and tomorrow, it'll be different again.

Work's going well, life's going well, but that is not the interesting detail you want to hear about.

I accidentally met someone I like. It is slightly disconcerting. He's cute. He collects carnivorous plants. We went to an awesome cat shelter to play with cats(Or rather, he took me there. On our second date, the same weekend as the first one). He says that this is the first time he's smiled so much around someone in years. I think that either means "yes, he's interested" or that I might just be an oddly funny person. His eyes are usually a medium brown, and sometimes green-grey. He likes black licorice.

I don't know, we'll see. I'll try not to be too girly.

The boy that I very briefly dated at the end of last year is now engaged to a girl that he is madly in love with. It's cute(no really, she seems utterly quirky-adorable). I am now going to see if I can more consistently drive men to marriage(with other people) after two weeks.

a moment of peace before another end.

I was lying down on his bed reading as he got out of the shower. He said "You had your appendix removed," touching the small scar near my pelvis. "Yes, I did," I answered, after a short pause.

Later, I realized that I was amazed and puzzled at the fact that a person had looked at me so acutely as to notice a tiny, almost invisible scar on my body. As far as the self esteem of 24 year old females go, I'm probably comfortably above average. I've always liked my physical features, regardless of whether I was a scrawny, muscular boyish looking thing, or the slightly more rounded version I am today.

But I'm not used to being observed and examined. I am a girl, like all other girls. If you glance quickly, and without precision, I am limber and cute and pretty, like most young women with good metabolism rates are. Most men look at me that way, and I'm okay with that.

I'm really unsure of how I look like under scrutiny. At the same time, I feel oddly honored to have been looked at carefully enough to notice my scars and scratches and any other odd physical flaws I have. When later, he looked up at me and said, "God, you're beautiful." - I believed him without hesitation and without attributing it to the usual words that are necessarily spoken in such situations.

For the first time, I unabashedly believed a compliment.

That's it for this one, though. We aren't dating and I'm not sure if we'll be friends. I don't think I'll write about him again.

moments : december 29th-january 1st.

one.

I woke up at 8:30am, out of habit, and noticed that he still had his arms(and a leg) around me. It occurred to me that I never actually wake up in a tangle of arms and legs. I squirm, and get warm, and usually by morning, my bed partner and I are on opposite sides of the bed. I'd never stayed the night here before, but it's always the same everywhere. But here he was - this funny boy I haven't known for very long - his hair falling over his face, his face burrowed in my hair, one arm in the crook of my neck, the other falling over and around me. I didn't think that real people could actually wake up this way.

I gently disentangled myself, and went to get a glass of water.

We already knew we weren't going to date. We got along well, but neither of us deserved to be a rebound, which we had already concluded that a relationship between us would be. Still, when I climbed back into bed, he wrapped his arms around me again.

two.

"Good morning, Josephine." Josephine is a cat. I had fallen asleep on a friend's couch. Josephine is casually sitting on my face.

"Purr. Purrr," said Josephine.

"Yes, I know. I'm going to grow old and be a crazy cat lady, and the best I can hope for will be a cat on my face in the morning."

"Puuurrrrrrr." she said, digging her paws into my chin.

"Oh god. I'm going to grow old alone."

"Purr."

three.

She started nibbling on my ear towards the end of 'Til There Was You, one of those movies where there is entirely no romantic tension between the main characters throughout the entire film. I kissed her back at the beginning of Strictly Ballroom, the aesthetically painful Baz Lurhman movie. She is very soft.

We counted down to the New Year in an apartment full of old and new friends. My first kiss of 2008. Later, halfway through Love Actually, I fell asleep on her lap.

four.

We are working on "what-to-do-next plans". The general consensus is to head to Sean's house and hang out there. I am acutely aware of the fact that Sean's roommate is my ex-boyfriend, and I nod and politely exclude myself. "I'll see you guys, later," I say, forcing a smile on my face. I used to spend a lot of time at that house. I still have a number of things there. He is still not talking to me.

I hug everyone and walk to my car. On the way home, my iPod shuffles to the Magnetic Fields' "I Think I Need a New Heart" :

cause I always say I love you
when I mean turn out the light
and I say let's run away
when I just mean stay the night
but the words you want to hear
you will never hear from me
I'll never say "happy anniversary"
never stay to say "happy anniversary"

A reminder of all the things that I couldn't be.

I cry on the way home. It felt really good to finally cry about that.

I'm not sure if 2008 will be better than 2007, because 2007 was an indomitably interesting year. But I will be better. I'm going to rock 2008. Just watch.

you'll just do it all again.

I'm at home, with nothing much to do but read and write.

And far be it for me to depart from my agreement to not be emo for the rest of the year, or to deviate too far from my blog's title - but I have to little to talk about regarding whiskey. So, really, what else?

So, since it's nearly the end of the year, here is an overview of the men of 2007. I didn't sleep with all of them; I'm not that much of a slut.

---

1. The Friend In Quotation Marks.
He technically belongs in the category of 2006 men, but for a very brief overlap into 2007. Also, I didn't do this in 2006.

The Friend in Quotation Marks actually started out as as A Friend Without Quotation Marks, which makes it the first such transition in my life. Generally speaking, I don't bed my friends, but he was cute and charming at a time when I was weak willed and lonely and rebound-ey. I am fortunate to have known him, not only for the good sex and enjoyable company, but because he is truly a smart, wonderful, and talented person who is surprisingly - still my friend.

Our relationship-of-sorts drifted away without any discussion into sporadic emails and text messages after we both got busier and caught up in our separate lives, but I am constantly grateful for the company we still share during our occasional talks over a beer or four.

2. The Boy I Liked.
I dated the Boy I Liked for about 8 months(and "sorta dated" for a bit longer). I remember asking him if he wanted to actually date me on March 14th. I only remember this because it was Pi day. Get it? 3/14? Anyway, he was one of those men that would have appreciated that, even if I'm certain he didn't remember.

I almost wish we hadn't dated, because I think we could have been wonderful friends. We played off each other incredibly well, and we definitely had some amazing adventures together.

He was probably the perfect balance of social and nerdy; I loved his friends and I wish I had met him at a later point in my life. Perhaps a version of me that was a bit older, a bit more prepared to settle down, and a bit less flighty and fickle.

Also, large cock. Seriously. Ow. Maybe too much so. Really, I'm not a very big girl.

At the end, though, the truth was that as much as I liked him and thought the world of him, I still didn't love him. There was just some sort of emotion missing from this relationship, and I truly felt that continuing it would have been selfish and unfair.

I do miss his company, though.

3. The One with the Perfect Penis.
I wish that I could be more truthful and give this one a far more appropriate name(not that the current moniker is inappropriate at all), but what I can find to actually say is minimal and completely trivial compared to what I still can't seem to find the right words for.

So, instead, I'll be crass and say that the sex, and general physical compatibility, was ridiculously incredible and I am afraid that if enough time passes, I will think that I would have just imagined it.

This boy was probably my greatest departure from "type." Objectively speaking, and based only on my past attractions to boys with rough hands and charming awkwardness, I would have ignored him. I'm still uncertain why I'd started flirting with him in the first place(or flirted back, I can't remember), but sometimes I am just compelled to do things I can't explain.

Perhaps that's why I still think about this one. I can't figure out why I liked him when I met him, except that I did. I found lots of reasons to quantify why I would have liked him later, as he is in fact, intelligent and funny and just awesome, but I am still perturbed wondering how I was drawn to him in the first place.

Some days, I am tempted to reassure myself by making myself think that the initial compulsion was formed on a visceral attraction to some basic physical feature, like his pretty amazing eyes - but I know that can't be true because I don't remember whether they were blue or green or both.

4. The One That Should Have Stayed The Fuck Away.
If I can think of one person that could have broken my trust in men, or people, it was him. I don't hate him, because I'm still convinced that it was all a mistake on his part. I actually often pity him.

But he also doesn't deserve another sentence worth talking about.

5. The We-Don't-Remember-It-So-Let's-Not-Mention-It-Again Boy.
Yeeeah. So, about that? Yeah, let's just not talk about that ever again. Yes, we definitely did not have sex - that much I very certainly remember. But I do have a couple bruises I can't explain, jerk.

Okay, memory being erased . Right. Now.

6. The Boy That Reminded me of an Awkward Puppy.
Perhaps it was because there was a large yellow Labrador sitting outside the bar where we were supposed to meet that made me think that he reminded me of a puppy, or perhaps it was the fact that his hair fell over his eyes as he stood up to hug me, or perhaps it was his awkward, and yet completely comfortable charm, but I felt utterly compelled to scratch his head.

The moment I met him, I wanted to protect him. Not in a creepy maternal way, but in the sense that he was a person that I never wanted to see hurt. Ever. It was a strange feeling, because I'd only felt that way about someone else once, and that feeling was far too fresh in my mind to be reminded of it again.

"You are a heartbreaker" - it has been an accusation levied by many of my friends, both in jest and with a degree of solemnity. They have been polite enough to attribute it to a sort of bumbling social gracelessness on my part, rather than any sort of malicious intent. I wouldn't be that sort of person, really. I am fairly ordinary: pretty enough, and smart enough and interesting enough, but at the end of the day, I'm just another girl, and not the stereotypical sort that breaks hearts. But - still. It happens.

And because the date with The Puppy, in fact, went very, very well and we got along like old friends, and were definitely compatible, and yet different enough, on an intellectual, creative and physical level - and he has already admitted to being somewhat smitten(although I take that with a grain of salt) - I know that the only way to protect him is to simply walk away.

---

2007 has been an incredible year for me. It has been a year of changes, like moving to LA, and taking my first desk job, and just the simple fact that I have met so many new and interesting people in one year that I want to keep in my life.

I'm ending this year a little lonelier than the last one, but I don't regret the adventures that got me here. I'll probably spend New Year's with my old roommates in their small, cramped, but comforting apartment watching romantic chick flicks. If these plans work out, for the first time in years, I will kiss no one at midnight.

For the first time in years, I am totally okay with that.

This is how it works
You're young until you're not
You love until you don't
You try until you can't
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath

No, this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else's heart
Pumping someone else's blood
And walking arm in arm
You hope it don't get harmed
But even if it does
You'll just do it all again

(regina spektor, from "on the radio")

omg. no more emo.

I swear, I just read this whole damn blog and I promise that there will be no emo posts for the rest of 2007.

I'll be the one to hold the gun.

I met someone a couple days ago, and had a pretty good time. He was just enough awkward to not turn me off completely with the typical smoothness I've come to notice in LA men and have developed a distinct distaste for. This sort of thing, as usual, tends to lead to "Hey, I'm a terrible person" conversations with my volunteer therapist and friend Matthew, the general gist of his criticism being summed up as: "Okay, so you went out with someone who is intelligent, well educated, ambitious, cute, funny and just enough nerdy and esoteric, and - you really don't think you're going to go on a second date?"

Nooo. I don't know. Yes. No. Maybe I will, I don't know.

I can feel my fight or flee mechanism kicking in, and in cases such as these, it tends to default to "flee". See, my wonderful practical logic is that if I never actually like anyone, I won't get hurt. So, the walls go up, and I don't have to worry about getting emotionally attached. Clearly, this is an absolutely faulty strategy, and I know it, but fixing it isn't really on my priority list for now.

I don't think that trust is something I really have these days when it comes to attempting any sort of emotional connection with other people. I don't trust other people, and I don't trust myself, and certainly not any part of me that would generally be credited with creating delusions of compatibility.

I think what I'm actually trying to say is that on an objective level, I am inherently compatible with an awful lot of people, and that "finding someone I have a lot in common with" has never been difficult for me. But I wish that I were more prone to emotional subjectivity, and even maybe a bit of ridiculous, impractical, illogical girly-ness. I do get that way sometimes - but I always think about it later and logic wins out when the prediction is eventual heartbreak.

There's this song by the Dresden Dolls that I've been listening to on repeat, that has a general theme irrelevant to this post. But there's this one line that goes "you'd rather be a bitch than be an ordinary broken heart." And it still gets me every single fucking time.

Well anyway - I still create New Year's resolutions, because I still believe that I'll try.

For 2008, I think I'll try my best not to run away.

i took out the trash today, and i'm on fire

When other girls in grade school were dreaming of weddings and husbands and houses, I envisioned a life in a charming flat(grade school was had with british nuns- we called them flats, not apartments), with some interesting job, and either a small, friendly cat or a big, stupid dog to come home to. I imagined walks to the grocery store, and constant use of mass transit, and a neighbourhood coffee shop and excursions to used bookstores and esoteric restaurants.

Yes, even at 8, I was planning the life of a pseudo intellectual, slightly introverted single woman.

Today, I walked to the grocery store and then wandered around looking for dinner, ending up at a place I affectionately call the "dive sushi place". It is actually far better than its moniker. I sat and watched a subtitled reality TV show while making my way through a pile of bulgogi, and some yellowtail sushi. At some point, I realized that the rest of the place was filled with couples or groups of people, and that the two men next to me had left and I was sitting at the bar alone. If it were an earlier point in my life, I would have felt oddly self conscious, but I just grinned and sent a couple friends a "Dude, I am such a bachelor!" text message.

As I headed out of the restaurant, it had started raining, and I walked four blocks in the rain before ducking into a Starbucks for some hot caramel apple cider, and walked another four blocks home. I admit, when I was eight, the weather never necessitated an umbrella. There is still something oddly romantic about the idea of walking into your apartment with jeans wet up to the knees from puddle jumping, and raindrops dripping off the tip of your nose, even if the reality is that it really just feels wet and drippy.

Still, despite the fact that I still do not take mass transit(but would, if it were more convenient), need to account for slightly inclement weather, and don't have any pets, my life is actually shaping up much like I had thought it would 16 years ago. Discounting the fact that I didn't have a sex drive when I was eight, and didn't account for the issues associated with that minor detail, I think that all is well.