I work a few nights a week at California Pizza Kitchen.  I quite enjoy the extra cash and the knowledge that I get to go home each day with my money, instead of waiting every two weeks for a paycheck which requires a bank trip.  I have fun most days, plus, it keeps me busy, which is good for me.  While I can say I am far from the perfect server, and it is definitely not my chosen career path (hence why I have two other “day” jobs), serving has some major challenges.  The biggest challenge is the customers.  Now, I know most of you probably don’t even realize how you may be making your server’s life more difficult, so I am just going to give you all some nice little dining out tips, so you aren’t that customer.

1- Tipping is NOT optional at a sit down dining establishment.  This may be a surprise to you, but servers in all but a small handful of states get an hourly wage of $2.13 an hour.  The lovely federal and state governments have decided that “tipped” employees can make that low of an hourly wage because their tips will make up for it.  What is more, if you look around and notice that there are hosts, bartenders, and bussers in the restaurant as well, your server actually has to tip them at the end of the night for their help (some restaurants even tip share with the cooks).  When you don’t tip your server, your server ends up paying for the opportunity to serve you, because regardless of whether you tip them or not, they have to tip the hosts and bussers.  How many of you have to pay your coworkers?  Ya, not many… Be warned.  Servers memorize the faces of the people who don’t tip and tell each other when they see you.  You may get stellar service the first time you go to a restaurant, but you won’t ever again after that.

2- Tip your server 18% minimum, that being 18% of the bill’s total pre-tax.  Yep, that is the new minimum.  Because your server is tipping out a good portion of the money you pay them, your tip dissipates pretty quickly.  If you want your server to see any of it, tip 18%.  20% is for good service.  20%+ if it was exceptional.  If your server really is a cracked up idiot, tip 15%.  They really won’t see that money after tip out, but they didn’t lose money for showing up to work.  Oh, and don’t rely on that $2.13 an hour to help cover your server’s time.  It is eaten up by taxes and you will be hard pressed to find a server who ever actually sees a paycheck.  If you drink, NEVER tip less than 20%, as your server is also going to share their tip with the bartender.  Don’t punish the bartender for anything you don’t like about your server.

3- Be kind to your server.  Your server is your advocate with the kitchen.  They tell them what to make you with any modifications you made and also look at your food before taking it out to make sure it is what you ordered.  Don’t go pissing them off.  Snapping at your server is rude.  Don’t treat them like they are stupid.  Plenty of smart, educated people find themselves serving at some point.  If they come to your table to take your order, listen to them.  If they ask you what to you want to drink, answer, don’t stare blankly and test their mind reading skills.  If they have hot plates in their hand and have forgotten who has what and have to ask, listen and respond when they say the name of the dish you ordered.  On that same note, if your food took a long time, it is probably not the server’s fault.  The server is not cooking your food.  Don’t give them attitude if it takes too long.  If it took forever and your food came out cold, it probably is their fault because it sat in the kitchen long after it was cooked, in which case, talk to a manager.  Really, if there is a problem, USE YOUR WORDS.  Nobody can help you if you don’t say something.  There’s no reason for you to be mad, and most restaurants have policies to take care of you.

4- If you are a camel, let your server know and they can bring you more than one drink at a time.  Seriously.  Some people suck down soda like it is Fat Tuesday.  I don’t know how or why, but if you do this, don’t get annoyed if your drink sits empty for 10 seconds.  Your server has other people to attend to and can’t run to your need every time you drink your soda at warp speed.

5- Do not stay past closing time.  Your server wants to go home at some point.  Just don’t do it.  Similarly, don’t “camp” at your table.  You are taking away money from your server, because another table could come and eat and tip.  If you are going to sit for hours, tip accordingly.  You’re not entitled to sit there.

6- Servers don’t write the menus.  Don’t give them attitude if you don’t like something that changed or there is a lack of something you consider a necessity (french fries and Dr. Pepper are two things I get attitude for the most).  You picked where you ate.  Deal with it.

7- Be aware that there are other diners.  You may not think this affects your server, but it does.  If you are loud and obnoxious, you are ruining the experience of the person at the table next to you, who will likely take it out on your server.  Also, how many times has a server come to your table asking if you were ready to order, and you say yes, meanwhile you are not and you take 10 minutes of their time while you deliberate?  That is definitely not cool.  Someone at the table next to you is getting pretty irate because they want to be cashed out and you are holding the server hostage and there goes their tip.  If you’re not ready, say so.  They’re not going anywhere.  They will come back for you.  Oh, and if you have kids, keep them in their seats and take them to the foyer or outside if they are crying. Non-parent diners get very annoyed by rowdy kids.

8- Don’t speak for the table, Ex: “We all want water.”  It is annoying, unless you are a parent.  In which case, please by all means speak for your shy child.  I don’t have time for you to give them a pep talk.  Just tell me what they want and teach them bravery elsewhere.

9- If you are in a hurry, ask your server for what food takes the least amount of time.  Don’t show up on a busy night and expect to have your food at McDonald’s speed when it has to have time to cook.  If you are in a hurry, order it to go or get something that your server says will take less time to prepare.  You are the person who didn’t plan accordingly.  Don’t get mad if the restaurant can’t accommodate your schedule.  Oh, and if you do end up taking your food to go or going to the “Take Out” counter, you still need to tip.

10- Don’t take pens.  I don’t care how nice the pen is.  It isn’t yours.  That is stealing.

That feels good to get off my chest.  Even if I educated just ONE solitary soul, I have helped a server somewhere.  And that is worth my share of good server karma!

So I know I talk about being single a lot, but that is my life, and my lifestyle at the moment, so deal.  As a single person, there are several questions I get asked a LOT.  For whatever reason, people feel like they can ask single people completely personal questions that really aren’t any of their business.  Whether it’s “So, are you dating anyone?”  “Why aren’t you married yet?” or “How often do you date?”, they are all quite personal questions with loaded answers, and frankly, I really don’t like answering them.  So, to hopefully avoid  having to field these questions, I’m going to answer once, bluntly and honestly, and you can know the answer.

First, though I am not not bitter, I had my heart broken terribly.  As much as I hate admitting it, I am still quite gun shy.  Some of you met the guy, most of you didn’t, and I really don’t think any of my “people” actually knew him because we rarely spent time with other people while together.  We were young, we were dramatic, and we were Britney and Kevin style chaotic.  The reasons that we were definitely not right together are completely obvious to me, but we did deeply love each other.  Some days I think about him and still don’t know whether to hate him or miss him (although I usually choose to hate him, because he’s married, so missing him is not really a productive activity).  I can’t overemphasize how much it bothers me that it still stings.  I know it shouldn’t, but it does, and it makes me come off as emotionally aloof.  I definitely would love to replace the bad memories with good memories with someone new, but the aloofness doesn’t really help that.  I’m working on it.

Secondly, if you haven’t been out in the single world lately, it’s not pretty.  Well, the female side is.  You can hardly throw a stone without hitting a beautiful, intelligent, woman who has herself well figured out.  It never ceases to amaze me how many wonderful women there are out there.  While it would be easy to be blind with envy, you really can’t hate them, because most of these women are also so nice!  The other side, the men, well…  I’m not saying there are no good guys out there.  I pray every day that there are!  I do have some single guy friends that are really great, but we don’t have a love connection (and single person + single person does not always = love connection.  This is a surprise to some of you, I know).  I’m saying that a lot of guys leave me singing, “Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?”  They take longer primping than I do, they don’t have the guts to ask for numbers, they flit from pretty flower to pretty flower like a shallow little bird, and are constantly looking for a perfect flower that doesn’t exist.  Don’t tell me it is because of women’s liberation, either.  If they really believed that, they wouldn’t be turned off by a girl asking them out, which they are.  They still want the hunt.  They want the hunt for the trophy that doesn’t exist, leaving a trail of bright pretty things behind them who have value “beyond rubies,” yet were written off like dirt clods.  It’s aggravating.  Why would I want to commit myself to someone who worries about how resilient my body would be after children over whether or not I would be a decent mother and companion?  The good guys are scarce.  I’m just waiting for one that I am attracted to who can also carry on a conversation without looking to see if there is someone hotter than me behind me.  Call me crazy.

So that basically covers it.  #1, still healing heart that makes me leery and#2 lack of good options.  So next time you ask me why I am single or when I’m going to get married, kindly think twice unless you have a solution for my two reasons.  If you know any nice good guys, by all means, send them my way.  I can’t guarantee that we will love each other, but I’ll appreciate meeting them, and will happily introduce them to any wonderful girls I know who might fit better.  If you are a single guy reading this, learn how to court a girl.  I’ll happily help you!  In the meantime, I will continue to be happily single until the next time I get asked the questions again.

Shamu is back, and that is not a good thing!  I’m sitting here on a Sunday morning watching The Jetsons on Cartoon Network to try to scrub my mind of the horrible dream I had last night that featured, the ultimate haunter of me, orca whales!  I guess a few days ago I wished to be able to get my vivid dreams back, and you know what they say…  Be careful of what you wish for!

So this is what happened.  I was in Hawaii with my family, although it didn’t look like Hawaii.  It looked like Lake Powell, but with white sand and crystal clear ocean water.  We were on a big giant boat, similar to a transport boat they use when you are going to Catalina Island.  I was on the top deck, looking over the rail with my dad, when one of those sneaky little suckers popped up and started swimming by our boat.  It was a really weird looking orca, like it had fur.  My dad told me that was his winter coat, which meant he was really hungry.  The first one left soon, and we were still on our little cruise to nowhere, when another one came and started swimming by our boat.  With every jump and crest by the whale, our boat rocked.  I was so scared of the rocking, that I had to hold on to the rail, which meant I also had to watch the whale.  My dad told me that they were just “dolphining” and it was fine, so don’t be scared.  Ya right!  They are still wearing their winter coats and my boat is rocking!  As we rode our boat, this happened several times.  We go in to this weird bay where we see this giant pontoon style boat that is made completely of blue inflatable plastic, the kind that water wings are made of.  I think to myself, “Hey, at least I’m not on that boat!  The orcas would definitely sink that!”  True to dreams, the moment I thought that, I was suddenly in a hybrid inflatable boat/recliner in the water.  Rachel was floating next to me and told me that whales don’t come in the bay, but even if they did, as long as I stayed out of the water I would be fine.  Of course, right by my leg I notice an inch long cut in my inflatable recliner.  I moved my leg to cover it up, but then my leg fell asleep and I had to move it, then I started sinking.  Just as I was sinking and saw those SUPER creepy dorsal fins heading my way, I woke myself up.

Just in the nick of time!  I really do like that I had a dream that I could remember, but really?  Whales?  I hate them!  It is true, though.  If you start keeping track of your dreams, you start dreaming more and remembering them.  Let’s just hope they get a lot less scary from here.  On a positive note, it kept me from sleeping in for Daylight Savings.  (Side note, searching for an image for this blog post was horrifying!  I decided if I searched costume, it would be a lot less scary, so that is why we have the Shamu mascot.  I can handle that, mostly… )

We’ve all been there.  You come across someone who is hurting in some way, whether physically or emotionally.  You go to comfort them and HI-YA!  You are karate chopped right in the feelings!  After that, all you want to do is karate them back, or at least step on their toe, but they’re already hurt, and it’s not cool to hurt someone who is already hurt.  So, you just apologize again and walk away.

I don’t understand this.  I mean, I understand feeling awkward about it, maybe.  Definitely feeling grateful for recognizing that something isn’t right.  I even understand an explosion of tears.  Ladies, tell me a time when you were upset and you called your mom and DIDN’T burst in to tears when she asks what is bothering you.  Those are all completely acceptable.  But criticizing someone’s kind words, slapping away a comforting hand, or other rude reactions are not normal.

I try really hard to be a compassionate person.  This is something that is not always natural for me, depending on the situation.  For one, I am not always eloquent, especially when I am thinking on my feet.  I’m a major word jumbler.  Next, it depends on who you are.  If you are a hurt or sad child, animal, or little old person, I don’t have a problem offering condolences.  If you are someone who I have an established relationship or friendship with, I will probably ask you what you need without a second thought or care as to how it would inconvenience me.  I would make it happen for you.  But if I don’t really know you well, I probably won’t even notice there is a problem.  Even with close friends, I sometimes don’t recognize there is an issue until someone else points it out.  I’m not emotionally observant and if I don’t have an established emotional connection with you, I’m going to feel all sorts of awkward having the first connection being over you being hurt.  Those are situations where it is hard for me.  I obviously would notice if you had a big gash in your head.  Just know if you trip and fall in front of me, my reaction is always to laugh first.  Don’t feel bad.  I just really enjoy seeing a good fall.  It’s not personal.  I’ll still help you up!

I’m not going to stop being nice to people just because I get a good loogie to the face (or feelings) here and there when I try to be nice, but COME ON!  Can people just be nice in return?  Nobody is entitled to kindness.  It is something that is always conditional upon what the other person wants to give you.  You definitely should be treated with kindness, but it isn’t something that you are entitled to.  So don’t bark at someone who is offering you something like that.  It is just silly, and I guarantee nobody is going to continue to come to your aide if that is how they are treated when they do.  A good, simple, “Thank you!” goes a long way!  Saying nothing is even better than being mean.  Even if the person who is offering kind words has monstrous dragon breath or accidentally touches your stitches (gross).  They’re trying their best and their heart is in the right place.  Maybe you should check where you left yours, and return kindness with kindness.  Love always, CoCo!

“To Sleep, perchance to dream.  Ay, there’s the rub.”  ~Shakespeare’s Hamlet (I actually still have most of that soliloquy memorized, thank you to Mrs. Erin Jensen… Love that woman!)

I’ve always been a rather vivid dreamer.  I can tell you in great detail a nightmare I had when I was in preschool where turquoise and purple frogs were loose all over Annabella and if you didn’t keep your mouth closed, they would jump in it and become chewing gum, then you would die.  Another one about a random boy I saw one day who was walking down the road having a nosebleed and then appeared in my dream as this strange time jumper who took me to these fabulous places.  Oh, and dreams are, by the way, where my fear of orcas comes from.  I went through a good solid 5 or 6 years where I dreamed nightly of them swimming after me and eating me or trapping me.  Prior to that, I actually quite liked orcas.  However, the intensity and clarity of my dreams ruined that for me, and now orca sighting = tears and fetal position.  I’m the kind of person who, if I had a dream about you, will probably continue whatever feeling I had towards you in my dream when I wake up, at least for a little while.  Alternatively, I will just feel awkward for whatever role my subconscious decided to cast you in.  I feel like some dreams I have had have been sheer entertainment for myself, and others have been meaningful, whether it is my inner Jiminy Cricket trying to talk to me or God or whatever.  Those dreams I don’t really talk about openly, because they could also mean that I am SUPER nuts.

It’s kind of been bothering me as of late that I have not been sleeping well.  I don’t really know why.  I keep myself pretty busy, so maybe it is just the fact that I don’t really ever give my mind a good chance to unwind.  The cogs are always turning… I really like living in my dream world.  My dreams were, for a time, the place where I would escape my reality that I wasn’t happy with and enjoy whatever bliss my mind had created for me.  I definitely followed the Cinderella way of thinking, “A dream is a wish your heart makes when you’re fast asleep.  In dreams you will  lose your heartaches.  Whatever you wish for, you keep.  Have faith in your dreams and someday your rainbow will come smiling through.  No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing, the dream that you wish will come true.”  (birds come and sing to me in the shower and give me sponge baths, too.)  Lately I don’t really have that little escape.  I’d love to go back and visit that place!  I’m pretty happy in my life right now, so maybe I just don’t need my little dreams anymore, but I really miss being able to just put an inner tube around my waste and start jumping then being able to fly.  It was quite a handy skill.

So, I’ve decided I am going to start keeping a dream journal to see if these dreams start reappearing.  If anything entertaining comes up, I’ll share it with you.  I think that dreams are an important part of me, fostering the creative liberties that my mind decides to take on its own.  So, for tonight, this is my lullaby.  Never Neverland, from Peter Pan the Musical.  (I LOVE the Mary Martin version the very best!)

http://youtu.be/RDbp0_vIlAg

I’ll keep you posted on the oddities that or born from my head, and please don’t use them as evidence that I belong in the looney bin.  At least, if I am nuts, I am somewhat entertaining, if only to myself.  So now, off to find my dreams!  All you need is faith and trust… and a little bit of pixie dust!

So I have been neglecting my little blog.  Sorry.  Life’s been busy.  However, in all my busy blunders, I did manage to go shopping.  In my shopping, I made a realization.  I have a real love/hate relationship with technology.  Yes, there is a connection, even if it is a “CoCo connection” (these are my own little versions of logic chains… They’re probably not logical to anyone but myself).

I love technology with bras.  Yep, bras.  My sister and I went to Victoria’s Secret and decided to get “fitted” for bras.  Apparently you are supposed to do this around once a year because your bra size can change a lot depending on weight and hormone fluctuations.  Even though my sister and I have the same bra size (is this getting too personal?), the different technology built in to the different bras gave us each a very different result, and we both got bras with different technologies.  I am obsessed with under things, so this was very exciting for me.

I hate technology in phones.  My cell phone doesn’t work in the mall.  I have T-mobile’s top of the line cell phone and, for some reason, if I am in certain stores I drop calls or have no service.  This is rather inconvenient if you need a second opinion on a purchase, are trying to multi-task and are talking to someone else while shopping, or are trying to meet up with people who are already in the mall.  That last inconvenience is even more inconvenient if they are in a store where they don’t get reception, either.  On the same note, I hate it in movie theaters as well.  My friend Steve and I went to see The Artist, and a really ignorant patron decided to text through the whole movie.  Steve leaned forward and asked him to stop.  After the movie was over, Steve and I were watching the credits and this man took his SWEET time getting his jacket on to leave. (At this point, I am sure Steve’s adrenaline was pumping, thinking he was going to have to defend his right to watch a movie without a glowing screen from the seat in front of him.  It’s a good thing it didn’t come to that, for the man’s sake.  I was wearing killer spikey heels.)  Then, the man leans over the seats and says, “Hey man, sorry if I bothered you.  I found out my mom died,” then he walked off.  My response was a loud laugh followed by shouting “LIAR!”  Really?  Your mom dies and you just sit in the theater and watch the rest of the movie?  If it was a death that was slow and gradual, why aren’t you with your family?  And if it was an accident and sudden, wouldn’t you get up and walk out in a panic?  People are weird… At least I got a good laugh out of the situation.  I wish they could just swap this so you ALWAYS had reception in the mall and never had reception in the theater.  THAT is technology I could get behind.

I love technology with online shopping.  About a week and a half ago, I got my personalized Hunger Games water bottle and my D.I.P., that’s a District Identification Pass for those of you not up on the lingo (I was assigned in District 4 as a ship captain).  This put me on a dorkfest overload!  I am sure there are places locally that I could have something like this created, but because it was online and already created by the Hunger Games publicity machine, I just clicked and to my door it came!  I now can proudly sport my water bottle and flash my D.I.P. because of technology.  YAY!

I hate technology with music.  I know that I am the type of person who would still love vinyls if I ever had a turntable and knew how to use one.  I still buy all my music on CDs.  I do not own an iPod.  I strongly resist change in this area.  I used to have an iPod and actively used iTunes.  All it took was being burned by Apple twice to decide that these were not for me, one time when my computer crashed and I learned I had to rebuy all my lost downloads and the second when Mad Men only downloaded the HD version that was not compatible with my computer I had at the time and wouldn’t download the non-HD version without buying the season pass again.  I HATE the Apple monopoly, but don’t get me started on that…  I also hate making my own playlists.  They take too much time and effort.  If I want to listen to something, I typically am in a mood to listen to that artist in general, so popping in their CD is much easier than making a playlist.  No matter what happens to my computer, I still have my CDs.  My resistance to technology in this category isn’t new, either.  I also held on to tapes for as long as I possibly could.  My parents bought me a new stereo for my car when I was a teenager, and I demanded one with a tape deck (I used a tape/CD converter with my discman for CDs at that time) because I wanted the option to listen to my tapes.  So I will happily go to Target to buy the Kelly Clarkson CD when I am on a Stronger kick, which I did within the past couple of weeks.

So there’s my little tangent this week on technology, and I do realize the irony of this being on a blog written from a laptop.

“I do not fear those pale green pants with nobody inside them!  I said and said and said those words, I said them, but I lied them” -Dr. Seuss

I have been thinking about fear a lot lately, and if any of you have conversed with me in the past week, we have probably talked about it.  Maybe we didn’t talk about it, but I was secretly analyzing you and trying to decide what your fears were.  I’m sneaky like that.  So what on earth possessed me to think about your fears and my own?  It all started with a trip to the spa.

I have a spa membership at The Grand America Hotel downtown.  It is a fantastic way for me to relax and warm up in the winter, plus there’s a nice gym there if I ever decide I want to work out (still waiting for that to happen).  My friend Erika has one as well.  Last week, we decided to go to dinner and the spa.  Erika and I have one of those friendships where you get together and solve the world’s problems with the greatest of ease in every conversation.  We can definitely be silly, but at some point we always address some issue in our lives and talk it through with one another.  She’s got some definite German practicality going on, and I have my “Critical Polyanna” way of looking at things (I want to think it is all going to end happy and perfect, but I have to analyze each piece of info before I get there), so the direction our conversations go is always interesting.  We started talking about fears and how we let them rule our lives and how we have seen fears interfere with the lives of some of our mutual friends.  Obviously, for her privacy and for the friends’ privacy, I’m not going to tell you what we talked about, exactly, but it did get me thinking…

What fears do I have?  What have I not done in my life because of fears?  How do I overcome my fears and move past them?  I welcome you to think of your fears as I go through this process with you.

Well, honestly, addressing your own fears is HARD!  It was for me, anyways.  I know I am petrified of orca whales, but that is neither here or there when it comes to interfering with my life, because I live in a landlocked state.  So I don’t go swimming in the middle of the Puget Sound.  It’s freaking COLD!  Who does that, anyways?  When I was little, I was always scared of being embarrassed, but that passed as I realized I am perpetually the awkward human and I needed to get used to it.  I think most of my fears are intertwined with love, actually.  Whether it is fear of not being loved, fear of being abandoned by loved ones, or fear of letting go of past loves to make room for unknown future loves… That is basically where I’m a big old ball of mess.  That is probably my biggest fear as far as “fear as an obstacle in my life.”  Some that I have seen in others who are close to me that I think are pretty common are fear of failure, loss, control, and lack of acceptance (for those that are self analyzing as you read). A QUICK, SPECIAL SIDE NOTE TO MY MOM, BECAUSE SHE’S GOING TO WORRY:  I don’t know where these fears come from and I’m positive I have felt them for a long time.  I’m sure it’s part of the package that is me that came with me from the beginning.  I don’t think anybody built it in to me as a child or as an adult, so don’t get your thinking cap on trying to decide who it could have been.  It’s ok.  Love you!

Well, love being the fear, makes what have I not done pretty interesting.  I don’t take a lot of chances with relationships.  I definitely try to be kind to others, because, as I think is the case with most fears, I project my fear on others and don’t want them to feel rejected from me.  That definitely hasn’t hurt me in my life to learn to love others.  It’s the love that is out of my control that is more the issue.  I’m probably not going to go in to full confessional mode and tell you everything that I have done or not done specifically because of my fear. I will say that thinking about it has been eye opening and a bit liberating in it’s own right.  The limits I have put on myself become liberating because, in acknowledging them, I can move past them and not be limited anymore.  That obviously brings me to overcoming and moving past fears.  It’s all a little clumped together for me.  I am not a good organizer (that’s what my sister is for), so I am sorry I can’t give you organized steps.  I can say that in thinking about this all, I have had several of my own “Ah ha!” “Huzzah!” moments where things started to make sense.

I don’t know that I am “Taylor Swift Fearless” yet, but I’m getting there.  I definitely don’t want to spend my life in a brickle bush getting brickles in my britches.  I want to be able to look my fear in the eye and get to where they are no longer fears, but familiar friends.

“And now we meet quite often, those empty pants and I.  And we never shake or tremble, we both smile and we say, HI!”

Well, congratulations!  It’s Valentine’s day!  The single day a year that I know, without a doubt, I am going to wake up wearing my crabby pants and likely will wear them all day.  For one reason or another, music is always my chosen avenue for therapy, and I always have a soundtrack to my life.  As tempted as I am to throw in Adele today, I’m not going to do it!  I love Adele, and 21 got me through some rough months when a certain past someone was engaged and married and I was forced to deal with the emotions of our breakup prior to that (probably the most I will ever openly speak about my feelings on that subject, so this is a red letter day for you), but today is a Tuesday in the middle of February.  It doesn’t deserve that much emotion.  Plus, considering I already almost cried over my breakfast when the server brought out my “vegetarian” breakfast sandwich chock full of bacon, well… I don’t need to go to that sad place today. So just for you, I have put together an alternative 10 song playlist for today.  Each song comes with an “Emma Pillsbury self help pamphlet” type title (Glee reference, for those of you not in-the-know), so you can easily choose which song will be your anthem today if you are not happy about Valentine’s Day.

1-SO SOME WENCH STOLE YOUR MAN

http://youtu.be/BRRUMcf93FY

2-SO YOUR MOTHER TAUGHT YOU NOT TO USE HYPERBOLES WHILE SPEAKING, BUT YOU REALLY DISLIKE SOMEONE

3-SO YOU WANT A MEANER TAKE  ON SOMEONE LIKE YOU BY ADELE

4-SO YOU WANT TO BREAK UP WITH SOMEONE TOMORROW AND DON’T KNOW HOW TO DO IT (PLEASE DON’T DO IT TODAY)

(the Paul Simon version wouldn’t post, so you get Rosemary)

5-SO YOU’RE A NARCISSISTIC JERK AND CAN’T FIGURE OUT WHY YOUR EX DOESN’T WANT TO TALK TO YOU, AND PAINTING YOURSELF LIKE A HARLEQUIN DOLL MAKES YOU MOODY AND ARTISTIC

6-SO YOU’RE LIVING IN A POWDERKEG AND GIVING OFF SPARKS

7-SO YOU HAVE A STALKER AND YOU WANT THEM TO GET THE CLUE

8-SO YOU LET YOURSELF BE A VICTIM OF A PLAYER AND ALSO LOVE TUTUS

9-SO YOU WANT TO KILL THE GIRL YOU ASKED OUT TONIGHT

10-SO ALL YOU REALLY WANT TO DO IS THINK OF ANYTHING THAT IS HAPPY AND NOT ROMANCE RELATED

The last one is my personal favorite.  If you love Harry Nilsson and really want to drive the point home with your anger, and don’t mind hearing the F word, an honorable mention for the list is his song called You’re Breaking My Heart, but it’s not clean enough for my personal blog standards.  Good luck with the rest of your day!  🙂

So you decided to kick your feet up and watch a little TV this weekend.  Chances are, you couldn’t push a button without bumping head on into some sappy love story, likely featuring either Meg Ryan, Reese Witherspoon, Kate Hudson, or Julia Roberts.  Even if you did find the one channel playing something else, your commercials were tainted with The Vow or This Means War commercials, both upcoming chick flicks.  It’s the season of love!  The weekend before Valentine’s Day!  Everyone needs to be in the mood for swooning, and nothing says swoon like Hugh Grant, the unattractive funny guy, awkwardly winning a girl over with his quirky charm.  Well, for girls anyway.

Don’t get me wrong, I do love myself a good chick flick.  Love Actually is one of my favorite movies and I went through a “sad” phase of my life where I watched it every night as I went to sleep.  Even last night I had a fun girl’s night going to see The Vow.  The one thing that I can’t seem to shake from every overly saccharinated movie I have seen is the completely false expectation that it puts in our heads for all the poor dopey men out there (I say dopey as a term of endearment.  Stick with me, I’ll get there).  Channing Tatum’s character, for example,  knew all the right words to say and the best way to handle an impossibly frustrating situation.  He showed strength when it was required and cried at the times that he needed to be vulnerable and sensitive.  Then, before the credits, it shows this picture of this lovely “happily ever after” family that the film was based on.  That means it is all true, obviously.

The truth is, men don’t have a clue what romantic little thing we need to hear at that pivotal moment when we are standing in the rain, waiting for a heartfelt confession.  I dated a guy for years who always managed to say the exact thing I didn’t want to hear at the moment I wanted to hear something wonderful.  In his mind, he was doing the best he possibly could to say the right thing.  We both were horrible at actually articulating our feelings as it was, a part of our relationship where we were oddly compatible and incompatible at the same time.  However, if I was in “chick flick” mode, it was never the right thing.  Through years of getting to know him, I learned to appreciate the little things he would say that would be golden, or the strange songs he would say reminded him of me because literally one line or phrase resonated with him, while the rest of the song was completely wrong and could easily be taken as offensive.  (EX: Stop This Train by John Mayer.  The whole song is about how he doesn’t want to grow up and life is moving too fast.  John shows extreme immaturity in this song, and our difference in maturity was always a hot spot.  However, there is one line that says, “Once in a while, when it’s good, It’ll feel like it should.”  THAT is the part I was supposed to be listening to, and it wasn’t until my feathers were already pretty rustled that he told me it was that one. little. tiny. line.)  Men in real life do not have writers sitting there feeding them these great, iconic lines like “Here’s looking at you, kid!”  They have to do the best they can to think outside of their own realm of emotions and think, what, exactly, does this dame want me to say!  Some become very smooth over time, but it just isn’t natural for the majority of men.  Yet, for some unknown reason, even though I have seen this with friends and with relationships in my own life, women, including myself, get this little ache inside, yearning for that romantic moment where the man says exactly what is in the contents of her head when they watch that chick flick.

So this is what I propose to fix this problem.  Men really need to watch more chick flicks and women need to watch less.  Yesterday, a couple of my little brother’s friends went to see The Vow together, both male, and posted on Facebook about this activity.  Several girls  “liked” that activity, while other guys razzed them.  These boys are actually quite wise.  First of all, they are going to run in to several single girls at a movie like that on a Saturday afternoon.  Second of all, they are going to actually be fully immersed in the fantasy.  Every chick flick is built on the same fantasy, which is: girl with all her quirks, whether self inflicted or inflicted by others, finds a man who loves her perfectly for all of those quirks, says all the right things at the right times, and TA DA!  It ends happily ever after.  By these boys learning the fantasy, they actually have an ace in the hole when they are faced with girls who are wanting just that.  Whether or not they understand the strange and wacky behaviors of the girl they are interested in, by carefully studying the output of men in chick flicks, they will know the correct response to said behaviors.  It’s that simple.  Women, on the other hand, really should watch about anything other than chick flicks unless they can watch them with complete cynicism.  Poor guys really don’t stand a chance against the perfectly dressed, sculpted, and scripted men in our fantasy movies.  Then, maybe just learn how to love the dopey, yet cute things the real men are actually saying and doing.  It’s much more romantic for a guy to be himself than to be some perfect poster child anyways.  (See!  I can stand up for men, too!)

A few months ago, I was talking to my mom on the phone about Thanksgiving, and in passing I said, “Well, I’m pescatarian now, so let’s just make sure there is stuff I can eat.”  Her response was a confused, “Oh, so what do they believe?”  “Not Presbyterian!  Pescatarian!  A vegetarian who will eat fish!  I didn’t change religions.  I don’t even know what, exactly, a Presbyterian is!”

This was a pretty simple change for me.  I already refused to eat meat from the bone.  I rarely ate red meat.  If I saw a vein, tendon, or any resemblance to a once living creature while eating, I couldn’t eat it.  If a restaurant had a fish tank, I had to make sure I wasn’t sitting where I could actually see it, because I couldn’t look at a living animal while I ate another one.  I had been a vegetarian once when I was younger, but it was hard to get protein, and I don’t love tofu, plus excessive soy has its own problems due to excessive estrogen, so I just tried not to think about it.  Especially because I am a busy girl and I really didn’t know how I would be able to eat conveniently on the go if I wasn’t able to grab some chicken nuggets in a pinch.  Still, every time I would have reason to think about where my food came from when I was eating meat, I felt very guilty.

I don’t know how a girl who grew up in rural Utah with an avid hunter for a dad (we have antelope, deer, and elk heads in the garage) developed this guilt issue.  I give partial blame to Disney.  All their singing, happy animals with human feelings.  Why would you want to eat any of them?!  Especially when you can hear Bambi’s little voice echo “Mother?  Mother?”  I also blame growing up in an agrarian community, where I could see little cows, pigs, and sheep born every spring.  Do not get me started on veal!  The last portion of the blame I place solely on my self and my melting heart for animals as well as my ability to give feelings to all objects, even inanimate ones (I eat my cinnamon bears and skittles in twos, because I don’t want them to get lonely in my tummy).  As much as you may want to argue that animals and food do not have feelings, I just can’t quite convince myself.  Plus, I’d rather err on the safe side and not hurt an animal (and not have lonely skittles in my tummy) than kill them (or eat an odd number).

I came across pescatarianism one day, and within a week, I was converted.  I didn’t do a grand change-over or last supper of roasted flesh.  I just decided that choosing to not eat meat was the best thing for me and on a random Tuesday, stopped.  So to explain why I eat fish?  Well, I still feel guilty.  I do love Finding Nemo.  I needed a good source of protein, for one.  For another, most fish, contrary to what Nemo portrays, actually don’t even know who their parents are.  Sure, they live in little ecosystems like schools or coral reefs, but they don’t really have feelings.  I am also very particular on what fish I will eat.  If it is a shark, for example, I definitely won’t be eating it.  It probably has feelings and it definitely is smart.  However, if it is a shrimp, well, those are basically the bugs of the ocean and I don’t feel bad eating bugs.  I also try to eat fish that is either responsibly farmed or fished.  Long line fishing kills all sorts of ocean wild life, and I don’t want to support that.  I know, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, and I will probably eventually find a day where I stop eating fish, but until I learn how to get protein from another source, I figure starting with the major animals and working my way down to the little ocean bugs, it is at least a start.

I’m not going to start joining PETA rallies or even try to convince anyone else to stop eating meat.  For me, your choice of values you choose to live your own life by is completely personal.  Part of my personal value system happens to be that animal consumption makes me feel guilty.  I don’t judge anyone who doesn’t agree or feel the same.  If you make me dinner and forget to omit the meat, I’ll even just pick around it, because it was nice of you to cook for me!  This is just a great choice for me.  Since I quit eating meat, I have been sick less (probably because I eat more vegetables, fruit, and whole foods now), feel healthier, and actually get more satisfaction from my food and eat less.  Apparently, my body likes this way of eating, too!  So, call me a hippy or whatever you want, but that is why I won’t be joining you on your next visit to Pat’s BBQ.  Plus, when McDonald’s announces things like “We will no longer be putting pink slime in our meat products,” I won’t have to worry because I didn’t eat it in the first place!