I love hugs.  I will hug anyone, dearest friend or complete stranger, anytime and anyplace and anywhere.  Proper hug technique consists of a) tight constriction of the arms, b) careful head placement, and c) knowing how long the hug should last.  Some of my friends need to work on their hugs, and some are masters.  One of my favorite huggers is Gym Buddy.  I see Gym Buddy for several hours every day, since we go to the gym every day, so that translates to a lot of hugs. In fact, for the past several days, Gym Buddy is the only person who has hugged me, I think.  Why is this relevant?  Because it narrows down the list of suspects considerably.

When I was showering yesterday morning, I noticed some bruising on my upper arms.  “Weird,” thought I, and then forgot about it.  After spending yet more time hugging Gym Buddy yesterday, I now look like I’ve been stomped by a gang of satyrs wearing steel shod booties.  I don’t really mind because the bruises don’t hurt all that much, but it does make me look rather like the victim of some womanbeating.  I’ll have to fix this situation, maybe wear protective padding when I see Gym Buddy.  Actually, I need to be wearing more clothes to cover up my entire body, since my eczema has exploded and now I look like I’ve been in a fight with a cheese grater and lost.  Badly.

To end on not quite a happy, but a HILARIOUS note, I have a question for all the ladies.  My friend Plum Muffin was engaged with a boy (a boy who ended up being so horrible that he does not deserve a pseudonym, only my eternal disdain, and he’s lucky to get even that) who was quite awkward.  How awkward, you ask?  While feeling her up, his idea of pillow talk was to tell her that her breasts were very supple.

Supple.

Supple is a word for the SAT and bodice ripper novels, not a word to incite passion and facilitate hot sex.  My question to you is a) can you top this little gem, or b) what would YOU do if you were confronted by this unfortunate choice of words?  My response to this story was to laugh uncontrollably for about five minutes, so you can guess what would happen if it were to occur in real life.  The resulting emasuclation would be enough to render him, as well as all his currently living relatives completely sterile.

-a length of rope
- pearl necklaces (2)
-a blow torch
-a bag of (popped) popcorn
-empty waterbottles (5)

I also found a pair of fairy wings from Halloween, which reminded me of an anecdote that I felt like sharing.  My family is weird.  Very weird indeed.  This most recent Halloween, I was at my parents’ house, and we decided to run to the quaint downtown district of our town and patronize a gourmet chocolate shop.  When I say “we” decided, I really mean that I told everyone to get into the car because I needed my chocolate covered gummy bear fix.  My mother’s workplace always does a costumed lunch, so she had her Sherlock Holmes outfit all set.  My younger brother was Michael Jackson, and I was a fairy.  My father had no costume, but we were able to find him all the trappings of an admirable King Arthur.  So off we went, in full regalia, to the chocolate shop.  Our town has plenty of holiday spirit, so we figured that there would be plenty of families and children gallivanting in costumes of their own.

As it turns out, this was a completely false assumption.

We faced a moment of indecision as we sat in our parked car, clearly the only dressed-up people within ten miles.  However, the Anthropy family is a brave bunch; squaring our fedoras, crowns, wings, and pipes, we stepped out into the street and proceeded boldly forth.  Well, it was maybe less of a “proceeding boldy” movement and more of a “skulking quickly through the shadows, trying to get behind cover as much as possible.”  Despite our best efforts, we did find we got some circus freak-worthy stares, but by and large people were tolerant of our eccentricity; we even got some of our bonbons on the house, since we had the moxie to be costumed fools.

Anyway, I just wanted to give you a bit of insight as to why I write like I do.  It’s clearly because I was raised by creative lunatics.

I am immensely sorry about missing my post yesterday, but things are afoot in Miss Anthropy’s world right now.

Today I want to talk about your neuroses and you.  Everyone has them, whether they admit it or not, but when is the right time to tell a significant other about all your weird little habits?  Some people say you should lay it all on the line up front; this is clearly a bit of idiocy because if you start listing off all your odd points, most people will at best think you aren’t very discrete, and at worst you’ll send them running and screaming in the opposite direction.  Another camp says you should hide all your secrets until after the wedding night, but seeing as how marriage isn’t the lifelong bond it once was, this is also a dumb idea.  Here at the Singlehood Chronicles, we advocate a happy medium approach, where you save the biggest ones until you’re reasonably sure he won’t get scared off.  Minor neuroses can be used as ice breakers, and in this spirit, I wil share a few of mine with you today.

I have basically two kinds of neurosis: food and non-food.  Probably 80% of the weird habits I maintain have to do with my food, and here are my top three:

1) Fruit Salad.  It takes me about ten minutes to eat fruit salad because I must separate it into the separate fruits, organize each piece from smallest to largest, and then eat this whole ensemble one group at a time, largest to smallest, in reverse alphabetical order by fruit name.  I no longer get cups of fruit salad to go, since I had a bad experience where one grape escaped detection until I was almost done with my snack.  The resulting freak out from disorderly consumption of fruit salad forced me to give the remainder of the food away and be murderously grumpy for the next few hours.

2) My food absolutely cannot touch.  I always prefer to serve myself because I can make sure that the entree, salad, and sides are separated by clean plate.  Whenever possible, I’ll eat with those separated plates commonly used by toddlers or picky children.  There are some exceptions to this rule, but not many.  I also can’t stand when sauces or juices from one dinner component leaks and contaminates another component.

3) If I am craving a certain type of food, I cannot be satisfied by ANYTHING but that exact type of food.  I have gone for literally days without eating because the food item I was craving was not at hand.  And no, I’m not pregnant, because this has been a bad habit of mine for many years.

I don’t really want to share my non-food neuroses, since most of them are just weird without any possible kind of charming angle.  So I’ll leave you with this bit of perspective.  Obviously, I don’t have really the first clue about how things SHOULD be done, but here is my suggestion for how to handle neuroses: getting to know your partner is like embarking on a booby-trapped Easter egg hunt.  Sometimes the treats will be in plain sight, and sometimes you’ll have to look a little harder for them.  And sometimes an egg will not, in fact, bear candy or prizes, but will instead unleash a big ball of CRAZY. Or you’ll be reaching for a cluster of eggs, and you’ll fall into a pit of angry billy goats.  This metaphor has gotten a bit out of control and I’m not sure how, but yeah, you get the gist of it, right?

Anyway, I had to cancel my plans to see my friends, Big Brother and Little Brother, because at this point, I am so behind on my cooking for tonight and tomorrow that I just need to lock myself in the kitchen for a while.  You know, where a good woman should be.  My dessert baking has gotten a bit out of control, since it’s a source of stress relief, so I decided to make everything small so I can bring a flight of three desserts to dinner tonight.  I’m a little hesitant to post it, in case Mr. Australia is reading it (and I KNOW he might be, since he was reading it last night when I popped over.  Ohhhhh the mortification…).  Here’s the plan: I’m going to  press “enter” about twenty times and then post what I’m bringing for dessert.  Mr. Australia, if you’re reading this I TRUST YOU not to look, or at least to act reasonably surprised later.

Okay, it was only 15 times.  I got bored.

1) Strawberry Shortcake: ridiculously yummy vanilla shortbread cookies layered with fresh strawberries and vanilla bean whipped cream
2) Sticky Toffee Pudding: a sort of date custard served with a chocolate toffee sauce.  I’m going to attempt to make this in ramekins
3) Lemon Meringue Tartlets: lemon curd (butter, lemon zest, butter, lemon juice, butter, and sugar. and butter), in a bit of pie shell with fluffy meringue baked on top.

Needless to say, ALL of this stuff is made from scratch.  Also, I’d like to point out that it is IMPOSSIBLE to chop a date…the best you can do is saw furiously and then kind of rip it to pieces.

Here is how my day was supposed to go down:

9:00 – grocery shopping for epic cooking/bakery action
10:00 – 11:30 – baking tart crust and cookies
12:00 – 14:00 – hanging out with some friends (who live about 40 min. away)
14:30 – 16:00 – climbing at the gym
16:30-17:30 – finish tarts and prep pudding
18:00 – go to Mr. Australia’s house for what is sure to be a wonderful dinner with his BEAUTIFUL and very huggy daughter (I met her last night, and you could say she’s a real gem)

Busy, but fun.  So far, here is my progress:

8:00 – wake up and discover I cannot open my eyes
8:05 – stumble to the bathroom and desperately claw at the gunk that is gluing my eyelashes together
8:07 – get a little smarter about it, realize pulling my eyelashes out is not the correct idea, and manage to wipe it off with scalding water
8:08 – see my own eyes in the mirror and fall backwards in disgust at their redness and swollen-ness
8:09 – realize that maybe, just maybe, both my eyes have been contaminated in one fell swoop by Pink Eye.

This has to be some kind of grand cosmic joke, right??  I finally get the rack of love to ease up a little bit and then BOOM, HAHA, FOOLED YOU MISS ANTHROPY, NOW YOU’RE A HORRIBLE HOSE MONSTER WHO WILL NEVER BE LOOKED AT TWICE, UNLESS IT IS A DOUBLE TAKE OF UNSPEAKABLE HORRORRRRRRR!!!!  Or something to that effect.  Seriously though, I am a little more than a little bummed out.

So now it’s about a quarter past 9, and I’m sitting in the examination room at Urgent Care, waiting for this problem to go away.  At this point, I’m not even sure if I’m going to be allowed to be around other people, especially kids (which would neatly obliterate my plans for this evening).  This is probably the first time in my life that I’ve ever voluntarily rushed off to the doctor’s as quickly as I possibly could, but I reeeaaallllly want to be able to do everything on my list today!  And I’m not even going to THINK about tomorrow’s Super Bowl Party/what I will do if I can’t go to Gym Buddy’s Super Bowl Party…

Anyway, this is kind of an impromptu blog, but I needed to vent.  Expect more blogs later in the day as things (good or bad) happen.  Signing off now to get prodded in the eyeballs for a bit, but it’s okay because this might be the closest thing to human contact I get for a few days.

Do you have friends from highschool (or even earlier) who you just know are going to be important people in a few years/are important people now?  I do, in fact, most of the people I knew in high school fall into this classification.  But I want to talk about one in particular, my old speech and debate partner, My Parents’ Favorite (MPF).  I call him this because whenever my father would drive us to debate tournaments, I would be relegated to the back seat so that MPF could sit up front.  My father also bought peanut M&M’s for MPF all the time, and these M&M’s were ONLY for MPF.  If he caught me sneaking some, I was in big trouble, because those were MPF’s candies and I was fat enough already.  I used to “joke” that my parents loved MPF more than me and were more interested in him anyway and would willingly trade me (although, I don’t know how funny that joke actually was because I was only 80% kidding).

MPF definitely noticed the attention he was getting, too.  Everytime he came over to my house for a party, my parents would pounce on him and begin the interrogation about what was going on in his life.  The most recent get together I had in December was the exception to this, and MPF was at a bit of a loss.   “Miss Anthropy,” he said in an aside, “your dad hasn’t jumped on me yet, it’s kind of weird.”  I offered to go admonish my father for his lack of attention, but MPF was swift to assure me that it wasn’t necessary.  Of course, I did it anyway and then walked away snickering, leaving MPF cowering before my father’s interest.  Ha.  I’d do it again.  In fact, it’s almost certain that I WILL do it again.

Anyway, I’m glad that My Parents’ Favorite has gotten into an EXCELLENT law school (this is your reward), and I hope that he goes into marital law, or whatever it’s called, so he can handle what I’m sure will become a long string of divorces.  Also my prenup agreements, since I don’t want my trophy husbands mooching off of my many riches.  Congratulations, and also GODDAMN YOU!  Do you realize what this means for me?  Your success, and my parents’ knowledge of it, means that I look like an underachiever in comparison and now I need to work harder!  I’m too bloody happy cruising through my college education; I don’t even know how to exert myself anymore, so clearly you’re going to have to bring your game down a little because I’m incapable of stepping my own up.  Thanks a lot, you jerk.

I’m also happy that he went to school at Puget Sound, and will probably be going to U Chicago for law school; since he seems to naturally suck all attention away from me, I’m pretty sure I’d never get a date if he were around all the time.  Conversely, if he WAS here, I could blame my lack of dates on him and have a reasonable precedent for doing so.  Maybe I like that idea better…

It’s 2:30 in the afternoon, do you know where your roommates are?  I sure don’t because I have just woken up and boom, half my day is gone.  I feel robbed.  But that’s not really what I wanted to chat about today.

As you know, I have been going to the gym with Gym Buddy just about every day so I can work on what USED to be a Revenge Body, but what has just turned into my Feel Better About Myself Body.  I’ve actually been enjoying it quite a bit; Gym Buddy is always fun to be around, and he’s very good at getting me to do things that I don’t want to do.  Also, he’s strong enough to hold me back when I try to dive into a coffee shop for some cheesecake.

The problem is that when I spend quality time at the gym, I’m also spending quality time with the OTHER gym denizens.  There’s no winning here, the girls are all thin as shoelaces and make me feel fat.  The boys are split into two groups: good looking ones and non-good looking ones, but it’s actually one big supergroup of boys who will never date me.  Ho hum.  There is one more group I have discovered, and these, THESE are the worst of all.  This is a group of people whom I could cheerfully see hung upside down by their ears and doused rigorously in a bath of bleach.  I would like to horribly emasculate these people at a public speaking event in front of every bitchy ex-girlfriend they have every had.  These are people who exist without souls, without decency, without any sign of the battles and trials human beings have endured for thousands of years to become the higher order organisms we are today.

These people are busybodies.

A busybody is someone who looks askance at you when you are setting up your weights and tells you, “That’s probably going to be too heavy for you.”  A busybody is someone who watches you sit down at a new machine and scoffs at you.  A busybody is someone who should rot in the deepest pits of Hell.

Part of this violent sentiment is that busybodies annoy me in general.  But let’s examine this a bit further; at every gym, there will be people who have been doing the work out thing for a while, and there will be those who are just starting.  Whether you’re a beginner or a veteran, the fact that you are at the gym trying to work on yourself is admirable.  As someone who is starting out, I can tell you that the WHOLE REASON I started working out is…GUESS WHAT, I AM COMPLETELY INSECURE ABOUT MY BODY/FITNESS LEVEL!  Wow, whoever could have imagined that??  In fact, I am pretty sure that everyone at the gym who doesn’t look like Rambo is suffering from similar self-esteem issues.  So for someone else to cut a beginner down when even putting one overweight toe into the gym is a big scary step is utterly reprehensible.  So, to all the busybodies in my gym and in any gym anywhere in the world, piss off.  And think about this: by and large, the world is not run by the superfit.  While you lot are spending all your time sweating and working on your abs and pecs and whatever else, us roly polies are sitting behind desks and attending conferences and making deals that completely dwarf your entire existence.  So go ahead, I DARE you to tell me that I can’t benchpress 40 lbs, because maybe one day I will command a commerce EMPIRE that will weigh, oh, I don’t know, let’s be conservative and say 400 MILLION POUNDS.  Let’s see you bench that, tough guy.

On the other hand, it is COMPLETELY ACCEPTABLE for me to celebrate when I can lift the same amount of weight as a boy who looks to be in much better shape than I am.  So there.

It’s the dawn of a new era.  Not just a new year, but a new decade.  I am single after almost half a decade of dating.  It’s the start of a new semester, the beginning of spring, the birth of what’s sure to be a neverending stream of sunshining days…

…I think it’s about time I stopped sleeping on the ground like a damn refugee.

I came to this college campus last summer, and since I was only going to be renting a room in a house for the summer semester (maybe two months), I didn’t want to go through the hassle of setting up a bed there.  Okay, fine, that’s reasonable.  Then, some crazy things happened, and I ended up moving in with my two wonderful roommates, Techie and Dr. Bro, but we weren’t sure if I was going to stay there or what, so I still didn’t move in my bed.  So, a semester goes by, and I am sleeping on a mattress on a ground.  In fact, I was still sleeping in said unacceptable situation until I finally manned up and went and bought myself a bed frame.  Yes, it’s from IKEA and was, in fact, very cheap.  But I took it home and primed it and painted it and fed it and took it on walks and made it my own, so I am VERY proud of it.  And today, after four hours of blood, sweat, tears, and copious amounts of foul swearing, it is DONE.  I am sitting on it now, in fact.  This may be my very proudest achievement.  However, a lesson for all of you out there who might follow in my noble footsteps: putting a bed together while naked is not the best idea in the world, and I would recommend at least a pair of pants.  Also, you should make sure your blinds are all the way shut.

Why did I pick now to do it?  For several reasons.  This is an act of independence from the parental umbrella; I bought this bed, I painted this bed, I carried this bed up four flights of stairs, I assembled this bed.  Therefore, it is mine.  Second, I did it for the dignity; every  human being should be able to have a little elevation.  It no longer pleased me to have my rubbish bin at eye level every time I was sitting in bed.  Now, I am lording it over that rubbish bin; I am at least two feet taller than it is, so hah!  So yep, that’s why I did it.

…it also may have had something to do with Mr. Australia mentioning that he wanted to drive up to Berkeley to visit me.  Maybe.  But I swear I would have gotten around to it eventually.  Maybe.

As I mentioned, I am sitting in the bed right now, but there are squeaky noises and some swaying action, and I am a bit sketched out.  It’s not my darling bed’s fault, it’s obviously mine for being a sub-par carpenter.  Although, I’m not sure that putting together IKEA furniture qualifies me as a carpenter…

Oh, also, I’ve been informed that I’m developing a bit of a following at Mills College, in Oakland, California, due to Dr. Bro’s fabulous girlfriend, The Girlfriend (whom you can now read about on the “Characters” page).  Er, yes, not my most original nickname, and it does pose the question of what do I call my other roommate’s girlfriend…I’m working on it.  Anyway, I’d like to extend a formal nod of greeting to my new readers at Mills and beyond.  I hope you have a day free from itchy sawdust in your body crevices.

I just got back from yet another fun evening with Mr. Australia, but I remembered that I needed to tell you one more detail about my visit to the optometrist today.  At the end of the checkup, I’m about to leave, when my doctor sticks his head back into the room.

Doctor: Oh, by the way, Miss Anthropy, I noticed you have something in your right eye.
Miss Anthropy: …oh?
Doctor: Yes, you appear to have a corneal ulcer.
Miss Anthropy: …OH?!?
Doctor: You probably got it from sleeping with your contacts on (he is correct), and if you keep doing that, you’ll develop worse ulcers and you won’t be able to wear contacts anymore.  Have a nice day.

This is why I abhor doctors.  Dear Doctor Fain, how dare you casually tell me that I seem to have open sores on my eyeball??  Isn’t this something you should have expounded on, perhaps?  How serious is this??  Can other people see it, or will they be able to when my eyeball begins to decompose??  I should have explained to him that I am single, and therefore cannot afford to be walking around with one normal eye AND ONE OOZING PIT WHERE MY OTHER NORMAL EYE SHOULD BE!  I mean, my god, I’m already trying to work around so many other abnormalities, but this one seems like it might shoot straight to the top of my “Panic About Weird Health Things” list (right after a supposedly analomous “hard spot that juts out” inside my lady cavity that Mr. Australia found tonight).  Sorry, I know that was TMI, but if I can’t say it on my blog, where can I say it?

Oh great, the fire alarm is now going off, so I must run.

Today I had to go to the eye doctor.  I hate going to the doctor, any kind of doctor, ever.  These past few weeks have been heinous in that I’ve put off any kind of non-emergency doctor visit for the past two or three years, and so I’ve been running this medical gauntlet where I’ve seen everyone from my regular doctor to my gynecologist to my dermatologist to my orthodontist…ugh.  Anyway, today was the optometrist, and there was one kind of eyedrop that made my eyes swell up like golf balls and turn redder than Hester Prynne’s scarlet letter.  It’s calming down a bit now, but I still look like the Medusa, which makes me sad because I’m going to see my new friend, Mr. Australia (yes, he’s from Australia) tonight, and I’d rather not look like a monster. 

Of course, regular visits to the doctor are important, because you have to stay healthy when you’re single.  If you get sick, there isn’t anyone to make you soup or rub your head or listen to your whining.  Well, I guess there’s always your mom, but come on, have some dignity.  Also, being sick is NOT attractive.  At all.  Ever.  So unless you’re willing/have the time to put yourself in confinement like a Victorian pregnant woman, you’ll be out in public with your runny nose and bug eyes and blotchy face, and it’ll take you WEEKS, if not MONTHS to get over the negative PR you’ll generate.  I know I don’t want to be “that ugly diseased girl on the 4th floor.” 

I want to close by announcing two things.  First, I’ve decided that it’s okay to publicize my blog.  No, I’m not going to use real names, either mine or anyone else’s, but I will include a page on the toolbar where I introduce all the various characters and their pseudonames for your perusal.  Second, I want to address the naysayers who thought I wouldn’t be able to keep up my blogging activities: HAHA YOU NEANDERTHALS, LOOK!  IT’S BEEN EIGHT DAYS OF FAITHFUL, ON TIME BLOGGING!  SO THERE!  Today, as I was writing this, I felt a tickle on my arm and saw that there was a spider creeping up my shoulder.  I didn’t stop blogging, I just brushed it off and kept going.  I have to admit though, that this did come out of my mouth:

AHHAHHHOHMYGODTHERE’SASPIDERBUTIT’SOKAYNOWBECAUSEISMASHEDITALREADY

I had to slow it down and translate again for my father and brother, both of whom insist I was speaking roughly at the speed and volume of a sonic boom.