Charming, but single

My younger brother just moved into a new apartment, and I have accompanied him to the grocery store twice in the past few weeks to help him shop. As I watch him wander the aisles of the store aimlessly, his eyes glossed over and his hands free of any kind of shopping list, I’m reminded of every other shopping experience I’ve had with males. Every guy I’ve shopped with has had that same overwhelmed look on his face as he shuffled through the store, clearly taken aback by the sheer selection of food and cleaning supplies and toiletries.

When I enter the grocery store, I’m a woman on a mission. I’ve got a pen in one hand and a list in the other and I attack the store. My list is organized by what foods are grouped together so I don’t forget anything. I know exactly which brands I like and where certain oddities (hearts of palm, anyone?) are. I rarely have to double back and I rarely forget items on my list. The rest of my life may be in a constant state of flux and confusion, but I have grocery shopping down. Maybe it’s because I hate it so much. Maybe it’s because of years of going shopping with my mom while my younger brother stayed home. I never notice my grocery shopping prowess until I’m paired with an unskilled partner.

One night, I spent more than two hours at the grocery store with B. He had just moved (a month before) and he had never gone shopping, so he was eating take out pretty much every night. We were hanging out and bored and he was hungry, so he asked me to accompany him to the grocery store at 11:30 p.m., because that’s the sensible time to buy groceries, I imagine.

The lack of a list amazed me. I tried to make one before we left, but he just stared at me blankly. “S,” he said, “I don’t have any food in my pantry. I don’t need a list because I just need everything.”

He was clueless and lost. I wondered how someone gets to be 26 years old and not know how to really shop, but I suppose years of buying just beer and barbecue fixins does that to you. He turned into a confused child who stopped and looked at everything cool on every aisle. I turned into the sensible mother who gently guides her children away from the sweets and onto the veggies.

It was an eye opening experience and a cheesy metaphor for how the two of us tackled unpleasant things — I planned and plotted and pushed my way through while he went in with only the vague idea that he needed to eat. I don’t know if this is a gender thing or just a personality conflict, but I should have known we didn’t have the same, um, nutritional needs.

T is the same way. One night he decided he was hungry post coitus. He had nothing but condiments, Guinness and grape juice, so he left me in bed to run to the market for some food.

Bad, terrible, horrible sign.

So, I started writing this post before I went out last night … but I got distracted and then I needed to get ready and I have this new haircut that needs velcro rollers and flat-ironing … anyway, I never got back to the post.

I was going to write about an aspect of “Single girl’s law,” which is like Murphy’s law for, um, single girls. (I never claimed that the name was creative.) Consider this a running feature, feel free to contribute.

Single Girl’s Law #1 — You will never get lucky on nights when you shave your legs.

Seriously, I’ve road-tested this one. It is law about 98 percent of the time. Now, when you have stubble for a few days or haven’t done bikini line maintenance, every guy you ever thought was cute will try to take you home. Guys who snubbed you for weeks and months will come out of the woodwork, buy you drinks and try to come home with you. This, of course, happens because shaving your legs is an admission to yourself that you think you MIGHT get lucky, and we all know that a watched pot never boils.

And yes, I shaved my legs last night. Bastards, all of them.

One of my recently-married friends referenced the episode of Sex and the City about “Secret Single Behavior” in conversation recently. SSB refers to those habits one picks up or things one does when single or living alone that you wouldn’t do with someone else around. It’s not that the SSB is somehow shameful or wrong, it’s just mildly embarrassing.

My friend missed listening to dorky soft rock love songs at night. She’d never do this in front of her husband because to him it would seem silly, but she loved to listen and sing along in the evenings after work. (Whenever he goes out of town for work, she indulges herself.)

This conversation got me thinking about my own Secret Single Behavior, so I compiled a list:

• Blaring silly songs whilst doing laundry and dishes. My favorites are “Sex Bomb” by Tom Jones, “Move Your Feet” by Junior Senior, “In These Shoes” by Kristy MacColl and (more recently) “Get Right” by J-Lo. (It’s that whole “spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down” thing.)
  
• Doing old ballet stretches and new yoga poses in the kitchen, because it has the biggest open space in the house.
• Watching C-Span like it’s a football game. White House press briefings are my favorite, even though I miss my main man Ari. (I also like to watch “Crossfire” on mute and make up my own dialogue.)
  
• Wearing new shoes with my PJs or lounging clothes so I can break them in.
• Practicing my French by describing aloud what I’m cooking or doing . (”Je fais mon petit dejeuner!”) (I used to translate newspaper or magazine articles into French as I read them, but I am so out of practice that it would take days to read one article. I miss my French classes.)
  

I could go on for days, but a girl must have some secret rituals that are entirely hers, no?

My day didn’t get any more interesting after I finally shook off the semi-hangover from Wednesday night. (Around 2 p.m., natch.) (I don’t think I use the word “natch” enough. Frankly, I’m not sure anyone (save gossip columnists) uses the word “natch” enough.)

I spent most of the afternoon doing laundry and organizing my clothes. I’ve realized that if I’m going to be able to arise and drag my sorry self to work for somewhere between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. every morning, I’m going to have to embrace a life with some semblance of organization. Damnit.

So, my old system of organizing my clothes simply would not do. This draconian method was one I mastered whilst in college. It consists of two overlapping piles, labeled “clean” and “not clean.” The main problem with this system is that it relies heavily on the “smell test,” whereby clothes are sniffed to determine their relative level of dirtiness. Unfortunately, early in the morning my sense of smell must be pretty lax, because I often end up in shirts that smell like smoke and vodka, which may fly in the retail biz, but ain’t going to make my new employer jump for joy. (I don’t care how much of that Gap body spray I douse on my clothes, the smoke-vodka smell combo is killer.) Also, I often ended up washing clothes that were clean when I washed the dirty ones, because I couldn’t tell the difference.

So, I’ve opted for a new system, whereby clothes are divided into the groups “work appropriate,” “only to be worn when going out” and “other.” (”Other” is for workout clothes, PJs, gloves and anything else that I shouldn’t wear to work and wouldn’t wear to a social occasion.) There is, of course, another pile. Some people call this the “Goodwill” pile, but I refer to it as “What the hell was I thinking when I bought this” and/or “Even if I worked out three times daily for the next three months this would not look good on me” pile. That pile is getting pretty sizable.

Also, there are these things in my closet … they’re wire or plastic and funny shaped and they hang off of a wooden pole … I think they’re called hangers. Well, I haven’t used them in years … seriously, I think the last thing I actually put on a hanger was my prom dress. I utilized these strange devices on the work clothes. It made me feel very adult.

The day was not without fun. I had a pile of clothes that wouldn’t work well with a washer or dryer — bras, the aforementioned sweater poncho, a few sweaters and a cute wrap dress that I forgot I owned. So, I spent the better part of the afternoon handwashing these items, which was a lot more work than it sounds.

The low point of all of this was when I decided to wash clothes in the kitchen sink (which is bigger and deeper, kind of how I like my men) and then transport the wet clothes to the bathroom for drying. Not the smoothest of moves. I ended up with a river running from the bathroom to the sink. And, to top it off, the entire front of the clothes I was wearing were DRENCHED. It was ridiculous. I looked like an unwilling participant in one of those wet T-shirt contests you see on a “Girls Gone Wild” video, only I was in no way, shape or form sexy at all. AT ALL.

So, after the laundry was done, I settled on making a list of clothes to buy with my first paycheck. (I cannot be expected to wear the same old clothes to my cool new job. Plus, it’s not like I’m going to spend all of my paycheck on clothes. Just, like, a lot of it.) I actually have a lot of work pieces, given my previous internships. I really want a chocolate brown suit, but I’m worried that it’s too close to spring to find a cute one. I am so getting a big black satchel purse though.

Finished the night by getting Chinese with my family and watching The Apprentice.

For some reason life felt purposeful and I less frantic and alone than the night before’s martinis led me to believe I am.