October 1, 2022

I woke up early this morning and just couldn’t get out of bed. Some combination of the gloomy weather and my mood, and some pain in my head and neck put me in this state I don’t like to be in. I like to wake up and hit the ground running (sometimes literally, running) on most days. I like to clean a few things up, take a bath, put on clothes and makeup, take some selfies if I’m feeling good about myself, and take Maudie for a stroll. I do my best to face the day head-on, as if I woke up on purpose. This morning, though, I put on some socks and a sweatshirt and crawled back into my absurd king-sized bed, and stayed there until Maudie thanked me to know it was time to go outside. While she was still snoozing, I turned on The Haunting of Hill House and stayed in bed for several hours, watching the end of the heartbreaking, heartwarming, scary show about a family. The show chronicles a family’s past – their grief, their internal drama and tension, their love and forgiveness, their struggles with mental health – plus ghosts. It’s a lot like that show This Is Us, but with ghouls and monsters. I tried to watch that show once, This Is Us. I made it through a few episodes but had to stop watching because I felt so affected by it. All of that grief and pain, beautifully portrayed on the screen was too much for me to handle. Isn’t that odd? I can watch scary movies full of gore and suspense and horror without flinching, but sometimes shows with too much emotion and hurt can drive me out of the room, the same way scary movies used to affect me when I was in my 20’s. I remember walking in on my college roommate once, and I think she was watching The Exorcist or something like that, and I practically ran out of the room. But now I find myself watching this show that’s pretty damn scary, and the stuff that’s bothering me is all of the other non-paranormal stuff. The normal stuff like grief and death and love and love lost- that’s what is getting to me.

I’ve been writing a lot lately – you may have noticed. It’s definitely a coping mechanism. One of my fears in writing so much here – in taking so much of myself and recording it on the page – is that you might read it and think I’m some sort of self-centered monster. You might think that all I ever concern myself with is my own pain, as if I’m under this assumption that I have a monopoly on heartache or rejection or loneliness or grief. Or worse yet, you might think I’m trying to draw on my own experiences to help you. I fear that you think I’m trying to pretend like I’ve got things figured out and that you can learn things from the tiny droplet in the universe that is my life. I hope you know that’s not the case, but this is a criticism that I’ve often thrown at writers. I look at the work of Rachel Hollis and others like her in the “self-help” section of the bookstore and want to ask them: Why are you writing about a sample size of 1 and calling it rules for life? How can you presume that your own experiences are so hefty – so impactful, unique and important – that you can write them down and use them as universal lessons that we should all take to heart? Why aren’t you zooming out to help people make impacts in their communities, in their families, or in the world? All of this self-stuff, it’s too specific and requires too many assumptions about an individual’s circumstances and resources to truly be helpful. I think it should be called self-help, only because the act of writing it all down- organizing your stories and memories and feelings in some structure that makes sense to you – can be really helpful to you as the writer. It’s a great way to help yourself.

Anyway, I was watching this show and there were some parts that made my heart beat really fast. I realized the reaction had nothing to do with the scary parts of the show. I watched this show for the first time last year with my ex and re-experiencing certain parts of it brought me right back to the brown couch I have on my first floor where we snuggled up under a blanket with the lights off and watched together. We binged about half of the season in one dreary afternoon right before we loaded up the cute Lego table I had made for his nephew’s birthday to take over to his brother’s house. As we were watching, the windy weather outside kept making the ‘Welcome’ sign that hangs on my front door smack against the glass, causing us to jump a bit more often from the startling sound. A few days earlier, he had come over on a ‘school night’ to help me build a little (disproportionate) Lego town for the little one. While carrying the Lego table to the car, I dropped the little spare tire we had placed in the back of the Lego pick-up truck that Josh built while we were watching the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. We brought the table to the birthday boy and watched as he and his sister tore it apart in glee. I got a text the next morning that the kids ran straight to that Lego table as soon as they woke up the next morning and I felt really happy. I felt like I was part of a family.

Three days later, everything fell apart. I fell apart. Some things that felt important to me at that time were stripped away from me – the man I loved, the pseudo-family I had nearby, the kids I loved to spoil who reminded me so much of my own niece and nephew, my scary movie buddy, dreary October afternoons spent with someone instead of missing someone. I had gained all of these things in the Fall and lost them all in the Fall, and something about the weather and spooky signs and pumpkin-spiced mania keeps giving me flashbacks to the beginning and the end. I keep reliving the high-highs and the lowest of lows. I think about the October afternoon we spent building Marvel Legos in my living room and he was looking for a certain Lego and said “Am I blind?” and I said “No, darlin’ you’re just stupid” and we giggled about that for the rest of the weekend. I think about the time I gave him strep throat with a smooch in the parking lot of a Wendys just a couple weeks before Thanksgiving, the time we drove around Northern Virginia looking at Fall leaves, the time I visited my family for a week over Halloween and came home to someone who couldn’t wait to see me when I got back and surprised me with Super Mario themed refrigerator magnets. Then I think about the trip we never took to Oktoberfest at Busch Gardens, which I had planned meticulously in a state of optimism and denial. I think about the Halloween costumes I bought that we still wore even though my Pikachu makeup was ruined by break-up tears by the end of the night, and the time I went on a run to try to keep my sanity and found that Lego spare tire on the street – and the way I cried on a stoop just staring at it in the palm of my hand. I think about how much courage it took for me to finish watching the rest of The Haunting of Hill House by myself after he left, and how I felt sad 100% percent of the time and scared 0% of the time. I think about how the time we delivered that Lego table to the kids was the last time I’ll ever see them.

It’s like this time in my life was bookended by two Fall seasons – the happiest one and the saddest one – and I’m haunted by both of them right now. In between the two bookends was a short lived romance in which I spent a lot of time wondering if my partner even liked me and knowing for sure that he didn’t love me. I kept trying to be someone worth being loved by him. I kept trying to be the best girlfriend ever. I never gave up on it until he made me give up on it. I know everything in between my two Fall bookends wasn’t great, and I’m way better off now that the story has ended. I wish the entire story really was something sitting on a shelf – novels in between bookends that I could scoop up and toss into a donation box. I wish I could take them to the used bookstore or the Goodwill and place them somewhere where they can still exist but be far away from me – far enough away that they won’t haunt me anymore. Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do with this writing. Maybe I’m trying to take these stories and offload them from my own bookshelf and onto yours, so you can enjoy them and I can declutter my head at the same time. Maybe you can soak them in and I can stop being haunted by them. And one day when I’m ready, I can find the new shelf that my stories sit on and read them again without pain or regret. Does that make sense? I want all of these ghosts to go away (the good ones and the bad ones) but I don’t want a Ghostbusters situation where they end up in one of those traps forever. They are memories worth having and I don’t have any regrets. I just wish I could take a break from them.

I guess there’s nothing unique here. It’s pretty common for people to have feelings of grief or miss someone during the Holidays. I was listening to a podcast the other day and one of the ladies hosting said that Halloween is millennial Christmas. In my case, I feel like that might be true. I’ve always thought Halloween is like the Friday afternoon of the Holiday season. Friday afternoon is when the work week is winding down and everything feels good and tingly because you know you’re only hours away from enjoying the weekend. The rest of the weekend just doesn’t feel as good. Saturday you realize that the weekend is halfway over already, Sunday you start to dread the start of the new week. Friday afternoon is really the only part of the weekend that feels like stress-free relief and anticipation. Halloween is like that – it’s the signal that wonderful things are coming and that you better pay attention and enjoy it, because you’ll blink and it will be another gray January.

So yeah. I’m at the best part of the Holiday season and I’m missing someone – or maybe the idea of someone, and memories are making me feel things. I’m also recognizing that this Holiday season will be another lonely one for me. No one is coming and I’ll be putting my tree up by myself again, and watching Christmas movies and the Holiday Baking Championship on the Food Network alone, and counting the days until I can load up the 4runner to retreat to my family in Kentucky for a few days. For a couple of weeks, it’s been a little difficult to get into the spirit because of that. I was hoping I’d be visited by three actual ghosts in A Christmas Carol form – the ghosts of Halloween Past, Halloween Present, and Halloween Future – to teach me how to keep Halloween in my heart all year, but they haven’t arrived yet (and Roseanne already did that bit in the 90’s). The only cure for memories that haunt (other than writing them down) is to try to take back the places and times that hold those memories and paint new memories over top of them. Now my job is to take the wonderful memories of Fall 2020 and the ugly ones from Fall 2021, and forge shiny new ones over top of them. Maudie and I have Halloween costumes in the mail as we speak, and I’m planning to take her to pick a pumpkin soon. We’ll watch Casper and Hocus Pocus and I’ll carve a pumpkin while she stares at me and begs me for food. Step by step, we’ll exorcize the ghosts of Falls past right out of this house, and before long the memories will haunt me no more.

October 13, 2022

If you’ve never been a single lady of a certain age, you may not be aware of one of life’s most basic principles. Most men in heterosexual relationships can’t be friends with women who are not their girlfriend. I know you’re all about to argue with me and say “Rebecca! My husband has 20 lady friends.” No Margaret, those are YOUR 20 lady friends that you let him talk to at social events or possibly the wives/girlfriends of his own buddies. I’m sure some of you are in sophisticated, cool relationships where your husbands/boyfriends have a ton of lady friends from all walks of life and it doesn’t bother you because “the trust is there.” I was in one of those relationships once, and my boyfriend at the time had such a great gal pal in his life that he told me “she’s a lot like you, but nice to me” and I think he might be married to her now. My point is – I’ve been on both sides of that mess: the girlfriend sitting at home feeling like garbage while her man drinks scotch on the roof with his best “buddy” with the double D’s, and the actual-real-life-no-shit lady friend who has known a man for years with no hanky panky involved and STILL gets blocked on all platforms when his girlfriend won’t stop screaming about that time the two of you spoke on Facebook messenger about an upcoming half marathon or some fish you fried together 8 years ago. The former has only happened to me once, but the latter has happened many times before. Something about this social media world and rampant infidelity has put people on edge, and trust is eroding. And I’ve seen some of the messages I receive from men who are married or in relationships – the online flirtation and boundary crossing is real – and real life platonic friendships are suffering because of it.

If you are a single woman, and as attractive as a mailbox, then you will not be allowed to keep some of your man friends who are in relationships with women. One of my best friends from high school found himself a girlfriend during sophomore year of college and told me she had banned him from talking to me and that was the end. We haven’t spoken since. I doubt this is much of a loss in my life, but still. That situation ended up being the first incident in a series of unfortunate identical incidents. It’s annoying. Anyway, I could rant about this forever and give you a ton of examples. But I brought it up to tell you a different story so I can bitch about something else. Here goes. Many weeks ago, a friend of mine told me that he was going through a break up. I tried to comfort him. I told him about mine from last year and told him everything was going to get better – the good is going to come back around, I said. One day I was in the city and I was about to text him to see if he wanted to get a drink after my volleyball game, and I noticed that my message wasn’t going through. I hopped on Snapchat and saw that he wasn’t my friend on there any more. I got on Instagram and saw that he unfollowed me. I messaged him on there and said “What’s going on? Why are you removing me from your life?” He replied with a few pseudo-code sentences: “Getting back together. Have to. Sorry.”

It took me a couple of minutes of staring at the non-sensical reply for me to realize he meant that he and his ex were getting back together and that I had to be the collateral damage to make that happen. Me and probably every other single woman of a certain age in his contacts. I got really angry. Like really angry. I said “HOW WONDERFUL FOR YOU, F**KING ASSHOLE. I’M SURE THIS WILL WORK OUT”. Guys, I was so mad and then I was also really baffled by my reaction. I usually don’t do the angry texting thing. My face got hot in the back of my Uber ride back to my car (because momma only drives in DC when she’s getting paid for it) and I thought about it for my entire drive back to my house. I’m smart enough to put the pieces together. This guy had been dumped as the result of some sort of infidelity or online flirtation and she had agreed to take him back with a couple of contingencies in place – one of them being that his single lady friends had to disappear. And once I pieced that together, I realized that my anger wasn’t driven by the fact that a friend was nuking me from his phone – it was driven by jealousy. I was jealous that he was getting a second chance and I didn’t.

A few weeks later, he unblocked me and reached out. It turns out that relationships that have to operate with one person in chains while the other is still carrying around resentment for crimes of the past aren’t long lived. Forgive me, I’m making a ton of assumptions about this scenario and I don’t actually have all the facts – this is just the way it went down in my imagination. Anyway, I forgave him with very few questions asked and we moved on with the surface level friendship we had before. He thanked me for being forgiving and my response to him was “I get it. If my ex would give me a second chance, I’d nuke just about every man I know out of my phone.”

I’ve been thinking about that statement a lot. It was a nonsensical hypothetical for a couple of reasons. For one thing, a second chance with him wouldn’t require any kind of non-cheating condition because I’m not a cheater and have never strayed outside of the boundaries of faithfulness. Also, and more importantly, he’s not coming back ever. I have to repeat that to myself about once a day to keep making it a truth that I understand. He is not coming back and no amount of wishing or crying or praying to a god I don’t even believe in will ever change that. This is not Pride and Prejudice and he won’t be walking through a field of fog on a crisp fall morning to tell me “You have bewitched me, body and soul and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on.” I’m of course talking about the 2005 Kiera Knightly movie version – he didn’t say that shit in the book. My point being, this is not Jane Austen’s universe, and he’s not coming back. That’s actually a huge theme in a lot of Jane Austen’s writing – men coming back for more- and I can’t relate at all.

I also get stuck on this idea of being given a second chance and the implications of it. It seems to mostly be used to describe situations where you screwed up and are undeserving of something – whether it be more time with a partner, or dessert after dinner or that big account at work – but someone is being charitable enough to offer it to you anyway in hopes that you’ll rise to the occasion. It’s an opportunity to try something again after failing. It’s like the time I got a C on my recitation of “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost in 11th grade English class, and the teacher let me go home and practice some more to try again. That’s the thing – in a lot of scenarios, you get second chances, but you also get a little bit of feedback to help you be more likely to succeed when you try again. My teacher gave me my C grade with some notes about how I needed to make more eye contact and be expressive. I knew what I needed to practice at home so I could come in the next day and get my A.

I guess that’s why a second chance in my situation never would have made sense – there was no actionable feedback or suggested improvement that came out of that relationship failure, because the things that were wrong had nothing to do with me. I didn’t fail at anything. I didn’t do anything to let anyone down. That’s another thing that I’ve been repeating to myself daily. I didn’t do anything wrong and “more” from me wouldn’t have changed the outcome because he didn’t need “more” – he needed “different”. Even if he showed up tomorrow and gave me a second chance, things would probably still end the same way they did before because I’m still me and he’s still him.

Personally, I have given out a lot of second chances in my life. I actually think our ability to forgive is one of the most beautiful parts of human relationships. It’s one of the things we have in common with dogs. No matter how often I screw up being Maudie’s mom, she still loves me more than anything and greets me the next morning like nothing happened. I think most people I know are very forgiving and that’s a lovely and vital part of the human condition – because a few of life’s certainties are death, taxes and people making mistakes. I’ve given some second chances to people who have burned me for doing so, but I’ve also had some people really surprise me. I’ve also been given some second chances from friends that I’m really grateful for and know I didn’t deserve them. I’m really forgiving because I honestly know what a little shit I can be and I want to extend the same grace I hope people will give me.

I wish I hadn’t gotten so angry with my friend. I wish I had been able to recognize in that moment that he was trying to rise to the occasion. This girl was kind enough and loved him enough to let him try to be the man she needed, and it seems like he was willing to do just about anything to try. Some people don’t forgive and some people don’t try, and I wish I had been able to appreciate being collateral damage in the middle of two people forgiving and trying at that time. She gave him a bad grade and some comments in red ink, and he went home to try to fix them. In the end it might not have been enough, but it’s actually still a lovely story if you zoom out and ignore some of the nonsense.

October 19, 2022

Once upon a time, in a land far, far, away called NOVA (Northern Virginia) there was a girl (32-year-old-woman) who lived high up in a tall tower (4 floors of a suburban town home). In her tower, she waited patiently for her Prince Charming (any man with cute face, a 401k and a dark sense of humor) to come and rescue her from her tower to take her on grand adventures (wineries in the country, plays in the City, the Olive Garden). While she waited in her tower, she watched reruns of Sister Wives on TLC, wrote in her diary (blog), sent postcards (Snapchats) to friends in far away lands and scoured local wanted ads (dating apps) for men in need of a beautiful princess (moderately attractive data scientist) to take to balls (weddings and hockey games). One night after a long evening of reading (scrolling and swiping), she retired to her bed chamber (king-sized bed with the unicorn pillow) looking forward to a long slumber (4 hours like Bill Clinton in the 90’s, interrupted by pee breaks every 2 hours). In the night, however, she was stirred by a sound – the sound came from her cell phone and it sounded like a text! Her face was illuminated in the dark room (thanks to black out curtains from Bed, Bath and Beyond) by the light of the cellular contraption. Her glowing face showed signs of confusion, followed by comprehension and finally horror as she realized THE TEXT WAS AN AD FOR ALLBIRDS SNEAKERS INSTEAD OF A FLIRTY MESSAGE FROM RYAN THE ACCOUNTANT WHO TOOK HER FOR ICE CREAM IN THE VILLAGE LAST WEEK. *scary horror movie sounds*. It was then that the maiden realized that her phone was HAUNTED by Ryan’s ghost (and the ghosts of many, many other young men).

Okay that’s not exactly Jane Eyre (which is a terrific ghost story to read in October, btw), but I needed a cute introduction to my prose on ghosting. You know by now that I complain about ghosting all the time. For those who don’t know, ghosting is the act of simply not responding to someone’s attempt at communication with you – either by ignoring phone calls and texts, or blocking phone numbers and social media accounts. It is the single most bothersome part of dating for me because I think it’s the most hurtful thing you can do to a person who has been vulnerable enough to go on a date with you. Someone has taken time out of their schedule to give both of you a chance to make a connection and has tried to present their authentic self to you for the sole purpose of your judgement – like a beauty pageant from hell with harder interview questions – and your response to that is to disappear. You ignore their texts, pretend that you don’t know who they are, or that you fell off of a cliff as soon as you walked away from the date. That’s sooooo shitty. It’s not just shitty, it’s cowardly and wasteful – it’s your way of saying to someone “I was so not attracted to you that I have no interest in treating you like a human that I have met before, or being your friend, or even putting you out of your misery while you wait for me to call. I have enough friends and aquaintances in this life of quiet desperation, and I have no room on my roster for you.”

Ghosting is a despicable act (in my humble opinion) that 1) is usually motivated by good-ish intentions and 2) has been normalized in society so much that people don’t feel guilty over it very often. I think people ghost because they don’t want to have an awkward conversation. I’ve written about this in previous posts – giving someone negative feedback or simply saying “I’m not interested” is one of the hardest things to do. Most people don’t want to say things to you that may hurt your feelings or may make you feel insecure or upset. So instead of doing that, they say nothing. The nothing is so deafening though. You ever do something bad when you were a kid and your mom was so mad or exasperated with you that she didn’t even yell? She just walked away from you and said nothing? That’s how ghosting feels to me. It feels like I was such a bad date for you that you can’t even thank me for my time or ask me to be your friend, or tell me “thanks but no thanks” – like you’re so disgusted by the whole ordeal that you just want to walk away and pretend it didn’t happen. Which is almost certainly not how the other person is feeling – at least not every time. I’ve been ghosted after really good dates where we laughed the whole time and kissed at the end of the night. I’ve been ghosted after sex. I’ve been ghosted after seeing a person for weeks. I’ve been ghosted twice by the same person in one decade after he swore to me he was sorry and that the first time was a youthful mistake. It happens all the time, and most of the time, I have no idea why.

It hurts me so much that I keep myself accountable to a strict moral code when it comes to ghosting. If you’ve never online dated, you may not know what it’s like. Basically you are on an app and you have many texting conversations going at one time, but most of them go absolutely no where. It’s basically impossible to avoid ghosting to some extent – if a conversation is fizzling, it’s easier for both of you to just stop replying than to have some conversation about how it isn’t going to work. My ghosting rules kick in when I meet someone face-to-face. If I have a date with someone or I talk to them on a video chat, I insist on keeping a promise to myself that I will not ghost them without communicating my feelings first.

So far, I have stayed true to this promise. Things did get a little shaky for me last week though. I met this really nice guy on an app. He was good looking, seemed to have a good job, wasn’t married to my knowledge – check, check, check. He is one of these people who insists on having a video chat conversation before a date. Not my preference, but ok. He kind of cold called me one evening after work, like he was trying to catch me at my ugliest or something – but I answered and talked to him. The conversation was just uncomfortable. He kept telling me how gorgeous I was but was interrupting me to tell me that. I’d be mid-sentence talking about Maudie or my job and he’d insert “Rebecca you’re so gorgeous” into the conversation. We got off the phone and I thought “well that wasn’t great but maybe he was nervous.” A couple nights later, he cold called me again. I happened to be wearing the same oversized house shirt I had on when we last spoke, and he commented on it. I joked “Plot twist, this is the only shirt I own.” His face fell and he said “Oh I’m sorry I didn’t realize.” Ah, so sarcasm, not his thing. Got it. Then he noticed my earrings and told me they were gorgeous. We chatted for a few more minutes and he brought up the earrings three more times and asked me where I got them. At the end he said “I’m so interested in you, Rebecca.” The vibe made me want to crawl out of my skin, and even now I’m having a hard time describing the cause of the alarm bells that went off in my head.

I know what you’re going to say. Gee, Rebecca, sounds like the guy was being super nice to you and you’re so used to jerks that you can’t handle it. But I’m telling you, this was not nice. I felt like I was being worked over by some professional who has learned to tell women what they want to hear. He complimented my eyebrows, for Christ’s sake. Red flags started popping up in my perifiery and my whole body and soul told me to run. I wanted to block his number and never live though another conversation like that again. Like I said, I can barely articulate why, but I knew I couldn’t go out on my date with him. As with most situations in my life, a phone call with my best friend Kristin gave me the courage I needed to keep my own promise to myself, and I called this guy and told him the truth – well a piece of the truth anyway – that I didn’t think our personalities were meshing well. He took it so well and was really kind about the whole thing. I was glad I told him. But to be honest, he called me past midnight twice this week and I am starting to regret not hitting that “block” button.

Oddly enough, the night after I went through this to-ghost-or-not-to-ghost ordeal (Macbeth! Another great ghost story for your spooky October!) I got a text from a man who ghosted me in August. He stood me up at a restaurant for date 1, actually showed up for date 2, kissed me goodnight and asked me out for date 3, and then got hit by a bus…or so I thought. Out of the blue, he texted me to apologize for not communicating. Just a simple text, saying hey I’m sorry for being a little shit head. Here’s a picture of me making fun of him with a friend, and you can tell by my reaction to her, I was kind of having an “Is that you, God?!” moment – a bit in awe of the coincidence. I made fun of him, but in truth, I appreciated that I was on whatever little list of amends he was running down that day. You always experience these little paper cuts in dating, small rejections that compound over time like the interest on your mortgage, and you kind of walk through that pain assuming that the culprits don’t even realize that their actions are wrong or hurtful. Some people don’t apologize or try to make things right, and I have a lot of respect for people who do. But I really think this could be an example of putting good into the universe and watching that good come back around. Anyway, I responded to let him know I was glad he enjoyed his vacations and to let me know if he ever needs a friend.

Anyway that’s my ghost story – the story of how I didn’t allow myself to turn into a ghost (*yet*, there’s still plenty of time in this life for me to act like a shit head too) and got visited by Casper (the friendly ghost). The true hero of this story is Nala the pitbull who is “loving the cooler temps with less bugs, by the way.” Maudie agrees with that statement.

September 29, 2022

I took a break from my regular trashy reality tv circuit this week to watch a scary series on Netflix. It’s called The Haunting of Hill House, and it’s based on a book with the same title by my favorite author, Shirley Jackson. ‘Based’ is a strong word – the story in the Netflix series is quite different from the story in the book, but many of the characters have the same names as those in the book and there are all kinds of little Easter eggs in the series that point back to the novel. Almost every day after work this week, I’ve found myself in my Lovesac snuggled under a fuzzy blanket, with all the lights off in my house, watching the horror unfold in this series. I’ve seen the series before, so some of the intensity is somewhat diminished by that, but the re-watch has gotten me into spooker-mood. Spookers – my word for scary movies, scary books, scary video games, haunting documentaries about serial killers, etc. – make this time of year fun. Who doesn’t love a good monster, afterall?

I read The Haunting of Hill House for the first time last year, and I’m certain that it’s one of those books I will read every Halloween from now on. I do this with Pride and Prejudice at Christmastime, not because that book is remotely related to Christmas in any way, but because the experience is a gift to myself. If you haven’t read The Haunting of Hill House yet, I really recommend it. It’s a quick ~300 page read and very scary, but still chock full of that wholesome charm of the 50’s (collars, poodle skirts, leather jackets, phrases like “jeepers creepers” and “chock full”- I don’t know, I wasn’t actually there). I love the book for a myriad of reasons, one being that the main character’s name is Eleanor, and I’ve always wanted to have a little girl named Eleanor and call her Ellie. In the book, Eleanor (Nell, Nellie) is a young woman who finds herself taking part in a scientific experiment with several strangers.  She sets out on this adventure to escape the monsters of her past (an ailing and abusive mother, a resentful sister), but she finds herself confronted by new monsters when she enters the walls of Hill House. Those familiar with Hill House believe it is haunted, and Nell and her compatriots soon discover that the house quite literally has a mind of its own. This book is marvelous fiction. Please read it. If you don’t want to buy a copy, shoot me your address and I’ll mail you one of mine.

Without spoiling anything, I’ll tell you that the horrifying part of The Haunting of Hill House is that you read the entire book and learn all about the history of the old house and the people who lived there, yet you never uncover the answers to the questions at the heart of the book. Is the house haunted or are the people inside the house haunted? Was the house evil upon creation or did it become evil over time due to the people who lived and died inside? Is Eleanor being haunted by the house or is she being haunted by her own mind? Or is the house saving her from the monsters inside of her mind and bringing her home? At the end of the day, I think the monsters that are the most frightening are those that we can’t understand – the ones that are shrouded in mysteries that can’t be solved with logic or investigation. In The Haunting of Hill House, you never even ‘see’ a ghost or demon or monster- you simply feel the reactions from the people living there. Your mind does these little acrobatic moves to try to fill in those blanks, though. You start using what you know about the history of the house and the people who have lived there over the years, and you start trying to draw your own conclusions. Then you get to page 300 or whatever and realize – Shirley isn’t going to tell you what’s going on. She’s not going to connect the dots for you because she knows that you’ve already done that yourself inside that sick, twisted little head of yours and your version of the truth is way scarier than anything she could write for you.

There’s one monster from the 80’s and early 90’s that everyone has been buzzing about lately. Like many of you, I watched all ten episodes of the Jeffrey Dahmer series on Netflix last weekend and then thought “I should eat something and go outside”. If you haven’t watched it, I guess you have a decision to make. It’s not the sort of thing I would recommend to anyone because it’s just not a pleasant experience. *I have to reiterate that I DO recommend The Haunting of Hill House because I know it is absolutely lovely, scary fiction that you’ll enjoy and will make you think in constructive ways. You will be happy that you read it.* The Dahmer shit…I just don’t know. I’ve done a lot of thinking about it this week, but I’m unsure how constructive or enlightening it has been. It is mostly just sad because it’s not a charming fictional tale. It’s a true story about a very disturbed man who murdered 17 people and mutilated and consumed their corpses all in the name of control. My understanding is that his basic motivation for his crimes was that his sexual partners always wanted to leave eventually after hanging out and he really just wanted them to stay with him. On one hand, you can view that as a depraved desire for control, which it absolutely is. But you can also view it as a result of extreme isolation and desire for cuddles. I mentioned that I’d been in my Lovesac watching scary tv this week – I have to say, I’ve thought to myself a few times “Man I would kill to have someone to snuggle right now… *then when Maudie looks at me confused, I clarify* …preferably a handsome human man.” But like, not literally, ya know? I wouldn’t literally kill for cuddles. But I understand how much we want them. When the actor playing Dahmer in the show presses play on The Exorcist III and reassures his victims that they are just going to have a casual night in – a scary movie, cuddles, beers, some nice, consensual sex – I hear that and think “yeah perfect October evening”. But he just wasn’t capable of enduring the truth that people don’t have to stay with you forever if they don’t want to. Snuggles have to end and that meant a lot of innocent young men would die.

The reason Dahmer scares us all so much is because we don’t understand him. People have studied his crimes and confessions for decades and have tried to figure out the details and circumstances of his life that created this Dahmer concoction that resulted in all the horror he created. No one has figured it out. His father wrote an excellent book in the 90’s called A Father’s Story. In heartbreaking detail, he describes what it was like to juxtapose his own memories of the sweet, shy little boy he raised with the gruesome crimes of the adult that little boy grew up to become. Lionel Dahmer was a PhD chemist, and spends a lot of real estate in his book trying to analyze his own decisions and actions as a father that may have contributed to Jeffrey’s crimes. It’s an incredibly well-written and introspective take on the matter, but of course, like everyone else who has studied Dahmer, he too sort of shrugs his shoulders at the end and says we’ll never know.

We’ll never know all of the environmental and genetic factors and moments and words that combined to brew the Dahmer serial killer potion. That drives us crazy, because we want to be able to prevent people like him from becoming killers in the future. We want to look at our own children and know for certain that they won’t grow up to commit atrocities. We want to send our children out into the world as adults one day and know that they can watch a scary movie with someone they are attracted to without winding up in pieces in a vat of acid. But we can’t know those things for sure – so we start creating what-if’s and hypotheticals in our mind. What if my neighbor, my best friend, my son, my mother…were to become a killer? What if my husband kills me some day? What if my wife kills my children? What if that stranger on the train is a killer? That’s the imagination we all have, and that’s what makes serial killers that have been dead for decades stick out in our minds as monsters. They are dead, they can’t hurt us now. But humans are capable of doing what they did and we don’t know why or how. We are living among monsters that we may never see and we can’t do anything to find them until it’s too late.

I’ve often felt like a lot of the monsters in my head are the direct result of an overactive imagination. I was on a date once, and the guy I was with casually mentioned a girl had recently made him watch Hamilton on Disney+. I asked the right questions (or wrong ones depending on how you look at it) and found out that he slept with her on Hamilton night and was in fact dating both of us at the same time. The difference being that I had asked him to go watch a musical with me once and he said “I don’t like musicals”. My brain started racing with this new information. Rather than just being upset about the very obvious and clear-cut “he’s dating you both at the same time, get out” fact, I fixated on the fact that he was willing to watch a musical with her and not with me. And just like that, a new monster was created in my head – one I referred to in my mind as “Hamilton Girl”. Long after I realized things were not going to work out with this dude and moved on to other possibilities, I kept thinking about her. I bet Hamilton Girl never gets stood up. I bet Hamilton Girl would have gotten a good night kiss. I bet Hamilton Girl never has to go to the bathroom and cry at work. Hamilton Girl has perfect skin. Hamilton Girl is probably in good enough shape to run the Army Ten Miler next weekend. This girl who I know nothing about (other than we have the same taste in men and great musicals) has become this representation of my every insecurity or bad feeling about myself. She’s probably really nice, and would also probably look at my life and feel envious about some parts of it. But my imagination has made her into a monster that I’ll never see. I learned one thing about her and my mind did all the work to connect those dots.

A lot of the fear in my life comes from this tendency to imagine the worst. My boss looks at me the wrong way, and suddenly I’m thinking he hates me now and I’ll soon get moved to another project. I imagine myself going to my favorite used bookstore for the first time in over a year and then wonder what will happen if I run into my ex while I’m there. And what if he’s with another girl, taking her to pick out books that they’ll read together? BUT THAT WAS OUR THING! What if I see them and run away? What if I go to the doctor and they tell me something is wrong with me? What if it’s cancer? Instead of assuming that things will be fine, as they almost always are (I’m a statistician, I should understand this better), I imagine the worst case scenario and sometimes those little scenarios create little monsters in my head that I have to face. Mundane activities become hurdles to jump. Maybe that’s why I like Halloween so much. Just as Christmas is the season for giving and November is a time for gratitude, Halloween is the time for facing your fears head on. It’s about watching the scary movie in the dark with or without cuddles. It’s about wearing the goofy costume without caring what anyone else thinks. It’s about telling Hamilton Girl to get out of your head because you’re awesome too and wonderful company at musicals. It’s about letting the stories about serial killers and abductors and aliens and ghosts scare you for as long as you want them to, but then tuning them out when it’s inconvenient for you to be afraid. I guess it’s all about experiencing fear in a controlled environment so you can try to handle it a little better for the rest of the year. Hamilton Girl and most of the other monsters out there (at least all the fake ones in my head) are all just a bunch of hocus pocus, after all.

I hope you’re having a nice start to your spooker season. If you read The Haunting of Hill House, let me know and we can talk about it.

September 25, 2022

I get migraines a lot. If you’ve ever had one, you know that it’s like a headache, but the kind of headache that can be debilitating and derail an entire day (or three). The pain can sit right on top of one side your forehead, but can also wrap around to the back of your head, down your neck and back. It makes it difficult to think, difficult to eat because of nausea…hell, just being up right in a room with the lights on can feel like it might kill you. It’s not a fun time, and I typically get about one bad one each month. I’ve tried to figure them out over the years – talking to doctors about birth control options that might help, eating habits I can change, preventative medication. A dentist hypothesized that my overbite might contribute to them, so I did Invisalign a few years ago. I’ve had eye exams and glasses prescriptions, I swore off red and white wine years ago, I’ve kept food diaries and tried to pinpoint foods that are correlated – so far I’ve had no luck in this battle, and it seems like they are just something I have to live with. Luckily, they make some pretty heavy duty medication I can take when one comes on. It’s expensive and my instructions from the doctor were to “use sparingly”. Usually I tough these migraines out and try not to miss any work because of them – once I was scheduled to brief the head-bitch-in-charge of my sector and didn’t hesitate to break that emergency glass and take a nice dose of meds that day. You do what you gotta do.

The great thing about migraines is that they always end. The migraine is one of those annoying life afflictions that can make you feel like you’re going to die, but simultaneously you know you won’t die from it, so there’s not a lot of stress involved. Only suffering. And that’s how I prefer to take my suffering – with little to no stress and a lot of sugar. There is this period after the migraine has abated that I like to call the “migraine hangover”. I took my emergency meds or slept it off and I wake up the next morning with no pain – but I have this fuzzy feeling in my head that’s like the ghost of migraines past. And I treat that fuzzy feeling as my body’s warning sign – listen, lady, you’re feeling better now but one wrong move and you’ll be on your ass again, understand? So I end up kind of babying myself the whole day, working really hard to appease the migraine gods. I take a hot shower and make sure I wear my hair down. I eat a real breakfast (not just a cup of those baller-shot-caller pumpkin spice Cheerios, but like an actual meal). I try to lay low at work if I can and avoid headphones. I drink a Coca-Cola because that’s what Mamaw always said would fix a headache, and I go to bed early. Basically I spend a couple of days walking on eggshells around my own body to keep from triggering another migraine – because the thought of having to live through another one so soon after recovering is too scary to take any risks. I’m feeling all better, I’m good to go. If the head of the SID (super important division) at work walks up to me and says he needs all the Bernoulli reports on his desk by noon, I’m ready to rock n’ roll. But if nothing like that comes up, then I lay low and am super careful to avoid unecessary stress. And after a day or so of this hangover feeling, I can move on and forget all about it until about a month later.

One of my friends at work is going through a tough breakup right now asked me the other day if I feel like I’m completely better after mine last year. This little migraine story is what I told him, because that’s the best way to describe where I am. I’m definitely better. I’m happy. I’m appreciating all the great things that are happening in my life and all the possibilities I have in front of me. I’m hanging out with my Maudie dog and keeping my house clean and my laundry all caught up and cooking good food for myself. I’m doing a great job at work and really focused on getting to the next level there. I’ve made some friends. I can sleep through most nights and don’t cry much anymore. I’m open to the next chapter – I know for certain that if I meet someone tomorrow who wants to be in the Rebecca-Business, I’m in a good spot to give that person the best of me without baggage or reservation. I’m good to go. I know it sounds like I’m gassing myself up over being a normal, functioning member of society, but that’s been my focus and it’s working. I took the whole thing really hard and went through a tough time, but like with my migraines, I knew the pain would subside eventually. That’s what I told him in hopes that he’ll take heart and keep moving forward.

But maybe I’m a little bit hungover still – walking around in that fuzzy space with a little bit of worry that I can make a wrong move and end up sliding back into pain. I can feel myself being really cautious. I haven’t been on a first date since July because I went through this series of small let downs that made me nervous. Dating can cause tiny amounts of sadness to start to compound over time. I start making that list of rejections in my head and inventing reasons that things aren’t working out. Maybe I look a certain way, I talk a certain way, I am a certain way that makes people keep me at arm’s length. Maybe my ex was the one person on the planet who was chemically, mentally and emotionally designed to be attracted to the whole package that is me and now that things didn’t work out with him, there’s no one else. Maybe I’ll never feel that way again, maybe I’ll never really move on. See that spiral there? That’s how quickly my hangover can push me right back into the pain zone. So I treat it the same way I treat my migraine hangover. I take a break. I take it easy and lay low. I protect myself a little more than I normally would.

This weekend, I’ve been laying low by deep cleaning my house and listening to country music. Every now and then, I start feeling some kind of way and crank up the “Today’s Country” playlist on Apple music so I can hear all the latest country music. From what I’m hearing, there are a few basic categories of country these days:

• Songs about loving country music. It’s not just a country thing, because “I Love Rock n’ Roll” and “Rock n’ Roll ain’t noise pollution”, but man I don’t know if Kane Brown singing about the Hoochie Coochie is doing it for me.
• Songs about loving country music that are just Jo Dee Messina’s “Heads Carolina, Tails California” but with different words about hitting on a girl at a bar who is trying to have fun with her friends. Cledus T Judd tried to make it big doing something like this in the 90’s and no one took him seriously. But apparently it’s cool now.

• Songs that slap from Jon Pardi and Luke Combs. Honestly, both of them can get it. Luke Combs is the kind of man who will take you out for a steak dinner every Saturday and I think Jon Pardi’s kisses probably taste like Miller Lite. Not that I’ve been thinking about it. Shut up, I don’t want to talk about it anymore.
• Whatever the hell Maddie and Tae are doing.
• Songs about trucks. Wait in the truck (while I kill this guy for you?? wtf??) My heart is like a truck. I need a new truck. Heaven’s in a blue Tacoma. I drive your truck. That ain’t my truck in her drive.
• Songs about whiskey, tequila, beer, moonshine and Muscadine wine. Tequila makes my clothes fall off. I’m not worth the whiskey. Half of me wants a cold beer. Write me a song about a jalapeño margarita and I’ll love you forever (I’m looking at you, Luke and Jon).
• Really disturbing songs about “her daddy”. Ok there’s this song at the top of the charts right now that starts off “Girl, I hope your daddy doesn’t own a gun. If he does, then I’m done from the things that you’re doing to me.” Sir. How old is this girl? What is she doing to you that her daddy doesn’t like? If your girlfriend is still worried about what her daddy thinks about about her sex life OR if her daddy is in any way invested in her sex life (so invested and also informed that a gun may come out?)- she’s too young for you, bro. This song literally made my stomach hurt, I won’t be listening to it again.
• Sad songs that absolutely gut me. I already wrote about my girl Carly’s song. There’s another one that I listened to today that made me cry for a second and have a bad dream during my afternoon nap (heh, I told you I’m laying low). It’s from someone called Shaylen, and it’s called “What If I Don’t”. It goes: “What if I’m not as strong as I think?…What if my heart never unbreaks? People move on, people let go. What if you do? What if I don’t?” Then at the end she just keeps singing “I want to move on” over and over. I love this song and I feel her sentiment. I want to move on. I want it more than anything. Laying low feels like the right thing right now, but I know I can’t do it forever. And the longer it takes me to really move on, the more I worry that it will never happen. But it will. I will.

Side note: This is why country music will always be my favorite genre- as much as I love running to Eminem’s “Shake That”, it doesn’t make me feel anything or reflect on my life at all. Country music does that for me (when it’s not making me worry about sex crimes and alcoholism).

I guess that’s the thing about the migraine hangover. You can’t sit in that spot for long. Life has to go on, work has to get done, and you can’t live your whole life trying to avoid pain when you don’t even know exactly what causes it. I don’t know if my stupid ritual of drinking coke and eating potatoes for breakfast even prevents my migraines from returning, but I do it to feel like I’m doing something to protect myself – and I think that’s pretty smart and healthy. At some point, the opportunity cost that comes with that cautious behavior (missing my pumpkin flavored Cheerios, for example) becomes too high to continue. The fuzzy hangover feeling fades into the background of all of the other things life throws at me, and life moves on. Which is great because I want to move on. I want to move on. I want to move on. I wanna move onnnnnnnnnn…

September 24, 2022

Earlier this week, I served as a reviewer for a proposal that some people in my analytics group are writing. A proposal is basically a document you write to a company or agency that is trying contract out some work. It’s a sales document where you have to be persuasive and tell the sponsor of the work what your approach to doing the work will be and why it’s the best approach and the most bang for their buck. As a reviewer, I had the nice cushy job of reading what other people wrote, making comments in the margins, and then jumping on a call with the writers to explain my feedback. And I will do this for every draft of the proposal that the team brings forward.

We had one of these calls on Thursday, and some of the other reviewers were really quiet on the line, so I was like “Well, I have thoughts.” I gave the team feedback on the fact that they were telling me what they were going to do in their approach without much of the how. “We’ll make sure the sponsor’s needs are taken into account before we begin working on any problem.” Great! But how will you do that? Will it be a series of meetings? How will you facilitate said meetings? Will there be some sort of report, roadmap or other deliverable? Why is this better than what the competition will do? I went on and on about how we were using up space in the document to talk about the sponsor’s problems they need us to solve without hammering home the pain they feel as a result of those problems and the benefit they will experience when we solve them (that is, why should they spend their money on this?) Thirty minutes of this was quite a treat for the team, I’m sure. I’ve been on the other end of these calls as a writer, feeling like I’m getting my ass handed to me by the reviewers, and it’s anything but a warm and fuzzy experience. But it’s also criticial feedback that you need if you want to write a successful proposal. So you gather it all up, don’t take it personally, and get started on the next draft. Side note: persuasive writing is really hard, especially for analytic thinkers, and it’s much easier to critique it than it is to do it. So no shade to the team, they are awesome.

After the call, I felt pretty down about having to deliver that kind of feedback. Any feedback that isn’t air horn noises and “Wow, great job” can be hard to deliver. Not just because it’s not fun to tell someone that they aren’t quite there yet, but also because negative feedback can require a lot more thought and tact when it comes to delivery than “Wow, Eric, you crushed it!” Although I think I was really careful not to deflate the writers, I still questioned myself and wonder if I came across as a “know-it-all-dick”. But like I said in a previous post, onto the next intimidating item of the day! Later in the day, I got an email from one of the other reviewers who was quiet on the call and the subject was “Feedback on my feedback?” He wanted to set up time to get some tips from me about how to offer actionable feedback when reviewing proposals. That’s how important this feedback loop is – I have someone asking for feedback on how they give their feedback! What a great job this person is doing taking responsibility for his own growth as a coach and leader! It was awesome to see and I imagine I’ll get some feedback from him about my own feedback and delivery when we talk next week and it will be good for both of us.

I just got back from a leadership training in California that was focused almost exclusively on giving and receiving feedback. They taught me a pretty simple technique for giving feedback called SBI – Situation, Behavior, Impact. It goes like this:

Situation: Give the important details and be as specific as possible – where and when did the incident happen? “While we were walking down the hallway on the 4th floor on our way to the 10 am meeting on Wednesday…”

Behavior: Explain the behavior you observed and be specific here too. “You used a straw to shoot a spit wad at Terry, the Partner on the project. The spit wad hit him in the back of the neck. You giggled.”

Impact: Explain the impact that the behavior had on the way you or others feel. “I think Terry was very upset about this and got spit all over his very expensive suit. He may be less willing to work with us in the future because of it and now we have to pay for his dry cleaning. You owe me 20 dollars.”

Then you pause to allow the other person to elaborate on their intent behind the behavior, and then you can start making plans for how to address it in the future. That pause is the important part that a lot of people forget – it’s the person’s opportunity to explain why the behavior occurred so you can see if there are larger problems at hand that you need to consider. It’s like when a little kid is acting up in school, one of the first things a teacher might want to know is “is there something going on at home?”, for example. This all sounds easy peasy when someone puts SBI on a poster board and you practice it in a classroom, but in real life, it’s not that easy. One of the first pieces of advice I’m going to give my reviewer buddy at work next week is going to be “put it in writing first” because that’s a great way to prepare yourself for the conversation. That’s how I prepped for Thursday’s call – I wrote it all down in a Word document using the exact phrasing I planned to use out loud with the team and then basically read my document to them on the call. My script even included my pauses for intent.

I wrote a post on here the other day about some men in the DC area who had let me down. One of those men actually read the post and recognized himself in some of the things I said, and sent me a long apology. I was really impressed by this because that’s a really brave and vulnerable thing to do, but also because he was introspective enough to see his own behavior in what I wrote. I didn’t mention any identifying details about this person in my post (other than he’s a man in DC who is not into me…boy oh boy the overlap in that Venn diagram is huge), but he still targeted his own behavior in my vague description.

That’s really impressive to me, and he took my indirect feedback and directed it to himself. In his note to me he mentioned that he let himself down by not being a man of his word and that no one deserves that. He recognized his own behavior and the impact that it has, then made a plan to change course in the future. Then he told me in not so many words “You and me? Never gonna happen.”

I don’t bring all of this up to poke him in the eye – on the contrary, I think it was a really classy, grown-man thing to do on his part. I brought it up to point out my own deficiency in giving feedback. I know for a fact that I had attempted to deliver the same feedback that he got from my blog post to him in person/over video chat well before I wrote any of it down. I tried to express to him how I felt like I was the lowest priority on his list, and that no other plans in the world could be cancelled by him unless they were plans with me. I tried to make him see the impact of that, and when nothing changed, I assumed that meant he didn’t care. But I think he did care, or he would have if he really understood me – he showed that to me with his thoughtful apology. If I know me, I would wager that my delivery of that feedback was inadequate. I can’t recall the exact details of the way I delivered it originally, but if I know me, I probably laughed after I said it as if it were a joke or not as serious to me as it actually was. I probably didn’t make eye contact, I probably rushed through it to get it over with. I probably changed the subject quickly afterward to avoid the actual confrontation. How is anyone supposed to understand the impact of their behavior if I can’t look them in the eye and articulate to them what that impact is and then pause and give them time to tell me about their intent?

If you’ve never read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, I would recommend that you immediately stop reading this crap and head to your local bookstore or library to pick up a copy. Definitely stop reading here if you want to avoid spoilers. In that book, Mr. Darcy (the handsome male lead who makes 10,000 pounds A YEAR!) approaches the heroine of the book, Elizabeth Bennet to profess his love for her. The two of them have endured an interesting acquaintanceship thus far in the novel (I’m using interesting in true mid-west form to mean bad). One time at this rager party her neighbors were throwing, she overheard Mr. Darcy telling his buddy that she was “not handsome enough to tempt” him and making fun of her family. He told her that only a handful of women in the world are truly accomplished, which was true based on his personal definition of that word (accomplished = really rich). She also learns about some drama between him and a charming, dumb-jock soldier named Mr. Wickam who she happens to have a crush on (allegedly, Darcy ruined his life for funzies), and has decided that he’s a prideful, unkind person. Who could blame her? This behavior is all very bad indeed.

Anyway, he walks up to her and says “In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” DAWWW, pretty good start, Darcy! That last sentence in particular…really nice. But of course, Elizabeth only hears that first part of his declaration where he was basically like “Listen, I really don’t want to love you, but it’s my cross to carry – you know, because your family is embarrassing and you’re not that pretty or accomplished.” She takes offense to that (women, am I right?) and says something like “Wow, since it’s such a burden for you to like me, you’ll probably get over this flat out rejection I’m about to throw at you very quickly. And by the way, if you weren’t so odious, I would thank you for this compliment, but nope I won’t even do that.” So he is obviously a little taken aback by this, and asks her why she hates him so much. She then goes on to offer him some very pointed feedback on his behavior since they met. Here’s what she says:

1. Behavior: Your best friend was in love with my sister and you told him to ghost her! Impact: That hurts me because I love my sister and it causes me pain to see her in pain.
2. Behavior: Mr. Wickam told me that you reduced him to his current state of poverty by denying him the money that your own father promised to leave him on his death bed. Impact: I wanted to marry Mr. Wickam because he’s a cutie patootie with a booty, but I can’t because we’ll be too poor to survive. And it’s all your fault!

Quick pause here. She’s delivering this feedback to him and he starts to get defensive and angry, and as a result, adds a third complaint to her list for her: Behavior: I never hid the fact that your inferiority of connections bothers me (that is, I don’t like that you’re poor and that your mother and sisters are dumb and embarrassing in public). Impact: I hurt your pride and now you’re yelling at me about your sister and Mr. Wickam. You’re making excuses for why you don’t want to marry me, when in reality, it’s because of your own pride. She challenges him on this and insists that his general attitude toward her family didn’t sway her decision about the marriage proposal, but rather made her worry less about hurting his feelings in her delivery of the “HARD PASS”. Ouch.

Okay, so that whole exchange didn’t go the way Mr. Darcy had planned and he ran home. Elizabeth did a pretty good job of delivering her feedback to him – she was specific, articulate, and expressive. He definitely understood the impact his actions had (the final impact being an embarrassing and angry rejection), but one thing she didn’t do was pause to allow time for him to talk about his intent. Tempers flared on both sides, and he didn’t get a chance to explain himself. She would ask him if he denied doing the things she was accusing him of, and when he didn’t, she’d be like “See! You’re an asshole. Oh and another thing…” She just burned through one bad behavior after another without stopping to hear his side of the story. Instead of a discussion, they had an argument.

He must have taken some time to digest all of Elizabeth’s feedback, and sat down to write a really nice letter describing his intent behind all of the grievances Elizabeth expressed. It wasn’t intended to be a persuasive letter, he opens by saying “Look, I know the answer is no and there’s no changing your mind, but here’s my side of the story.”

1. Intent: I told my friend not to marry your sister because I love him the way you love your own sister. I was trying to look out for him the way you would look out her, and I believed that marrying into your family is a mistake. It’s a mistake because your family is poor and also because they don’t seem to understand propriety. I still believe it’s a mistake to marry Bennet girls, but was willing to make that mistake myself because I love you, girl. Honestly, I also believed that your sister was not as into my friend as he was into her – she wasn’t showing him much affection and I feared that her intentions were to marry him for his money (You know, because you’re all poor. Did I mention that you’re all very poor? I make 10000 pounds a year and my sister is very accomplished.)
2. Intent: Mr. Wickam is an old family friend and my father did like him a lot. As a result, I gave him a bunch of money to study law or something and washed my hands of him because he would never spend my father’s money the way we asked him to (we wanted him to be in the clergy). But then he started hanging around my sister and made a plan with her to sneak away and get married without running it by me. I discovered their plan in time and ran him off before they eloped, and he ghosted my sister. He was definitely after her for her money (30,000 pounds, did I mention that I’m very rich?) and to get revenge on me for not supporting him his whole life. I love my sister the way you love your sister, Elizabeth and I don’t care how poor Mr. Wickam is now. He sucks.

He closes his note with “You may wonder why all this was not told to you last night; but I was not then master enough of myself to know what could or ought to be revealed.” That’s the thing. It is so hard to be master of yourself when you’re having important conversations. When emotions are involved, or you’re staring down at the barrel of truth that you’ve hurt someone you love, or they’ve hurt you – it’s so hard to have the right words to say. And if you’re Elizabeth, and you’re really good at expressing yourself, you might be so focused on pouring out your own observations and feelings that you forget that you might only have part of the story or may simply misunderstand the other person’s intent. Elizabeth assumed Darcy was just a hateful person who didn’t care about anyone but himself, but most of his behavior was driven by love that he had for his friend and his sister.

I identify so much with Mr. Darcy because I’m really rich because I am a much better at expressing myself in writing than I am with my mouth-words. I think some of the times in life I’ve been most effective at getting someone to “hear” me have been through writing letters. I’m an excellent pen-pal (although if you ask my friend Taylor, he’ll tell you about the time he was deployed overseas and I wrote him a four-page joke about a moth that I stole from Norm MacDonald on The Tonight Show). I’ve had people reach out to me years after the fact saying things like “I re-read your letter, and you were right about this…” I can organize my thoughts and use the right words to make you really hear me. And one perk of this medium is that if you don’t hear me the first time, you can re-read it until you do hear me. It also gives people the opportunity to step away from the conversation…if what I’ve written is overwhelming you or making you feel things, you can put it away and try again later. This is really useful for when it’s critical for people to understand me, whether I’m telling the proposal team that they aren’t making me feel the pain their potential client is feeling, or I’m having to tell my friend about the pain I’m feeling as a result of their behavior, or I’m having to explain the intent behind my own crappy behavior.

It’s okay to try to stick to your strengths when you can, especially when you’re doing something really hard like giving someone feedback. Mr. Darcy might not have been understood in the moment when Elizabeth was in his face running him down his resume of transgressions, but he went back to the drawing board, used his strengths in writing that clear, thoughtful letter and in the end she really heard him. Not to spoil the book even further, but he does eventually get the girl in the end (although I am a Mr. Darcy-stan and am convinced it was she who got him in the end). The other moral of this story is that I’m an excellent (albeit obnoxious) pen pal, so let me know if you need one.

September 22, 2022

I love special occasions. I love getting dressed up and going out, especially to shows. It doesn’t matter if it’s a musical or a play or an opera.  If I can put on a dress and some heels and drink cocktails for a night out (preferably with a good friend or a handsome man at my side), I feel like such an uptown girl. I really look forward to these things. When I’m looking forward to things, I typically over-plan and overprepare, and imagine the way said things will go in my head. Last week, I had a visitor from out of town.  He was here for one night, and I was so excited and determined to make the evening memorable. I plotted with a girl at work about what we should do and followed her solid advice – a reservation at a nice restaurant (but not too nice because he’ll almost certainly insist on paying), and tickets to Hamilton at the Kennedy Center (which I managed to keep a secret until 30 minutes before the show!). I did the mental gymnastics to see what time we needed to leave dinner to get to the Kennedy Center on time and made the dinner reservation accordingly.

On the day of the event, I kept looking at the weather and stepping outside to see how hot it was so I could make the call about whether we should do dinner and drinks outside on the patio or not. Around noon, I made the decision that it was way too hot to sit outside so I called the restaurant and asked them to move our spot to inside. Then of course when I arrived at the restaurant, the temperature outside felt so lovely, I had to be ‘that person’ who sweet talks the host into changing the plan at the last minute. I got my nails done the weekend before and went to this magical place called a DryBar on the day-of during my lunchbreak at work where this wonderful lady named Nadia washed and dried my hair and made it shiny and fluffy and beautiful. I tried on three dresses the night before and asked some friends which one they liked best. In true girl scout fashion, I packed a bag the night before with cash, extra panty hose (which I ended up needing!), a pair of flat shoes (also needed those!), lipstick, the printed Hamilton tickets, masks, Tylenol, deodorant, and a phone charger. As one does. All in all, all of my over-planning went off without a hitch other than some minor logistics things I didn’t consider. It was everything I wanted it to be. It was a wonderful evening and I felt like a beautiful, uptown girl treating someone to a really nice evening out. He even showed up with roses! A fun time was had by all, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. Then I woke up the next morning and thought “Now, what?”

I always feel this way when the thing I’ve been looking forward to and fretting over is…well…over.  I usually mourn the end of Christmas well into January, not because I want it to be Christmas all the time, but because all that build up toward something wonderful can sometimes feel more exciting than the memory of something wonderful. Isn’t that strange? Most of the fun experiences we have in life are centered around one concept – making memories. I ran in a 5k race at Six Flags in July, and after the race I rode roller coasters with my friend Amanda all day. We rode the same Superman themed coaster about six times that day. The trip down the big hill at the beginning of that ride is worth the full price of admission – that’s the fun part. In front of that fun you have the slow climb to the top of the big hill, and on the backend you have the memory of the fun you had going down the hill. While the memory of the fun may be great, it’s not as intense as that anticipation you feel on the way up the hill. Once that anticipation is gone, you feel a moment of relief and exhilaration as you fly down the hill, followed by inevitable sadness that the ride is over.

What can I say? I’m a planner. Planning is that climb up the hill on the rollercoaster. Planning something out meticulously (especially when it’s something fun or meaningful) is this special combination of anxiety and excitement that I love. You try to put all the pieces in place, leaving no detail unconsidered, while imagining how it’s all going to play out in real life. Will the ride down the hill make me scream with joy? Scream with fear? Swallow a bug? Throw up in Amanda’s lap? Throw my hands in the air? That’s up to the universe, and that’s the part of planning that can drive you mad – you don’t have as much power over things as you like to pretend you do when you’re making plans. You might have some power, but for the most part you are at the mercy of all of the outside forces of the universe (weather, traffic, other people). After the plans have been made and executed to the best of your ability within the constraints of this thing called life, all you can really do is sit back and enjoy (or not) the ride. And boom! Good or bad, a memory is made.

I mentioned in my last post that I can be a little insufferable intense. I can give off an intense “I’ll love you so well, no one can love you as well as me” vibe. It can be a lot. I’m like that at work too. “I won’t just do a good job, I’ll do the BEST job.” I come in to the office first thing every morning and make my to-do list in my notebook. I can only imagine how much my teammates start to shudder when they hear the scratching of my mechanical pencil against the paper in my moleskine notebook because as soon as my list is finished, I’ll start adding things to their lists. Some of the strongest criticism I’ve gotten from my boss over the years is “Rebecca is excellent at burning through a list of action items each week and driving her team to success, but sometimes fails to see the bigger picture.” Boy oh boy, if that isn’t the truth. That big picture is what gets me. It drove me crazy that my plan to review that proposal draft from 10:30-12:30 on Monday was thwarted by my client who wanted me to remake all of the maps in our PowerPoint deck with a different background map layer. Sometimes the small picture kills me. How am I supposed to think about the BIG PICTURE where derailed plans go from “possible” to “all but certain” and the stakes are high?

When has big picture planning ever worked out for me? When I was a teen, my big picture plan was to be married by 25 with 2 kids by 30. HAHAHA. Small detached home, big yard for the dogs (yes, plural). Last year, my big picture thinking caused me to buy a house to be closer to a man who was so NOT INTO ME that even the blind dog that lives next door could see it. The day he dumped me, I had been angry with him because he wouldn’t go with me to see Little Shop of Horrors at the Alamo Drafthouse. I had been telling him for weeks that I wanted to go, and he would say “I’m not sure I’ll be able to get off work in time.” Then the day of the show, he made last minute plans with a friend instead. I acted like a brat about it, and when he broke up with me later that evening he said something like “I don’t like to make plans more than three days in advance!” and then the floodgates of all of his grievances opened – grievances about me and how I made him so unhappy. At the time, I blamed it all on my stupid, intense, plan-making nature – YOU PLANNED YOURSELF RIGHT OUT OF A RELATIONSHIP! ARE YOU HAPPY NOW, REBECCA? TAKE YOUR DATEBOOK AND SHOVE IT RIGHT UP YOUR… Of course, that wasn’t it. This incident was just a symptom of a hard truth. I was making big picture plans in my head about marrying him, and he couldn’t commit to Rick Moranis on a Tuesday night. That wasn’t his fault or my fault. We just had different plans.

Big picture stuff is so scary. I had the nerve to think about the future with my ex and I landed right on my tail with another door slammed in my face. And it’s not just the romantic stuff that’s scary. I want to get promoted next year and become a partner at my firm by the time I’m 38. I want to save enough money to buy that little detached house with a yard for Maudie. I want to run a marathon before I’m 35. I want to find a partner who will take me to see Little Shop of Horrors and buy me some popcorn. I’m taking steps toward all of these things- well except for the Little Shop of Horrors partner thing, because I refuse to go on another date with a stranger in 2022- but eventually I’ll start working on that again too. Because not only will failure to do big picture planning cause you to get negative feedback from your boss, but it will also keep you from looking forward to the future. You know how last Tuesday I was looking forward to my Hamilton date and made thoughtful plans for it? Even if that whole evening had been a disaster – if I had showed up with lipstick all over my teeth and dropped the tickets to the show in a puddle and had an allergic reaction to my shrimp dinner like that guy in the movie Hitch and spent the evening with my face swelled up like a balloon – that wouldn’t change the joy and excitement I had from looking forward to it and planning for it. I should be looking forward to all this big picture crap in the same way. It might not work out the way I want it to, but I can still look forward to these things, and try to plan for them as best I can and feel that anticipation of going up the big scary hill.

September 20, 2022

“Don’t be afraid to use the P-word when you talk to him, ok?“

“Huh?“

“Oh. Sorry, the other P-word women hate to say – promotion. Tell him you want to go up this year and ask him for feedback.“

“Oh Rebecca, I’m so intimidated by that conversation.“

One of the hats I wear at work is that of “coach”. I have six people who all let me try to offer them career advice about once a month, and the conversation above was one I had today with one of the rock-star data scientists I have in my coaching group. She’s trying to make some decisions about when she should throw her hat in the ring for a promotion, and I’ve been coaching her through some conversations with her management to see how supportive they are. I’ve worked with this lady long enough that I wasn’t surprised by her reaction here – in fact, I’ve started to believe that ‘intimidated’ is one of her favorite words. The only thing I can think to say to her when she tosses that word out is something like “Girl, I’m intimidated every day. Literally. If I let intimidation stop me from doing things, I’d never get anything done.”

I try my best to support her through her intimidation- we’ve had role playing conversations where I pretend to be her boss, we’ve worked on public speaking together – anything and everything I can think of to give her some practice and build some confidence. But I know better than anyone, sometimes you’re intimidated by things and the only thing you can do is close your eyes and face them. And I certainly can’t blame her for feeling intimidated by these vulnerable conversations she needs to have at work because I feel really daunted by those conversations as well. Every time you need to get feedback from you boss or your teammates you are opening yourself up to criticism and possible pain, and that can be really scary. But unfortunately, there’s no other way to learn and grow.

The truth is that I am intimidated all the time. My stomach was in knots all morning today because I had a one-on-one conversation scheduled with a client. He’s just a man – an extremely nice man – but the thought of walking into his office with an invoice and a long list of uncomfortable questions to ask him about funding and such was so scary. The reason it was scary was that it was my first time ever doing it. I’ve talked to him a million times about math and project timelines and python code, but this was the first time my boss ever asked me to go and talk to him about dollars before. It was so intimidating, but of course it went fine. Then I had to jump on my phone to talk to my coachee about the P-word, and started giving her useless advice (see my blog about mansplaining) like “awe don’t be intimidated.” This! From a woman who fussed and fretted and remade the same powerpoint slide 4 times this morning: “DoN’t FeEl InTiMiDaTeD.” No matter what I say or how much I try to help her, she’s going to feel intimidated by these things until she does them about 100 times, and then she’ll find something else to intimidate her. And then she’ll retire. It’s the American dream and we are living it, baybee.

Here are some things that intimidate me:

1. Home improvement projects. I cried on FaceTime with my dad when I tried to hang the curtains in my house and messed up my wall with my new power drill. I cried alone the next day when I watched that YouTube video about spackle and realized no one was coming to help. This guy came to look at my hvac yesterday and asked “Has anyone told you about the damper?” and said something about some kind of drain and I just handed him my credit card and smiled.
2. Pivot tables. I have a motherfucking PhD in Statistics. I developed, theoretically proved and empirically tested my own motherfucking method of dimensionality reduction. I wrote a 100 page dissertation. Yet, pivot tables in Microsoft Excel make me act like a little baby. I can’t figure them out, I don’t like how often I need them, and my boss hates me.
3. Nail salons and the dentist. See my previous blog post. I’m really sorry I cut my nails too short and don’t floss enough. Please don’t hit me.
4. The non-cardio part of gyms. You know, that big area with all the weights and stuff? And all those machines? I’d go over there but everyone is looking at me and judging me for the way I pick stuff up and put it down. What’s that? No one gives a shit about me or is looking at me at all? The world doesn’t revolve around me and I’m not as interesting or hot as I think I am? Oh.
5. Driving in DC. I am not one of those people who is under any false impression that I am a good driver. I’m terrible at it, I don’t like doing it and it hurts my feelings when you honk at me.
6. The girls on my running team. They are 6th, 7th and 8th graders and I can tell they don’t think I’m cool and they know that I never was cool and will probably never be cool. And they are right.
7. Eating at restaurants with new friends who don’t know how picky I am yet. Look. I know that you know a great little Indian restaurant in Arlington and I would love to go there with you because I am absolutely desperate for you to like me. But also, no.
8. First dates. That part where he is going to see what my face looks like in person, while doing things like talking and drinking is really scary.
9. Second dates. What’s the big idea here? You saw my face in broad daylight and talked to me for like an hour the other day and yet here you are, back for more. Do you need money? Trying to win a bet with the guys in homeroom? Running from the law? Here, take my wallet, don’t hurt my puppy.
10. Active Dry Yeast. You never know when that shit is just not going to make my dough rise, and it is going to happen when I’m making dinner for Chris Pratt or something. So embarrassing.

I had a long meeting with a former client on Friday (believe it or not, he used to intimidate me, heh). He’s this guy from West Virginia who calls me “Becky” without my consent, and after years of interacting with me, he’s gotten comfortable. We scheduled time to just catch up and he mentioned that he and his wife were celebrating 40 years of marriage, which got us onto the topic of my marital status. When I told him I was single, he nodded and said “not surprising.” My mouth kind of fell open because most people aren’t so bold as to call me “fugly” to my face, but then he followed with “I imagine it will take a special man to match your intellect. You probably intimidate every man you meet. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

People say things like this to me all the time and it always makes me laugh. “He’s just intimidated by you. He realized how awesome you are couldn’t handle it.” I’m 5’0″ tall and 120 lbs. I get bullied by a 10-year-old on my street. I’m not kidding about this. More than once I have been walking home from the grocery store, and this little girl will step in front of me and assume this youth-league basketball defensive stance, and she’ll shuffle her feet left and right as I try to pass her. And all I can do is just stand there with this mean child all up in my personal space and take it until her little brother distracts her enough that I can make a run for it.

But sure, all of these grown men are intimidated by me? I do wonder sometimes if there’s any truth to that. Not because I’m as smart as Greg from West Virginia thinks I am or as amazing as my girlfriends will tell me when I call them upset on a Saturday night, because these things almost certainly not true. No one is sooooo smart and sooooo amazing that someone is going to be like “nah, it’s gonna be a no from me, dawg”. But maybe I give off some sort of vibe – like this intense I’ll-love-you-forever-and-make-you-steak-dinners-once-a-week vibe that makes the “Back off, none of your business, we don’t need to label this” crowd nervous about moving too fast. Or maybe it’s a vibe that says “I worry so much about having my shit together that you will worry about how not together your shit is and that won’t feel good.” Or maybe I’m fugly. Who knows?

I always complain about the word “vibe” and how about 2 out of every 5 dating profiles say “good vibes only”, as if I’m going to intentionally show up with my bad vibes and you better be okay with that and love me at my Marylin Monroe worst. But now that I’m writing this post…what if I’m showing up with these bad, intimidating vibes by accident? Now I’m intimidated by my own intimidation and this rabbit hole is getting dark. But I guess I just need to read back to the beginning of this post where I was talking about my coachee and how the secret for her to get over being intimidated is for her to…well…get over it (super, duper helpful coach of the year, am I right?!) If these fellas actually are intimidated by my authentic, intense, loving, shit-together-having-self – I guess they’ll just have to…get over it? And if I’m just fugly, I guess I’ll have to get over that. LOL.

I hope I cheered you up some on this Tuesday, I’m gonna go try to get my shit together.

September 17, 2022

When I find a song on the radio that I enjoy, I’ll often listen to it 500 times in a row until all the joy is sucked out of it and I *may* be able to actually enjoy listening to it again in a year or two. It’s like that time I worked in the Pentagon for a year and ate Subway every single day. It’s been three years and I still haven’t been able to stomach a bite of a 5-dollar footlong. Anyway, I’m currently in the process of sucking all the joy out of this country song that I love called “What He Didn’t Do” by Carly Pearce. It’s a slow, pretty song about a break-up where a woman describes that it was ultimately the things that her partner did not do for her that caused their relationship to deteriorate, rather than anything he DID do.

“Treat me right, put me first, be a man of his word, stay home ‘cause he wanted to; Always fight for my love, hold on tight like it’s something that he couldn’t stand to lose; The devil’s in the details, I won’t tell the hell that he put me through; All I know is in the end it wasn’t what he did, no it was what he didn’t do.”

Nothing too insightful in there, but every time I listen to it (which has been many many times now) I get stuck on that “be a man of his word” line. I had a few dates with a guy a few months ago and on the very first date he made a big deal about being a “man of his word” in the context of dating. He was trying to tell me that he never cancels dates or ghosts because his word means so much to him. Of course, it was no surprise that his “man of his word” integrity-bond to the women of the world didn’t include women named Rebecca. In fact, in a city full of men who blow me off for better opportunities ALL THE TIME, I would say he blew me off the most. Or maybe I simply gave him the most chances. We would make a plan and it seemed like something would always come up. My family needs me to blah blah blah. I forgot it was my friend’s birthday.  I fell asleep after work and just saw your message. This went on for weeks – maybe the entire month of June, before I finally gave up.

This is hurtful behavior, and it’s really common in dating. I’ve had dates cancelled an hour before the agreed upon time, I’ve been ghosted the day of the date, and I’ve been caught in endless rescheduling cycles – “Let’s see, I can’t do Thursday but the 5th of never might work. I dunno, thoughts?” I once found myself sitting on a beautiful little bar patio in Leesburg wearing a pretty blue dress, crying into a cocktail because my date didn’t show up. The sweet waiter comped my yucky drink for me, so my evil plan to get free disgusting drinks alone on a Tuesday night worked, although the mascara running down my face did spoil my party mood. These are just the hijinks you experience in the dating phase. Then you end up in a relationship, and realize that the man you’ve chosen, however handsome and charming and funny, may not be a man of his word. I’ve been cheated on, lied to, and spent more nights alone wondering when/if my partner was going to make time for me than I’d care to admit.

I know the “sisters are doin’ it for themselves” crowd are reading this and shouting at the screen – WHY DON’T YOU PUT THESE MEN IN THEIR PLACE? If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that putting people in their place is never as satisfying in real life as it is on Designing Women. I could go all Julia Sugarbaker on them – “JUST SO YOU KNOW, TAYLOR, AND YOUR CHILDREN WILL KNOW, AND YOUR CHILDREN’S CHILDREN WILL KNOW….YOU STOOD ME UP AND *THAT* WAS THE NIGHT THAT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN GEORGIA…errrr…VIRGINIA!!! YOU, SIR, ARE NOT A MAN OF YOUR WORD.” Unfortunately, it would fall on deaf ears. Here’s the ugly truth. Taylor the fireman who stood me up may very well be a man of his word. He might be a loyal, trustworthy, kind gentleman with a heart of gold. When he meets the right woman, he may be inclined to do all the things Carly listed in her song for that lady. But he didn’t want to be that person for me. I’m using poor Taylor as a representation of all the men in the DC area, which is not fair, but I doubt he’ll ever read this. But that’s the truth – the way he treated me is probably not a true representation of his character, it’s simply the side of him that he thought I deserved to experience.

That’s a bleak outlook and it can hurt if you dwell on it. You start to compare yourself to these other women that you’ll never see or meet and ask the universe why your favorite asshat is somewhere out there treating some other woman like a queen. How can it be that I keep presenting the best, most-thoughtful, authentic, well-dressed, showered, agreeable version of myself only to receive the worst version of him? I know people will disagree with me on this and say that those other girls aren’t getting anything better than what I got, but I just know that can’t be true. It simply can’t be true that these asshats are asshats all the time to every person they meet and it’s just an asshat city out there.

With the death of Queen Elizabeth II in headlines, my potpourri of podcasts have reminded me of one of King Charles’ most scandalous moments of the nineties. The incident is commonly known as Camillagate and involves a recording of young Prince Charles having a telephone conversation with his well-known mistress, Camilla. Charles was married to the lovely Princess Diana at the time. It went like this:

Prince Charles: He was a bit anxious actually.
Camilla: Was he?
Prince Charles: He thought he might have gone a bit far.
Camilla: Ah well.
Prince Charles: Anyway you know that’s the sort of thing one has to beware of. And sort of feel one’s way along with – if you know what I mean.
Camilla: Mmm. You’re awfully good at feeling your way along.

Prince Charles: Oh stop! I want to feel my way along you, all over you and up and down you and in and out…
Camilla: Oh!
Prince Charles: Particularly in and out.
Camilla: Oh, that’s just what I need at the moment.
Prince Charles: Is it?

Camilla: I know it would revive me. I can’t bear a Sunday night without you.
Prince Charles: Oh, God.
Camilla: It’s like that programme Start The Week. I can’t start the week without you.
Prince Charles: I fill up your tank!
Camilla: Yes, you do.
Prince Charles: Then you can cope.
Camilla: Then I’m all right.
Prince Charles: What about me? The trouble is I need you several times a week.
Camilla: Mmm, so do I. I need you all the week. All the time.
Prince Charles: Oh, God. I’ll just live inside your trousers or something. It would be much easier!

Camilla (laughing): What are you going to turn into, a pair of knickers? (Both laugh). Oh, you’re going to come back as a pair of knickers.
Prince Charles: Or, God forbid, a Tampax. Just my luck! (Laughs)
Camilla: You are a complete idiot! (Laughs) Oh, what a wonderful idea.
Prince Charles: My luck to be chucked down a lavatory and go on and on forever swirling round on the top, never going down.
Camilla (laughing): Oh darling!
Prince Charles: Until the next one comes through.
Camilla: Oh, perhaps you could just come back as a box.
Prince Charles: What sort of box?
Camilla: A box of Tampax, so you could just keep going.
Prince Charles: That’s true.
Camilla: Repeating yourself . . . (laughing). Oh, darling, oh I just want you now.
Prince Charles: Do you?
Camilla: Mmm.
Prince Charles: So do I.

This recording was very scandalous when it was released to the public. I’ll spare you my thoughts about the privacy violation this is and the Panda-at-the-zoo existence that British royalty are subjected to. I also don’t condone the context of this call because it’s a clear cut example of infidelity. I’ve never cheated on anyone or thought about it or wanted to, and I’ve been on the receiving end of this sneaky behavior, so my knee-jerk reaction is to be grossed out. But if I suspend that for just a moment and read this as a conversation between two lovers, I have to say THIS IS CUTE. People act all grossed out by the talk about knickers and tampons and clutch their pearls, but I think it is so so so adorable. These are two people who are just into each other and want to be together. It’s beautiful.

I went down this road because I think Prince Charles’ behavior here is a prime example of what I’m talking about. He’s in relationships with two women and those relationships are like gardens. One of his gardens is lush and green and bursting with life and blooms, and the other is full of wilted plants and the ground is dry and cracked. All evidence points to Charles and Diana having an awful, mean-spirited marriage in which both of them were problematic. But it seems like his relationship with Camilla was beautiful and sexy and full of kindness. His behavior with Diana wasn’t exactly indicative of who he is as a man or a partner – it was indicative of who he was with her. And she was Princess Diana, for Pete’s sake! If Princess Diana’s life was sometimes like a country song, maybe it’s okay that mine is too.

I know that I’ve met some great men in my life – my dad, my grandpa, my uncles, my brother-in-law Joey, my boss and many others. As for the men who have been less than kind to me in this single-journey I’m on – I think some of them may be great guys too. They may be great when they meet a Camilla or as they age, or whatever. At some point, I think timing will be on my side and a man will look at me and decide that I’m a garden worth watering and weeding, and whatever else you do with gardens (I’m not a plant lady, yet). He’ll treat me right, put me first, be a man of his word…and all of that. And maybe he’ll be so enamored with me that he’ll want to live inside my trousers.

September 11, 2022

“Jesus, it’s like trying to manicure a baby.”

I have a special occasion coming up this week, so I thought I’d treat myself to a manicure to look nice for it. It was my first one since Christmas time, so I was very excited. I drove all the way to Pentagon City to go to the salon there because “proximity to charming nail salons” was not one of the selling features of my house in Aldie, as it turns out. So I made the journey, stopped for a SweetGreen salad, walked around the Ann Taylor shop, sighed with relief that I still felt too young to wear anything in there (no shade if you love that store – men have a Peter Pan phase and women have a Loft phase, and I am in my Loft phase). Then I made my way to my appointment. After I chose my color and sat down, the nail technician took one look at my fingernails and grimaced. “Oh no,” he said “so short.” I said “ha yeah, I like to wear them short.” A few minutes later he said “Jesus, it’s like trying to manicure a baby. Do you cut these yourself?” I nodded reluctantly. “Well you need to stop.”

I felt bad, guys. Like bad. Bad enough that I didn’t leave him a tip. That may not sound like a big deal but if you’d ever been ANYWHERE with me, you’d know how seriously I take my tip game. I once left a waiter at Uncle Julio’s a 50 dollar tip on a 15 dollar fajita just because he smiled at me and told me he liked my earrings. It doesn’t take much. But this guy made me feel embarrassed and just so bad. And what’s worse: later on I felt bad that I didn’t leave him a tip and looked up his venmo on the salon webpage and left one. Just a cycle of bad feelings caused by this encounter.

Anyway after he said these things to me, I sat there feeling my cheeks redden and put my headphones in my ears as a cue to him that talking time was over. I listened to my podcast about trashy reality tv and tried to figure out why this guy hurt my feelings so much. I looked at him – he had a mullet and an “Essentials: Fear of God” t-shirt on with blue sweatpants and the kind of New Balance sneakers your dad wears. It wasn’t like I looked at this nail technician in his active wear and thought “now, there’s a man whose opinion matters to me”. But as it turns out, it does. I tried to cheer myself up with a pretty solid joke, “Great, this is the first time a man has held my hand in months and it’s turned out like this,” which consoled me and helped me move my thoughts away from it until the final “please wash your hands.”

I cannot figure out why I reacted so strongly to someone criticizing my fingernails of all things. It felt kind of like when I was a kid and the dental hygienist would give me a hard time about drinking coke and it made me feel like such a failure every time. Like I had let her down and committed this sin of coke drinking, when in reality I was just enjoying sweet things and being a kid. I’d say having someone criticize your fingernails or teeth is infinitely better than being criticized for your character or behavior, and I’m very lucky that I don’t hear much of that – not because my character is good and I don’t misbehave, but because I live alone and no one is ever around to be annoyed by me. Maybe I felt bad because of the dentist thing- some kind of kid trauma I haven’t worked out with my therapist yet. Maybe it was because getting my nails done was part of this process I was going through to try to look nice for an outing, and was met with this attitude. When you think about it, it’s kind of fucked up. You go to a professional and ask them to help you look prettier, and while doing so, they tell you all the things that are wrong with you.

Look, I know that having short stubby fingernails is something that is completely within my power physically, but I am mentally incapable of growing them out. If they grow out beyond my fingertips, my brain starts telling me I’m the dirtiest, yuckiest woman on the planet and I must cut them SHORT immediately. Now this compulsion has made me feel bad about yet another part of my body. I have to be honest, as I age, more and more of these body part of mine are landing on that list of things that make me feel bad, but I didn’t have fingernails on my 30’s-bad-body-image bingo card. When you think about it, there are so many things that can make us feel bad about ourselves. Today alone I have fretted over my weight, the color of my teeth, my calves, laugh lines around my eyes and the zits on my face. I guess the benefit to having a nice long list of things you don’t like about your body is that you don’t spend too much time dwelling on any one of them.

One of my favorite writers (you may have heard of the late, great Nora Ephron) has a memoir called “I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts About Being a Woman”. I obviously ripped off the title from this blog post from her, so I guess I’m the worst kind of fan. I love that book. It’s this collection of little essays about her life – I guess you could call it a blog before blogs existed, except the writing is actually good and very funny. In it she says “Anything you think is wrong with your body at the age of thirty-five, you will be nostalgic for at the age of forty-five.” I’m not sure fingernails apply here, but a lot of that other stuff I mentioned above does. In ten years, I may long for the days when the scale told me I was one pound overweight according to BMI. She makes a good point, but mostly hearing her take on body image is yet another reminder that everyone feels bad about some parts of their body sometimes – and that doesn’t make us vapid or shallow or ungrateful for everything we have. It just means we are people who feel bad about stuff sometimes, even when we are getting 50 dollar manicures.