Rare Advice for Falling in Love

As a madly in love, happily married woman who recently (and I think successfully) hooked up two of her single friends, I have garnered priceless love data. I have researched my findings with other happily married or otherwise paired couples and I'm willing to share now that I've tested it on someone else.

1. Go for Quantity, Not Quality: If you are still single and looking for love, you need to go on as many dates as humanly possible. You need to ask your friends, co-workers, and yes, even your parents to hook you up. Try internet dating. As long as you meet in public, with whom it matters not. Like the efficient market theory, I believe in the efficient dating theory: that eventually by wading through all the crap you will find a priceless commodity, the one you don't trade up for because you've found a mate that will make your love equity skyrocket.

2. Hold Your Tongue: Like having sex on the first date, learn to say “No” to sharing the first thing that comes to mind in the frenzy of feelings that ensues when you first think you’ve found The One. Learn to walk the fine line between intimacy and annoyance. After a week or so, we tend to get comfortable, clingy, and our feelings get hurt if The One isn't following the puppetry of our expectations. That's when things start getting weird. Just don't say anything. I don't mean lie, or withhold important matters. Simply, don't be quick to judge or harshly opine with your new mate. You don't know anything about them, and be assured, though you find their beard trimming habits tragic, or their politics dismal, they will find your inability to leave the house without doubling back three times, or affinity for sci-fi equally horrendous.

3. No More Hairy Eyeball: You'll know you are in love when you are out and about, oblivious to glances from other potential suitors. I can say with assurance (sorry guys) that with every other boyfriend, I'd still be receptive to flirting with other guys. However, it all went away when I was dating my husband. It was like other men no longer existed in time and space. And on the off chance that my eyes met theirs, instead of getting all tingly inside, I'd laugh. A maudlin laugh as if seeing a sad clown, knowing that he could never capture my attention when I'd already got it so good.

4. Bridge Burning: Probably the most significant, and cathartic revelation in love is when you willingly, and happily, remove remnants from the wayward past you shared with various exes. I recommend gleefully cheering "Burn those bridges!" as you proceed. Deleting old phone numbers and ridiculous love emails is a delight, mementos you couldn’t bear to toss are now donated without mourning, and the only photos you keep are group shots or events you want to remember, not the singular poses of a beloved that used to arouse your affection. They now leave you unstirred.

Learn from me because I once was a bitter single woman. Painfully existing through the solitude of ice cream binges and Law & Order marathons alone. Ice cream and Law & Order are just so much better with a husband to share them.

Go get a room.

Or if you are not ready for commitment, try a small step, like subscribing to Shouting to Quiet the Thunder.

Growing a Pair: Blogging as an Experiment in Courage

My cousin has been experimenting with gratitude. For thirty days she has committed to finding something, anything to be grateful for. Reading her posts follows the wave of inspiration striking, uncertainty creeping in, and then breaking through again – not to inspiration, but something else. I dare call it change. Because of her readership she is called to be accountable for her promise some odd 17 days ago.

If you dare to blog, you commit to change. People who blog don’t do it because they are interested in ruminating about how stale and stagnant they’ve become and their plans to stay that way Thank You Very Much. No. They talk about how stale and stagnant they are, and then, as if the effect of a million tiny miracles colliding - they change. Slowly. Foot by foot, step by step. As much as I hate to admit it, blogging has changed me. And it’s not just signing up for Blogger and saying stupid shit. It’s the self-examination that comes with it. Anyone could do it, whether they have a blog or not, but there is something encouraging and emboldening about letting your (sometimes stupid and sometimes brilliant) shit be read by total strangers who strangely seem to give a damn about what you have to say. Incredible.

No one wants to read about me crying in the ladies room for thirty days in a row. People read blogs for something different, for examples of people doing things they want to do, for ideas, for inspiration. That was my motivation to read great blogs. My favorite bloggers are not the ones sitting on their duff complaining. My favorite bloggers have balls.

And by balls, I mean hutspa, I mean good old fashioned dusting themselves off and putting one foot in front of the other. Some of them even let me whine and complain on their blog and respond with patience and seriousness. Seriousness because, perhaps, they’ve felt like me and moved past the pain.

So, I’m going to jump on the thirty day bandwagon, with a slightly different angle.

Doing one thing every day that takes courage, for me.

I’ll be twittering them daily for thirty days. Follow me, join me, dare me.

House of Horrors

5:00 pm. An empty house. A ticking clock. Even the dog is away, vacationing with his grandmother.

I hadn’t carried on a conversation in 25 hours and needed to get out of the house.

My first mistake was clipping coupons. A dreary Saturday while one’s husband is away is not the time to start thinking about dwindling account balances and heading out on a discount shopping tour. But I braved the onslaught nevertheless.

First stop, Kmart. The scent of vinyl shower curtains greets me, unlike the salespeople who avoid eye contact. I apologetically slink past a woman replenishing the bath towel supply.

I make two round trips through the store and decide my time is up when I hear angry price haggling coming from the season opening of the Garden Department.

Though my mind is beginning to numb, my psyche dares me for more.

Next, I choose what Mike and I have marked as the most sinister retail location we’ve ever seen, but I had to prove it. Aldi.

If you are unfamiliar with this name, I’m not surprised. It can’t be from this country, if it is even from this planet. I’m convinced it’s simply a front for an elaborate money laundering scheme.

Cars are idling outside like getaway vehicles, as though everyone entering was planning on robbing the place. Shoppers are traveling in pairs: a mother-daughter duo, clutching ice cream and microwave popcorn, the younger waddling behind her future fattened self; a husband and wife, both sporting ponytails, speaking in tongues.

I venture in, holding my breath. Boxes of discounted inventory are stacked high, slashed open with a negligent hand, yet expertly arranged to block shoppers in like a creepy carnival maze, only no fun mirrors or music.

I get close, peering inside to see what is being offered. Fit & Active Chips. Does Aldi sell products whose marketing campaigns failed miserably?

A woman is walking towards me with a slow but determined charge. It feels sickeningly intimate, frightening. Our awkward dance continues when I veer left and she lunges in the same direction. She mumbles something about needing what I need. Feeling violated, I began moving with breakneck speed for the checkout counters.

In an attempt to test the limits of my gag reflex, the store layout forces me to walk past deviant brands of marked down mayonnaise, cheeses, gardening equipment, and jogging suits.

Certain the worst was over I head for the exit, only to encounter another woman, rail-thin, swathed in pink down to feathered flip-flops, whose flesh was the most unearthly shade of grey I’d ever seen, resembling that of a hippopotamus’.

The only thing I can take away from this is that there’s something to be said for paying a premium for a pleasant shopping environment.

God is On Everyone’s Mind Lately

Talking about God and Jesus just got a little more hip, thanks to Penelope Trunk featuring some Christian bloggers on Brazen Careerist and mentioning that people of faith can be more productive. I mean, we’re all looking for the next edge right?

While George Michael said it best, “You gotta have faith," no matter what your form of worship, I think it’s critically important to know what you are talking about before you start foaming at the mouth about someone else’s religion.

Take this blogger’s denunciation of a Papal document citing a proclamation about the Catholic church being the one true church.*

While this is old news (and by old, I mean biblically so) her post was further riddled with myriad misconceptions, gross over-generalizations, and cheap sensationalism, only pointing to an unstudied defense as a self-designated “non-Jewish Calvinist follower of Christ.” (By the way, are there any Jewish Calvinists?)

Furthermore, if you are not a follower of Catholicism, why would it make you mad what the Pope says? Shouldn’t you leave that to the Catholics? I mean, as a Catholic, I didn’t get upset when my best friend, a practicing Hindu, wouldn’t allow me to eat meat at her house because she thought cows were sacred. I just kept my mouth shut and had a hamburger on my own time.

And if you must know…

*The Pope’s statement is, at its simplest, tautological: true by definition. A little history lesson will further clarify that the Catholic church (the first of its kind) was the one founded by St. Peter, who was told to do so by Jesus. There’s no controversy here. And if you happen to be a Catholic, you can think that that is really cool, you celebrate in the one and only original church. Kind of like the Original Pancake house. Sure, there are other places to get pancakes, but who wouldn't want the original? So, if you are arguing that the Catholic church is not the only path to salvation, that is one thing. But the Catholic church is, by definition, the Catholic church.

How To Pretend You Weren’t Just Crying At Work

Life sucks…and then you cry.

Ever confused about how to handle uncontrollable crying at the office? Never fear, here’s how to turn even the most unprofessional display of emotion in your favor.

Pretend You Are Choking – you’re busy, and you show it. While your nerves might be on fire, you don’t want to put ‘em out with tears! Just pretend you are choking on that sandwich you are scarfing down because you don’t have time for lunch – or your sanity!

Pretend You Are Sick – you’re busy, and you show it. So busy, in fact, that you haven’t taken a sick day since 1995. No one will question your glossy-eyed look if you are hacking away as if fighting off typhoid fever.

Important Documents to Shred Anyone? – Backlogs got you waterlogged? No worries, take a trip to the ol’ shredding machine, where you are sure to get some solitude, and no one will notice the paperwork covered in waterworks, just shred your worries away!

The most obvious escape is the bathroom break, but I perform this routine with such frequency I had to come up with more ideas, you know, just to keep my nervous breakdowns feeling fresh.

Some of you might think that I hate my job. I don’t. Some of you may think I hate my life. I don’t. Some of you may think there is just something fundamentally wrong with my brain. Bingo.

I haven’t been diagnosed with anything, nor have I sought such help because that would mean admitting I have a problem – but I’ve long been convinced there’s a hole in my brain where rational thought, followed by adult decision-making was supposed to go. I end up crying and getting depressed about the most inconsequential things. Let me rephrase that – I fight like a f*ing champ through some of the toughest shit life has to throw at me, and then my bangs veer left, or my dog looks old, or my pants feel tight and life falls apart.

I haven’t got any actual advice, and forgive the corny sarcasm above. I’m out of ideas.