flying in planes with boys

Pop quiz!  You and your significant other are flying across the country for an awesome vacation together.  Your ticket gets upgraded to 1st class, but your s/o's doesn't.  Do you:

• A:   Switch your seat so you can snuggle back in steerage.
• B:   Tell your honey "See you in [somewhere across the country!]"  and enjoy the free food, free drinks, and extra legroom guilt-free.
• C:   Give the upgrade to your significant other so they can enjoy the perks of 1st class.
• D:   Pay for your partner's upgrade so you can sit together.
• E:   All of the above. 

If you chose:

A:  You are an awesome girlfriend/boyfriend that can't be tempted from your sweetie's side by mere human comforts.  You may also just want to make people jealous as you hold hands for 5 hours and use your partner as a pillow.  Bonus: You can make them take the middle seat and avoid sitting next to strangers!

B: You are secure in your relationship and you know that 5 hours apart isn't going to put a damper on a 5 day trip, and you're not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.  Alternatively, you're just greedy and selfish (hopefully this isn't the case).

C:  You're sickeningly sweet.  You ride a unicorn as your car on rainbow paved roads.  Or maybe you take sedatives on planes, so you wouldn't enjoy 1st class anyways.

D:  You are rich.  You aren't worried about spending a couple hundred dollars extra on an already-extravagant vacation.

E:  Just kidding, this doesn't apply to this Completely Hypothetical Situation.

Me?  Try as I might, I'm just not nice enough to be C, and I'm far from rich, so D is out.  So I'm choosing between A and B.  On the one hand, airplane food isn't all that special, and I'm not really looking for a ton of free booze.  Plus, I'm on the small end of the human spectrum, and I don't really need the extra legroom.  Also, it would be nice to hold my boyfriend's hand and make people jealous cozy up for a long flight with a non-stranger.  On the other hand?  I've never flown first class before.  I'm dying to know what it's like.  And I do have enough faith in my relationship that a measly 5 hours won't jeopardize anything.  Luckily for me, my awesome man friend immediately told me to stay up in front and enjoy it, so the choice is mine!

Life sure is hard sometimes.  ;)

the balancing act

I've been talking about balance a lot recently.  Balanced diet, balance doing weird butt-firming isometric moves at Pure Barre, balancing my check book, and of course, work-life balance.  I'm awful at some of them -- Lean Pockets and Rockstar do not a healthy diet make, and my checkbook has been the family joke since I was about 8 years old.  My sore buns are hard evidence that I must be at least semi-decent at the barre, but the work in progress is that pesky work-life balance. 

I should probably specify what I mean by work-life balance.  As someone who shows up at 7:59:59 AM and leaves at 5:00:01 PM Monday through Friday, I have exactly zero difficulty with work-life balance.  It's the life-life balance.  The life-cooking-exercise-boyfriend-alone time-family-friends-cleaning room- doing laundry balance.

I've always struggled with this, largely due to my persistent need to appear "fun."  So in the balance boxing ring, I pretty much always let family/friends/partying kick the crap out of boring stuff like doing laundry/exercise/reading books in peace and quiet.  Fun>No fun.  Simple enough, and very mature and adult-like (heh).  It's gotten even hairier in the past, when boyfriends were added to the mix.  I'll spare you the gory details and sum it up real quick:  Boyfriend > everything else.  Eep! This is concerning for many, many reasons, but I can narrow it down to two big ones.  First, it isn't cool to blow off your friends and the rest of your life for a guy.  And second, when things end (probably due to the clinginess involved), you won't have any friends or life waiting for you.

So I've been making a conscious effort to bring a little balance to my life.  My method so far is to spend my time on things that have higher priority.  It sounds simple, but it's really not-- priorities can shift depending on the circumstances.  For example:  If Friend A, Friend B, and Boyfriend all want to hang out and I have a couple of loads of laundry to run and I need to go to the gym... BUT I hung out with Boyfriend last night and I see Friend A all the time, and it's been weeks since I've seen Friend B and I do have plenty of clean underwear left anyways, and I need a rest day anyways... Aren't you glad you don't live in my head?  Fighting through my crazy inner monologue is half the battle, and I'm trying my hardest to make the right choices.

I'm finding that the temptation is still to blow off exercise and chores for greener pastures, but nonetheless, my room is cleaner than it's ever been in my adult life and I'm starting to rack up some mileage on the treadmill.  So far, there's been a distinct lack of staged interventions from my friends to get me to hang out more, and yesterday, my boyfriend told me that I'm clingy but he "can tell that I'm trying not to be."

I'm gonna call all of those signs of success. 

the lmh defriending method

It seems laughable now, but when Facebook first became a "thing" I wasn't going to join.  Quick cut to the end of the first week of college, and I'd already given in and joined.  Don't judge! -- I've never claimed to be a non-conformist.  So there I was on The 'Book, looking up my high school and adding every person I'd ever talked to or had a class with in high school, and rapidly adding my new college friends.  And random people I meet at bars.  And classmates that I need to work on group projects with.  And random people I meet on trains in Chicago on St. Patrick's Day.    And friend's significant others.  And the lifeguard at the Vegas pool. I've been doing a lot of friending since August 1, 2005  (Fun fact: timeline can tell you when you joined!), but --with the exception of ex-boyfriends--not a lot of defriending.  

It never really bothered me to have absurd amounts of "friends" on Facebook, because it's occasionally fun to look up random people from high school and see how they're doing.  The thing is, I never stopped to think that people might be doing that to me.  And then recently, I got a notification that I had been "poked."  Shocked and confused  that someone was poking me in 2012, I was also a little weirded out when I saw it was from a creep-a-licious kid (now married) who I had never really spoken to, even when he was in my AP Calc class in high school.  I promptly defriended him, and got to thinking about who I should be allowing in my social network. 

I didn't come up with any hard and fast guidelines as to who should be included, but I determined that one should NOT be my friend if:

1. I hate his or her guts.
2. I can't figure out who the person is after looking through a couple of profile pictures.
3. I can't remember his or her real last name.
4. I haven't had any interaction--in person, or on the internet, however small it may be-- with the person that I can remember (I assume that my memory is good for 18-24 months).

I opened up my friend list and started to go at it, but it was a huge hassle, and I only made it halfway through the As.  And that's when I devised the perfect solution:  I defriend people on their birthdays. 

Every day, someone has a birthday, and I get a Birthday notification at the top of my homepage.  I click on it, wish my friends a happy birthday, and defriend anyone who falls into one of the 4 categories above.    It may seem harsh to pull the plug on someone's birthday, but I've been doing this for a couple months and no one's said anything yet.  I figure that even someone who checks every day to make sure their number of friends hasn't changed isn't going to do it on their birthday, when they're getting blown up with hundreds of wall posts.  And if they do happen to notice that someone went missing, it's their birthday and there are hundreds of more fun things to obsess over.  I figure that in a year's time, I'll have made it through my whole friend list, but without the hassle of doing it all in one day.  So there you have it --Easy, clean defriending without a huge time commitment.  

Want to avoid being defriended by me?  Like a status or two, message me, hang out with me, or exploit the loophole and have your birthday on Saturday or Sunday this year... I don't clean house on weekends! 

resolutions

It's that time of year when the gym is packed, Lean Cuisines are on sale, and everyone's talking resolutions--except me.  (Until now.)  You see, I don't really buy into the whole New Years resolution thing.  For starters, in the navel-gazing world of Lindsey Marie, the year starts on my birthday.  August 13.  In my crazy head, it has always made more sense to track my mile markers relative to my age, not the calendar year.  In the past when I've tried to do New Years resolutions, they just haven't stuck.  I've chosen either completely arbitrary goals (you should ask to see my journal entry every day from 2010), or completely unreasonable goals (still waiting to walk on the moon).  There's also the obvious reason not to make resolutions-- I'm perfect and there's nothing to fix.

KIDDING!  The truth is, while I'm not perfect, I really don't hate myself.  And in the words of my darling sister Kiwi regarding New Years resolutions, "I like myself.  And if I don't, I fix it.  Immediately."  I don't need to wait around for January 1 to make a list of things to work on.  I already have one, and it's in a state of constant growth and modification.  This is what I'm working on right now (in no particular order of importance):

• Be on time for things.
• Be better to my body.  Wear sunscreen, drink less, eat healthier, sweat once a day.
• Save more money.
• Get a passport.
• Write more, whether I post it on the internet or not.
• Be more even-tempered.
• Run faster.  
• Stop trying to lose the imaginary 3 pounds and accept and love myself.
• Be a better sister/daughter/friend/lover.
• Tell the truth.
• Do the things I don't want to do, especially when I'm not in the mood to do them.

Before I got uber-serious on you with this little list of mine (such a buzz kill, oops), the point where I was headed toward?  My only resolution for 2013 is to work on my list for all of the 365 days of the year.  And to anyone who has New Years Resolutions, I hope they stick.  Self-improvement for all! 








PS:  I kind of changed my blog title.  Let's just call this what it really is.  :)

if the world should end

The Mayan Apocalypse.  12-21-12.  Yikes!  The general consensus is that it's not happening, but that hasn't stopped people from stalking the mountain tops in France waiting for the UFOs to rescue them, buying candles en masse, and scheduling End of the World parties.  I'm basically a non-believer, but this awful rainstorm we're getting in the Ace Deuce right now has me ever so slightly worried, just in case that movie 2012 was right and we DO need to be piling onto the arks...which are in China.  Since I'm obviously not making it over there in time, I've got less than a day to start living to the fullest.  Here's my Last Day On Earth List:

1. Use the Mayan Apocalypse to jump back on the blogging horse.  I've been writing a lot and then get stuck pulling the trigger on the "publish" button.  "No more!" I say.  You'll be stuck with my random thoughts and drawings whether they're witty or not.
2. This might be a cliché, but people say this for a reason:  I'd call everyone who I love (and go see anyone close enough in person), and tell them I love them.  Then I'd throw away my phone.
3. Stop saying sorry.  My habit of gratuitous apologizing has reached new levels recently.  I am NOT sorry you have indigestion, as I did not cause it.  I am NOT sorry that you elbowed me at soccer.  Sorry I'm not sorry for not being sorry?
4. Go for a hard, fast run, because it's something that makes me feel alive.  (So does waterfall jumping, but there aren't any waterfalls close enough).
5. Stock up on canned goods.  I know that the kind of apocalypse people are talking about won't be the kind for which bottled water and canned beans would be useful.  But what if ... the Mayans were predicting the Zombie Apocalypse?  I need canned food, good running shoes, a backpack, a machete, and some water proof mascara (I'll be the best looking zombie survivor ever!) STAT.  At any rate, I'll actually have canned goods in the kitchen, which would be its own kind of apocalypse in a way.
6. Blast "Don't Rain On My Parade" on repeat for a good 20-30 minutes. 
7. Ignore the End of the World emails that are flooding my inbox.  No, Spirit.  I will not be booking a cheap flight.  And I hear OKCupid is encouraging its users to "Go out with a BANG," if you get my drift.  Delete delete delete!!
8. Watch Dirty Dancing.  And then turn on Crazy Stupid Love, but only watch the Ryan Gosling parts--particularly the shirtless scenes.  
9. Put on the beautiful, unworn cocktail dress hanging in my closet and await the end gracefully, peacefully, and in style. 

All that said, it doesn't seem that the world will be ending.  I'm not sure if the world is ending at midnight tonight, midnight tomorrow, or 5:11 AM tomorrow, but it's already 9:35 AM on Friday 21 in New Zealand, so I'm gonna go ahead and call a big bluff on those Mayans. 

Dear Mayans,
Stick to the brain surgeries with rocks as utensils, and leave Doomsday predictions to Harold Camping.

why you shouldn't apply the scientific method to relationships

I’m in a relationship again.  The funny thing about relationships is that they send my psycho brain zooming off in a million directions, all at once, non-stop, twenty-four-seven.  [Side bar: What if we knew all the answers to love?  We could devote all that extra brainpower to something productive.  Cancer would be cured.]  Unfortunately, my brain doesn’t always meander in good directions, because this hopelessly romantic gal is a tad cynical and guarded these days.   And my overactive brainy nerdiness that makes me endearing (to some at least) totally backfires in this instance.  Because I collect and gather evidence and analyze my relationship, like it’s an experiment or something-- the Scientific Method, 20 times a day: 

• Ask A Question:  Does my boyfriend like me?  (Easily replaced with “Is my boyfriend planning on breaking up with me?”)
• Construct a Hypothesis:  Boyfriend does not like me. 
• Conduct an Experiment:  Now, I’m not the kind of girl who usually sets up “traps” for her boyfriend.  There is no “Count how long it takes to respond to my text message” or any of that baloney.    But I might employ those methods during my experimental phases.  When I send a smiley face, is it returned?  If I call does he sound happy to hear me?
• Analyze the data:  I combine the results of my “experiments” with the vast amount of data already at my disposal -- the number of dates, numbers of text messages, lines in gchats, and numbers of phone calls received versus sent.  And I look at those numbers in terms of frequency over time, e.g.,  “3 months ago he used to text me 20 times a day, and now only 2 times a day!”
• Draw a Conclusion:  He hates me and is planning to dump me ASAP.  Or very occasionally, my fears are put to rest.  The numbers have remained steady, and I am relieved and consoled for a whole hour until the whole process starts again.
• Communicate the results (and more!):  Once I draw my pessimistic conclusion, I start to dwell on it and let it eat at me, and I become resentful, and start lashing out with passive aggressiveness.  And then, what do you know—that hypothesis becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because how many sane guys would stay with an angry, resentful, passive aggressive girlfriend that counts text messages?  Oh wait…none.

I know.  This is insane, irrational, and totally unhealthy.  (Though I WAS comforted to find out recently from a girlfriend that I’m not the only one who does this—but I may be the only one who admits to it on the internet!).  I’m slowly coming to recognize my unhealthy behaviors, and I’m trying to grow out of them.  So going forward, I’m going to try and ditch the scientific method and operate on a basis of trust.  Trust that just because I’m not receiving a constant stream of text messages doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about me.  Trust that if he does want to break up, he will let me know.  And trust that if I am feeling uncertain about anything, that we can have an open dialogue about it.

Whoa-- Am I sounding a little grown-up? 

L

an open [breakup] letter to pinterest

Dear Pinterest,

Are you from Jamaica?  Because Jamaican me crazy!  But really --all puns aside, you're driving me crazy.

I suppose I should love you.  After all, I'm a 20-something web savvy, social networking girl who unabashedly went to college hoping for an MRS degree (obviously that didn't pan out), and loves painting her nails and eating cupcakes.  Plus, most of my friends love you.  They're inspired, invigorated, and motivated by you.  But me?  You just make crazy.  Let me explain.

Despite what some mean ex-boyfriends would say about me, I like to think of myself as a nice, normal, 23-year old girl.  I feed myself at restaurants and vending machines, and I haven't set foot in a grocery store in almost two months.  I don't have a boyfriend and I'm okay with that-- I have a ton of fun with my friends, and I sometimes wonder if I even have the time to invest in a relationship right now.  I have a closet filled with a fantastic mix of clothes from J. Crew, Banana Republic, Target and JCPenney.  I rent a room in a condo from my best girlfriend.  I like my life.  It's messy and imperfect, but it's mine, and I'm content.  Until I visit you, that is.

I try to avoid you, I really do.  But you pop up everywhere --blogs, twitter, my facebook newsfeed-- beckoning me with your trendy, perfectly painted fingernail.  And I always give in.  "Just 15 minutes before I start this project," I tell myself.  And after just 15 minutes with you?  I can't stop.  I can feel the crazy coming on, but I keep going.  Next thing I know, I have my 17th wedding planned out, 300 low-fat meals, 77 art projects, 43 fabulous outfits, and 96 ab-toning workout plans pinned.  In the course of minutes, you have turned me into some crazed, wedding-obsessed, crafty, over-ambitious Stepford Wife.


Why do you show me these things?  I don't have a boyfriend, I can't afford those adorable outfits, and my idea of creative cooking is ordering something from the kitchen that's not on the menu.  And let's be honest-- I am not Martha Stewart, and I will never make those cute, eco-friendly lightbulb flower holders.  Maybe someday I'll get to that point in my life.  Someday, I'll love cooking and have a fiancé and it will be appropriate to plan a wedding.  Maybe I'll even have tens of thousands of dollars to spend renovating my dream bathroom.  But right now?  Not so much.  You're thrusting me into this fantasy future and stealing hours and hours from my actual life, which I should be living.

So, I'm sorry, Pinterest.  But I think we've run our course.  Our time together has been special, but my heart just isn't in it anymore.   It's not you, it's me.  I want us to be friends, but I don't think that's possible right now.  Maybe I'll see you in 5 or 10 years, when I'm ready to organize my closet.

Love,
Lindsey