The Other Woman

As I said in a previous post, I'm not the kind of woman who would ever want/try to steal a guy from his significant other. That doesn't mean I don't find myself in a subcategory of "The Other Woman"-dom.

Being a female who is also friends with single, 20-something males, means that I have to walk a treacherous line between friend and competition for the girls that the guys are dating... something I never considered I'd be. While this has lead to lots of laughing and jokes it's not all unicorns and rainbows. The one real situation where I've been banned from being friends with a guy because of his girlfriend (I believe his name was Pedro), has made me reevaluate my relationship with my other guy friends.

The worst part of my section of "The Other Woman"-dom is being "dumped" when a guy friend gets a girlfriend. I think this is the one thing I hate about having guys friends. (Of course there are things that drive me nuts, but I don't truely hate anything other than this.)

It is almost like being actually dumped. You stop seeing and talking to them regularly, you randomly wonder what he's doing, you feel left out when you find out he was out with some of your other friends and nobody invited you, you lose somebody to cook for (maybe that last one is just me, besides, I still have Puffy), and most of all, you miss them.

All guys you talk to say that they're not going to dump their friends when they get a girlfriend, and while their intentions might be pure, they're execution is usually a little weak. It's understandable. They have somebody new and important in their lives that they want to spend time with and get to know... it just sucks.

Not that Kind of Girl, pt. II

Here's a not-so-pleasant update from the previous post:

I'm not 100% sure what the catalyst was, but I've been forbidden from seeing Pedro anymore by his girlfriend. Not only seeing, but facebooking, texting, calling, or really talking. (Remember him saying that he would never let that happen? Yeah, me too.)

While, from my point of view, that's the worst of it since it directly affected me (you should be the most important thing in your own life, right?), but it does get worse. Pedro's girlfriend had him give up rugby to prove how important she was to him, and he can't do a lot of the things that makes him, him, without her there to supervise so he doesn't get into any trouble.

Pedro is 27 freaking years old... When did girlfriend start equalling babysitter, mom, and warden all rolled into one?

Anyway, I guess the point of this is to send out a plea to the girls who might stumble across this:

Please don't turn into a crazy girlfriend like my friend Pedro has. Not only does it make you look like a manipulative cunt dragon to everybody who knows your boyfriend, it is far from healthy. If you are that kind of girlfriend, please take a step back and reevaluate your life... maybe even see a councilor because you'll only end up hurting the person you care about the most and yourself.

(Edited from previous post 7/4/2012)

Not That Kind of Girl

As one of my coworkers succinctly put it, I think like a girl up to a certain point, but I think like a guy most of the time.

Which is why I was so baffled when one of my best friend’s (let’s call him Pedro) girl friend accused me of wanting to steal him away from her. I’ll tell you just like I told Pedro, I love him as a friend, but I haven’t had those kind of feelings for him for over six months (long before he and his girlfriend started)… ever since I finally woke up and realized how horrible we would be together. :)

I could tell how awkward he was when he told me what she was accusing me of (I laughed… hard. Probably not the most mature reaction but it took me by surprise) and that she told him to inform me that he would never leave her for me (More laughing. I’m not the kind of person who would encourage a guy to leave his significant other for me). But as Pedro’s friend, I was willing to do what I could to help sooth her ruffled feathers and help him get his shit back on track. I promised to keep my distance and told him to tell her that she could call me if she wanted to take anything up with me personally.

Thankfully, she didn’t forbid us from hanging out together anymore. We all would have had a problem with that. Pedro even said that it wouldn’t have flown if she had… not 100% sure what he meant by that but I like to think that he would have stolen his balls back from her purse and put his foot down.

While it’s a rather delicate situation and uncharted territory for me, it has become a bit of a joke amongst my friends. Hell, Puffy has even started calling me “Homewrecker” depending on the situation and who we’re with. He’s even asked me if I was allowed to have lunch with him and Pedro… and he went out of his joking way to make sure Pedro and I didn’t sit next to each other.

This whole thing has finally forced me to the realization that if I am going to continue to have male friends, I am going to have to figure out some way to make nice with their girlfriends so this occurrence doesn’t keep happening….

Now, how the hell do I do that?

The first rule of Fight Club is: Never talk about Fight Club

I recently got into a pretty bad car accident. My little Dodge Stratus could not compete with the other driver's Ford Expedition and it was sent to an early grave. I'm still alive and doing better than my car... but not by much.

I'm sore, stitches in my elbow, bruises on my right leg and hand, and a huge fucking goose-egg that takes up half of my face, highlighted by the epic shiner around my left eye.

Girls and guys normally react to injuries very differently and my injuries definitely gave me first hand knowledge of this.

My accident happened Thursday afternoon. After an evening spent with some of my closest friends at the Lair trying to wrap my head around what happened and dealing with my injuries I ventured out Friday morning to get the stuff out of my car and fax the police report to the insurance agent. To do this, I ran out to work so I could use the fax machine.

As soon as I walked into the building, I was swamped by some of my female coworkers who lamented over my injuries and shuddered at sight of my swollen eye. After I told my story a few times and took all the sympathy I could handle at that moment, I headed back to the gun department to send my fax and chat with my friend Matt and a couple of my other coworkers.

I loved my male coworkers reactions to my injuries. They were excited about my black eye and actually complimented me on it. Their eyes brightened at the retelling of my tale and they gave me outlandish stories to tell when somebody asked about my eye.

An interesting difference between the sex's reactions to injuries: Women are nurturing and worried, men are proud and excited to see them/show them off.

Totally True

My friend Mark took one taste of one of the goodies I made this week and spouted that he couldn't decide weither to classify me as a Goddess or something above a Goddess. That warmed the cockles of my heart a bit.

The Awesomeness that is Carbomb Cupcakes

Sorry, another post tooting my own horn about how awesome a cook/baker I am. I'm done now.

The way to a man's heart....

... is through his stomach.

I've been cooking for guys for a few years now so I know this first hand. Beside, I don't think I'm the only person who can attest to this either. I'm a pretty damn good cook if I do say so myself and there are a few things that I make that, when mentioned, make my friends' eyes light up.... which is why I make them so often. There is nothing more pleasing to a cook than seeing people truly enjoy the fruits of their labor... and my friends never fail to enjoy what I cook..

My favorite is introducing my friends to old family recipes that I've loved for years and having them love them as much or more than I do, like galumpkis (cabbage rolls) and kifli (crescent cookies). Puffy and Joey are usually the ones who get to be my guinea pigs when I attempt new recipes and as far as I know, I haven't disappointed them yet.

One of my favorite new recipes is carbomb cupcakes/cake (which Puffy recently requested and I have spent a good part of the day working on): Guinness chocolate cake, Jameson ganache, and Bailey's Irish Cream frosting. I've made them quite a few times since I put them together and they never fail to be a huge hit.

picture and recipe from http://www.mybakingaddiction.com/guinness-cupcakes/

They even made my friend Evan think of me when he found a recipe for Blue Moon cupcakes. Which he sent me with the a note saying that I needed to make them next time he was in town. They weren't as good as the carbomb cupcakes but they weren't bad.

Oh, another thing. If alcohol and/or bacon can be added to a recipe, do it! Don't think twice! Not only will they make it better, guys will love you for it.

...Oh, gravy and cheese, too.

My Sheldon

I have a friend who is our version of Sheldon. He's not as socially retarded as Sheldon, but the resemblance is scary. He's super smart and tends to insert very random bits of information into conversations that nobody understands but actually is pertinent to the conversation.

Nathan and Me

He has a very dry wit and most people can't tell when he's joking or serious and I have to be on my toes around him to keep from being utterly confused by what he says.

The reason for this post is to share with the word what kind of text messages Nathan comes up with after an evening of drinking. I might have to ask him for the translation... you'll see what I mean.

"crepuscular uniformatarianstic revanchistic polyandrous fricative tetrapodsm"

"slutious maximus in the common tongue most slutious with an entymogical root in Italic Indo European, bitches!"

"In the course of ones life one lives to make light of ones own existence and existential frailty or in the words of the wise...one must live for liveliness sake and create our own fate. so in a word... nefarious apathy, bitches!"

The last one I can actually understand and love but the other two are a little iffy on their meanings to this kid.