My mom told me to do this
I was feeling depressed the other night and talking to my mom on the phone.
(How's that for a catchy opening hook?)
We were talking about the eclipse and she lives in a place that was in the Path of Totality and was so excited to tell me about her experience seeing the moon block out the sun. She asked me how it was for me. I told her I had eclipse glasses and so was viewing it like a normal person, but that I also took a metal colander and was playing with it and making tiny crescent shapes on the large piece of paper I took outside, and that some haters were giving me a hard time about being weird and how some other well-meaning but totally insufferable person told me, "It's OK to be different," as if I am the kind of person who needs to be told that. I was fairly snarky about this last point.
I should mention I was Facetiming my mom, which means I was on speaker for her houseguests - my second cousins who I haven't seen in 20 years - to hear. No mom wants her houseguests' first experience with her daughter in 20 years to be the witnessing of depressive snark about the Great American Solar Eclipse.
She excitedly asked me, "Did you stand under a tree to see the cool patterns the shadows made?" My response was one for the Jerk Daughter books. "No, mom, my eclipse experience was nothing like yours. I was standing in a parking lot and people were making fun of me about my colander and there were no trees."
I immediately shamed myself for this last response, which I knew was mean, but I couldn't stop the words from coming out of my mouth.
Mom realized she should change the subject. She is so smart.
So she asked about the guy I've been dating--let's call him Jon (which also happens to be his real name). I told her it's going nowhere, he acts completely uninterested and it's making me feel terrible about myself. She said, "You should write that blog you were talking about. The Irregulars. That was really funny."
See, in a previous depressive funk I was talking to her about how my experience of dating is like going to that weird Gap factory store outside Cincinnati where all the clothes are messed up in some way and you have to sort through about 147 shirts with stitched-up buttonholes and leg-sized sleeves and "PGA" where "GAP" is supposed to be in order to find one shirt (that has a only the tiniest Sharpie mark on the hem but if you tuck it in no one will notice) that you might actually be willing to part with $5 for.
Dating is like that for me. Sorting through all the irregulars looking for the least irregular irregular.
When she reminded me of the blog idea, I basically ignored the idea - I wasn't in the mood for humor and at the idea of another failed blog (I currently have about 8) I shamed myself again, and changed the subject.
Then a couple days later, I updated my OKcupid profile and went to bed happy for the first time in a week or so. It hit me that writing a couple charmingly self-deprecating paragraphs about myself for strangers to read was the most fulfilling thing I had done in a long time.
So mom was right. I should start a blog on The Irregulars. And talk about how awful dating is, and also how funny it is. How dating that guy who was awesome in every way except for how he didn't have a real job and that time we cooked dinner in his dorm room on a stove with two fallen-in burners was the best date I'd had in a month was just like sifting through four racks of size-4-in-the-thighs and size-12-in-the-waist jeans, to finally find a great-fitting size 8 that is awesome until you put it on and realize it has buttons on the back pockets--the kind that make your butt look big and you finally learned not to buy anymore --but you'd almost buy them anyway, because they fit!!, except the buttons are uneven and while you can almost settle for butt-buttons (because hey, men like big butts), you can't deal with uneven ones.
I will kill this metaphor over and over. I think it's a perfect metaphor, though, so I'm going to own it.
(How's that for a catchy opening hook?)
We were talking about the eclipse and she lives in a place that was in the Path of Totality and was so excited to tell me about her experience seeing the moon block out the sun. She asked me how it was for me. I told her I had eclipse glasses and so was viewing it like a normal person, but that I also took a metal colander and was playing with it and making tiny crescent shapes on the large piece of paper I took outside, and that some haters were giving me a hard time about being weird and how some other well-meaning but totally insufferable person told me, "It's OK to be different," as if I am the kind of person who needs to be told that. I was fairly snarky about this last point.
I should mention I was Facetiming my mom, which means I was on speaker for her houseguests - my second cousins who I haven't seen in 20 years - to hear. No mom wants her houseguests' first experience with her daughter in 20 years to be the witnessing of depressive snark about the Great American Solar Eclipse.
She excitedly asked me, "Did you stand under a tree to see the cool patterns the shadows made?" My response was one for the Jerk Daughter books. "No, mom, my eclipse experience was nothing like yours. I was standing in a parking lot and people were making fun of me about my colander and there were no trees."
I immediately shamed myself for this last response, which I knew was mean, but I couldn't stop the words from coming out of my mouth.
Mom realized she should change the subject. She is so smart.
So she asked about the guy I've been dating--let's call him Jon (which also happens to be his real name). I told her it's going nowhere, he acts completely uninterested and it's making me feel terrible about myself. She said, "You should write that blog you were talking about. The Irregulars. That was really funny."
See, in a previous depressive funk I was talking to her about how my experience of dating is like going to that weird Gap factory store outside Cincinnati where all the clothes are messed up in some way and you have to sort through about 147 shirts with stitched-up buttonholes and leg-sized sleeves and "PGA" where "GAP" is supposed to be in order to find one shirt (that has a only the tiniest Sharpie mark on the hem but if you tuck it in no one will notice) that you might actually be willing to part with $5 for.
Dating is like that for me. Sorting through all the irregulars looking for the least irregular irregular.
When she reminded me of the blog idea, I basically ignored the idea - I wasn't in the mood for humor and at the idea of another failed blog (I currently have about 8) I shamed myself again, and changed the subject.
Then a couple days later, I updated my OKcupid profile and went to bed happy for the first time in a week or so. It hit me that writing a couple charmingly self-deprecating paragraphs about myself for strangers to read was the most fulfilling thing I had done in a long time.
So mom was right. I should start a blog on The Irregulars. And talk about how awful dating is, and also how funny it is. How dating that guy who was awesome in every way except for how he didn't have a real job and that time we cooked dinner in his dorm room on a stove with two fallen-in burners was the best date I'd had in a month was just like sifting through four racks of size-4-in-the-thighs and size-12-in-the-waist jeans, to finally find a great-fitting size 8 that is awesome until you put it on and realize it has buttons on the back pockets--the kind that make your butt look big and you finally learned not to buy anymore --but you'd almost buy them anyway, because they fit!!, except the buttons are uneven and while you can almost settle for butt-buttons (because hey, men like big butts), you can't deal with uneven ones.
I will kill this metaphor over and over. I think it's a perfect metaphor, though, so I'm going to own it.
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