't get the pleasure of working with a Senor Chang. However, I did get stuck with a series of teachers who were both fairly good and downright awful.

Some of the better ones included my Psychology teacher whom I thanked after the classes were over since I felt like I actually learned a thing or two in that course. My Intermediate Algebra teacher who didn't mind if I would occasionally slip out of class early on bad weather days and even changed my grades a little bit after reviewing my terrible tests together. Even my Pop Culture instructor was a good guy who was always interested in where I would transfer over to.

Then there were the bad ones. Specifically my Biology and Intro to Mass Media teachers. The Bio teacher, Skeevy McGee, was one of those young, hip, "I'm in my 30's but I can still relate to a bunch of 18 year old's" guys who picks one guy in the class to be buddy-buddy with and crack jokes at his expense. He also had a thing for young girls. Specifically of the 18 and under freshman set. On my first day in class Skeevy went around the room asking us what our life ambitions and plans after this school entailed, I very loudly and assertively announced what I had planned after and the university I had in mind to attend. After I finished, I smiled at him and the rest of the classroom as a whole.

Skeevy just gave me that amused look (see above, this crap is a regular recurrence in my life), that older guys will occasionally give me. It's a lot like a smirk and it usually says, "Righhhht."

He told me, "You sound like a game show host." Smiling the entire time.

What. The. What. Most of the girls in the room giggled. My brain silently rationed that if my chest size was two times bigger and I was blond just how this would be going down. Suffice to say, I kind of hated that course for the rest of the semester. But the additional reasons why are yet to come.

The Mass Media course, my introduction to my future major, was awful. My teacher had issues with anyone reading newspapers outside of our city. As in, no worldwide papers period. She also professed an extreme dislike for Will Ferrell and enjoyed telling the class about how she spent all of her money while in college on booze. My head spun from the confusion of this course.

And then there was my Public Relations course where my teacher and one of my classmates got into a big fight, but since my classmate was a really awful girl who rudely assumed I was a pothead two weeks in (under what grounds did that get started was what I would like to know) it was totally cool with me that the student got yelled at. That was another really unpleasant course too, come to think of it. All of the girls in that class were serious PR majors, the ones who start interning in high school and name drop clients and celebrities during classes and you can kind of already see that their future includes a lifetime of offices, Louboutins (for the name-dropping factor), and Botox.



The Art of Presentation

During the community college days, I gave a few interesting presentations. My presentations, in general, begin with a joke, involve me walking around, lots of hand motions, and as little note card glances and "umm's" as possible. While none of these presentations featured sparklers or wigs, they were still memorable in their own way.

The best one was a piece I did on the argument pros and cons for school uniforms in Psychology. Why I was doing this sort of presentation in a psych class, I don't remember. I have a long-term history of tweaking classroom work to fit my likes more than the actual assignment given. Case in point, in eighth grade when faced with writing a paper on issues like homelessness and AIDS awareness, I requested, and received permission, to write about the cancellation of my then-favorite show on ABC, Once and Again. And that paper received a round of applause. Just. Sayin'.

For this presentation, I bought a black piece of construction foam, chalk, and ripped out dozens of photos from magazines of school blazers and uniforms to create a chalkboard collage. Definitely had a blast putting it together. I tend to do very well when I'm on my hands and knees, surrounded by cut out pictures, scissors, tape, glue, and lots of good music playing in the background. The presentation and chalkboard were a hit and I was proud of the work I had done.

In contrast, for the Biology course with Skeevy McGee, I had to write a report on the heart and present it sans a PowerPoint. I printed out a bunch of information on the heart to put on the overhead projector, but midway through the assignment I had a really good idea to pull up a clip art picture of Dracula at the moment I described just how much blood pumps into our hearts in the span of 1 minute. I got the idea approved with my girlfriends who thought it was ridiculous but hilarious. Boom. Happening.

I'm in my presentation and I just finished telling everyone how much blood pumps through the human heart. I repeated the number twice, then pretended to put my hand to my ear, "What's that? I think I just heard someone else is interested in that bit of information." I slid the vampire picture onto the projector, "Aw, it's Count Dracula! Now that's information he can use, aww yeah!"

At first nobody moved. I wondered if I had lost them. Then one person started to laugh, followed by another, until the entire room was laughing including Skeevy McGee. Yay! Inappropriate blood sucking jokes for the win! I rounded out the presentation by clasping my hands together to make a heart shape. Lots o' applause and even a nod from Ole Skeevy from the presentation going well.



'L' is for the Way You Look at Me

In Community, Jeff gets around with a professor on campus and with both Annie and Britta (whom Troy refers to both as 'donuts' in one episode in that it isn't fair for Jeff to get with both of the study group girls).

I'd really prefer not to remember all of the instances of guys trying to make moves on me during my 1.5 years of community college, but two in particular stick out the most. Emo Child and $. Not a typo on the last one, $ signed his first name which began with an "S" with a dollar sign.

Emo Child sat next to me in the Bio class with Skeevy McGee (jeez, what was wrong with this class? Why didn't I transfer out?) and was very unsettling. Anytime I would get up for presentations/getting back from presenting he would tell me "good luck" and "that was a good presentation." Before class began, he would sit there listening to his metal and death rock and I, in my Rammstein phase, would sit there listening to my Till Lindemann while reading. In some ways we did look like a good match for one another, but we weren't. Some people can look like good matches but from experience, that doesn't mean jack shit.

It was $ who was the true weirdo. I took a Persuasion course (in communications, not on the Jane Austen book) where I met $ who sat next to me. Initially our friendship was formed on making fun of a guy who sat two seats behind me and was dubbed by the entire classroom as "Smelly Dude." Of course, the thing is $ and I were hardly friends. I was much closer to the girl who sat behind me and she knew I had issues with $. $ was nice....ish. He drank more energy drinks than I did, which at the time, was highly impressive in an odd way. His desk was lined up with a wide variety of Monster and Rock Star beverages and he never blinked when he talked to you.

One afternoon, I had a head-splitting headache and was walking to that class, contemplating if I could make it through. The class was canceled for the afternoon and relieved, I made the decision to skip the rest of the classes for the day and go home. On my way down the stairs to go to my bus, $ was walking up, tweaked on too much Red Bull as usual. "Where are you going?" he asked me, not blinking.

"Class is canceled for today." I replied and he nodded and grinned, "Alright, cool. Hey, want to go get sushi? I know a great place."

"No thanks," I told him, now down the stairs with $ as my reluctant companion out of the door. My head was threatening to explode on the entire student body.

"Maybe another time?" He asked and in a fuzz of blurred pain, I nodded. Through the blur, I remember thinking it was so unfortunate that he just didn't dress better, otherwise he might make a semi-fine young man.

Then I went home and slept for an hour before going on a walk in the neighborhood since it was a stunningly sunny day outside. On the walk, I recalled saying yes to the next sushi outing. My stomach felt panicked.

Of course this story has a terrible ending. He talked to me one afternoon where I expressly made it clear that not only was he ruining my math memorization, but I did not want to have anything to do with him. It was harsh granted, but necessary. I only felt better afterward. I mean, when everyone in your class is asking you about your "boyfriend" and you have to loudly clarify it that nothing is going on, then sometimes the mean route is the best way to go.

I felt even better in class the next week when the girl sitting behind me gasped out, "$! What happened to your eye?"

I briefly turned and saw that one of his eyeballs had popped out and looked as though a blood vessel exploded. Though terrible, I stifled a laugh.

Must have been all of the Red Bull.

This is only the beginning of the stories though. I haven't discussed my time writing for the school newspaper, the boy who had a crush on me on the bus, the week the hippie invasion occurred on campus. Like the Community gang on the show and myself in real life, the good news that keeps you warm on the nights you're standing outside in the snow waiting for the bus to arrive to take you home and the realization that it isn't coming and you have to wait for the next one to arrive is this. It's not forever. Maybe it's coming in two years or six months or 5 years, but I swear...



You Will Get Out

Love to you all,
Heather

The Buck Stops Here

I've been a bag of nerves for a little over a week now and this morning, decided to add jittery on top of jittery with a nice grande iced Caramel Macchiato from that gleaming beacon of green and white hope dotting neighborhood blocks everywhere- Starbucks.

The bus wasn't even midway to my job yet and already I had gulped down half the glass. Normally coffee and caffeine in general doesn't do much for me. I have this rare gift of being able to sleep whenever, however, and do it at the drop of a hat no matter how much I try to pump myself up to stay awake (unless I'm going to a city I like or a bookstore...no sleep tonight with those places). This morning though, a strange thing happened. My fraying nerves connected to the java hot-wired through my body for an electric charge. ZING! POP! BOOSH! I was awake! I was rip ready roaring to go at 7am! Back off world 'cause I, in my roasted coffee bean armor, can take ya on!

In the movie Alfie, the main character Alfie describes his pretty and reckless girlfriend Nikki as going through "major highs and manic lows." All par for the course with how I felt in the span of 15 minutes that would continue to translate for the entire day. Much of my jitterbugness is stemming from the fact that by Friday, I will hear back from a cause-marketing company I've gone on not one but two interviews for. The first interview was a smashing success and felt perfectly natural whereas the second one was grueling and had me physically exhausted afterward. Evaluating the second interview in my head as impartially as possible, I felt it did go well in theory. I answered every question as truthfully and honestly as possible. I dressed nicely (if you know me though, this is nothing new). I gave it my all and more but once I got outside, I felt a weight fell off of my shoulders and a new one get tossed on. The weight of worry if they want me on their team. I fear my age is too young, I don't have enough experience, that they want someone who is older, wiser. I might be young and tech-savvy, but is it enough? My own self is my worst critic and she wishes I could have done more sooner, earlier, and faster. We all have to start somewhere, sometime, don't we?

So with coffee fueling me, I think about this position. Everything will change for me no matter what the decision is. Yes. No. One syllable and I'm a new girl. I can have it all or I can lose it all. I can rebuild myself anew or continue working on the foundation already in place. I wish I could see both versions of this Heather by brain is slowly working on, but I won't be able to. One syllable and I'm a new girl.

Yes. No.



The coffee kicks in further and my right-sided brain starts to hop all over the place. You should blog! it excitedly jabs at me, write it out! Don't go to work today, get off at the next stop, go home, and write!

Ahem, the left side of my brain taps me with a pencil, listen to your The Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack instead. It puts you in a peaceful mood.

I put on the soundtrack and consider blogging these thoughts, this moment. The Starbucks needs to be tied in somehow but not in a "running out of ideas" way like that episode of Sex and the City when Carrie isn't dating any new guys and is going to write her column for the week comparing men to socks. Better than the week before when finding the perfect man is compared to finding delicious French fries (the ever-faithful Charlotte pipes up that that particular piece was "cute!"). This segue-ways into me thinking about how much I wanted to be Carrie when I was applying to college and at the time on the East Coast track...which leads to me remembering college and the dorm life...which leads to me thinking about if 111 Archer Avenue is a real place in New York...which leads to the bus announcing my stop and me getting off with the thought of the job coming back. It's so strange how when I daydream, I go from thought to thought only much later in the day to arrive to my first thought which feels so long ago, it's like I never dwelled on it at all.

Oh, that crazy hoppin' coffee bean effect on me.

The effect of the coffee begins to wear off at about 10am, but until that moment, I am wrapped in its roasted aroma embrace. It's a feeling I've known and been close to for years.



I am not a Starbucks snob. I drink coffee from other establishments as well, though not as often. Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf very, very rarely. Peet's in the summer, and especially in San Francisco where I feel it is more appropriate to sip (don't ask me why). Panera Bread, from my 3.5 year stint of working as a barista there, often with carefully hidden cups of various brews I created out of boredom strategically dotting the store where I knew no one would find them and throw my treasures out. While I enjoy coffee from many a shop, Starbucks has held me captive since childhood. It was those green straws, tucked into their little clear cups with the mermaid on the outside. I would see them, see the people drinking them, and would fall in love with the image of being a grown-up I saw reflected back onto me. Someday, the younger version of me rhapsodized, I will wear red lipstick, heels that clack with every step, a full skirt, and carry a pretty pocketbook. I will live in a beautiful apartment in a bustling city and smell of roses with good manners given to all. I will write all day and have a wonderful job. I will be like Audrey Hepburn, those Parisian girls in the pictures in my magazines, and Samantha Parkington from the American Girl series all rolled up into one. And I will drink coffee from Starbucks, like a true grown up lady.

My younger self would have been a perfect focus group participant for this company.



One afternoon, in my preteens, I was at the Barnes and Noble with my Mom, just another lazy Saturday of reading piles of books until the store closed. Or it would have been if my Dad went with me. My Mom didn't care for bookstores much and was always in a hurry to leave them and go somewhere else instead. Book in hand, I headed to the cash register while she waited for me outside. As I was about to grasp the exit door handle to leave, I saw the the straight open aisle by the magazine racks leading to a Starbucks. Here, inside my bookstore! (These cafes wouldn't become more frequented until 2004, when the Wi-Fi option was added).

I checked myself out. Okay, so I might have been 11 and wearing all of the typical popular garb of the time (check it: glittery rose shirt, linen pants, Sketchers, and a million of those butterfly hair clips, I. Was. Awesome.), but still, I wanted to try Starbucks and begin that road to adulthood, paved with early elegance!

Only, here's the best part, I chickened out on ordering a coffee beverage.

"One small, I mean tall vanilla bean blended cream!" I proudly ordered. I wondered if the girl behind the counter knew this was my first visit. Can you tell just by looking at people that they're about to try drinking out of those slender green straws for the first time ever? Perhaps not. We all have to begin our journey somewhere and this would be my beginning (with an actual coffee drink purchased later that year). Later on, I would learn how to make these drinks and be able to foam a cappuccino properly, substitute the right amount of soy milk, and create aesthetically pleasing hot chocolate in a mug for even the most subjective coffee drinkers.



Though I go many places and will continue to, my dear Starbucks goes with me. It's familiar green and white slogan comforts me because I know where I am, no matter how new the land may be, I'm still connected to this place, the one I started with even though I didn't know how to order sizes properly. And even though I'm slowly working on becoming my younger self's version of Audrey/Samantha with a side of Carrie Bradshaw for good measure, I'm still learning just to order that type of life for myself. One green straw and I'm a girl who is both old and new.

A girl who is both yes and no.

And good to the last drop.

Love to you all,
Heather

Foreign Countries with Spatulas

Initially this post was going to be about my s-l-o-w eating habits, but today I witnessed an event that was of greater importance. So much so it demanded a blog post.

Up by my library are a bunch of restaurants, bookstores, coffee shops, and grocery stores. In that midst, for no apparent reason, is a Williams Sonoma. To get to the library, you have to walk past this store which falls on deaf ears with me in terms of piquing my interest. Today, I watched a young man (30-something) run to the door and clasp that handle for dear life. He stopped once he had the door handle in his hand and turned to wait for his significant other who was still getting out of the car. He was huffing and puffing and beaming with pride at being only a mere moment from exploring the wild world of China plates, espresso machines, and lobster forks. Let me repeat it though: a 30-something male ran to the door of a kitchenware shop before his wife even had her seatbelt off.

Jeez, I'm honestly surprised he parked the car at all. Nothing says "I'm here to shop!" than plowing an SUV through the storefront of a boho culinary paradise. I mean, that's how I do it. Hence the reason I don't have a car.



Here is the inside of a Williams Sonoma. I'm already lost at identifying the majority of the things in the picture. I see a waffle maker. Maybe some measuring spoons. Bunch of bamboo baskets holding things that look like scented floral sachets. And wait a minute, is that a candle on the shelf?

For the domesticated person, these kinds of stores offer hours of entertainment and items to browse through that they can already envision whipping up a dessert with that's sure to please friends and family alike. For me, it's a place where I might drop something expensive and break it and get some old bitty trailing me to ask her "if you need help young lady." It's like a foreign country with spatulas and breadmakers to me. The few times I've gone, I've been with friends who speak the language there and may act as my translator when I stare at a whisk and demand to know who would spend $20 on it when there are flats you can buy for $20 more at the Macys next door.



Is it so terrible to never want to own a set of actual cutlery and spend the rest of your life using plasticware to eat? With all of its little neat compartments, why would it be a crime to transform a dishwasher into a magazine rack? When having a get-together of friends, does it really necessitate a full course meal to be made or can just cheese and crackers with a generous refillable portion of wine suffice? So long as you wear a flouncy apron and scrap off the burned edges, will the casserole still work as a crowd-pleaser? Once they get to the cold center, all you have to do is say that's how the original recipe from your grandmother that was handed down in the family for ages, clasp whatever utensil you have in your hand to your heart, and cry out "Bless her frail heart!" and boom, everyone is eating your half-baked disaster again.

I'm going to make some lucky guy a terrible/unique housewife one day.

If it helps, I do believe in keeping a nice set of wine, martini, and lowball glasses in a kitchen. You can even get them in non-breakable versions these days if you ever get a little too excited by all of your cooking skills.



Personally I get all of my cooking/hosting/crafting tips from a one Amy Sedaris...

Love to you all,
Heather

Tales From the Blind Dating Crypt

When you think about it, blind dating has its similarities to crypts. Most of the time, the dates end on a less than desired note and you have to bury the memories in a place as far out and away of your head as possible. If you can't kill the brain cells that cling to those thoughts with liquor, an underground vault to hold them all is probably your next best option.

Setting me up on blind dates can go in a multitude of directions. I either get really:

a) Dry and deadpan, with a sense of neurotic verbal dialogue that makes it sound like I'm mocking you when in fact I may not be. Or I might just be. My wordplay will veer on the side of sardonic every now and then. It happens.

b) Stiff and too much like Miss Manners. My body language is very telling. I generally sit ramrod straight, cross my legs, and clasp my hands together, nails digging into the skin. I ask questions and keep the tone very cordial with a slight hint of interest. I don't say a whole lot in this situation unless asked. Several years of anal-retentive childhood behavior contributed to this.

c) Distracted by the guy in the next booth. Or the menu in front of me. Or someone's shoes or dangling earrings. But usually it's the guy at the next table making eyes that does it.

d) Relaxed and normal to be myself, enough to graciously accept compliments, make some off-color joke about the latest celebrity scandal, and just get the other person. This is once in a blue moon stuff, folks, and it's when you know you're with someone good.

e) Tipsy which leads to me getting too friendly, if you catch my drift. No further comments necessary.

I'm going to tell you about my best and worst (so far) blind date experiences. The good one was set up by one of my very best girlfriends in the entire world, whom I consider to be my sister in many ways. The other one was set up by my ex-roommate who I had a series of unfortunate events and issues with.

On with the show!



Terrible Tom Cruise Movies Bring Everyone Together

The utter irony of this story is that while this guy's face will be permanently etched within my memory bank, his name was not. The other day, I texted my good friend, Randi, who was the one who set us up on that fateful date and would undoubtedly know the guy's name. She replied she didn't remember it either. Go, memory banks, go!

In any case, I'm going to refer to him by his most distinctive trait: Mormon Guy. Not a bad thing either.

At the time, I was a junior in college and quite close with Randi, whom I met when getting lunch one afternoon after a costume class I had let me out early. Both of us were getting our meals to go, but decided to sit and eat together and get to know one another. This worked out so well we went on another lunch date the day after, and the day after, and again and again for the next two years. She's very funny and bright, like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day. That's very punny of me, I know, but finding friends who instantly perk you up upon seeing them is hard to do. We had, and still have, a high policy of working hard for what we want, lots of trust between us on keeping certain matters quiet, and no judgment for anything the other has to say on taboo topics.

We also had a constant need to go out dancing on the weekends. Even though at the time she had a boyfriend and I was working two jobs and an internship, this did not stop us from going to our favorite dance club with our other girlfriends and partying the night away and escaping the creepers in the process.

One afternoon, Randi suggested we all go on a double date. Me, her, her boyfriend, and a mystery guy friend of her boyfriend's. I agreed, my anxiety quelled when she proclaimed the guy was "really cute because I wouldn't set you up with anything less." And her taste in guys is most excellent. She did mention he was Mormon briefly, but religion doesn't matter to me. If anything, I found it to be very intriguing and distinguishing in setting him apart from most guys I knew at the time.

The only snag in the situation was that the boys wanted to see this movie, Valkyrie. Remember that Tom Cruise Nazi war film? I'd like not to remember it, but if seeing a bad movie is what it takes to be with a cute guy, I'll make the sacrifice.

Just once.

The night arrived and as per usual, I'm wearing white and black and red lipstick with heels from head to toe. The boys picked us up and I got to meet Mormon Guy in all of his hottie glory. Taller than me, dark hair, blue eyes, nicely dressed, and polite. He was the male version of myself. He reminded me of James Marsden (the other guy in The Notebook apart from Ryan Gosling that Rachel McAdams is torn between). Whatever they're doing in Utah is working out. Which is where he is originally from, fyi.

Conversation comes easy about work, school, all that jazz. He pays for the movie ticket (plus sign) and offers me overpriced concession food (thumbs up once more). But it isn't until we're all sitting together that the real magic starts. The magic of saying awesomely snarky and witty things about the terrible movie trailers and opening scenes of the film. My guard is slowly dropping and I mention something that pokes fun at Tom Cruise and Mormon Guy catches it and comes back at me with a nice spot-on remark. Before you know it, our banter is flinging back and forth between each other as naturally as a fight with family during Thanksgiving dinner. It's twenty different types of perfect and feels just right.

Behavior for the night: at an e) on the grid established above.



Of course the beauty of this night is that it's one night only. Neither one of us thinks to get the others number, especially since he is a missionary (Mormon missionary, who knew they existed?), but the moral of the story is that we had a great time and Randi knows how to hook a lady up with the very best. She should seriously replace that Millionaire Matchmaker host.



The "Wigger" Incident at Blue

If I could Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind remove a memory from my memory bank, this one would be the first to go. Going back in my head to remember this blows, but for the blog I'm willing to go the extra mile.

The guy in this one does have a name that I remember all too well (hint: the kid in the wheelchair from South Park) but won't write here because like Mormon Guy, he was distinctive in another different way. He was a Wigger, defined at Urban Dictionary to a T: "A male caucasion, usually born and raised in the suburbs that displays a strong desire to emulate African American Hip Hop culture and style through "Bling" fashion and generally accepted "thug life" guiding principles."

Of course, I didn't know this. My ex-roommate at the time "A" didn't fill me on it either. At the time, she and I were on rocky ground because she had this constant desire to go out and be "social" whereupon I was a year older than her and worked literally nonstop so when I got home all I wanted to do was watch Malcolm in the Middle and eat something of questionable healthiness.

At the time, she wanted to hook up with this guy "S". S was one of your typical frat-boy asshats minus the frat with the added community college and overtime dedicated to working his biceps at the gym. Everyone knows an S, he's king of the beer pong table, but has trouble doing basic division problems. In the line of guys I would later come to see file in and out of our dorm room for A, S would surprisingly not be the more idiotic of them all. He would come close, but not quite. You have to give him credit in giving this his one-night all and nothing more.

So the four of us would be going out. Me, her, S, and S's friend. We were going to this club in the area, Blue, that briefly went through a surge of college-student popularity in the spring and summer of '09. I took the night with a grain of salt. Neutral was the only way to feel. Nothing would happen, nor would I allow it to.

When the guys came over to our dorm room, I met him. He, resplendent in a wifebeater, jeans falling off his ass, chains (chains, really now?), and oh yes, a hat that bore no purpose except to be slanted to the side, in a straight-up "yo dawg" fashion. Wigger Guy had arrived and with his arrival came his inability to impress me.

"I've seen that movie!" He enthusiastically pointed to a poster of Bertolucci's The Dreamers on my wall, the French film notorious for its NC-17 rating I loved.

"Really?" I was part skeptical and part amused, "What did you like about it?"

He couldn't tell me. At one point I had to remind him it was in French with subtitles which was a definite sign that this night had a sour beginning already. He also went around and touched my things on my desk which pissed me off. I don't like guys to touch my things without asking and I certainly don't like for them to pick up important objects without my permission. Like my framed photo of Derek Zoolander my Dad made me as a present when I was in high school. It's okay for people to touch it with permission but when guys pick it up without my go-ahead, I feel like it taints the memory that lies within the photo. It's as if they're trying to pull out the innocence from that time by touching the frame and it just makes me close myself off further when I see it happen. That's just how I think of it.

We leave and go to Blue. The car ride is awful and once I'm at the club, I'm subjected to him telling me about his future hip-hop career. Yay? It's good to have dreams, young Wigger Guy. I leave the three of them multiple times and go watch a pole dancer perform on a pole in front of a group of people. She's very flexible. I applaud and she comes up to me after and gives me a card for pole dancing lessons I should sign up for because "you would be good at this!" That will never happen, but I keep the card anyway, as a souvenir of the night.

I get back to the trio who are all pissed at me for wandering off and amusing myself. During this time, it should also be noted that I fired off a rapid round of text messages to the majority of my address book and am in the process of replying back to the many people I haven't spoken to in ages. This used to be my fallback plan when trapped with people I don't like or know very well. So I just look to my phone and stay busy with that, all the while aware of the storm rising from S who is now drinking, as we all are.



After Blue, we go to someone's house party which makes me want to turn around and run out of and not stop running until I'm home. Everyone in the house is tanned and has popped collars and is blasting hip-hop. There are no books on the shelves and everyone is playing a noisy game of beer pong. I sit on the couch and pray for a plane to crash into the roof. Nothing happens. Wigger Guy disappears and I see a girl from one of my Communications classes across the room. Neither one of us expected to see the other here. It's the most awkward nod of recognition ever. I carefully watch A to see if she's getting her "socializing" out of the way and as per usual, she doesn't talk to anyone and winds up sitting next to me on the couch with S hanging all over her and avoiding me.

We get ready to leave and go outside where suddenly S turns to me and shouts, "Why did you have to be so mean to [Wigger Guy]?"

"Excuse me?" I replied.

"He was trying to be nice to you and you were mean to him!" S slurred.

"I wasn't mean." I shrugged, "And he wasn't nice."

We get in the car and go back to the dorms. I went directly to my shared room with A and closed the door, leaving her to neck with S out in the living room. At this point, I had no intention of leaving the room and would even sleep in my contact lenses if need be and climb out the window and use a public bathroom as opposed to opening that door. I looked at my photograph in its frame and felt a sense of sadness overwhelm me. Wouldn't it be easier to be the girl without standards, who would make out with a sign post if it breathed and called you "sexy." Wouldn't it be easier to pretend to care, when you really didn't. Sure it would. If it was though, this post wouldn't exist! So I'll take my chances with being my semi-judgmental and taking cues from Woody Allen in the humor department self. I like it that way!

Behavior for the night: being a) for the entire night until the moment I'm in bed, hashing out the night where I land at d) where I continue to stay until this moment.

Love to you all,
Heather

All the Queen's Men

The Setting: Wedding at a nightclub on a Sunday night.

The Character: Your blogger, Miss Heather Taylor, in a pretty little black dress with a pearl necklace and red heels. No black tights tonight, nude panty hose. I mean business. I am also well beyond tipsy at this point, as is my wont when going out.

The Scene: I snag a guy from not one but two girls in under 1:30 of Katy Perry's "California Gurls" One of the girls is one of my friends, but she is totally cool with it. Proper dancing commences. Twirls, prettiness all around. DJ puts on salsa music. Dirty dancing begins. Hello, mojo.

The Big Time: Aaaaand, we're making out at the bar. The right side of my brain is feelin' good. This is promising. He is 3 years older than me. Has a great name. Very attractive. Employed. Well, damn this is a rarity for me. Here comes the phone number! It's looking up...

The Dealbreaker: "It's a temporary number." ...until it isn't anymore. The left side of my brain snaps my right side wide open. I stand there smiling, smiling, smiling but my brain screams, "What the what? Is this seriously my life. Can I ever get with a guy who understands how to pay for his phone bill? It is the basics of bill payments people! Red flag, red flag, RED FLAG."

I'd say I'd overreacted but I never actually said any of this to his face. And he never texted or called despite the fact that he did get his real number a few weeks later.

Le sigh.

It's just another night in the journey for the single girl who is forever looking for that "Real Man" (Trademark), the elusive creature of the night that even the Wall Street Journal is also musing over its recent disappearance from our society. Pulling quotes from author Kay Hymowitz's gorgeous article, maybe the answer is right under my nose as to "Where Have the Good Men Gone?"



"Among pre-adults, women are the first sex. They graduate from college in greater numbers (among Americans ages 25 to 34, 34% of women now have a bachelor's degree but just 27% of men), and they have higher GPAs. As most professors tell it, they also have more confidence and drive. These strengths carry women through their 20s, when they are more likely than men to be in grad school and making strides in the workplace. In a number of cities, they are even out-earning their brothers and boyfriends."

If there is one thing synonymous with me, it's my work ethic. As of right now, I work as a copywriter, manage two blogs, and work as a freelance writer on the weekends. Dull moments are rare for me, and I spend my life being caught in a perpetual swing of moving motion. I multitask and how!

I'll admit I go through phases of life WAY differently than most people. When I was 13, I had a pre-quarter life crisis. They say puberty is tough for everyone but for me, it was literally a loss of identity. I didn't know what I believed when it came to religion or politics. I didn't know how I wanted to dress or what I aspired to do with my life at all. Have you ever looked in the mirror and had no idea who the person looking back at you was? Have you ever had that feeling last for three years? I did. During this time, I turned to my Dad, the self-proclaimed "man for all seasons" who would take me out for lunches and listen to me wail about my life and offer me advice. I fought with him on viewpoints he had I didn't agree with and even during the moments I pretended not to listen to him, I always was. At that age, I craved intellectual conversation which I didn't get at school and only found my voice in books, which I read through like they were going out of print. My Dad gave me great advice on where to take my future, where my strengths lay, how to begin working for what I wanted because no one would ever give it to me on my own. He told me how to invest in the stock market and to begin a stock portfolio early on. Most of all, his biggest piece of advice was "always have an edge" which he argued that at the time I did not have which I fought back with him on until we were both blue in the face.

I am confident. I don't know how I am, but I hold tight to this invisible faith inside of me that everything will work out if I make it work. This year was the biggest year of my life because it was the first year I began to work for everything I have and take it in a direction without the comfortable confines of school holding me snugly in its bubble. Breaking out of the bubble hurt, but it had to be done. Prolonging adulthood, this dream of my career I've fallen asleep to on restless nights, was never an option to me. In many ways, I have my Dad to thank for showing me direction and being able to love me the way I've always needed love: at arm's length. Close enough to be there when I need it, but far enough to let me be and do things on my own terms and learn the lessons within them.



"It's been an almost universal rule of civilization that girls became women simply by reaching physical maturity, but boys had to pass a test. They needed to demonstrate courage, physical prowess or mastery of the necessary skills. The goal was to prove their competence as protectors and providers. Today, however, with women moving ahead in our advanced economy, husbands and fathers are now optional, and the qualities of character men once needed to play their roles—fortitude, stoicism, courage, fidelity—are obsolete, even a little embarrassing."

Here are the necessary qualities I look for in men.

*note* These are non-negotiable. Yes, I read Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink which references that during speed-dating and courtship most women will drop their ideal man in favor of the real thing, but I am not most women. I am me and I do not budge on certain traits. If I am single forever, then I'm single forever. Will I one day meet someone who will make this entire post seem girlish and moot in point? Maybe. Don't hold your breath yet...

1) Good sense of humor. Witty banter and verbal wordplay are included on this. If I'm not laughing, then I'm not happy. My happiness levels, I've discovered, are linked to how often I'm cracking a terrible joke or giggling at any given moment.

2) Sharp. Dressed. Man. I did the "date the hobo" thing and it did not work. I cannot tell you how awful it is to have an acquaintance come up to you and wonder aloud, "How are you two even together? You're so nicely dressed and he, er, isn't!" Love shouldn't be about clothes, but you're talking to a girl who gets stars in her eyes when staring at creases in dress shirts. It's probably not healthy for a girl to sit in class and fantasize a roomful of properly dressed guys in argyle and Oxfords sitting around her either, but there ya go.

3) Love At Arms Length. Because I need space and time to be alone very often. Giving up pieces of my independence comes very hard for me.

4) Able to hold their own with me. If I think I can, I will try the patience of someone with me and up the ante looking for a response. I also say inappropriate things, swear, and argue with the best of them. Just hold your ground with me. For once, I'd like the first fight to not be the last one.

5) Older than me. I have a very strong attraction to older men. I think it was genetic.

I blame Judd Apatow for the invention of the "manchild", the kind of guy that seems to literally surround me nonstop today: grubby slacker with part-time job, ramshackle apartment, and Cheeto stains on his 3 day unwashed shirt. The question is does Kay see this too?



"Where have the good men gone? Their male peers often come across as aging frat boys, maladroit geeks or grubby slackers—a gender gap neatly crystallized by the director Judd Apatow in his hit 2007 movie "Knocked Up." The story's hero is 23-year-old Ben Stone (Seth Rogen), who has a drunken fling with Allison Scott (Katherine Heigl) and gets her pregnant. Ben lives in a Los Angeles crash pad with a group of grubby friends who spend their days playing videogames, smoking pot and unsuccessfully planning to launch a porn website. Allison, by contrast, is on her way up as a television reporter and lives in a neatly kept apartment with what appear to be clean sheets and towels. Once she decides to have the baby, she figures out what needs to be done and does it. Ben can only stumble his way toward being a responsible grownup."

Oh this is so disturbing. And by disturbing, I mean that Seth Rogen in this film is supposed to be depicting a 23 year old when he is clearly way older. But look at the way this is written. Only because Katherine Heigl is having a baby will he finally begin the road to becoming an adult. Is that what it takes for guys today? Do they need the girl they had a fling with to get pregnant to pull them away from their Call of Duty and excess bongwater collecting in their bongs? Is he being a good man here-or really just being a guy trapped into a responsibility that had it not happened, he wouldn't give a second thought to?

Hymowitz writes, "Americans had always struck foreigners as youthful, even childlike, in their energy and optimism. But this was too much."

Clearly, I am destined to be with a foreign guy. While I do love optimism, there's a thin line between remaining forever a child and growing up.



"The knowledge economy gives the educated young an unprecedented opportunity to think about work in personal terms. They are looking not just for jobs but for "careers," work in which they can exercise their talents and express their deepest passions. They expect their careers to give shape to their identity. For today's pre-adults, "what you do" is almost synonymous with "who you are," and starting a family is seldom part of the picture."

There you have it. When work ethic is to Heather as salt is to pepper, you know that in the event of sacrificing my identity through my career for a guy, I would give up the guy. What I do is who I am. Writing is my world, quite literally. When life is impossible or unpleasant, I create a new one through words. A long time ago, I wrote up my dream man with all of his fantastic qualities that you see written up there. Then I gutted him with flaws and problems and birthed reality into his veins. He still resides inside of my head where I continue to tweak and fiddle with his personality. If I ever stop procrastinating and write him out onto Word Documents, I'd flesh out a person you'd never forget. Which I suppose is my biggest flaw within him: this list of standards I have that fill up even my imaginary creations. My standards may be the death of me. Any guy reading this post I feel would slowly start backing away because once more, I'm behaving too intensely, taking too much control, behaving like well, like the man. A couple of my friends have told me that I tend to embody both male and female characteristics which makes it difficult for guys to approach me. In which case all I can say is, try. I have quite a bit of respect for men who approach me first as opposed to the other way around.

I don't bite, despite my reputation.

Joking :)



"Single men have never been civilization's most responsible actors; they continue to be more troubled and less successful than men who deliberately choose to become husbands and fathers. So we can be disgusted if some of them continue to live in rooms decorated with "Star Wars" posters and crushed beer cans and to treat women like disposable estrogen toys, but we shouldn't be surprised."

Ugh, it pains me to caption a picture of the gorgeous Ralph Fiennes with this. Men of the world, read this and know that I, Heather Taylor, am always in awe of you. I admire how you dress so well, make conversation beautifully, pick up the bar tab, and hold the door open no matter what for a lady.

In contrast, guys of the world, you can be like this. I'm very much a believer that one day you will trade the Natty Light for a Manhattan, the Star Wars for Wes Anderson, and the part-time job at Kinko's to a managerial position at the nicer Kinko's down the street.



Ah, Jimmy, I know. The good ones are out there somewhere. Sometimes you just have to travel to other seas to find the right fish though.

Love to you all,
Heather