true confessions

What do you think is the modern day equivalent of those '40s and '50s confessional magazines? Could it be...blogging??!?!!??

Not in my case, I hasten to add, because everything I tell you is 100% true. Mainly because, really, you can't make this shit up, as I remind you every freakin' week. The things I see, hear, and do are far stranger than most fiction***, and that's not even taking into consideration that I don't tell you people EVERYTHING. But, I digress. I'm here to unburden myself. Bless me, father, for I have sinned (against good taste and judgment)...

Yesterday was apparently National Bad Decision Day. I went to the gym, as I do almost every Sunday afternoon, it being my most favorite day to work out, and then I proceeded to do some errands. There were a few things I needed to pick up. My son needed minutes for his ghetto cell phone, and I prefer to buy an actual card, because I don't trust the Tracfone website. I also needed some mineral powder so that I can continue to look beautiful (ahem) and some conditioner (ditto, and also, ahem.) None of those errands would, on the surface, require a person to go to DSW, since, y'know, all they sell is shoes. Nevertheless, there I was.

You see where this is going, right? They had UGG sweater boots for $99.95, which is totally the universe telling me I should have them. (Plus, I never spent the hundred bucks I won for building my muskles, it's still sitting in my paypal account.) Not exactly the same ones I showed you; they don't have the fold-over with the buttons. Which, really? I think that's a plus because needless doodads like those buttons are the kind of thing that fall off when you least expect it. Also, they had that brown color and it doesn't look as nice in person. So I bought cream. Cream-colored sweater boots. Why, yes, I have lost my mind, thanks for asking. They're adorable. They're lined in sheepskin, so you can wear them without socks. (You may or may not know, but I dislike socks. And also, when I go to yoga, and you have to take your shoes off before entering the room, it'll save a step.) Let's just hope for a dry and snowless winter, so that I can wear these for more than the months of October and November.

I felt I needed to confess all this solely because if any of you all see me wearing these boots, I wouldn't want a little bell to go off in your brain (ding!) and have you say, "Um, Andrea, aren't those the UGG boots you made such a fucking big deal about NOT buying?" No, total transparency here, yo.

The next confession, however, is motivated entirely from some kind of base impulse to publicly humiliate myself. (Hey, it won me that hundred bucks, so don't knock it.) Well, that and the fact I think it is hilarious and I would like to brighten up the beginning of your work week. Because I love you all.

Luxuriating in my haze of bad decisions made and the afterglow of boot-buying, and also being in that state of tiredness last night where you are too exhausted to do anything useful and yet you can't sleep, and spurred by someone else's blog in which they mentioned the embarrassing way the met their future (and current, haha) husband, and having just last week discussed with Led Zep Girl how, shockingly, the old geezer dating sites want our business, I made myself a dating profile. NOT on an old geezer site, thanks very much, I hasten to add. The last time I did this kind of thing was in 2005, and it lead to my very brief but very bitterness-inducing acquaintance with The Lawyer, the only man whom I can honestly say I deeply regret fucking (and you all know my ex-husband, if only in theory, so you know that's saying something.) So, yeah, my track record with this kind of business is not, y'know, stellar. But neither is my track record in any kind of romantic shenanigans and I haven't become a nun yet, so why the hell learn from experience?

And so I had to choose a profile picture. Since the vast majority of the pictures I have of myself on my computer are underwear shots in which I am trying to ascertain whether my lats are growing quicker than my thighs are getting even fatter than they already are (short answer:no) and have all or most of my head cut off, I went with the same picture I use as my avatar on my other blog and on my weightlifting boards, the "delts in the mirror" shot. I like it 'cause it's kinda artsy, my shoulders look fabulous, and because I was concentrating on getting the angle of my delts right, I didn't do anything weird with my face in it. So, lo and behold, I got messaged by a gentleman who said it was the most surprisingly sexy picture he'd seen on the dating site, and the juxtaposition of my guns with my stern but pretty librarian look (wearing my glasses, all y'all) was, and I quote, yummy. Huh. Not surprised to hear I look yummy, because that's what you pick a picture you like for, nomimsayin, but stern? There you go. More proof positive that I have bitchface all the time and I don't even know it.

Okay, maybe I do know it. A few weeks ago, someone confided to me that she's having a torrid affair (is it an affair if you aren't married? she isn't, it's all legit) with a guy she met at her gym. I was like, "hey! how do you meet guys at the gym and I never do?" and then, immediately, "oh, wait, it's because I have my bitch face on all the time, right?" And thus, boys and girls, I am driven to the ignominy of internet dating. Where apparently bitchface is alluring.

Anyway, if I do actually blind date anyone, I'm sure my horrible evenings will make entertaining blog fodder. Sacrifice for art. I live to serve, y'all.

xoxo

Oh, for god's sake, I forgot the footnote.

***Any fiction writer will tell you that you can base a plot entirely on real life events and have an editor tell you it's not believeable. "But it really happened!" is not justification.