Stalking: Justifiable and Natural

Apparently fellows like stalking and "will call it cute, whereas they are indifferent to those who ask for the pleasure of their company" (Ramirez, 2007). In case you don't want to look up Ramirez, 2007 (although please do note our APA format), this quote comes from our new favorite guidebook, The Art of Dating: Necking, Petting & Popularity: Wisdom from the 1940s. Given our latest set of shenanigans, we picked up this handy little tool to help us navigate the shark-infested waters of dating.

To start, we would like to inform you of the many ridiculous encounters we have had over the last two weeks:

• The elusive Man of Mystery - yes, the one who spent time in the Thai prison, the one who had a severe accident in the Amazon - was once again culled away to a remote part of the globe where he clearly had no means of communication (something dangerous and sexy, we're sure). He finally resurfaced around 11:30 on Friday night; eager to hear about his adventures, we (one of us) met him at a local watering hole. (We meet at these sketchy locations to avoid the Des Moines glitterati, hoping to conceal his identity - or, more likely, to avoid running into people we know). Should we have gone? Absolutely not. Did we? Duh.
• Thing One - although he may have blown us off for the last two months (and subsequently asked us if WE had grown up yet), we felt the need to take him out for an expensive birthday dinner of sushi and cocktails. As usual, this was decision-making at its best.
• Boy - after he totally avoided us for several weeks, we also felt the need to invite him over for a delicious, homemade three-course meal. Shockingly, he did not blow us off this time. Not shockingly, we have not heard from him since.
• C-Squared - you may think he is new to the blog, but this assumption would be incorrect: this is just the first time he has been named. He is actually the impetus for one of our moves to the Midwest and has a past of causing much turmoil. Although we had both agreed to divulge any new relationships to the other, we found him at OUR dog park with another bitch (whose dog, by the way, sucks).

To reiterate, we picked up this tome to rescue us from our dating misadventures and to help us fine everlasting love, happiness, and security. (Who are we kidding? We were just hoping it could help us get a second date.)

Although this is not a create-your-own adventure book, we skipped over chapter one (the title is "Should We Date?" and our answer is "Duh"). We charged head-first into chapter two, "Dates to Avoid." While we expected to see full summaries of our previous blog entries, we actually read some new information regarding

• Girl-made dates: in case you were wondering, "the girl who asks for a date places herself in a humiliating position." Guys, you should be honoring us with your presence, not vice versa. Now would be a great time to start asking us out.
• Blind dates: these are apparently not a good idea. We may be set up with undesirable characters (but hey, we'd have dates), and we might lose our good names by going out with these individuals (which is why we go to sketchy establishments where we just don't care). Interestingly, blind dates are so bad that "the person you have dated may persist in seeing you again." (Please, please, please inform us as to why this would be a negative.)
• Pick-ups: if you are acting cheap, you will be treated cheaply, and if you had self-respect, you wouldn't make "chance acquaintances." What other chance do we have to make acquaintances?!
• Mail order dates: supposedly making light of dating and not taking "fellowship" seriously is a bad thing and leads to taking matrimony as a joke as well. Perhaps we should halt the blog publication...

...or not. Dating is at least bearable if we can make a joke of it! And as Ramirez reports, "Certain legitimate dating methods may be used," and these will be covered in the next chapter. Get ready, readers, for us to test out all these amazing, 70-year old strategies; stay tuned.

Mmm... Bang Bang Shrimp.

Mussels Josephine, take two.

Daters' Block

Brace yourselves:

1. ONE teacher's guide (Broadway Books)
2. ONE collection of personal narratives (Random House)
3. ONE research study (in progress, DU)
4. ONE scholarly journal article (WPC)
5. ONE poetry anthology (something for youth poets)
6. ONE literary magazine (MSHS)

Not enough. We are striving for further national publication. And we would like to enlighten you, our loyal readers, as to our writing process:

Please notice that we offering you a glimpse into the minds of pure genius. (Okay, that may be pushing it, but please DO notice the two empty wine glasses - after polishing off a good three glasses each - and the scribbled notes in the back of a planner.)

Now, we would like to present you with a hypothetical* situation relating to the topic of our (hopefully published) essay.

Let's just say, for example, that one of us joined an athletic team. And in the midst of her whole-hearted athleticizing, she met Boy. Boy was unlike any other (or at least unlike the last few): he was single, he was Girl's age, he had a college degree, he had a solid source of income, he seemingly maintained only a singular residence, he had no children, and he had a clean bill of health.

So, Girl talks to Boy. Boy invites Girl to athletic party; Girl accepts invitation and spends many hours in engaging conversation, carefree laughter, and, of course, copious drinking. Note: Girl did NOT cook.**

Blah, blah, blah.

Fast forward to end-of-night: Boy kisses Girl; Girl gets butterflies in her tummy and feels like she is 14 again.

Guess what happens next...

Fast forward to now: Wha Wha.

The phone is silent. Popular-social-networking chatter has stopped. A cold, nuclear winter has descended upon the distance between Boy and Girl.

Switching to "I" (warning, rant about to happen): what did I do wrong? Am I too fat? Am I too sarcastic? Am I too smart? Are my boobs too big? (Ha ha - like that's even possible!) Am I too nice? Does he not want to mix athletics with relationship? Is he involved with someone else? Am I "just a teacher"? Am I too socially-minded and liberal? Is it my public-school education? Do I have too many degrees? WHY DOESN'T HE LIKE ME? What is wrong with me?!

Switching to "we" and to "more general" (warning, rant continuing): should we keep our mouths shut sometimes? (Okay, yes. We should.) Do we have to compromise our values and integrity and beliefs to get a date with a "professional"? Are we too opinionated? Do we go into way too much detail on our blog***? Do we need to lose a collective 50 pounds? Do we need to wear make-up to the gym? Should we be wearing stilettos to the grocery store? Should we return a degree or two? (Just kidding - we like being smart.) Are we too intimidating?

We're not passing judgment, and we're not placing blame: we are just straight-up confused.

*Please note this may have happened three hours ago...

**Had Girl cooked, outcome may have been vastly different.

***Not widely read - but thank you, Bitches and Ya-Ya's!

You Asked...We Answered

We have created an additional blog for two reasons:

1.) We are sick and tired of you whining about this blog not including recipes.

2.) We have approximately 32 index cards, receipts, cocktail napkins, and scraps of paper that hold our gourmet recipes and thought a different system might be better.

So, please view Burned: Recipes of the Broke 'n Single for all of our recipes. From here on out, they will be linked to our blog posts, but for now, consider it a work in progress. And stop whining.

Because we responded to your request, now respond to ours: please forward any names, numbers, email addresses, court records, custody arrangements, divorce settlements, or any other information that may make one of your acquaintances eligible in our eyes (keep in mind that "eligible" is a flexible term, although our deal breakers are job, car, independent living situation).

Happy cooking - and boyfriend finding!

The One Where We Talk About the Food

Seeing as we have been on family vacations for the last four weeks, our opportunities to meet eligible bachelors have been relatively limited. Long Island Tea fish bowl races with the 'rents, parties where we are relegated to the kids' table, and Renaissance Fairs with the relatives, albeit quite entertaining, don't exactly make for ideal conditions to prowl.

In keeping in the same vein, we decided to spend Monday evening doing quite the same: creating an anti-male environment by hosting a cleaning product party. This is similar to a Tupperware party, a jewelry party, or a naughty toy party, except these products clean toilets. Essentially, it is an excuse to get a group of friends together, eat good food, and drink a lot. As glamorous as that may sound, it's a horrible men-meeting arena.

While we could bore you to tears - or exploit the inherent humor in hosting a cleaning party - we are going to instead take this opportunity to actually talk about the food we prepared. Coincidentally and due to popular demand, we will now start linking our recipes to our blog. However, after multiple mojitos and two bottles of wine, this will not be happening tonight. In the meantime, though, you can find most of these recipes by typing key phrases into Google. Stay tuned.

Last night, somewhere in the middle of consuming an entire bottle of rum (intended to "test out" the mojito recipe for tonight- hey, practice makes perfect) followed by a bottle of cheap Chardonnay (intended for the party tonight), we decided our menu should be Cuban inspired due to our newfound love of rum and our new kitchen toy, the muddler.

And then we promptly nixed that idea and moved into the other hemisphere with an Asian-themed menu: spring rolls, edamame, peach salsa (yes, we realize this does not fit in anywhere, but one of us, for whatever reason, was really attached to this recipe), and crab rangoon pizza.

Look at these beautiful spring rolls, stuffed to the carelessly-sealed seams with tofu, rice noodles, avocado, carrots, cucumbers, green onions, and basil. We served these with a delicious spicy peanut sauce but were too lazy to take a picture of it.

We tried to mimic the edamame appetizer from one of our favorite restaurants (that we refuse to name until they decide to advertise on our page, which is highly unlikely until we solicit their sponsorship). Because there were no men at the party, we decided to spice things up a bit by liberally dousing the dish with some heat and enhancing our men repellant for a few days until we sweat out the ginger. We promise it tastes better than it looks - at least we assume that's the case...turns out neither of us tried it.

Clearly we are not food stylists or photographers by any stretch of the imagination since this looks like we poured salsa out of a jar or made a chunky tomato soup. However, this peach salsa delicacy required three ingredients (THREE, people!) and was quite challenging - there was, after all, a knife involved.

This evening's main course was another recipe that we shamelessly ripped off from another of our favorite restaurants: crab rangoon pizza. As if crab rangoon weren't unhealthy enough with the massive amounts of cream cheese and mayonnaise, we had to take the filling and spread it all over a piece of bread and douse it with mozzarella cheese and sweet chili sauce. This is the ultimate "I give up" recipe: why don't we just coat ourselves in Crisco and nominate ourselves as the targets in a greased-pig contest? We'd wave the white flag, but it's coated in lard and too heavy to hoist up the pole. Suey!

Excuses, Excuses

In lieu of no new potentials (and, in fact, because of the demise of previous possibilities), we have decided to turn our conversation to one of our favorite past-times, something that occupies most of our waking moments: making excuses for guys' ridiculous and completely unreasonable (and by most standards, completely inexcusable) behavior. Is it an exercise in creativity? Complete fiction? Or delusional tendencies?

On our part: all of the above.

For example, maybe he hasn't called us in the last six months because he is in a Thai prison. Or quarantined with H1N1 (or a hot, sexy, tropical disease). Or, and this one's for real, buying a house.

For example, he didn't tell us he had two children from two previous relationships because someone just made that up - he would've told us if that were the truth.

For example, his lack of communication skills are the result of growing up on the streets of East Los Angeles, and we are completely okay with this because former gang life is an endearing quality and one we seek out in potential mates.

For example, the fact that he has girlfriends in nearly every state of this country is reflective of him not feeling he has a home here, as he immigrated from Guatemala in eighth grade; he is just trying to find his identity as a new American.

For example, he does not really have a drinking problem, despite him passing out and drooling on himself in his running vehicle in our driveway and receiving two OWIs because he does go to work everyday and is very successful.

For example, he wears a Hooters waitress outfit because it's funny any day of the year, not just October 31st. Right? RIGHT?!

For example, it's okay to have two girlfriends of the same name in the same graduate program at the same school because hey, it cuts down on conversational confusion.

For example, you can do whatever you want to do because hey, you were in the Olympics.

For example, you can grab our boobs in public in front of our professional colleagues because we have the same values. (Um...those values are...oops: we need to reevaluate this one.)

For example, it's understandable that he has problems committing to one relationship because he has been armchair-diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder as a result of his crappy childhood. (Keep in mind, this is not an official diagnosis: one of us may have - and use liberally - a copy of the DSM.)

For example, maybe he hasn't called us because he's been out of town. For the last six weekends.

For example, maybe he calls every night at 2 a.m. because we are so amazing, and he is too shy and needs some liquid courage to talk to us.

For example, his stunted social skills are a result of him growing up in a small, rural community; really, man-ginas aren't funny...to anyone...anywhere.

For example, after spending a weekend together, we are sure that their hasty departure had to do with them needing to be back in the office...stat.

For example, we are sure he didn't pick one of us up an hour late from the airport and drop us off three hours early while she was throwing up from the movie theater hot dog (apparently this qualified as a dinner date for the girl who flew from Iowa to California, the girl who paid for the plane ticket and the hotel room), because he had a rough childhood growing up and, again, grew up amidst gang-life in LA.

Interestingly, gang-life and crappy childhoods seem to be great excuses - we mean reasons...REASONS, people - for ridiculous (but oddly acceptable) behavior.

And now for the food that we turn to for comfort in times like these... In ode to our ethnic, alcoholic, maladjusted, gangsta ex-boyfriends...mojitos.

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