Tales of a Delectable Redhead

I am still posting at tumblr regularly. I love it, I can post from my phone, which makes it especially fun.

You can check that out to see pics of my mother and stuff from my fun notre dame weekend.

posted by Betty @ 4:44 PM 3 comments

Found in my inbox, unposted blog entry.

I wrote this on January 3, 2007 and never posted it. Amy, you should get a kick out of this, I wrote it before we reconnected:

But that being said, a funny thing happened on the way to the gym today….

When I was 8 years old, fresh off my communion, that summer I wore my little white dress every day with my best friend Amy. The house between our houses was vacant, but the garden was plentiful, beautiful arrays of lilacs and tiger lilies lined the property. Every afternoon, that summer of 1988, Amy and I would take turns wearing our communion dresses and carry bouquets of lilacs down the sidewalk of our block singing that old familiar tune, "dun, dun, dun….dun, dun, duna." Sometimes we would force her older "cooler" brothers to play along, back when 16 year old boys were gods; they would laugh at us from the comfort of their porch. Mostly there was never a groom, only a young girls dream to be the perfect example of feminine grace and womanly character. My mother wasn't married at the time so I have no idea where my fantasies of married life came from.

During my high school years, I developed a fascination and obsession with classic movies. I watched Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, and Audrey Hepburn movies late into the night to unwind from my long nights at my café job. Long nights at my café job involved hours of Ella, Nina, Sarah, and Frank- singing alone with my lilting mezzo-soprano voice. I idolized everything about romantic love and my old Hollywood idea of it. I daydreamed in English class about meeting my Cary Grant type and spending hours fighting while we secretly fell in love. Chosen selections for book reports included Jane Austen, Shakespeare, and more Jane Austen. To this day, Pride and Prejudice is still my all time favorite book.

Around 1996, I saw Gone with the Wind for the first time and have proceeded to watch it and it's crappy sequel "Scarlett" (I really love this movie and have no idea why) about 50 times over the years. My parents' garage is filled with Gone with the Wind collectables included vintage posters, collectors plates, and even a life size standup of Rhett and Scarlett. For years I drowned myself in stylized ideals of romantic love.

Then I went to college, became a feminist, moved to New York, made all male friends, and finally realized men and women are just people. Despite all that gender difference crap people stuff down their throats to justify every fucking emotion they have, we all have our own hardships, obsessions, flaws, character traits, and charming personalities.

On New Year's Eve, in a room full of decent looking men, I found myself talking to a couple of cute guys early in the night. My old friend Lawrence in a classic Scarlett moment approaches me:

Lawrence: Who are you talking to?
(Rhett: So what costumes have you bought to entice me now?)
Me: What do you mean?
Lawrence: I leave for a year and come back and you are still talking to douchebags?!?
(Rhett: Terrible, too many bows, wrong, wrong.)
Lawrence: Stop talking that guy. He's not good enough.
(Rhett: Orange is a terrible color on you, get rid of it.)
And I agree with him and walk away.

Which is how I ended up kissing all my friends at midnight and other friends at midnight.

Back to what I found on our table tonight as I was high tailing it to the gym- Martha Stewart's Weddings.

Labels: cary grant is my husband, I am crazy cat lady

posted by Betty @ 8:47 PM 1 comments

I am fate's bitch.

I saw him on the A train today, he hugged me and told me he's moving 4 blocks over from me tomorrow.

posted by Betty @ 11:33 PM 2 comments

Trying something different

I am no longer full of analytical thought about myself, mostly I read about current events and try to evaluate how I can do my part in the world or how I am doing my part. But not in a deep emo way more in a philanthropic less self-involved way. I know, I know, big difference.

That being said, I read alot through out my day, good/bad, wants, needs- whatever and I recently set up a blog (ie. Friday) that allows to write short-ish type stuff and post.

So unless I have some long winded melodrama that only exists in my head, I am going to use the tumblr site more of a day to day thing. I am testing it out this week and so far it better suits my needs then writing really dry and pointless crap about myself. It's actually alot of fun to use.

I am not quitting the blog just testing out other self-promoting websites. Also I can't check email, facebook, myspace, etc, etc, etc, at work so it takes a while for me to respond to anything and everything.

I am giving you a chance to sample some of the things that interest me- mainly philanthropy.

posted by Betty @ 11:53 PM 8 comments

Breaking up with faceybook friends: what's the proper etiquette?

My iGoogle horoscope told me to avoid confrontation with friends because they were currently annoying me and I might say the wrong thing- true and true. My friends can be very not nice people sometimes and I wish that they would take responsibility for their own bullshit and stop projecting it on me. I think I am really sick of friends that constantly put me down and gang up on me. It's really not a mystery why I enjoy my own company and spend most of my time at work and the gym. Not to be misconstrued as a passive aggressive post because that would mean my dickhead friends actually read "blogs". Whatever, I needed to vent. That being said...

I need to delete two people off of my facebook friends- mostly because I just plain can't stand them. They think we are "friends" but in actuality, I accepted their invite out of obligation. Do you think they will know if I delete them- like it will show up in their feeds? "Alice has deleted Amanda as a friend" (just an example)

Will they even notice? Has anyone else deleted friends?

Okay- I have two books to finish tonight.

Labels: reasons why I am up on current events, things pushing me to become a better person, work is my new best friend

posted by Betty @ 8:51 PM 5 comments

Everyday should be lasagna day!

I can't stop coughing and I have the worst headache. Can't you have strokes from coughing too much? At this point, I am on day 7 of being sick so I am basically looking for any reason to justify why I feel like ass.

In other news, I made lasagna and it was awesome. I love lasagna because I don't have to make it the crappy way everyone else makes it (ricotta or cottage cheese, yuck). I use pepper jack, mozzarella and I make a meat sauce. I am fed for the whole week!

Okay, I think I need to go get some nyquil, my lungs are burning from coughing all day. And it sucks being sick on the second week of my new job.

Labels: lasagna

posted by Betty @ 8:55 PM 1 comments

Answering a question I just now figured out the answer to...

For the past 3 months, many things have been going through my head and I haven’t been comfortable talking about any of it- on the internet or in person.

I can’t really say or put my finger on events earlier this year that led to this cataclysmic change within myself that took 10 months to fruition. There’s a joke that’s been going around all year that I keep recycling the men from my life in 2006, which is partly true. All the guys I went out with in 2006 weren’t particularly memorable, most of them I faded out on and others I – no wait, I faded out on all of them.

From the beginning of my unemployment in August of 2006 to the end in January 2007, I often referred to that as the time of me. I dated about 3 guys in that time span and the breakups came to the tune of “oops, I was at a party and I met someone else”. So fast forward to the beginning of this past year during my 4th “oops, I was a party and I met someone else”, something real happened. I actually connected with someone for what felt like the first time in my natural born life- in retrospect, I realize now that the person I was connecting with was myself. But for months during and after the breakup, the pain at the loss I felt for someone who in my head was the only guy I was ever my true self with kept me locked inside my own head for the better part of 10 months.

To truly understand what happened in that relationship and my avoidance of all relationships since (it’s been 8 months since I have been out with anyone and in NYC time, that’s a pretty long fucking time), you have to understand the changes that were taking place during January of 2007. It’s taken me roughly 10 months to figure out why I would completely lose my head over someone I barely knew and still barely know. I would characterize December 2006 as my awakening to adult hood, it’s when I quit drinking and smoking, and became a long distance runner. I still drink but I only do so in moderation and I would no longer characterize myself as a party girl.

January 2007 rolls around and I meet another straight arrow/looking to find themselves person who appeals to my “self-improvement” side and we are in an instant relationship. We spend long nights talking about our feelings and all the changes we want to make in the world, it would later turn out that apparently I was the only person who did the talking, him for all his superior years was intimidated at the depth of my self-knowledge and felt his own intellect paled in comparison. Leading up to the night he cruelly dumps me and doesn’t leave my apartment, not knowing proper protocol, he finds it completely appropriate to still spend the night while I lay awake the whole night silently crying and trying to figure out why “this vaguely feels like my fault”.

Fast forward through four months of quiet introspection, alienating friends, and being casual to everyone else ensues, after which time we once again find ourselves at a party and re-connect for what feels like to me 3 days of bliss but which is later characterized by him as hell. Once again, it’s mildly implied that I am at fault. The only thing truly at fault is the almost cult this guy belongs to that has instilled this belief in him that in order to be a whole person he must forge through life alone.

My principal argument to all of this is: what’s the point of doing anything in life if you don’t have anyone to share it with. But in the end he wins with the “I was just so lonely” trump card, there were a lot of other words mumbled in there also, but too painful to repeat. So dumped once again by the elusive man, I am forced to 7 full days of friends at our Montauk house, in which I feel repeatedly attacked by certain boarders because I feel the need to retreat and lick my wounds. Wound licking that has only ended in the past 2 weeks or so because I have made good on my promise with said former suitor and we are what I would loosely call friends. This of course means he must never speak, write, or look at me again with any sort of desire (my terms, not his) and we must never acknowledge that we have dated or are dating new people. That last one was really said in anger at the time of the second cruel breakup. And unbeknownst to him, I kind of ran into him last week but didn’t feel like saying hi because frankly I just didn’t feel like it and mostly cause I didn’t really care- yay me! Vast improvements!

At the end of the day the past 10 months haven't been about him, they have been about me and what I have needed to do to grow up and take responsibility for life.

The key question that is in the middle of all of this is – how am I doing? And I think the answer is okay. When I finally found that I no longer cared about this person long enough to email them to ask them how they were doing, is the only time I looked up from my mental clock and checked the amount wasted on said human being and the total was and is 10 months. My lack of posts is a direct correlation with how connected I have been with the world. In a year where intimacy became correlated with painful, moving forward in any friendships or relationships wasn’t going to happen for me.

I have been in a foul mood since July. Being told roughly five times by the same person that I suck has been one of the worst experiences of my life. For the past couple of months I kind of took a break from the world and retreated into work and looking for a job. How can I expect others to like me if I don’t like myself? I haven’t felt like myself or had much of self-esteem for a really long time. It’s a bit like being punched in the gut, I am still winded. This week is the first time I have been extremely happy and carefree- excited and full of ideas, I feel in complete control of my destiny. I am working hard, I have year long goals. I finally feel like socializing, I am not sure if I am ready to end my man hiatus. But after a long conversation with my new boss, it might be a better idea for me to meet future beaus at political and philanthropic fundraisers.

Because at the end of the day, I am a philanthropist and I really need someone like minded. All this will come to pass; in the meantime, I am going to work on my career. I am devoting the rest of 2007 to philanthropy.

Labels: Daily Affirmations, I should just leave the city now before I die alone, Stuart Smalley

posted by Betty @ 6:05 PM 3 comments