The Tale of Everything Becomes Annoying

Alternate titles* - The Tale of When Romance Helps with Rocky Moments, Except That Those Moments Make it Difficult to Generate Romance and The Tale of These Bloody Shelves. Pick your angle. Choose your own adventure.

Sometimes being in a committed relationship is like torture, only it's torture that you signed up for. Some of us even spent years longing for it and thousands upon thousands of dollars celebrating it. But you better believe most of us didn't see shit like this coming.

Am I talking finances?

Am I talking about matters in the bedroom?

Am I talking about trust issues?

No, worse. I'm talking about my boo's inability to buy a freaking stud-finder when he says he will. Stick with me. There's a lot to go over.

if it wasn't clear, the gorilla is me.

Sunday evening - After many, MANY sweaty hours of working on some of my projects, I sat down to eat some dinner with boo. I desperately needed a shower, and it was getting late, so he offered to go to Home Depot for me to get the screws and a stud-finder for hanging the bloody shelves I bought from Ikea.  I read one too many horror stories about these shelves ripping out of people's walls, even when they used real bad-ass screws, because they hadn't screwed into studs. It was important to me that we find studs.  I made this very clear to him. Very clear.

Approximately 30 minutes later he returns. He says he's found just the thing. I say, great! With these screws and the studs we should be in business! He says, I didn't get the stud-finder.

HE DIDN'T GET THE STUD-FINDER.

I'll get it tomorrow, he says. He works next to a Home Depot, so this should be easy. It should take all of ten minutes.

Monday after work- I'm running approximately 8,000 errands while he is doing things like going for a freaking jog and nerding out to photoshop tutorials on youtube. I'd like him to find studs during this time, but he can't. And why can't he?

BECAUSE HE DIDN'T GET THE STUD-FINDER.

He forgot. So, that became errand 8,001 for me.

I finally got home at 8:15, one hour before I needed to get in bed, only to find that he hadn't thought to vacuum our horribly gross carpets before his mom's visit. (She stays over every other Monday.) He also hadn't thought to read my mind to know that he should do it.

Instead of screaming, “WHY DIDN’T YOU RUN THE FREAKIN’ VACUUM”, I managed to say “oh no, the carpets are so dirty! We need to vacuum before your mom comes”

He said it was okay, I said it wasn’t, he volunteered to do it. I sat in the bedroom eating gummy bears so as not to criticize him for not vacuuming to my liking.

Tuesday  - the shelves were not even close to being up, and the idea of getting dinner made and cleaned up AND putting up shelves made me feel stabby. That's when I remembered this -

My boo says, on multiple occasions, “I can help you with dinner so you don’t have to do everything yourself”

It occurred to me that if he helped my slow-ass with dinner, we could get to the shelf business a little faster.

I say, I need to ask you for help with dinner tonight.
My boo says, sure, I can help after my run.

AFTER HIS RUN?!

I just can't even. Before I even got a chance to post this last night, we realized we don't have the right kind of mothafuckin battery for the mothafuckin stud-finder. I do recall that several months ago I came upon some of these batteries on clearance, only for my boo to proclaim "when will we ever need those?"

The time is now, it seems.


*a thousand thanks to my friend Cristina for input and title ideas!

Maintaining Friendships

I couldn't think of an interesting title for this post. Since I graduated from Chapman, I have been continuously struggling with how to maintain friendships. In fact, I really haven't maintained them at all. I used to think maybe it was due to my relationship, or being busy with work, or just no longer being in such close proximity to your friends. No more club meetings, classes, meals in the cafeteria, dorm living, or sorority events. But that really isn't it at all. At least, that not the entire problem. 

I've been invited to plenty of events. I get the emails, but for whatever reason I don't go. People even invited me to important things like graduations, and I didn't go. I'm not that busy. Most of the time I'm home alone. I don't live with my boyfriend nor do I even see him everyday. Every so often I kick myself in the ass for not reaching out to my old friends, and I pick up the phone. But eventually I run out of steam and I can't keep it up. Or, they flake on me and I get discouraged so I give up. I haven't talked to my study abroad friends in about two years. I haven't seen or talked to my sorority sisters for anywhere from one to three years. I haven't seen my MEChA friends for the same amount of time, and I haven't talked to my BSU friends aside from facebook occasional wall posts for that long either. 

I realize that I kept many of my friends at arms length. I was content to play the role of a silly, goofy person that made everyone laugh but rarely connected with people on a deep level. That's not to say my friendships were meaningless or our conversations were meaningless. I think I always kept a partial wall up. 

When I look at pictures of people who have stayed close, I feel jealous. I don't have that with anyone except my blood sister! It's no one's fault but my own. Do you know how many friends of mine have gotten married? Quite a few. Do you know how many weddings I've been invited to? One. If I got married tomorrow, my guest list would be pretty small. I don't know why this is so hard for me, but I know I have to work on it and work on myself until I figure it out. 

I have known a lot of amazing people, a lot of amazing women in particular, and I need to learn how to be a better friend to them, if they'll have me.