Burlesque

You know you have a good boyfriend when he agrees (after minimal pleading) to see a movie with you that stars both Cher and Christina Aguilera.

Can't wait to see Christina sing!

health and deficiencies

Hi.

I found out today that I'm deficient in vitamin D. I only have a vague idea of how to read the diagnostics sheet my doctor gave me, but I'm about half of the lower side of the range for vitamin D. As my doctor said, my vitamin D levels are "in the shitter." I read a statistic online saying 85% of people are deficient in D. (Whether the stat is accurate or not is another story.) My doctor says if I don't do anything about it, that is, take a supplement or sun myself, that it will turn into osteoporosis when I'm older and possibly some other things. He didn't exactly say I'd get the big C, but asked if breast cancer runs in the family, which it does. Then he said women with high levels of vitamin D are less likely to get it. The ironic thing is that I've been going to great lengths to steer clear of the sun so as to avoid another cancer--skin cancer.

When you're young, you never think anything you do (or don't do) will catch up with you. And that being strict about certain things will make you live forever. I'm still young, but I'm beginning to see some symptoms of my life's choices catching up with me. I'm feeling fortunate that I have health care and that I can go to the doctor and be tested for important things like this. (The first thing I did after my appointment was buy D supplements.)

I'm going to go now to check on my baking yam. Incidentally, I've also added more fiber to my diet.

O hai!

I'm pretty sure I'll be writing here some more soon. 'Cause I ain't so depressed like I've been lately. Need to de-rut myself and get my songs going again. Practice makes perfect.

Tell me how you've been if you're here. :)

Dreams about the Lion

The Lion is my former boyfriend. The one who moved to LA without telling me, constantly ditched me, refused to talk to me on the phone because he said he didn't like our conversations, was meeting other girls on dating sites while we were dating (Lord only knows what he was doing with them), etc etc etc. Today I saw that the band he's running sound for is coming to play a show in my city. I immediately felt knots in my stomach. I'm tempted to go to the show just to see him. We haven't spoken in about a year, but I can't stop thinking about him. At this point, he's really just a stranger to me, but a stranger who caused me incredible amounts of pain and emotional bruising. I can still cry about the way things ended between us. I felt used, betrayed, and belittled.

Now I'm sort of with someone else. I'm hesitant to let him call me his girlfriend just because I don't want to have to deal with all the shit a relationship entails. I get too emotionally tied to these people and relationships end up being more stressful than beneficial to me (typically). However, I do like this guy I'm with now. It was weird because I had a really awful thing happen in November. One might use the word "fiasco" to describe it. Let's just say that I dated a guy who gave me the biggest scare of my life. He didn't do anything horrible to me or anything, but I thought something had happened to me that couldn't be undone. I'm being really cryptic right now because I don't want to say what it was, but everything's OK.

ANYWAY, after the November thing happened, I was completely worn out. 2009 was a HORRIBLE dating year for me and it ended with a bang. It was at that point that I decided to come to terms with ending up being an old maid. I didn't want to have anything to do with any guy ever again. The only way anything would happen would be if the guy was a friend first. I have a history of dating guys who are not my friends, and I think that's where it goes wrong. I want to be friends with the guy I'm dating. I act differently when I'm with a guy I'm dating. I'm not myself because I'm trying to impress him. At that point in November/December, I started to pray that my next boyfriend would be a friend first. That's when he asked me out.

At first I didn't even know it was a date, until he tried to kiss me. He and I have known each other for about 3 years or so, only getting to know each other a lot better back in April. He's almost 5 years younger than me, which is the same as my younger sister, so I always put him in the same category as my sister's friends--the "never gonna happen" category. And to be honest, I always thought he was really good looking in the kind of way that I wouldn't be his type because he could get hotter girls, but it turns out I am his type.

I don't know how long he's liked me, but he certainly kept it quiet. I ended up turning him down immediately when he tried to kiss me and as I hung out with him more later, I ended up regretting it. I kept hoping that he'd ask me again, and he did. Two more times. I brushed him off one of the times and then the last time, finally gave in. I'm always so resistant to starting anything with guys and I'm not sure why. I know that he's not the kind of guy who would just try to get in my pants, and I completely trust him.

I really don't know what else to say. He and I are together now, with me still trying to figure out what I want us to be. My favorite thing about him is that he doesn't want to push me into anything. Also, while The Lion lived in LA and would never see me when he came up to visit while we were still going out, this new one, who also lives in LA right now, comes up and sees me every time he's here.

I don't know. They can't really be compared. Thank God.

---------

I'm so scattered. I meant this entry to be about a dream I had about The Lion. Long story short: I dreamt he was in town and I ran into him. Even though I was standing right in front of him, he STILL wouldn't make time to see me. I woke up wanting to talk to him. Somehow I was at peace with him in that dream, because I did get to tell him what I was feeling at least a little bit before he went off to do whatever it was he was going to do. I hate carrying around all this negative energy toward him. I don't know how to get rid of it unless I talk to him and get on friendly terms. It's just my feelings and my ego get in the way. I think I need to read some Pablo Neruda now. Or Bukowski. But most likely Neruda. Bukowski'd just put me in an I-hate-love mood.

Good night.

datey face

So I'm dating a friend. This is new to me, but I probably should've been doing this instead of just dating dudes till I realized they weren't my friends. Right? He's so incredibly sweet and makes me laugh and he's a smarty pants, too. :-) I'll have to tell you more later. I miss yous!

<3

P.S. I must say that I love how he and I can just lay there all tangled up limbwise and just talk. And he LIKES (!!!) that I laugh too much. Take THAT, other guys who didn't like that about me! I'm pretty sure he'll be good for me. Really, really good.

Date inventory

Sore nipple, two hickeys and a bruised crotch. Never had a date end quite like this before.

New singing video

I've been too busy and unmotivated to share my dating disaster stories right now (I really just want to stop thinking about dating altogether if I can). So instead, here's a video of me playing my new ukulele. :-)

Marry Me

Hi lovey dovies,

It's too hot in Oakland to write anything of substance. However, I did record a video of myself being musical. If you'd like to see it, it's here.

Good night,

MMC

Kind of breakthrough

I'm in a singing group. I mentioned this before, right? So we sang last week--four sets at various classy retirement homes in San Francisco. For the first time in a very, very long time, I felt at ease singing for people. In fact, I really enjoyed it. I've never been able to fully grasp the "singing for others can be a gift to them" concept, but I understood it a little more when I saw the looks on the seniors' faces. To me I've always thought thinking someone else would enjoy the sound I create was the arrogant way to think, but I do get joy out of hearing other people sing, so why not? So I guess I've had a kind of breakthrough. Just wanted to mention it before I forgot.

More stories of dating disasters to come. I've got some doozies.

Men are scum.

I haven't written here for a very long time, and it kind of makes me sad. These past few months I've been incredibly busy and feely and trying to be as bold as I can be in the dating scene. I feel like social stuff is something I've needed to focus on. Sometimes I'm in my own world about how people act and think. I guess I've expected everyone to behave civilly toward each other, but I've recently had the realization that many people aren't civil. People lie, cheat, steal, and everything else.

Where to start.

So after my boyfriend and I broke up, I felt desperate (sort of), but in the kind of angry way where I didn't want him to ruin my life. My favorite guy friend, D, had a house warming party with his roommate and despite my feeling of ugly depression, I slapped on a smile and went. I ended up flirting with several guys that night, but befriended two. One (G) was a friend of D, and the other, V, was a guest of D's roommate. This particular story is about V.

From the moment I saw him in the kitchen, I could tell he wanted something from me. We sort of noticed each other. Finally, he came up to me and we started up a conversation. He was completely wasted, but funny so I kept up the flirtation with him. He paused our conversation and went out to smoke for a little bit. Somehow he ended up leaving without saying anything to me. An hour or so later, the party was dying down so we all went to a jazz club. Suddenly, V walks up behind me with a drink in his hand and asks me to dance. As soon as we got on the dance floor the song ended and the band packed up to leave. Against my better judgment (after all, this was a drunk guy), I hung out with V and his friend P for the rest of the night.

We got back to the party apartment and V asked me to go talk to him on the balcony. For about an hour or so we chatted and he was obviously hitting on me. At one point he asked me to kiss him, but he was so drunk I told him no, but that didn't stop him from kissing me on my face. I really didn't care about that, but I didn't want to make out with a drunk dude while I'm completely sober.

As the party started dying down, we left and headed to a diner (it was like 3 or 4 in the morning by this time). The entire time we were there, V was telling P (in English and sometimes another language) how much he liked me. There was NO question about whether or not he wanted to date me. P asked me if I had any single girl friends for him, and V made some comment like "We haven't even had our first date and you're asking her for her friends???" He even told me he wanted to take me rock climbing with him.

When the night ended I gave him my phone number and expected never to see him again. I really just thought he was drunk and overly friendly. In the case that he did call me, I'd actually decided not to speak to him again because of his drinking. (It doesn't bother me if friend drink, but I'd like the guy I'm dating not to.)

V completely surprised me later that week when he added me on Facebook. I added him back. Then later, he called me, but I wasn't near my phone so I missed his call. The harder I thought about him the less I wanted to talk to him--not because I thought he was an awful person, but because I didn't think we'd click. Basically he ended up calling me once a week consistently for the month of April and I ignored every call. Usually I ended up texting him back giving him some BS reason for why I hadn't called back. One time he actually said, "OK but tag, you're it." He'd put the ball in my court, but I didn't call. I honestly thought that would give him the biggest hint. But still, he ended up calling the next week just like clockwork.

Around this time, I had started using Facebook chat. I logged in one day and he messaged me. Turns out he wasn't so bad. I actually enjoyed talking to him. From that day on, I answered his weekly phone calls. I even invited him to my birthday party. He told me he had something scheduled that day but would try to make it if I promised to dance four dances with him. During this phone call I distinctly remember him saying something to the effect of, "Then you'll see that I'm the guy you're supposed to be with." He didn't exactly finish his statement, it sort of trailed off, but I knew that was what he was going to say. I thought it was weird, but ignored it.

A couple weeks ago things started getting weird. I got a text message from him one day at work asking if I'd left him a message on FB. When I said no and asked why, he said "My parents are setting up an arranged marriage for me and my mom's going through my FB." He's Indian, so it sort of seemed plausible. (Though he had also made it a point during the night we meant to say how NOT Indian he was, which made no sense in this context.) Later that night he called me and said his parents had guessed his password to his FB. They wanted to set him up in a marriage because he's getting old (31) and needs to settle down. On top of that, his parents had FIVE girls waiting for him to choose from. I asked him what he was going to do and he said he didn't want to get married and that he and I should pop out a baby and skip the marriage thing just to appease his parents. Then he laughed and said he was kidding.

Ironically this is probably the closest I've felt to him. I thought that I finally got him to open up to me and that we had a good conversation. The next day I had one less friend on Facebook. By Friday I'd figured out who it was. I immediately texted him to see if everything was OK. I told him I'd seen that we were no longer friends, that his Facebook was deleted and wanted to make sure his parents hadn't gotten the best of him.

(*#&$*&@^#(*$&%$&^%&#^$#@&^!!!!!

The fucker actually texted me back, "What, let me check." That was the last I heard from him. I thought it was odd because usually when we had texted each other during the day, he would call me later on his way home from work. I got no such call. Then I realized that one of his female friends who I'd seen him in pictures with on his profile had viewed my LinkedIn page. In the beginning I saw the pictures of them that looked like they were in a relationship back in March. I figured that if they'd been together that I was a rebound girl or something, which didn't really matter to me at this point because, while I liked him, I didn't really feel like he was going to be my boyfriend anytime soon.

Later that night, I got a message from this girl on FB only saying "hi there..." Even odder. I messaged her back saying hi, and asking who she was. My friends said maybe she was a sister or a good friend. I honestly thought one of his girl friends was checking up on me to make sure I was good enough for her friend.

The weirdest part of all was when I got a call from her during the day on Thursday from this girl. The news she gave me shocked and disgusted me. Apparently the guy who had been hitting on me so persistently, trying to get me to date him was this girl's fucking FIANCE. They are/were scheduled to be married in two months is what she said. It wasn't an arranged marriage and they'd been dating for TWO freaking years. I immediately apologized to her and couldn't stop myself from repeating, "Eww. YUCK." over and over.

I told her everything that had gone on between V and me and she said, "If what you say is true, I have to confront him." I told her if she needed to talk--or anything at all--to let me know. She called an hour or two later saying she'd talked to V and he had denied everything, saying he and I were just friends and that all the talk about his parents trying to arrange a marriage for him was just a conversation we'd had. FUCKING LIAR.

Between quiet sobs, she told me she had to go because she was at work. Again, I repeated that if she needed ANYTHING to give me a call and told her when I got off work. I'm not sure if I'll ever hear from her again, but I hope she's able to make a decision she's happy with. I would even go so far as to say I would want to befriend her, of course not if she actually marries V. But fuckin' a if some men don't totally, completely suck.

I'll write about my other lame experiences I've had in a little bit.