On the Other Side of a Saturday

I didn't post last night because... I was out! (GASP!... smattering of applause)

A bestie was in town to visit and nothing gets me out of the house like company. It was a magical weekend of laughing, incredible food, movies, and more laughing. Serendipitous timing at restaurants, minimal traffic, and decent parking contributed to make the weekend a quintessential LA Weekend Visit Miracle. (Seriously, I haven't had a better Saturday night out in too many months to count and not feel like a loser.)

And now? The blues.

For every Christmas morning there is crap-ass December 26. For every college Mardi Gras there is the hangover sponsored by Saltines and Pedia-lite. And for this weekend, I find the frigid quiet of a solitary Sunday night, giving way to the harsh glare of tomorrow's "reality."

I'm being dramatic. It's from all the estrogen. For three days I've been in the company of women. I spa'd. I talked about dreamy movie stars. I read girly magazines. I even watched 20 minutes of the movie "Valentine's Day"... and defended it. I choaked up several times during all 10 minutes I watched of the SAG awards. I'm not this girly in a full month. And now? It's over... (whine, lump, glisten)

It's hard for me to be girly. I hate shopping. HATE. I have minimal patience for children and cooking. I tolerate spa-type procedures like facials ONLY if I have a gift certificate I can't trade for something else. I hate (HATE!!!!!!!) chick lit and every chick flick made after Bridget Jones' Diary.

But when I'm around certain besties, I forget to judge- okay, that's a lie, but I'm game for the girly, and the 14 year-old boy inside me (Let's name him something... Boo?) partakes with open-minded curiosity. It's like we (Boo and I) get to hang out with the cool girls and we play along and get to learn and do all kinds of new stuff. They encourage us to try on the orange mini-dress.They read our horoscopes to us. They ask us about how we feel. Its the same reason, I imagine, that the boy who sat next to me all three years of middle school went through my purse on a weekly basis. It was tourquoise and had dancing bears on it, and it contained intimate secrets (read: period stuff). It's a different Purse World that he (and Boo and I) can only visit because it's not our nature.

This is a long digression from my post-party weekend blues, but I feel on the cusp of a personal discovery so bear with me.

These girly weekends free me somehow. Not like I'm free to be the girl I've always wanted to be, because I don't want to be different- I like me, Boo and all. It's more like, the love, sensitivity and thoughtfulness of my estrogen-heavy girly girlfriends encourages me to be more adventurous, tender, and accepting of myself. And I, in turn, stop analyzing and judging myself and the things around me and just enjoy living.

It just occured to me the above qualities have nothing to do with estrogen or sex but more to do with real friendship and intimacy. I just blew my own mind. (Heh.)

"Okay, so now what?" Boo wonders, growing increasingly impatient with all this emotion.

I don't know. I just know I have the best friends in the world to give me the gift of enjoying my life and my self. The next step is... what...? Being a better friend to myself so I don't have to wait for Girly Blowout Weekends to truly relax and have a time too fantastic to put into words?

Oh. I just blew my own mind again. (Heh, heh.)

Knot a Gnat Last Knight

I analyze. I belabor. I stress. I'm a perfectionist. But I rarely spell-check.

I woke up this morning to a text from Bestie: "Your gnat?"

I snicker at myself, but then Igor, my Ego, points his fat finger at my forehead, "Idiot!"

I lower my eyes, chastised. Grainy war-footage flashbacks run through my head of every instance I typed "knat" instead of "gnat" in my previous post, as well as ON FACEBOOK.

Holy Christ, I posted my new, tender baby blog on Facebook! WITH MISSPELLINGS?!

Igor is right. I'm an idiot. I look like an idiot. I have hundreds of Facebook friends who will see that I don't know how to spell GNAT.

I decide: I can fix this. It's Sunday morning! People are either at church or asleep! I can delete the FB post, go into Blogger, edit, re-publish, re-post and most importantly, save face.

But... I like knat. It makes more sense than gnat. WAY more words begin with kn than gn- I know, I googled it. Good ones, too: knackered (AMAZING), knife (Love!), knee (essential), knit (very good for stress, I hear).

What other words begin with gn? Probably weirdo D&D names and biology terms... Oh, hm.

Gnarl. That's actually one of my favorite words.
Gnash. Oooo, good descriptive verbs totally turn me on.
Gnaw! I LOVE to gnaw on stuff!
Gnome. Aww, gnot gnome! Gnothing beats gnome...

Okay, just disproved the superiority of kn or gn words. Know (ha!) what? I don't care.

It's knat. I'm sticking with knat. Knat's mine. My own species of tiny, drifty flying bug, closely related to its Parent Trap split-screen identical cousin, gnat.

Screw you, Igor. And get your finger out of my face before I knaw it off. Tee!

PS. I spellchecked this.

Let There Be Light

I'm in the midst of award-winning procrastination (cash prizes?? oh... sulk.) to keep from finishing the script revision I STAYED HOME ON A SATURDAY NIGHT to work on.

(I didn't fool you, did I? There's a reason this blog is called "Views From Saturday Night" and it has very little to do with leaving my apartment-hole.)

I know I already posted my Saturday view, but I can't not share. I have something to confess. Oh God, I've become a blogger. That was quick.

The first phase of Procrastination Mode is Eat. So I do. I eat everything I can get my hands on. I eat anything that will get me away from my computer and to the fridge/stove/microwave to slice/spoon/nuke so I can chomp/lick/slurp. In this particular instance, I was reheating some Campbell's Tomato Soup. Not super important to the story, but was super inportant to me at the time because I like soup.

I've got the soup dregs in my Wonder Woman coffee cup ("As lovely as Aphrodite, As wise as Athena"... oh, sister, I KNOW.), I open the microwave - Lights on, inside! - and slip the cup in. I'm about to close the microwave door- I see a knat flying around inside the microwave...

I don't so much pause as I do register the following thoughts, "hey-knat-where-did-you-come-from-what-are-you-doing-in-there-I-wonder-what-would-"

SLAM! The door shuts and my evil scientist hand punches 20 secs on high.

My conscience eeks out, "reeeeally...?" as I watch the knat fly around my Wonder Woman cup, almost energized by the radiation I'm subjecting it to. Ironically, I have this thought with about 5 seconds to go: "I'm standing awfully close to the microwave. This can't be good." The knat inside gives me the finger.

DING! My soup is done and the knat must be, too. 20 seconds on high took my 2 tablespoons of soup from cold to boiling. The knat couldn't possibly...

Oh, but she did. Wonder Woman, indeed. I pop open the micro door and out lilts my little Frankenstein monster. My conscience is still whining, "I can't believe we did thaaaat! We teach yogaaaa!" My evil scientist hand considers shutting the Franken-knat in again to see what a minute would do.

My conscience wins and I eat my soup. I comfort my conscience with the fact that payback is a bitch, and I've likely strengthened this knat's DNA with so much radiation that she will catapult up the evolutionary ladder. I expect the clouds of Franken-babies to descend on my kitchen in a couple days.

Evil in Pastels

In the last week I tried to figure out what the hell I was going to blog about. Specifically. Yes, I have a grand plan of developing this voice that generally fails me, but that's not sexy. Know what's sexy? Fear.
My business is fear- I write horror/thrillers. But really, who's business isn't fear? Take the evening news, for example. Ominous news teasers haunt you: "What five things in your freezer could KILL YOUR CHILDREN?!"
We're a society run by advertising. Advertisers capitalize on your deepest fears to get you to buy what they want. Afraid you won't fit in? Buy these shoes... Afraid you're getting old? Buy this erectile disfunction pill... Afraid you'll be alone forever? Buy this self-help book...
Fuck self-help books. Let me be more specific: Fuck self-help books that target women's insecurities and make them think they aren't good enough. Which is about 98% of the self-help book shelf.
I'm self aware, so I have perspective. I teach pole dancing, so I'm empowered. I pay my own bills, clean my own place, and cut my own cat's nails, so I'm independent. But I'm also a single commitment-phobe with self worth issues so SOMETIMES I get weak and SOMETIMES I will page through whatever goddamned book my girlfriends are lately raving about.
I cave, I read, I feel worse, I remember I'm awesome, I quit reading, I throw the book on the floor, and I rant and rave.
This happened recently. Smart girlfriends recommended this book- not by name, but by subject: the roles of masculine and feminine in a relationship. I was intriged. My girlfriend would leave it at work for me.
I picked up the pastel on pastel book. "I DO!" is in the title. Flanked by wedding bands. And a chaste white flower.
I should have put down the book. A co-worker saw the look on my face. "Oh, I read this! It's great." Another endorsement from a smart, empowered woman. Despite my gut reaction, I took the book on vacation with me to read on the plane. The following is a rough sketch of how that went...
Pages 1-20. I start with an open-ish mind. The thinking is old fashioned, but I recognize myself in some of the things the author says.
Pg 21. She describes me exactly. Omigod.
Pgs 22-30 Maybe I've found the secret I've needed all along to achieve intimacy with another human, make a commitment and raise healthy children! All I need to do is CHANGE!
Pg 35. Wait, what? What the hell is this lady talking about?
Pg 36. THIS lady is a DOCTOR? Where did she go to school...?
Pg 37-272. I pick pages at random and read the following...
"Love yourself first" followed quickly with "you have to make changes".
"Flirt" and "Be pretty, look your best always" because "you never know when you'll meet Mr. Right!"
"Trying to have it all is just narcissism. Decide- are you masculine or feminine?"
And finally my personal favorite: "no sex without a firm commitment".
I jam the damn book into my backpack. Then I curse the upcoming hours of plane time with nothing to read. Stupid book... it almost got to me.
It wasn't until a few days later that I experienced the real evil of this book:
I had to leave my apartment-hole to get groceries mid-day. Wearing my uniform of pajama pants and a sweater, I passed my full length mirror on the way out- Oh, dear. I looked so homeless people would think I was famous. The thought flashed through my brain, "look your best always."
What? Where did that come from?
"You never know when you'll meet Mr. Right!"
Holy, mantra... The book got to me!, I thought as I changed into jeans and put on some lip gloss.
I drove to Trader Joe's and realized the way I'd been beating myself up in the last few days about the narcissistic tendencies that ruined my last relationship, about my stubborn fantasy that I could have the best of all worlds, and about my hopelessness at effectively flirting.
These were not my real thoughts! I was torturing myself based on thirty-something pages of a crappy self help book that reinforced my greatest fears and insecurities.
Here's the truth:
I didn't ruin my last relationship. He just wasn't right for me. That's all.
Its no fantasy. I CAN have the best of all worlds. The key is how I define those worlds, not how anyone else sees them.
I am pretty bad at flirting. I'm shy. Most people (people, not just men) think I hate them until they get to know me. That is, unless I meet the right person. With the right people, I forget to have a shell to hide in.
So, back to my earlier point, fuck self-help books.
You want to help yourself? Don't buy what other people tell you about you. They have no idea.

Late to the Party

I HATE BLOGGING. It's ego-driven masterbation, and yet here I sit on a Saturday night whacking it with the other guys. Or maybe not. I'm not sure people blog anymore. I'm about six or seven years late to this party which is normal for me. Starving kids in Africa had CD players before I did. I probably won't get a blueray player until jetpacks are a viable form of transportation. I didn't have sex until I got to college. (Ya hear that, Patsy George? I wasn't a whore, I just dressed like one! Judgemental bitch...)

Anyway, blogging. I'm a writer. I have a hard time sharing my opinion. I was raised to not rock the boat, to see everyone's side, to eat shit politely and say thank you for the meal. Because of this, sometimes I wait for cues on how to feel. Scratch that- I look for cues on how to react. And that's no way to live. I decided blogging would be a nice practice field to exercise my voice, speak out on things I care about, and stroke myself with the rest of the online world.

I had a whole rant on birthdays and birthday guest decorum, but I'm letting that slide- well, here: It's your friend's birthday? Make sure they have a good night, no matter what. Save your petty everyday BS for tomorrow- everyone has the right to one day of undeserved special treatment, this is theirs. Be on-time, chip in more than you should for the bill, and smile in the pictures. It sounds like a given, doesn't it? I wish it was.

The thing I'd rather address is the very group of people I'm joining- on-line posting people. I don't know what else to call us/you... the general public, I guess? Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, and the comment section after every article you read online, society has convinced you/me that every thought you/I have is precious and must be shared. I'm here to remind you/me, that this is crap. Less is more. Only one person cares about every thought you share on the internet- you. Even your mother doesn't care. Next time, think about what you write before you report to the world about grocery shopping or how much you hate Mondays. MUST you share? Be honest...
Keep thinking about it while I go change my status update to "Blogging!"
Kidding.
I'm gonna Tweet it. But see what I mean?