ME on CBS Early Show!

On Wednesday, I was proud to be a guest on the CBS Early Show. That's right. Sometime around Valentine's Day, friends and family will be able to catch a glimpse of me dishing it out with 6 other women about my breakup with the ex and its aftermath.
As you can guess, this is part of every girls fantasy. To be able to go on NATIONAL TELEVISION and talk about ridiculous and horrible things about your ex? Come on! It's only a 3 1/2 minute spot, but hopefully something shaming I said about him will get aired, and he will be sitting in front of the telly eating his non-fat Muesli and watching it, along with his friends and his mother (who all think he's such a stand up guy).
It was so nice to take a little walk down memory lane and revisit some of the more vile behaviors I subjected myself too. With two years distance now, I was able to look back and have a real Idi Amin moment. An Idi Amin moment is precicely that moment when a man who you formerly considered charming is suddenly revealed as a vicious and predatory louse.
On the Early show panel, I got to talk about the breakup. How he called me out of the blue to break up with me at 10:30pm , right before a yearly children's dance recital I had to coordinate the next day. How he sent all my stuff back in boxes minus all the jewelry and clothes he gave me. I got to show the viewers at home the only thing I got to keep, his first stuffed animal: a faded and stained stuffed snake. I got to talk about how after every time he treated me badly, he would shut me up with chinese food. He'd buy us a big feast, and after I munched down spare ribs and lo mein, we'd end up in the sack. I should never have been a willing participant in this. And about how he backed out of our vacation plans to stay in New York for his mother's surgery. And before you think I'm a bitch, like all his friends did, can I tell you about how I had to pay for the vacation myself, and how I found out that HE DIDN'T EVEN VISIT HIS MOTHER AFTER THE SURGERY?!

Chances are, each of us willl be hauled to the dump at least once in our lives. I am an expert on getting dumped. At least when it comes to what NOT to do. I've broken all the rules and have lived to tell what what could have been done, what should have been said, what might have been read, and what I'd wished I'd learned when I was eighteen.
If you would like to become an expert like me, I've got a few tips.
First of all, like anything else, you can't expect mastery overnight. You should get one good decade and at least three devastating dumps under your belt before you consider yourself an expert. Here are some things to get you started.
Communication. Make sure you check into his voicemail a few times a day so he can see your number flashing on his caller ID.
Home Decorating. Each time you visit his apartment, bring a gym bag full of your things to stash there. It's not a home until your tampons are edging out his shaving supplies.
Compromise. In this case, fight for what you want and deserve, but if it lasts too long, just give in.
Holidays. An IPod or a Typing program is a really good gift, much better than some girly crap like diamond earrings.
Other Women. If he is still licking his wounds from a previous breakup, by all means, proceed. If it doesn't work out with the two of you, you have the great personal satisfaction of knowing you have helped heal his soul just a little bit, enough to reunite with his ex.

More tips to come...

Mrs. BeenThere says:

We’ve often heard it said that 'a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.' That's all fine and dandy, unless you happen to be a fish that idolizes Lance Armstrong. We know what it is like to be that fish; desperate to get out there and peddle, even though we don't have any feet. As any fish who’s ever longed for a ten speed of her very own knows, it is especially hard to sit on the sidelines watching all the other fish pedaling off to Pottery Barn to register for wedding gifts. Given how many fish are out there actually riding bikes, who seem to be having a really good time, you can hardly fault your average fish for wanting that damn bike!
Sometimes you are a fish without a bicycle, so your goal is to find the perfect bike. Much of the time, however, you have a bicycle. The problem is, however, that your bicycle has a lot of problems. Some bikes are missing important parts, like the seat, so every time you try to take it somewhere you end up with a big pain in your ass. Sometimes one or more of its wheels don't work. No matter how hard you try, you can never get it to go in the direction you want. Lots of times the bike just doesn’t want to take off his training wheels and grow up, thus making it impossible for the two of you to go the long haul together.
Many fish who find themselves with bikes that don't work simply dump them by the side of the road and get new ones. Other fish (and we put ourselves in that category) want to hang on to the bike that they have. They are attached to their bikes. They have worked on their bike, investing time and emotional energy (and even a lot of cash). They are determined to cross the finish line with the bike they've chosen. Even if that bike is a Big Wheel and the race they are riding is the Tour de France.
"You'll never make it!" onlookers scream. We know better. We love this bike. And love conquers all. Even if we can't control the steering, the brakes are shot, and the only thing that works is the bell.
Welcome to the world of long term love and commitment, where irrationality, blind sentiment, and foolish determination rule. We feel your pain. We have been 'the girlfriend' and we know that when you are just a girlfriend, no one really feels very sorry for you. If someone's husband or wife leaves them they usually get quite a lot of sympathy. A woman or man married to a cheating spouse or stuck in a marriage marred by poor communication and a lack of intimacy usually gets at least a sympathetic nod. But when you are 'just the girlfriend' in a long term relationship that isn't going where you want it to, as far as sympathy goes you get nothing.

Today, A Lizard Man Asked Me Out

As a dog walker, I am on familiar and friendly terms with a number of doormen that work in my clients' buildings. I've been asked out by two of them, and would have taken each of them up on it if one hadn't been 21, and the other hadn't been married. But today, somebody else that works in one of the buildings asked me out. Somebody behind the scenes. He is obese and looks like a lizard and works with the garbage in the back elevator. And socially, there's nothing wrong with the guy. Which makes it worse, because that means that he used sound, critical analysis to determine the credibility of us as a couple.
Now, I'm not being mean when I say that he looks like a lizard. He just does. He has scaly skin under his eyes and a gap in his front teeth through which his tongue darts out. He appears to be about 10 years older than me. He may be somebody's dreamboat, he's not mine. And I am upset that he continues to hit on me, not only because I feel violated, which I do, but also because he is apparently he has a chance of making it happen with me.
And yet somehow, my sense of inequality would fail to be riled if George Clooney, or someone else out of my league, goosed me while I was leaning over to clean up some dog poop. Oh well.
I used to be real friendly with him, but I have turned into a cold fish. I have to use the service elevator in that building, and I pray to God I won't be caught in there with him and the smelly garbage with him tomorrow. On Tuesday, he told me I was "a hard working woman," and he needed to find someone like me. On Wednesday, he started putting his hand on my shoulder when he talked to me. You know the move. Everyday day now I get the hand. He's got as far as the intro, the old "so what do you do with yourself when you're not working?" I've been able to evade any further advances because it is a very short time I have to see him every day, only a trip from the 11th to the 1st floor, but I feel that one day soon I'm just going to have to shoot him down.

Jagged Little Pill

When a relationship ends under devastating circumstances, the best thing to do is to take some time alone, and to not jump into anything serious. Good advice, but when you reach the two year mark, beware. I have not had one date that has made me even consider bending over far enough to shave my overgrown legs. A lovelife this barren can actually drive you a bit bonkers. My recent solution that backfired? The Celebrity Crush.
A little background about me: I have all the inclinations of your basic stalker; although I like to believe I have some modicum of impulse control. The stalker side of me reared it's ugly head recently, after developing a crush on Ryan Reynolds, the comic actor. I became immediately infatuated and proceded to google him and fantasize about how we would meet and how I could get Alanis out of the way. Of course, I usually succeed in keeping most of my movie star obsessions safely under control, due to the extremely remote chance of any one of them entering my daily orbit of doggie poop bags and donut shop lunches. This convenient barrier to obsessive behavior derailed, however, when I realized that the movie set I had been passing by with the dogs for two weeks, and which had just wrapped, was the set of Ryan's latest movie. I have since been filled with rage. WHY CAN'T I MEET MY RYAN REYNOLDS!? If I had known, I would have hung out by the set, and Ryan would probably have sauntered by with a meat sandwich. Then I would have encouraged Scruffy to chase after him, surely initializing a courtship between us.