Love, Loss, and What I Ate.

Upon breaking up with what I thought was my first true love, I created the ultimate my-boyfriend-has-just-dumped-me comfort food. The dessert potato. Because nothing says "I'm hurting" quite like a russet potato piled high with cookie dough ice cream, slathered with marshmellow cream, and topped with a smattering of sprinkles. Steve Jobs gets the Ipod, prehistoric man can have the wheel, but let the record show that I created the dessert potato.

Flower Free Zone

I am staring into space when the doorbell rings. I answer just in time to see the delivery man drop a fat bouquet of roses on my doorstoop. Flowers! I never get flowers! I am a flower free zone! The blood fizzles in my head and I think, Matt? Matt! Flowers from Matt to say he likes me again! I take a sidelong glance at the fire escape just in case hes climbed up the building a la Richard Gere and is loitering with the intent of sweeping me away. He hasn't. But roses - the symbol of romantic love! He's sorry for bellowing! He's contrite and I'm right! I fumble for the card and rip it open. My hands are clamy and shaky as I read the message.

Lisa, It's been too long.

Love Laramie XOXO

My hopes shrivel and I feel like James in James and the Giant Peach when he drops the bag of life-enhancing grubs and they wriggle and shrivel and disappear into the dirt. Marvelous things could have happened to me. But I messed up and now I have nothing. Nothing but this fat bouquet of roses.

Things I Know for Sure

i've never touted myself as a know-it-all. However, I'm pretty sure about the following things.

1. If you look good in a speedo, you will look better in virtually any other type of swimwear.

2. You don't actually have to swerve left to turn right. Really, you don't.

3. We are an entire generation of women who are making our lives up as we go along. Despite (or perhaps because of ) all the coulda, woulda, shoulda moments that have come and gone, we've learned how to have a good laugh, an impromptu party, and an impure thought ( or two ) on a semiregular basis. We consider our options, our alternatives, our exit strategies. We take notes, we plan ahead, but we always leave room for serendipity.

4. What doesn't kill me does not make me stronger. It makes me anxious, bitchy, and vulnerable... but nobody wants to see that embroidered on a pillow.

Girlfriends

As I see it, if you're a man in your twenties, your friends live to make life hard for you. They tell you you're ugly. Your job is sad. Your car is shite. Your girlfriend is going to leave you. It's their way of being supportive. But I am a woman. And the entire point of being female and having female friends is that however hideous, stupid, or unwise you look, act, or behave, they are biologically programmed to tell you you're wonderful, your hair looks fab, and that you did the right thing. It's their job!

When it happened, I wasn't ready for it. I expected it about as much as I expected to win miss world and be flown around the world and forced to work with screaming kids. And being so awesomely unprepared, i reacted like Scooby Doo chancing upon a ghost. I followed my instinct, which turned out to be hopelessly lost and rubbish at map reading.

Maybe I was too confused to do the right thing. After all, the right thing rarely involves fun and mostly means making the least exciting choice. If we always made the smartest choice, we'd never get laid.

That said, the day it all began, I came close to making a very smart choice. Here it is, bravely scrawled in black ink, in my blue diary.

I am dumping Thomas, tomorrow.

He deserves being called ex-rat after all. He falls several thousand feet below acceptable boyfriend standards. Funny thing is, at the age of five I knew what that was. I was dating the boy across the road and I routinely ate his milk and cookies before embarking on mine. I also tantrumed until he surrendered his Fisher Price wheelie dog. And I refused to play in his room because it smelled of wee. Then I grew up and started taking crap.