Change is Good For Spring (Spare Change or Otherwise)

It's finally Spring, bitches!

This means it's time for new beginnings - also Cadbury Eggs, bunny-shaped Pez, chocolate baby chicks and delicious Marshmallow Peeps (and what is the word for those Kosher jelly rings? They're like tiny raspberry-candy donuts covered in chocolate? Just delightful. How is it I've been Jewish this long and don't know? That's like not knowing foil-covered chocolate coins are Gelt. Blasphemous.) Anyway. Where was I? Oh yes. So Spring is the season of delicious change. And this year, in the spirit of really starting new, I've decided to change some long-held bad behaviors of mine.

But for the sake of thoroughly explaining all this, let's map out my bad behavior like an algebra equation. Which means if Highly Suggestible is "X" and Remarkably Low Impulse Control is "Y," then X+Y=Lifelong Social Retard.

To elaborate further: I am not exactly the queen of containing myself when an idea is put in my head. Like if you were to suggest to me how wonderful a donut might be, I would last maybe a minute before running out to buy half a dozen donuts (chocolate frosted with sprinkles, Bavarian-creme-kruller, devil's food, strawberry frosted, black-and-white marble and Boston Creme - shut your mouth blogland; my philosophy is always have a gameplan in a Dunkin Donuts - otherwise it's baked good anarchy.) Of course, fast-forward five hours and I'm lying on the couch in a state of either pre or post-vomitness - then fastforward nine more hours and I'm consuming donuts like nothing happened - or doodling on a steno pad what is essentially a giant donut with arms and legs exclaiming, "You know you wanna eat the crap out of me!" (Sometimes I pin these to the wall of my cubicle.)

Anyway.

The point is, I am constantly far too tempted by the donut. And by tempted I mean in a way that knocks out logic and will-power and normal reasoning skills - like when I run the air conditioner and vacuum at the same time and it knocks out the whole fucking apartment because god forbid the super should replace copper wiring laid out in the frakking 1970s. (Is it possible the Super in my brain is also a lazy son of a bitch? Now that I think about it, other things never seem to work right either. Damn you, Lazy Building Super In My Brain! Why must you be so inept and at the same time, so imaginary?)

Moving on.

It's probably no great shock that my Algebra Equation of Bad Behavior has long been a source of trouble for me. For instance, when I was a senior in college and my friend Laura, at a house party, suggested to me that our combined lack of idiotic college badassedness might be a thing to regret after graduation, I immediately tossed back about half a gallon of 151 (that's rum with a flame-retardant barrier over the lip - literally one step from sucking gasoline out of a hose) and then I selected from the crowd a drunk boy who I thought might be game to - shall we say - mack on my awesomeness.

"Hey you hey hey you yeah you hey no not you not you yes YOU wanna make out with me?" was what I slurred to pretty much the entire room before I finally grabbed my friend James, yanked him into a corner and climbed him like a spider-monkey; literally, I wrapped one leg around his legs, knocked both of us into a side table, and then, after a half-assed drunken display which involved my mouth and a stuck zipper (it's better I not describe that part in more detail), I excused myself to the porch to vomit into a houseplant.

From that point forward, many post-college-football parties seemed to end this way - with my drinking until wicked-retarded and then striking out (spectacularly) with some guy until I eventually excused myself to go vomit off, over, into, or at something. (Once, after six Goldshlaggers at Club Cairo and a boy-wistful conversation with my roommate Tiff, I drunkenly hit on my friend Brian - who immediately reminded me that he already had a girlfriend - and then I vomited over the railing of the roof deck. Another time, after a shot contest in which I downed more than 10 Red Eyed Sluts because it was suggested by my friend Renee that women should not be afraid to out-shoot [out-shot?] the men they want, I made a pass at Brian - who STILL had a girlfriend - and crawled into Tiff's bathroom, where for the next hour I pushed tissues into her sink, named all of them "Brian" and then vomited into the cat's litter box.)

So to build upon the original equation:

X+Y=Social Retard
WHEN
Social Retard= Substance + Want To Mack On Hot Guy
OR
Value of X is bad idea
Value of Y is well-meaning friend

Of course, now I'm older and wiser (whatever that means) and sure I've stopped going to college football parties, sure instead of complaining about my lack of badassedness I now complain about the pain in my legs and back and how that untalented fetus Miley Cyrus is ruining music for everyone (because she is), and sure I'm "so mature and so over it all," but really, 20 year old retard me has been floating around inside mature 30 year old adult me for awhile now.

So as much as I hate wake-up calls (emotional, metaphorical, iphone alarm, that guy who delivers packages to my desk at 9am and fails to grasp that it's 9am and nobody should be like a Skittles rainbow, dude!) I'm also of the mind that change is good. And eventually, change is absolutely necessary. Like when you reach that point in life where you realize you don't need to think or try so hard. Or when you realize that - hey - my own instincts are pretty good when I just trust myself - and not someone else. And so what if it took me 30 years and several hundred vomits into plants and litter boxes to realize this; the important thing is I can now be like Scrooge McDuck in Mickey's Christmas Carol: "There's still time! I haven't missed it! I can still change!" (Merry Easter and God bless us, everyone!)

Which means Spring is totally the season of my spiritual and emotional growth (as I say this, I'm bending paper-clips into animals and murdering them by hurling them over the wall of my cubicle - great start!!) But the truth is, I'm already learning. As in - from every experience and person and situation. (Craziness!) Also, I've learned that I don't need to eat every donut in front of me just because it is the donut in front of me. Furthermore, I deserve better than some thirty-five cent fast food desert. Like some Cadbury Egg with luscuious creme filling and rich milk chocolate- who needs that? I CAN and WILL wait for something better.

(Oh god but I love Cadbury eggs so much....)

Why must everything I want always have to be so crazy unhealthy despite its shiny deliciousness? That just feels like punishment from the Heavens, yo.

Ugh. Change is hard. Wish me luck, blogland.

Calling all men of the world...

As I'm sure you've guessed by now, the queen of all tragic rodents has not yet been swept up. At least, not by a man. By the magic of Lost on DVD and the Thursday night NBC comedy block, sure. By the evil witchcraft of the Food Network and every cupcake bakery on the Upper West Side? (and yes, I can find them all blind-folded), absolutely. But by a man? No. Or I should say - not yet. So last month, as a solution (or rather, an inept plot device engineered by someone who has seen way more 30 Rock episodes than is normal) I've decided to go out on 30 dates before my 30th Birthday - hopefully not with 30 different guys, although I'm not about to hold my breath. My Relationship Magic 8 Ball still points to Try Again Later - however much I may have believed, at the age of 18, that at 30 I'd at least be living with someone, even if at 18 I also believed that 30 was the age people started sleeping in coffins.

RIP, youth and stupidity.

"I don't even know what you're so friggen worried about, you're still so young," was what my grandmother was quick to remind me at dinner last week - and although I suppose in comparison to her 90 years I seem like a surly little ova, the next words out of her mouth were, "And if I die before I have any great grand-children, so be it. God's will."

(I swear, you have no idea how much wine it takes to get through a dinner at my aunt's house.)

All in all, I'm doing rather poorly thus far - 10 dates, no takers, and five more months to go.

But just to give you an idea of what I'm up against here, let me describe what I've dealt with so far:

- guys who dirty-talk me by asking if I've ever watched cat-porn on TV - as in, two house cats fucking. True story.

- guys who open with, "not that I go around talking about my money, but I'm fine with you getting whatever you want. If you want the deluxe with fries that's fine. I'll pick up the tab - I have a job."

- guys who begin with, "Wow, I was actually kind of thinking you'd be late because of the rain," after I catch him at the bar, flirting with some whore disguised as an innocent, ten minutes before we're about to get our free mini-pizza with beer on. (I paid for that beer, by the way, because he apparently "wore the wrong jeans" - like the ones missing a place to store his balls, apparently - yeah, thanks match.com. But here's a word of advice, ladies: Don't let that guy make out with you after the beer is gone just because you're bored and super-competitive and have a need to show up that girl at the bar because she's taller and blonder. That would just be crazy. And retarded.)

- guys who, when I push back our first date one hour, demand to know "why you are trying to jerk me around by my ball sac." (this gem via text message.)

- guys who don't call, yet send out of the blue, mispelled Facebook make-out pleas, and the next day follow it up with: "I think I messaged you last night? I'm so sorry. My ex-girlfriend texted me out of nowhere and it stressed me out, so I took an Ambien. Thanks for being cool. What are you up to later?"

- guys who get on the wrong train and end up in Babylon. Three hours away.

- guys who come over for dinner and immediately apologize for their appearance by explaining, in these exact words, "My friends and I were drinking. It was Boggle. It got ugly. Sometimes I go a little crazy." He had a huge black eye - like a panda, except not at all cute.

So this is my problem: have all the normal guys been taken? Have I missed my window? Am I sending out digital dating signals which can only be picked up by Douchebag Sattelite? Does true love even exist? Or has some cuter girl already stolen my one true love because she went to the right bar with free pizza - and I went to the wrong bar with free pizza and a guy who keeps his money in the wrong pants? Or is it me? Is that it? Is it the way my ass looks in jeans? Should I buy new jeans? Should I watch more What Not To Wear? SO MANY QUESTIONS, BABY JESUS!

Le sigh.

Why are there never any answers?

Maybe I'll figure it all out during the last five months of 2009 - with 20 more dates to go.