Sunday, July 1, 2007

"Build Her a Cake or Something"

Maddi was in town this weekend, and we had the perfect time.
Friday night I picked her up at the airport and my dad treated us to a delicious dinner at this sort of touristy barbecue restaurant that I used to love going to when I was little but hadn't been to in years. Then the three of us went over to opposite-side-of-town bar where I work. After a while my mom and her best friend came to join us (they'd been out to dinner celebrating another friend's birthday), and after he got off work my brother came to join us as well. Between all of us, a couple of guys we met that joined us*, and my coworkers who were bartending that night and keeping the drinks more than adequately flowing, we had the most fun night I've had all month.
Saturday Maddi and I got up semi-early, especially considering how much we'd had to drink the night before. We went to lunch with my mom and brother at my dad's restaurant and then Mom, Maddi and I went over to this ridiculously cheap clothing store near my house that Mom just discovered. Nothing in the store is more than $9, and I'm sure everything I bought will fall to pieces the first time I try to put it through the washing machine, but I also couldn't resist the temptation to buy a dress and three shirts for $27. If I can get a cute shirt for $3.99, if it only looks good one night before falling apart, I don't really care. And if the shirt can actually be worn more than two or three times, awesome, what a bargain! After shopping, I took Maddi to one of those touristy sight seeing places where she could get some beautiful scenic views of the city and surreptitiously steal rocks from national park land, which was fun. Then we went over to my grandparents' house and swam and laid out for a couple of hours. Then it was home for dinner with my parents at one of our favorite Italian restaurants here in town, and then Maddi and I went out on the town again.
This time we started out at the other bar where I work, the one close to my house. My brother was bartending, so we had him make up some drinks for us, which was fun. His best creation was a Long Island Iced Tea with raspberry liquer in place of the triple sec. Maddi was like, "I don't want to tell him because I don't want him to get a big head, but damn, this is a good drink!" Ha. Then we headed over to the bars near the local university. I knew they wouldn't be that busy or fun on a Saturday night in the summer, and they really weren't, but I figured we should go to at least one watering hole where I'm not employed. We finished up the night at opposite-side-of-town bar, where we had been the night before, and we once again had a great time. Meagan had just gotten off work so she sat and had a few drinks with us and entertained Maddi and I with her ridiculous proclamations (My personal favorites: "Hey, you, Gangster Jones, where's the after party?!" to some random guy who was walking by our table and, "I drink Patron like it's water!", to which Maddi solemnly replied, "Yes. You do."), and then for about an hour after the bar was closed the three of us stayed there chatting with the guys who were staying late to do inventory. Jay and Vic, the two guys who had been bartending last night, were being very good sports dealing with us as we teased them and ran around the bar taking stupid pictures to send to one of Maddi's guy friends who is in Iraq right now. Jay already has a million tattoos, so Maddi was entertaining herself by drawing new tattoo options for him on cocktail napkins. The best were this woman with enormous boobs who had a cartoon word bubble coming out of her mouth that said, "Damn, I love my tits!" and a penis that came out so weird looking that Jay commented, "Who have you been sleeping with that has a penis like THAT?!"
I really like my coworkers at that bar. I like my coworkers at the other bar, too, but not as much. At the bar by my house, I have a cordial relationship with my coworkers but I wouldn't say we're exactly friends yet. We could be. I could potentially become actual friends with them if I were going to be in town longer, but as it is we're friendly at work but don't hang out outside of work and I'm not making much of an effort to make that happen. At opposite-side-of-town bar, though, I'm making actual friends, people that I text message and hang out with when we get out for the night, people that I'll honestly be sad to say goodbye to when the summer is over.
It's nice to actually be making some new friends here. And it was great seeing Maddi. When I'm out here in this city in the middle of nowhere, it's easy to forget that I do in fact have friends under the age of 50 and above the age of 20. Every now and then lately I've had these moments where I'm like, "Wow, I'm such a loser, how do I have no one in this town that I can go out with, other than my parents and their friends or my brother and his friends?" But then I remember:
a) I haven't lived in this city full-time in six years and all of my closest friends in high school were the sort of overacheiving people who had their choice of schools. I've always been a nerd like that. As a result, most of us chose to go elsewhere, as opposed to staying here to attend the local college. My boyfriend at the time and a few good friends did choose to stay here to go to the local college, but other than that, most of my best friends stopped living in this city full time in 2001 as well. And out of the friends that did stay here to go to college, pretty much all of them took jobs elsewhere when they graduated. And now that we all have actual adult jobs, nobody comes home for summer vacations like we did in college. So it's not that I don't have any friends from here, it's just that my friends from here don't actually live here anymore. That realization always makes me feel better.
b) Just because I don't have friends in this city doesn't mean I don't have friends. Seems obvious, yes, but it's easy to overlook that fact when I just want to go out and have a beer with somebody. I'm lucky to have many friends, it's just that 98% of them live 500+ miles away from me right now. And there's nothing wrong with that. Having to talk on the phone/internet instead of being together in person has it's frustrations, yes, but that doesn't make the friendship any less valid than it is when you're lucky enough to live in the same city.
c) I've only been living here a month, and I'm only staying here a month longer. That's not a situation that's very conducive to making friends. And yet I was surprised to realize this weekend that I actually am starting to make friends. So life is good.

Anyway, Maddi had to go home this afternoon, and I'm sad. But I had so much fun showing her around my hometown this weekend. There's nothing that makes you appreciate your home more than showing around someone who has never seen it before and can make you see it all with fresh eyes. She thought it was beautiful here. And you know, it really is.

*So Friday night my dad was talking to this guy and his friend at the bar. They'd met in a golf tournament earlier this week. So Maddi and I started chatting with them, and they ended up joining our party. After a while one of the guys said to me, "You're really fun to talk to, do you have any older girlfriends? Please don't take that the wrong way. It's just that I'd like to hang out with a girl like you, but you're a little young for me." So I said, "I guarantee I'm older than you think I am," and told him that I'm 24. He was surprised because he'd just assumed that I was 18 or 19 and only drinking because I was with my family (when I say I look young, I'm not kidding). So anyway, once he realized that, he started flirting a lot with me, and I was flirting back because, well, he had a really great smile. There were a lot of things I liked about him, actually. He's the kind of skinny, vaguely nerdy white guy I'm usually attracted to, he seemed easy to talk to, he had a good sense of humor (when my brother walked in he said, "So, I hear you work at the bar. I'm assuming you're a bouncer?" and trust me, you'd find that funny if you'd ever seen my brother), he has a Ph.D., he has a good job at the local university...Amongst other things, he told me that he likes to cook and bake, and somehow he ended up making this proposition. I almost don't even want to write about this because it's so cheesy, and so the sort of thing that would make me go, "Oh lord, that's ridiculous", if I read it on someone else's blog, but even though I'm possibly Girl Least Likely to Appreciate Grand Romantic Gestures, I occasionally inspire guys to try them (why is that, anyway?) and I figure I have to tell you all about this one even if nothing comes of it.
So anyway, the proposition was that he would bake a cake for me and if I tasted it and liked it I would have to go to dinner with him, but if I didn't like it I didn't have to see him again. Sounded like a win-win proposition to me, because I at least get cake, and maybe I get cake AND dinner! I laughed at the idea and didn't think he'd remember it, but we texted a little bit yesterday and then this afternoon he texted me and said that my cake was ready. So he stopped by my side of town and dropped the cake off on his way to dinner with a friend. He was dead serious about the deal, I thought for sure he'd use the cake thing as an excuse to have a drink with me or something, but no, he just dropped it off and said "If you like it, we're going to dinner later this week. If not, you're off the hook." And you know what? It's a really good cake! I mean, I would let him take me out to dinner regardless of his baking skills, just because any guy that's going to spend hours baking a cake for me is going to get a date out of the deal. I'm a kind person. But it really is a good cake.
It's one of the craziest things that has ever happened to me, mostly in a good way. I'll admit that the cynical part of me is going, "Whoa, that's a bit much." But how many girls have ever had a guy bake a cake for them, period, much less just to guarantee a first date? Guess I made a helluva first impression, huh? Ha. It's flattering. And true, I'd say the cake thing is a bit over the top, but he isn't showing any other signs of being overbearing. I'm extremely sensitive to overzealous guys. You all know that about me, the vast majority of the time I reject a guy it's because I feel like he's way more excited about me than I am about him. But this guy is actually keeping up the sort of contact I like: just one or two texts a day, enough to let me know he's interested but not so much that I'm like, "Dude, chill."
Who knows what will actually come of this. He already knows that I'm moving in a month and I do actually think he's too old for me (he's 37, I know age is just a number, but...) so we're obviously not going to have a "real" relationship. But I wouldn't mind going on a few dates in the next month, if that's what ends up happening. Or maybe he could just be another friend here, which I'd like, too. Or maybe nothing will happen at all, I'll just have a story about how a guy once baked me a cake to get me to go on a date with him.

P.S.-I realized something exciting on Friday night that I'd never thought of before: spousal support. This guy has an important job at the university, and in one of our conversations he mentioned that a stipulation in his contract is that his spouse, if he had one, would be given a job at the university. I'd forgotten that that happens sometimes. And while I don't particularly want to be that person who gets a job just because her husband gets a job, I also know that I would absolutely take advantage of that situation. So now my Impossible Daydream of my Ideal Life (which I recognize will never happen, that's why it's the Ideal Life) involves marriage to someone important enough that he can command a job for his spouse, or, alternately, to become important and respected enough myself that I can demand a spot for my tagalong spouse. Hooray for imaginary ideal lives!

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