Knock

Listen its like poker you can play your best/ But you got to know when to fold your cards and take a rest/
And know when to hold your cards and hold your breath/ And hope that nobody else is stacking the deck

“I don’t play a hand unless it’s paired or suited.”

*pause*

uhm… then you don’t play very much, do you?

“Exactly.”

I learned to play poker (Omaha and hold ’em) my sophomore year of college from my boyfriend’s apartment-mate.  Scott is a beanpole of an Asian kid, quiet and witty.  He had a passion for poker, the likes of which I had never seen.  I harassing him regularly to teach me, in between hanging out in my boyfriend’s on-campus apartment while he was at class exclusively so I could watch TLC.

We sat down, finally, one night.  I absorbed the rules and layout of play quickly and let him deal me a few hands face up so he could explain strategy.  My boyfriend quickly got bored and wandered off to play Halo.  I was rapt as he explained statistics and percentages, numbers that made a game quickly less of a game and more of a math equation that I would NEVER get a grip on.

“So, you have a five of clubs and a eight of diamonds, what would you do?”

Play it, at least until the flop and see what my odds are for the straight.

“No. You would fold.”

…

“The odds of you hitting a five to nine or four to eight straight aren’t in your favor, and you have nothing else to work with.”

Oh.  So.  I fold.  That’s boring.

“No. That’s smart.”

He finally let me conceal my cards. I was so excited to have a secret.  We folded hand after hand.  I got bold and played hands he wouldn’t, he expressed (generally with a sigh) the luck I got in flops and rivers.  He still beat me, of course, but I was hooked.  My birthday was celebrated on the beach and I requested we play poker at a picnic table after lunch.

Now when I play, I always think of Scott.  I don’t talk to him anymore, I rarely talked to him after my boyfriend moved out of the apartment.  But I sit and play on free poker sites, rolling my eyes at how other people play.  I don’t fold as many hands, but I’ll ride my blind when given the opportunity and raise aggressively on good hands.  I’ve lost more than I’ve won, but I can hold my own.

Scott also once, for a minute, convinced me that horse sweat was poisonous and that’s why cowboy’s wear chaps.

He could apparently teach me anything.

Life Lessons from the 2010

Now that we’re solidly no-turning-back into 2011, I figure it’s time for reflection.  For those who missed the drama-post, this blog has been functional (in a very loose sense of the word) for just over a year now.  The funny thing is, nothing really remarkable happened in 2010.  Once you leave school and enter the monotony of the REAL WORLD with a Steady Job and a Solid Paycheck, very little actually happens.

That’s not to say that nothing happened.  Or that I didn’t learn anything.  Because hot damn did I get a schooling in some things…

1) Being single is awesome. And lonely.  But mostly awesome, especially when you live alone.   I got the pleasure of residing in my favorite two bedroom apartment entirely alone for three months out of 2010, and it was amazing.  No one’s messes but my own, no shame-food to hide from anyone, no unexpectedly running out of toilet paper, no one to wake up if I come stumbling in at all hours of the  morning. Except of course Miss Milwaukee.  Of course it’s not a financially viable option, so I also found my first craigslist housemate.  In a space so small I was omgsuperfreakingscared of letting anyone else into “my” space, but I ended up finding a pretty chill roommate.  To recap: Single = not as bad as expected, living alone = freakin’ amazing, craigslist = not full of murderous killers.

2) Sometimes what you’re getting yourself into is exactly what you should be getting yourself into.  I went to my boss’ seminar “graduation” for a program that I was sure was going to pass out koolaid at the end, and I fell in love with a new way of being.  I fell in love with being able to achieve anything I want.   I’m dedicated to a new lifestyle that has only proved positive so far.

3) I too can be a hockey guru. My twitter is filled with hockey players, commentators and news sites.  I know the Sharks schedule at least two days in advance, I can comment on player and team stats and could choreograph a dance routine solely using ref calls.  And I love it.

4) Online dating BLOWS. Seriously, it’s the worst meat-market around.  And if you don’t have the patience to filter through the bullshit,  sexual advances and pathetic one-liners, you might as well give up. So I did.  But sometimes it’s your only option, and to those who survive it still I give you mad props.

5) Sometimes what you think you want is exactly what you’ve never wanted.  I was devastated the middle of this year after I got played by someone I really trusted, but honestly I wouldn’t have had it any other way now.  Now I can walk away, now I can be shocked, now I can hold a little disgust.  And I have.

6) Sometimes what you swear against is exactly what you’ve needed.  It wasn’t going to happen this way, I didn’t need that treatment, I didn’t want to be weak.  It wasn’t going to be the same song and dance again, especially after what happened earlier in the year.  The funny thing is, it hasn’t been.  And it never will be, nor am I afraid of that.

7) Sometimes you need to give up on the expected, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.  Those who you want to trust so badly cannot be trusted.  Those who you never want to trust will support you fully in a way no one ever could.  Non-issues will become issues, fights will surface, true friends will float to your aide.

8 ) Starting a business is hard. It’s beyond hard.  I haven’t even really started yet, and I don’t know where to go. I don’t know if it’s viable, but I know it’s popular and niche and could work. But we’ll see.

Ultimately, I learned that I am capable of so much more than I thought: speaking up, firing a gun, starting a business, becoming a makeup artist, being a manager, leading a team, giving myself fully, fighting for what I want, blogging blogging blogging, loving myself, surviving alone, going on dates (shudder) and taking care of business.

One bonus lesson from 2011?  I am fully capable of getting pneumonia and being legitimately sick. And that’s how I’ve spent the past week and a half.

Here’s to 2011: life lists, happy days, continuous growth and never-ending wonder.

[i was home all along…]

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Shatter

I never EVER have felt like my business was going to fail. Never.  Not once in three months.

Until now.

Now I feel like it’s going to fail.   Like all of this work and networking and hope and dreams and support and self that I’ve poured out in the past three months is going to be in vain.

Do you know that when you search “how to start a website” you get almost a billion results?  I no longer know what I’m doing. I can’t afford to hire someone.  Every extra piece of myself, be it time, money, ideas and energy has gone to this frivolous idea that might make it.

I didn’t need this wall right now.

Excuse me while I pick up my pieces… I didn’t realize when I fell apart that I would shatter so.

Pride

I need to take this moment to be proud of myself, for everything I am.  Not to toot my own horn but I can be pretty awesome sometimes.  For example:

– I wash and detail my own car (read: when I feel like it), including waxing.  I know how to check all the fluids, the tire pressure, and what to do if my car starts to overheat.  I know antifreeze gets mixed with water, oil comes in quarts and what EXACTLY happens when your transmission dies while you’re driving your car.  I CAN change a tire if I have to, and keep oil in my trunk mainly because my dad thinks it’s a good idea.

– I can cook a turkey for 16 people, and serve them with cloth napkins and a full set of plates and flatware.  I know the difference between flatware and silverware, and how to care for each.

– I’ve refinished three pieces of furniture: sanding in three grits, staining, sealing, and picking out hardware.  All by myself.  I’m in the process of three other pieces, but I’ve gotten a bit bored of being covered in sawdust and paint flecks.  But I own the power sander, so I can pick up that job whenever my pretty little heart desires.

– I can walk well in heels, dress for any function, blow out my hair and do a full face of makeup.  I own a complete set of makeup brushes (17 total) and hot pink suede platform stiletto Guess heels.

– I kinda have my shit together, in that grown up way.  I pay my bills every month, buy groceries, keep the house clean.  I keep whiskey and vodka stocked in my bar (a physical, actual bar which also holds a vast array of glassware… including buckets.  and yes, I call them buckets), and at least a six pack of premium beer in my fridge because you just never know when the boys will stop by.  I don’t call in sick to work because I’m hungover.  My boss trusts me with her business.  I’m respected for the work that I do, and because I don’t talk back.

– I have excellent friends. Fantastic really.  And my guy friends are nice enough to let me start a task, like the bbq or heavy lifting, because they know I’m stubborn enough that I want to prove it… and then take over for me.  Probably because they know I keep that beer stocked…

I think that’s all for now.  I’m proud of who I am, and what I’ve become.  I like me.  And I have some of the best friends and family in the world, so they must like me at least a little bit too.

Sassy

I don’t talk about my feelings a whole lot, mainly because I’m awkward and get this really fake look on my face when I do.  Then I realize I look awkward and retarded and start turning red.  It’s not pretty.  So we’re going to do this via blog, and that way it lasts forever.

Let’s preempt this with one simple fact: I don’t have many female friends.  Women tend to play games and get catty (I do it myself, so I would know), whereas guys are pretty straight forward, take it or leave it.  The few female friends I have mean the world to me, and I don’t let them know it often enough.  So here’s a start.

We talk about horrible tv shows, struggles and boys.  We giggle over jokes in movies that we’d do, get drinks and walk in like we run the place.  We can sit on the couch and veg without it meaning anything, and scoff at texts the other receives.  We lose weight, we change hair color, we start trouble.  We bitch about cleaning, love our respective cats (and admire the others), and contact each other randomly about amusing things like unicorn legs.

And we weren’t always this close, and close is kind of a relative term.  I was the girlfriend, she was the best friend.  We’d sit at happy hour on opposite sides politely laughing and listening to the other’s conversation.  We scoped each other out and I don’t think either of us knew what to make of the other.  I was quiet, observant and wary; she was louder, bold and confident.  We were, and still are, opposite sides of the spectrum.  Eventually the boy dropped out from between us and we became friends.

She just graduate with a degree that means so much more than mine and took three times as much work.  She’s horribly intelligent but keeps it so real it’s like HD (yeah, I just went there).  She speaks her mind in a way I envy, and has flirting down to a science.  She’s one of my best friends and I can’t for the life of me figure out how we get along so well.

Dearest Meghan, you are an amazing woman.  I am so glad that I got to know you, despite the circumstances, and I am so proud of all you have achieved.  I’ll miss you, but I have a feeling this is only the beginning.  We will probably be friends for life.

Touchies, darling.  Happy trails.

Return to Sender

There was a time where the only way your written words could get to another person was with a stamp and a pen.  You would wait anxiously for the mailman to arrive, wondering if he had anything especially for you.  Rushing to the mailbox you would flip through bills and mailers, looking for a flowing script addressed just to you from someone you love.  Birthdays were a wonderful week, with cards coming in sporratically like little pieces of joy from other parts of the planet.

I have a Ziploc gallon sized bag that has resided in my childhood desk for as long as I can remember.  That desk is now for sale and cleaned out.  The bag has finally left my parents house and will follow me.  It has looked like variations of this since its inception:

Nothing of glory to look at really, but delve and see the wonderment.  Within this bag are a million memories and milestones; a hundred special notes that have made the cut year after year through birthdays, graduations and just because’s.  I opened this bag this evening, to see if anything else could be purged to save space in my increasingly cluttered life.  Not surprising I found myself smiling, laughing, tearing up and checking dates then returning every single one back to the bag.

There are a few cards from my mom’s best friends’ grandmother (who lives on to this day, and who’s cards I continue to keep to this day) whom I have NEVER in my life met.  Her scrawling penmanship makes me squint and focus to read, but invariably makes me smile.  She always signs her name with a smiley face made into the “V.”  I love this woman, and she clearly loves me as well.  She writes about what a great person I am, what a great person my mother is and all of my accomplishments over the years.  Thank you, Victoria.

There are birthday cards from friends that I got in middle and high school.  Funny things quickly penned onto binder and printer paper; The “card” my best friend Rachelle gave me when she got me tickets to Blink 182 freshman year of high school – with a note of “we already asked your mom!” in the post-script; group-signed cards.

There are letters from penpals in elementary school.  Friends from honor choir in Utah, second cousins in Oregon, my friend Amirtha who briefly moved to Santa Ana in second grade, only to move back for third.  There is an envelope of notes from Stephanie Beasley, my best friend in first grade who moved to Pismo, never to be heard of again.  Her letters say she was staying with her Aunt and now I wonder if there were problems with her family that my first grade self would have never clued in to.

There are a few letters from teachers.  I have two letters and a postcard from my elementary school music teacher, a woman who could have kidnapped me and I wouldn’t have complained a tick.  She wrote me from Budapest about the Kodaly Museum – a music theory that she taught us, even that young.  My second grade teacher, Mrs. Skoglund, thanked me for the presents, wrote about her bears and said she hope to come back to visit next year.  There were notes from two different composers who’s works I performed in while in elementary school.  These are all things I hardly understood the importance of at the time.

There are letters from my parents when I went to Science camp in 5th grade, Spinners-and-Splatters Girl Scout camp in ’94 and when I stayed with a friend when my brother was in the hospital in San Francisco for open-heart surgery. My mothers crisp writing on the backs of three postcards sent over a week breaks my heart now, it tells a tale of a woman torn 80 miles between two children who needed her.  My brother obviously took precedence but I remember having my own emotional breakdown at the end of the week, just wanting to have my family and a sense of normalcy back.

There are so many postcards that my dad sent to me while he was traveling for work, little notes that mean nothing at all but that I see now are so full of love that I can’t stand it.  He writes about cats in Malaysia, prairie dogs in Colorado, my sewing and buildings he won’t see in Chicago, bears not having toothbrushes from Puerto Rico, fall colors in Wisconsin and one from Missouri that only reads “This is in case I mailed your postcard without an address. Love, Dad.” (I did, in fact, receive the other postcard.  I was also super gloat-y that I got TWO postcards from Dad that trip.)

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Impending Nuptuals

“from the house of our friendship shut the door and light the match, throw behind you, walk away”

My upstairs neighbor is my old housemate and high school/college best friend.  We had a falling out two years ago or so, and don’t talk much anymore.  Due to proximity we’re civil and due to history we know a lot about each other.  I think she disagreed with how I started living my life and my vocalization of opinions I had previously kept to myself.  I was hard on her more often than not, primarily because she was hard on herself and probably still is.

Yesterday we both apparently eyeballed the landlord outside and ran out of our respective apartments to give her the rent checks directly.  We found ourselves in a rare situation, in the company of someone who didn’t really know about our falling out but is still a pretty chatty person.  I knew it would be an interesting conversation regardless of what was said, and mentally buckled down for at least a fifteen minute conversation.  So it caught me a little off gaurd when my delightful landlady turned to my old housemate and said this:

“Why aren’t you wearing your ring?! [boyfriend] can’t be too happy about that!! My daughter doesn’t take hers off now…”

I chuckled with them, then processed the statement.  Apparently I missed something, and I prefer to not make assumptions on big ticket items.  But as conversation turned to the preference of pearls over diamonds and planning stages, I realized that my jumped conclusion was accurate.  I missed an engagement.  Sort of.  They had been talking about engagements long ago, soon after they got back together after a year and a half breakup (long story) but she hadn’t gotten a ring to my knowledge.  It’s not shocking that in two years of awkwardness she had failed to mention that.

So I stood there uncomfortably as they discussed my friend’s wedding and compared it to the planning of my landlady’s daughter’s wedding.  My landlady periodically turned to me with jokes about eloping and picnics in the park versus formal ceremonies (which also led me to believe she doesn’t know about my breakup, but that’s another story) and my friend avoided eye contact or communication with me directly.  Then I started to realize that my landlords clearly know a good deal about this wedding, including a fight my friend had with her controlling mother that has been dubbed the infamous “flower girl sock fight.”  Now I’ve never planned a wedding, and I’ve only ever even been to three weddings, but I’m guessing that if you’re talking about flower girl’s socks in combination with other things that are covered, we’ve gotta be a few months from this wedding.

And despite her commentary on the size of the wedding, the phrase “my bridesmaids” still stung.  My teenage best friend who lives under the same roof as me neglected to tell me about her wedding.  If I hadn’t dropped off that rent check, I probably would have never found out until photos hit facebook after the fact (for the record, her relationship status on the social network hasn’t changed).  We had a history, and as she continues toward her future she has openly decided to destroy all ties with me.

So, in my true fashion as of late, I proceeded to get wasted.  Not my finest moment in the least, but when your bridge burns there’s not a whole lot left.

A Night of Unlearning

I seriously can’t get over how much fun last night was.  Here’s the short list of why:

– champagne toast (as well as multiple other ridiculous toasts)

– HBICs on the loose

– Sophia’s at 515

– Hands emerging from curtains

– Sharing lipglosses, secrets, boobie grabs, text messages and pictures of pets

– Struting into hotiv/brotiv like we straight own the place and dancing before we could get our coats off

– Meghan and I being SURROUNDED by guys while dancing.  Then realizing how creepy they all were.

– Elliot.  and Mike.  And thinking Mike was Elliot, playing it off and not being sad at all in the long run about it.  Although I think I told him my name was Amy….

– Average of $4 per drink.

– Telling off James for being there for the wrong reasons.

– Mike was extremely touchy-feely and I loved every minute of it…

– Getting my first number EVER. And a great (yet brief) makeover session…. like effing awesome.

– Catching up with a very drunk Meghan, who was weilding peperspray while getting a number on the corner.

– Peeing into bushes, then peeling off my shoes and tights possibly outside a client’s house.

– Obligatory stop at TacoBell.