Still Broke & Single

We know we haven't blogged for awhile (sorry, Moms), but we experienced such a high level of douche-itude last night that requires an immediate response. After inhaling pounds of burritos and mini-donuts at the Latino Heritage Festival, trying to expand our cultural horizons, we visited a local drinking establishment. Immediately upon entering the bar at 3:00 in the afternoon, we were accosted by 25 loud, obnoxious members of the Des Moines chapter of Douchebags International. We just wanted to enjoy the beautiful weather of our "second Saturday," but this was not in the cards. Instead, this is what we tried so hard, unsuccessfully, to avoid:

• Men who refer to their wives as their "moms."
• Men who wear t-shirts with "Twat Yeah" on the back.
• Men who jump up and down singing every single word of Miley Cyrus's "Party in the USA."*
• Men who dance to Miley Cyrus's "Party in the USA."
• Men who repeatedly sexually harass the underage servers.
• Men who insist on wearing their cell phones on a belt clip.
• Men who lie about everything: their marital status, their children, their job, their age, their fiance's untimely death (sorry, dude - we don't believe you).
• Men who table hop, trying to find the girl who will most likely believe their crap stories, the girl most likely to not call them out, the girl most likely to bring them back to her college dorm room (remember, they have wives).
• Men who attempt to start fights for no apparent reason.
• Men who cheat at cards - and yes, this includes UNO.
• Men who ditch you immediately when your married friend arrives.

Now for the short update as to why we haven't posted for nearly a month:

• Kicking ass and taking names.

That's basically it. Included in this favorite activity of ours is the following:

• Trying to improve our health by eating better and working out. Shockingly, this does not include drinking copious amounts of alcohol and seeing just how much better we can cram into one meal.
• Starting school: teaching and learning. This whole work thing sure takes a lot of time and energy.
• Nerding it up every Tuesday night in Des Moines' premier trivia league.
• Hosting a Fantasy Football draft and talking a lot of trash.
• Not training for a 5k that we "ran" on Saturday.
• Prepping for the Wedding of the Century.
• Participating in a number of pants-off dance-offs.
• Hanging out at Des Moines' oldest cemetery.
• Joining every sports league Des Moines has to offer.
• Traveling to such amazing places as Knoxville and Melcher.
• Moving two apartments.
• Freaking out about money in general, and more specifically auto repairs on our two identical Corollas.
• Trying to find the one spot in the apartment that gets cell phone reception. And then apologizing to all our friends when the new phone resends every message from the last two weeks.

Basically, we've been trying to be semi-productive members of society. But we'll try to blog more. Sorry.

Dinner tonight utilized one of our recent purchases: a grill pan. We were so excited for this and deemed it necessary enough to spend a whopping $40 on it. (Remember, we're broke: that's a lot of money.) Upon cooking with said grill pan for the first time, we are perplexed as to how it's so different from a frying pan. Those fancy little marks sure are nice, though.

Flank steak with chermoula, sauteed squash and zucchini, red roasted potatoes.

*We were the ones who played this at the juke box, trying to empty the bar of d-bags. However, this turned into a pissing contest among different groups of gentlemen, seeing who could play the worst song. Unfortunately for the rest of us, this lasted two-and-a-half hours. Lesson learned.

B is for Booze

We have decided that we are going to take a hiatus from talking about our number one favorite topic (bitching about boys) and are instead going to talk about our number two favorite topic: booze. Generally, we enjoy booze because it makes us funnier, smarter, cuter, better dancers and singers, more outgoing and willing to take chances; clearly, it only strengthens our best features. While we are content drinking on our couches and with our friends, we also subscribe to the following notion: "The family that drinks together, stays together." Thus, we have enjoyed a variety of familial drinking experiences this summer.

Recently, one set of parents visited from Florida, and as we were discussing all of the social events here in Iowa, step-mommy-dearest interjected with, "Does everything here involve drinking in some way, shape, or form?" Um, yes. This was a surprising question, considering that we come by our drinking problems honestly; neither one complained when we pulled out the two bottles of wine we stowed in the picnic basket for our six-hour tour of the Bridges of Madison County. They are good sports and whole-heartedly embraced the drinking philosophy of Iowa: "There's Nothing To Do Here But Drink." In fact, they even attended our friends' half-birthday celebration, which included midnight tree climbing (unsafe), road flares as birthday candles (dangerous), tiki torches at one of the city's busiest intersections (illegal), sprinkler enemas in the sculpture garden (immature), and too many trips down the slip 'n slide (really fun).* Awkward moment: trying to introduce your father to your friends who had apparently decided to take a nap in the middle of the multi-million-dollar sculpture garden. Dad didn't care; after all, we had also been drinking all day.

Because we are such philanthropists - and huge fans of open bars - we joined a second set of parents in Omaha for a charity event in the not-so-distant past. 'Tinis & Tunes was a benefit for the Ribbon Foundation and took place in the parking lot of the hair salon, which was transformed into a beach oasis...sort of. Shockingly, we steered away from our typical drink of choice (wine) and went straight to the liquor bar, chugging down copious amounts of vodka and gin tonics. Yum. These drinks helped us be not only the first ones on the dance floor (remember, we are really good dancers after drinking), but we were the only ones on the dance floor. Did we care? Nope. After all, we were by far the youngest people there and were only doing our young-person duty: we got the party started. Did we embarrass ourselves? Quite possibly. Did we make Mama proud? Most definitely. And, we won door prizes.

Just two days ago, we further strengthened familial ties by bonding over alcohol at our sister's going-away party...which took place at none other than a frat house. In addition to all of the well-wishes for our sister, the evening's activities included a rousing game of Circle of Death, heckling the losers during Catchphrase (yes, pointing fingers and screaming, "YOU LOSE!" did happen), and investigating the source of the persisting vomit stench. Please do not think we were there cougar-ing it up, searching for fresh meat; but what girl doesn't jump at the opportunity to go to a party on Greek Street?!

Perpetuating drinking among family members, we invited Sister and Her Boyfriend over for dinner tonight and cooked a delicious meal of tilapia with a puttanesca relish over parmesan orzo. Oh, with wine, of course.** And Trivial Pursuit.

Tilapia with Puttanesca Relish and Parmesan Orzo

*Interestingly, this same party prompted the hostess the following day to ask, "Where were the grown-ups at this party?"
**If anyone would like to spring for a 28-day stay at a facility in Malibu, please email us.

Disclaimer: we may be drunk, but we ain't stupid: a designated driver accompanied us to each of these endeavors.

I'm Ready For My Close-Up, Mr. DeMille...

To begin, we would like to talk about a recent publicity stunt we somehow pulled off - or, in retrospect, completely failed. A few months after soliciting ourselves for the singles issue of the local newspaper (and our desperate pleas for more attention ignored), they contacted us for an article about being "single in the city." Of course, we jumped at this opportunity: we are shameless self-promoters and had been featured in this publication many times before. We spent endless time preparing: discussed potential questions, conferred with friends and family, read previous articles to see the format, fine-tuned our resumes, picked out the perfect outfit for the photo-shoot that was to be taken while we were at home and cooking, discussed with our stylist the best hair and make-up for photos, etc. We wanted to be presented as smart, sassy, career women; after all, we have multiple degrees, have traveled the world, and have ventured into careers that only the boldest take.

And this is what happened:

Phone Interview: one of us was stricken with a severe case of verbal diarrhea, and here are a few of the little turds that came floating out of our mouths:

• "I played an instrument in the high school orchestra and took a lot of art classes." Really? The violin 12 years ago? And in high school? I guess I've done nothing worthy of note since then... (Have you seen "Never Been Kissed"? Hey, Drew Barrymore is my celebrity doppelgänger.)
• "I pretty much hate this whole dating thing. I want to skip the dating stage and go straight to the relationship." Come and get me, boys!
• "The most romantic thing I've done is made scrapbooks for two of my boyfriends." Obviously that's every guy's dream. Those two guys are lucky I made theirs come true. So lucky, in fact, that they left the scrapbooks with me.
• Quote from best friend/co-blogger: "She chooses to see the good in people, which can be a bad thing sometimes when it comes to shady characters." Truer words were never spoken - have you read the blog?!

Photo Shoot: not the photo shoot we were expecting. Instead of coming to the apartment for a glamour shot of us cooking something absolutely gourmet, we were caught off guard drinking PBR tall-boys, the classiest of brews, in a downtown establishment. We tried to get them to use this picture...

And so we don't get sued...

...but all we heard was "copyright, blah blah blah, lawsuit, blah blah blah."

Clearly this was a huge success: the boys are breaking down the door.

He Sure Has Cojones!

Even though one of us is currently out of town getting paid for one of our all-time favorite activities*, we both felt that this story was just too good to keep from you any longer.

We recently got a call from Political Candidate. Had this been just a few months ago, this communication would not be such a shock; however, since we had not heard from him and since he neglected to respond to a few very important issues that occurred as a direct result of him, this call came completely out of the blue. While we contemplated letting him head straight to voicemail, we decided to take any opportunity to slash his machismo, figured that it had to be that good, and answered. This is the conversation:

Burned: Hello?

Political Candidate: Hi, Burned.

Burned: Hi, Political Candidate.

PC: Do you still have those GED books** that I left at your house awhile back?

Burned: Probably.***

PC: Well, do you think that if you find them we could make an arrangement for me to get those back?

Burned: Maybe.

PC: Okay. Well, if you could just let me know when you find them, I'd really appreciate it.

Burned: Goodbye.

Click.

(Please note how difficult - and liberating! - it is for us to assume a one-word-response persona. If you can't figure out through this venue, we like to talk. A lot. And we sure have a lot to say to this character!) So, after the two of us intelligent women discussed PC's obvious idiocy, we came up with a wonderful solution and called him back five minutes later:

PC: Hello?

Burned: Hi! So, I just found those books, and I'd be happy to give them to you...

PC: Oh, great!

Burned: ...as soon as you give me back the camera! (Spoken in a super peppy, sing-songy voice.)

PC: (Dumb silence.) What camera?

Burned: Oh, you know, the one I bought you for Christmas a week before you broke up with me.

PC: Oh, I don't have that anymore.

Burned: Totally fine! I'll take the money instead.

PC: Um...okay.

Burned: Okay, great! Talk to you later! Bye!

Click.

We must explain, dear readers: we are not spiteful, malicious, vindictive women. Instead, we are actually quite compassionate, kind, and caring. However, we make an exception with PC. This ignoramus accepted an expensive camera****, several other time-consuming and thoughtful gifts, and presents for his two children, all of which totaled a nice sum of money; in return, he gave us nothing but a break-up for Christmas. In essence, he stole from a poor, hardworking teacher - and feels no remorse. All of our benevolence is tossed to the side when dealing with a sociopath.

Because we are fairly certain we will not be receiving $200 from this fool, we generated a few alternative ideas:

1. Write informative messages and draw insightful pictures on every other page of the books and send one to his ex-wife (who we are certain is no longer an ex) and one to his boss.
2. Send the books with an informative letter to the community college to which the books belong.
3. Hand-deliver the books to his office and ask to speak with his boss, or stop by his ex(?)-wife's house and speak to her about the imbecile she married.
4. Hold on to them until the next political election he is daft enough to enter.
5. Keep them forever and ever.

And we are open to any other suggestions you may have! Please, please, please enlighten us!

Brown rice and pine nut tabbouleh

*Judging people - more on this when she returns

**His job entails him working with high school dropouts. (Please keep in mind that the only reason we are defending this is so that we don't look like idiots - if it helps you to envision him as a GED candidate himself, by all means, go for it!)

***They are currently on the floor next to the paper shredder, two feet from where we were sitting - along with two of his library books.

****This is in addition to the camera he most certainly stole from our parents. We only hope his current girlfriends and/or wives are enjoying this new technology.

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!