february 14th. & current thoughts

well, i found this post that i never posted (well ok, cause i just wrote it last week, whatever) anyways, thought i'd post it today and add a brief intro to it. i thought it rather timely. so as of wed night/thurs morn, i have no idea where alex and i stand and it really really hurts. just when i've really started falling for a boy, he throws out: my life isn't stabile and i'm confused. so what does that mean exactly. he has no idea and therefore has no idea what to tell me. he i'm sure is scared and his manhood is probably being tested. it sucks being unemployed and i think it's a big blow to his ego as it was to mine though i must say it was probably easier for me to digest since my entire division was being laid off too. i don't know - this is my armchair psychology here. but he says he doesn't want to end things and that he doesn't know if he wants to keep things the same or slow down. i might add here that everything has been at his pace. i've let him ask me out, i've let him call us being exclusive, and i let him call me his gf before i did any of those things. so it's all been at his pace... anyways, him being confused makes me even more confused b/c i have no explanation. i kinda feel in limbo while he decides to screw his head on tighter and i don't know what to do about that.... along the lines of the job, he worries about what if in 2, 3, 5, 6, etc months down the road he takes a job in ny or london or some other city. then what? he knows it would be unfair to ask me to move too, but he's afraid of long distance too i think. but why can't we figure that out IF it even happens?!?! right now he's living on savings and as he said, he can't live in chicago without a job forever and live the lifestyle he wants and keep his place over looking the river and all that. ok, well, let's worry about that in the future. the what if game will drive you insane. i know this b/c i play it ALL the time in my head and i've been trying really hard to push it out of my mind when they start popping up. i've gotten pretty good at pushing away those stupid "what ifs". so in any case, a couple of wks ago he asked me to go to dinner with his friends and their gfs and wives. that dinner is supposed to be tomorrow. he says he still wants me to come, but i don't know. i want to spend time with him, but would going to dinner after this talk be awkward? i have no idea. i have til tomorrow to decide i guess. i've also told him he has to initiate contact with me. i'll respond, but i won't contact him. i know what i want. the ball is in his court if he wants to talk or see me which he says he does. he says if i don't go to dinner, he wants to do something else this weekend. adding to the confusion is he's always mentioning future events. as in: this summer we'll bbq on my balcony, or i can't wait for the billy/elton concert at wrigley (which is in july), or let's make a bet on amazing race and the loser gets to take the other for a nice dinner. so how can you be so back and forth?! it's like a seesaw that he is standing exactly in the middle and can't move either direction. he can't even tell me which way he is leaning for gods sake. so, long story short, i'm left confused, hurt, wounded, sad, and more confused. so there it is... and here is the story of feb 14th....


Valentine’s day… that fun fun day that a lot of people dread. I wouldn’t say I dread it exactly, but for the past ohhhh 6 or 7 years I haven’t had one. Over the years I’ve always done something fun with the girlfriends. It’s been coined S.A.D. – single awareness day. I presumed that this year would be like any other – the girls getting together for drinks either at a bar or in front of some bad tv show and possibly some deliciously terrible for you food too.

Alex and I had been dating, but not for very long and I certainly was not going to be the one to broach the subject! I was content in ignoring the whole day… but he actually brought it up. I think I’ve mentioned how we are big texters and not big talkers… so one day after I’d seen him the night before (I think) I got a text saying “I meant to ask you what you are doing for valentine’s day” and when I read that, I thought “holy crap! A guy actually asking about v-day?!” so I wrote back that I wasn’t planning on anything and he asked if I would like to cook dinner and have a night in with him. So it took me all of about 3 seconds to respond with a ‘that sounds great!’. Now, you all know I am definitely not a chef…not even close. And neither is he. And we both knew this prior to him deciding he wanted to cook together – he had mentioned something along the lines of it would be something fun to do sometime. So, here was that sometime. I thought about some of the easier yummy meals my dad does and came up with chicken Mexican meal – it’s a chicken marinated in stuff and then grilled with beans and rice. Well, instead of beans and rice, we went with baked potatoes.

Alex came over and when I opened the door, he surprised me with a dozen red roses! I was definitely not expecting that! So thoughtful!! He had also brought a couple bottles of wine as I had done the grocery shopping. We got started making the marinade. That wasn’t too hard! Then we put the chicken and the marinade in a plastic Ziploc baggie and let it soak for 30 mins. So far so good… I think! Since I don’t own a grill, my dad said we could substitute by putting the oven on broil. Once the chicken was good and marinated, we heated the oven to broil and cut up potato wedges. Here’s where we fall apart… it took a million years to heat to broil and when it finally did, we stuck in the chicken and the potatoes. Not long after we put it in, the smoke alarm went off. Great! We’re going to burn down my condo. We managed to get the smoke detector to stop and since the whole place was smoky, we opened up the doors and windows which in feb in Chicago is rather cold! So we tried again…and it kept going off. Deciding that 3+ hours later we were starving, our food looked terrible, my house was filled with smoke, and we were completely clueless… we ordered pizza. And polished off the wine!

My mom was laughing when I told her and she said “I think to broil, you have leave the oven door open a bit”. Well how the heck am I supposed to know that?! She said she knew b/c her mom used to broil stuff when she was little and being blind she would know when the food was done b/c the smoke detector would go off! So even my mom who is just as bad of a cook as I am knew that. Sheesh! Maybe I’ll try a cooking class….