Charming, but single

This evening I had a snack-supper with two girlfriends to watch the Apprentice finale. I’ve never been one to have a party or anything for a TV show, but it seemed like a good excuse to eat unhealthy snack foods and gossip. (As if you needed a reason for that.) Also, Kendra won, which was cool. Mad props to hard-working young professional women who get so many mixed messages thrown at them — “Get married and have babies!” “Have a career!” “You can’t have a career with babies!” “Yes you can!” Also, if I would have had to hear about how Tana is just a “housewife from Iowa” one more time …

Enough with the Apprentice.

As we were leaving, my friend and I were exchanging plans and whatnot for the weekend. We were both blowing off a party we’d be invited to. This turned us to the topic of invites and parties.

Now, we all have friends who go to every party, every happy hour, every dinner, every barbecue or any other kind of celebration that they’re invited to. They’re determined to make an appearance at every social function they know of. They’re constantly seeking invites to events and worrying far too much about the details.

You know the type. They call you the second they find out about a party and hassle you about if you’re going and then send you a million reminders about the party and stress about every detail of it and then if you don’t go, they call you and say, “Why aren’t you at [Name's] party? We got invited to it a month ago!”

These people drive me crazy.

My friend has a theory that I sort of agree with. “They can’t miss you if you’re never gone,” she says.

Now, I’m not trying to make people miss me or anything like that. But in many situations, I take a “leave them wanting more” approach. There’s a big difference between being well-liked and the life of the party and being a groupie barfly. If you’re going to go to every event ever held by someone you know, you just as soon paste yourself to the wall, because you’re basically wallpaper. Truth be told, you never want to be the girl or guy who’s always hanging out around closing time at the same place every night. Barfly is a derogatory term, not a badge of honor.

I’m not advocating skipping social occasions to be fashionable. But to err on the other side, to be the first person to every party and the last person to leave and the first person to RSVP on Evite every time just makes you look overeager and not busy enough. (Not to mention, who doesn’t want a night off sometimes? I know people who go out every night to every bar where they know someone. I’m too old for that.)

I’ve missed a few things with my normal partying crew. Most of it had to do with sickness, although I skipped a few events just because I didn’t want to go. I’ve been reverting to the “I’m an adult and I don’t have to go if I don’t want to” excuse with people a lot. It’s my new favorite excuse.

To recap: Parties, good. Busy social life, good. Being a groupie, bad bad bad.

Hola, people.

I’m soliciting opinions from my blogger buddies about some tools I’ve been playing around with. I’d e-mail you all … but, you know, I have a LOT of things go on right now. I mean, with The Apprentice finale coming up and a very demanding schedule of resting to help heal the lungs and dreaming about what I’m going to spend my coming-any-day-now tax refund on, I’ve just been swamped. Swamped, I tell you.

So, we likey Sitemeter (the free version) for stats? Yay or nay? I just added it to the site to give it a whirl. Any other free counters? (I’ve been using Branica, which is okay, but I’d like to have something that tracked more than just my last 10 search terms and referrers. For free. I’m cheap like that.)

From a commenting standpoint, I was considering switching to Haloscan, but I’m a touch concerned I’d lose my current comments. That would just break my heart. I’m around 300. (Y’all rock. We’ll have a party or something when we get to around 500.) Anyone know if there’s a way to not lose your comments and transfer to Haloscan? Is it even worth changing? I’m not sure that the Blogger commenting system discourages commenting … I don’t know. Thoughts?

Also, I was reading a little bit about the Google AdSense program. I’m not getting a TON of hits. (Between 50 and 100 a day, I would estimate.) I didn’t start this to make money … I started it to have a canvas, so to speak. I know that at this point in time, I am not ready to place ads on the site. I’ve been thinking about the direction I want to take the blog. This is part of a lot of thinking about the general direction of my life and dating and all that boring jazz.

It’s odd for me to think about putting ads on my journal. Of course, I still haven’t quite wrapped my head around the fact that I actually publish this — anonymous or not — for anyone else to see. I’m waiting for the day when I wake up and think, “Holy crap, why the hell did I think it would be a good idea to blog about my lacking love life? I just need to go back to therapy and delete the damn thing!”

On one hand, I think, if people want to read this and click on ads and I get money off of it, that’s kind of a sweet deal. Is that any different from publishing your work in a magazine? (This is a much much much smaller scale, obviously.) But there’s probably a can of worms waiting to be opened when you switch from “fun side project of fed-up singleton” to “ad-supported, money-making site.” For one, there’s the need to fill the site up all of the time, regardless of what’s going on in my personal life. (I like having the option that if nothing is going on in life, nothing is going on on the blog, you know?) Also, by taking ads, do you run the risk of having to water down your content? I’m sure Google AdSense has some sort of language filter in place and if you get into BlogAds and stuff, you end up having to think about how your advertisers are going to feel about your content, which is common in the publishing world, but more of an afterthought in the writing-in-your-journal world.

I’m not passing judgment on blogs that take ads. I haven’t seen a TON of single-type blogs that do, but I’m sure they’re out there. It’s an interesting proposition, but ultimately something that I don’t think fits for me right now.

All of this ad talk is probably a touch presumptive, as I doubt I’d make much (if any) money from ads. This was just rumbling around in my head and I wanted to get it out and get some perspectives.

So, darlings who have bothered to read this far, opine on ad-supported blogs versus blogs with an ad or two versus just-for-the-hell-of-it blogs. I’m just curious.

Also, I’ve been getting crazy Google referrers lately. A lot of searches related to the words “panties” and “peeing.” Crazy crazy, I tell ya …

On Friday, there was a touch of car trouble in my life. A dead battery. Sigh.

My father and uncle, my go-to lifesavers in such situations, were both out of town. My brother and B were both working, my mom clueless and a string of other people unavailable. A kind stranger in the parking lot finally jumped us off, which was very nice of him.

On Saturday, I left my car at the shop to have some (not battery-related) things done to it — oil, fluids, filters and something else changed. I greatly underestimated the popularity of the shop on Saturday. It was annoying and I didn’t really want to sit around and read magazines, so my mom suggested that she pick me up and we eat lunch and then I tag along on her errands for the day. I heard “Free lunch. Shopping!” and we were off.

After a few hours of this, we were driving to the grocery store when B called. He apologized for not returning my call from the night before, saying that he hadn’t gotten off of work until 1:30 a.m. and figured by that time that we had either “fixed it or given up.”

I joked that I had almost called him to come put a battery in the car this morning and he fell silent.

“You don’t know how to put a battery in your car?”

He was serious.

The amount of information I know about my car could probably fit in the world’s smallest thimble. I do (sort of) know how to jump off a car and where to put water for the bug washer thing and how to pump gas and check the amount of air in my tires and add more — but that’s about it. I don’t know how to change a tire and I certainly don’t know how to put a battery in a car. Although I do know that you can pour Coke on it if there’s corrosion on it. Doesn’t that count for something?

(Sidenote: I am not without handy skills. I can paint and hammer and use some tools and do minor around-the-house repairs. I can put things together. And I can sew, when I want to. I don’t see anything wrong with not being able to fix my car.)

I’m not going to lie, B was amazed. In fact, he was damn near incredulous.

B: S, seriously, how do you not know how to put a battery in your car?

Me: I’ve never had to. Plus, that’s a bit more major than pumping gas or adding air to the tires, no?

B: Okay. I’m going to explain this to you.

Me: What?

B: There’s a red wire and a black wire.

Me: [interrupting] I’ve SEEN a battery before.

B: Ok, so, you want to unscrew the wires and …

Me: [interrupting again] B, can I be honest with you?

B: Uh, sure.

Me: I am never going to change the battery in my car. Most places will put it in for free when you buy it.

B: But, S, you need to know about your car.

Me: B, there’s only so much knowledge that I can have at any given time. And this is something I do not need to know how to do. I promise you, I’m never going to have this sort of interaction with a battery. Ever.

B: Um, okay. I see.

Look, I don’t feel like a bad person or a wimpy woman because I don’t know how to put a new battery in my car. There comes a time when you have to say that some things are not things that you can do, and changing a battery in a car is one of the things I cannot do. (I also can’t waterski, but you don’t hear anyone trying to teach me how to do THAT over the phone.)

B is from a much smaller town and more rural area than I am. He was raised on a farm, I was raised in suburbia. Now, I hardly live in a booming metropolis, but compared to where he is originally from, I just as soon live in New York City or London or Paris or something. When you live somewhere where you can actually count the number of stoplights … well, there’s not really anything else I can say about that. There’s a divide. He’s always seen me as a “city girl” to his “country guy”-ness. This battery thing was only the most recent thing to support his theory about my handiness (or lack thereof).

I think he’s focusing on the wrong things. There are A LOT of things that I can do.

Also, I am not the only person in the world who didn’t know what a salt lick was.

Right?

After work I had scheduled an appointment to check out an apartment, as my hunt for new digs is still going on. (I’m being terribly particular because I don’t HAVE to move. I would just rather move somewhere closer to work. Traffic and long commutes suck.)

So I didn’t take the Interstate home. Instead, I drove through town to get an idea of how the commute to this new place would be. (Fabulously short commute, far-from-fabulous apartment.) My car was in direct sun all day, so it was hot and stuffy and the AC just wasn’t doing it for me and my still-weak little lungs. I was burning up, with sweat rolling down my face because I was still in my jacket. (I had to look nice to meet my potential landlord.)

Suffice it to say that I was a sight. And probably not a good one.

I turn onto a mildly busy sidestreet and I notice a car slow down to my left and pull even with me. It was pretty obvious, but I didn’t think much of it.

I stop at a very long red light. I was checking my voicemail when the same car pulls even with me again and the driver and passenger roll their windows down.

I hear a man’s voice calling for me. I look down and fiddle with my phone, trying to ignore the man, who is unfazed by me ignoring him and only yells louder — “Hey, baby! Hey! Baby! Looky here! Hey girl! Heeeeey!”

I put my phone back to my ear. I pretend to make a call. I curse the long red light.

So these dumbasses start honking the horn at me.

Annoyed, I turn and shoot them a Look of Death from behind my sunglasses. They start bouncing up and down and hollering and catcalling like crazy.

Now, what did these prospective Mensa members think I was going to do, leave my car parked on the street, jump in theirs and make sweet, sweet love to them in a parking lot? Shout out my phone number? Follow them home? Flash my breasts?

More likely than not, it was just a random act of obnoxiousness caused by a need to feel like big men. Machismo gone mad, although I’m not quite sure how getting my attention displayed their virility.

Things like this drive me crazy. When I’m out and about, I don’t want to be yelled at or honked at by anyone, let alone strange men that I don’t know. I don’t know many women who do.

Guys who catcall, yell, whistle, squeal and generally make a scene when women walk by are always overcompensating and never fooling anyone. These are the same men who feel the need to display their “straightness” when around gay men. (Men don’t have the market cornered on this — I know plenty of women who try to act sexy or play up their femininity to make themselves feel better.)

It goes without saying that anyone who feels that they have to prove something isn’t really proving anything. When people look at you and think, “Doth thou protest too much?” it is never a good thing.

I knew a girl who got really tired of catcalls while we were on Spring Break a few years back. After about the 10th time in as many minutes, she snappily replied, “Oh really! Let’s go then, Bring! It! On!” to a guy who loudly suggested that our group of girls perform a sexual act on him. He was left speechless and stammered something before quickly leaving us alone. He wasn’t prepared to back up his random act of sexual harassment, and he looked like an ass. It was one of the funniest things I’ve witnessed.

As for the geniuses in the car next to me in traffic today, I sped off as soon as the light changed, leaving them honking and yelling behind me.

Jerkoffs.