My friend Simon is a lot of things. He is a filmmaker, a chocolate cake enthusiast, a critic, a cynic, and a button-up wearer. He is also right. Not all the time, but a good chunk of the time.  Last night, he was right. He suggested I respond to a young man’s invitation by simply writing, “No Thanks.” I have never been good at harsh, solid responses to men. I try to be polite and ladylike. So I buffered my response with an, “I don’t really know you.”  Simon was right.  A simple “No Thanks” would have been better.

In my own defense, the guy said, “I know you live in Canada and all, but I think we should start doing something.” I wasn’t sure if that was a euphemism for something else, so, despite the thousand other reasons I felt no inclination to respond positively, I felt that I ought to decline the offer. That and I don’t respond to facebook messages that begin with the words, “hey mama.” Especially not from a white guy.

Of course the guy followed up, insisting that we could get to know each other, and I found myself responding with a classic bull-filled response about being so over long distance relationships and being too busy with school and work.  Well, I suppose my response was honest enough. I am “so over” long distance relationships. And I am very busy with work and school and trying to finish a damn novel. But would those things really matter if I met someone with whom I had real chemistry? No. They just wouldn’t stand up as a real reason to not pursue the elusive Mr. Right. Or someone that seemed awfully right, for that matter. If I met someone I really hit it off with, distance and busyness would seem like very small obstacles.

Last summer’s brief spell dating a man that shall only be known as “Jersey Shore” (total guido!) was enough to remind me that I should only get involved with someone I really click with. Over the past year, I’ve also learned that I need to stop looking for Kevin 2.0. It would be so easy to continue looking for someone “just like Kevin, only he doesn’t do [insert frustrating thing] and actually likes [thing I like].”  I’m over it. I’ve moved on. And I need another Kevin about as much as he needs another Naomi. I’m pretty sure that amount roughly equates to “not at all, not even a little.”

So where does that leave me?  Single.

Sometimes I feel like I have become incredibly picky, but looking at the guys I’ve been involved with in the past, I know I haven’t been picky enough. I’d rather spend a lengthy period watching all my friends pair off and settle down than to keep dating for the sake of dating. It’s just frustrating. I feel like I’m finally at a place where I’m emotionally ready for another serious relationship, but I’m just not meeting any one that catches my fancy.

I still believe in fairytales and true love and being swept of my feet. Actually, the problem is that I’m just not willing to settle for anything less.

Now, if you excuse me, I shall go find my copy of Sense and Sensibility; perhaps Jane Austen will hold the answers.

Tonight I write about cardigans. Josh requested I write about cardigans, and, as I have little else to write about, I shall offer you a few thoughts about cardigans.

I have a long history with cardigans. As a Scottish school girl, the cardigan was an integral part of my identity. And uniform.  That formative period of my life left me with a general distaste for cardigans. I’ve always been the rebellious type; thus, I felt it necessary to rebel against cardigans for a long time. This led me to embrace several alternative fashion faux pas from the mid 90′s until about 2003. I’m talking about serious faux pas. On many a day, I left the house wearing denim from head to toe. I even carried a denim purse. I owned denim shirts and skirts and jackets and pants, and I wore them all in some sort of ridiculous blue ensemble. Don’t even get me started on the strange color combinations that I paired with my Old Navy tech vest. Although I courted cardigans upon occasion, I was bullied out of my openness to the garments by a giant, butch pain in my ass, who gave me hell for wearing pink.  Looking back, I see nothing wrong with my hot pink sweater, but I suppose anything from the Gap or Old Navy would intimidate a 13-year-old who grew up on a basketball court and lived in over-sized sweat pants.

So it seems strange that cardigans have become a staple of my clothing diet.

In the past six months, I bought at least 5 or 6 cardigans, all of which I’ve over worn to the point of destruction. I love cardigans. Two of said cardigans are pink, and I’m sure everyone I know is sick of seeing me in pink cardigans. On a particularly bad day, I found myself waiting in line at the Tommy Hilfiger outlet, baby pink cardigan in hand. It took every ounce of will power I had to put it back and walk out of the store. I own black cardigans. I own grey cardigans. I have biscuit coloured cardigans. Yes. Plural. Three biscuit coloured cardigans, to be exact. Beige, if you prefer.

Why am I telling you all of this? It just serves to illustrate that we’re a product our journeys. It might be my nature, after all, I come from a long line of cardigan-wearing women. It might be nurture; I was raised with cardigans, sweater sets, and films in which Doris Day wore cardigans. Whatever the reason, cardigans are in my blood.

The sooner we embrace our roots, the living history in us, the better. You can runaway from who you are and your past, but it’s still going to be there. When you finally confront it, it will hit you with a vengeance. You will wake up one day with a closet full of cardigans.

I’m a girl who wears cardigans. I’m not even cool enough to rock a hipster look. I am a Gap poster child reject. And I’m happy with that.

• Walking city streets unobstructed by umbrellas.
• Good drip coffee. Almost everywhere.
• Quality used bookstores.
• Knowing exactly where to buy obscure groceries.
• Or Chinese take-out.
• Bottles of wine for $5 or less.
• The smell of garlic fries filling Safeco.
• And pouring out of the stadium, onto the street, where it mingles with that of popcorn and beer.
• Poseidon, Lord of the Sea – otherwise know as the Edmonds water temperature guy.
• Mac & Jack’s.
• Bumping into old friends.
• Bumping into new friends.
• Bumping. Generally.
• 24-hour fast food chains.
• Ferry rides in the rain.
• Blustery days.
• Walks through old wood growth on familiar paths.
• Waves from the sound, surging over the breakwater.
• Watching pink sunsets from rooftops.
• Front porch nights bleeding into morning over a smoldering hookah.
• Shoe sales.
• Seashells.
• Soft-serve.
• Rockabilly shows in the park.
• Driving too fast.
• Learning too slow.
• And You.
• All of you.

As relocating to a tropical locale is currently beyond my financial means, I did the next best thing. I purchased a Toy Story Action Heroes Adventure Pool, with which I have created my own backyard oasis. At Toys R Us I had been confronted with the difficult choice between said Toy Story pool and a Lightening McQueen pool, but ultimately chose the former because it came with a canon. Seriously. A canon to which one can connect one’s hose in order to launch water across the yard.  Perhaps the choice wasn’t so difficult after all… In the end, I knew I had made the right choice because I incited envy in the small boy behind me in the check-out line.

“Why can’t I have a pool like that,” He asked his mother.

“I bet that lady’s little boy has been really good,” She replied. “Maybe if you’re really good we can talk about it.”

The little boy switched his attention to me. “Is your little boy really good?”

“I don’t have a little boy,” I admitted.  ”I’m buying this for me.”

He blinked, slightly bemused, and then grinned widely. I’m probably the coolest adult that kid has met in a long time.  In any case, he nodded approvingly.

I’m still a child at heart, and I hope I never lose the ability to sit proudly in my Toy Story pool. Growing up is strange in that regard. As much as we must mature and readjust our goals and priorities as we become responsible, independent adults,  I think it’s important to keep a youthful spirit. But I find the balance a little tricky at times. About two weeks ago, I had a crazy freak-out moment. I realized that, despite taking several educational detours, I may actually graduate next summer. And the thought of it scares the pants off of me.

What the hell am I going to do with an English degree?

Regardless, I had planned to go straight to graduate school after finishing my degree, but I didn’t realize I was going to have to start making the hard decisions about where and when and how quite so soon. I’m stunned, actually.  The scariest thing is that it’s all out of my control. If I can’t get into all the required classes I need, I wont graduate. I almost prefer that idea. Tagging on an additional semester would allow me to finish up three minors; excessive, but it would certainly make it seem as though I’d been very studious over the past couple of years.  I guess I’ll start my grad school applications and leave some room for serendipitous developments; whenever I plan my life too carefully, God laughs and throws me a curve ball.

In the meanwhile, I’ll be finishing my novel and drinking beer in my wading pool. The coolest thing about being an adult is that you don’t have to ask anyone to buy you wading pools or beer. (Okay, maybe those are lower on the top-ten list.)

Our neighborhood sucks.

On the surface, it looks like a slice of suburban heaven. The craftsman charm is, in actuality, skin deep and entirely misleading.  Under the facade of picket fences, our neighborhood is a breeding grown for illicit behavior.  The following has occurred within a one block radius of my home in the past 10 months:

• A marijuana grow-op, resulting in the seizure of a home
• Marijuana use on the lawn at the side of my house by two men I’ve never seen before
• A police raid on a garage apartment; we presume this was drug-related
• A motorcycle DWU that resulted in a woman being airlifted to a trauma center
• Two (or was it three?) arson fires in the extension of our development currently under construction
• Our neighbor’s basement tenant beat the snot out of his girlfriend while I watched in horror
• A fatal stabbing
• And – today – a man was shot. Twice. We don’t know why, and the police still have the street closed.

This list ignores the moderately annoying this we deal with on a constant basis… young garage apartment tenants partying until 3 am, punk kids smashing windows in the retail construction two blocks away, graffiti, littering…

This is my neighborhood:

(I choose to ignore the fact that the woman arrested as a person of interest does not look like the sort that would shoot someone.  I’m sure the Surrey RCMP know exactly what they’re doing. )

Regardless, I feel like I’m living with all the hazards of the “hood” without any of the soul.  There’s nobody sitting on the stoop, there’s no hip hop, there’s no double dutch in the street, there’s no fire hydrant spraying a crowd of kids on the hottest day of the year. Perhaps that’s an idealized image that hollywood fed me, but if I have to live constantly looking over my shoulder, I would far rather live in a thriving metropolis than an apathetic suburban cesspool.  In the eleven years we lived in Seattle, we didn’t witness anything close to the crime that is practically in our backyard.

And I suppose it doesn’t help that I’ve been feeling exceptionally home sick lately.

I wrangle munchkins.  It’s a brilliant job. Most days.  But Children’s Ministry has its challenges.  We recently had several weeks of what can only be described as “serious and persistent behavioral challenges” – which is exactly what I called it in the parent letter I sent home; however, I decided to spare the gory details.  This behavior came to a stunning climax one Sunday when every boy in my 1st and 2nd grade class simultaneously needed to use the washroom and took off screaming through the halls with a stunned (and slightly frightened) youth volunteer.  Upon returning, we all put our heads down to think about our actions and spent the remainder of class talking about what constitutes appropriate behavior.  Apparently, although we know that we ought not pee in the sink, it came out during our discussion that one lad had done just that. At least we knew it was wrong, right?

My philosophy is that drawing too much attention to a particularly negative behavior – especially when the child has expressed remorse and understands why the behavior was incorrect – only exacerbates the problem. No more was said about peeing in the sink.  Until this morning.

Today, one mother approached me during the insanity that is parent pick-up.  Several weeks ago, I complimented her son’s art, and he continues to draw quite frequently at home.  She had discovered a fabulous drawing of a little boy stuck on her fridge, and questioned her son about it.  This mom had wanted to understand the fountainous yellow flow that the boy in the picture was releasing.  Her son left her in no doubt that it was a picture of the little boy who had peed in the sink.  I guess the moment was more formative for everyone involved than I had originally realized.  **sigh** I suppose for 6 and 7 year olds, it was very exciting and rebellious. And epic?

Thankfully, the mom was in very good humor about the whole affair.  With three boys of her own, she really “got it.”  And she didn’t blame  me.  She did, however, promise me the picture.

So I will frame the picture and put it up on my wall.    In many ways, it was a landmark for everyone – for the witnesses of the event, for the behavioral smack down that followed, and for the opportunity I had to bond with a parent over a sticky situation. The picture will be a great ice breaker whenever someone visits me in my office.

Our “Grade 5 Grad Event” was tonight.  I work in Kids Unlimited, the Children’s Ministry at my church. In our program, the kids progress to Junior High at the end of fifth grade.  We had a solid turnout, and the evening was a complete riot.  I forgot just how wild youth events can be.  Many moons ago (alright, about five years ago), I worked almost exclusively with Junior High kids.  At the time, I felt it was my calling and I was totally passionate about it.  Having experienced a wild night of youth, I have realized just how much I love working with children.

Of course, I still adore adolescents, but they’re so complicated. Tonight I had a lovely talk with three fabulous young women about dating. They’re 11. Yikes!  Still, the girls said some surprisingly accurate things about dating…

• “Don’t have your friend tell him you like him. Seriously. It’ll make you look like a desperate woman. Nobody wants to date a desperate woman.”
• “If you kiss too many guys… Well, people would think pretty badly about you.”
• “I can’t date right now, so I just tell boys I like them.  Ya know? For later. So that they know. He should know.”
• “Girls can probably ask a guy out. I asked a guy to go out with me.”
• “If you talk on the phone with him for like 6 hours, that’s obsessive. I’ve totally done that.”
• “If your battery dies or your mom yells at you, you can get off the phone and go on facebook.”
• “I’m not getting facebook until I’m 13. Facebook leads to dating. A lot of the time.”
• “We both like each other, but we’ve been friends for YEARS.  It’s awkward now.”
• “If you become more than friends… I’m not sure you can really go back after that.”
• “It’s best to find out whether he likes you back. At least you know.”
• “If a guy is mean to you, he doesn’t really like you. Guys shouldn’t be mean to their girlfriends.”

Kids may be growing up faster than ever before, but at least they’re not stumbling blindly onward.  These girls have already learned dating lessons I didn’t learn until I was in my twenties. I’m not sure that’s an entirely bad thing. Perhaps it will save a little heartache.   At the very least, kudos to parents for raising confident, level-headed, articulate young ladies!

In any case, it makes me feel old to realize I’ve been doing the dating thing for almost 10 years.

Over the weekend I lost my blog, the blog that once occupied the cyberspace in which this post is sitting, the blog that documented the past two years of my life. I wasn’t devastated. Had I lost the 4 years documented in my MySpace blog – the blog that really followed my transition from anxious high school senior to confident woman – I would have found myself in the depths of despair. The result would have been extended, quality time with my good friends Ben and Jerry, as well as a resurgence of my shopaholism. But I wasn’t particularly upset. I was a little irked at the inconvenience, but I didn’t feel the nagging sense of loss that hangs in the back of my head whenever I imagine the results of a MySpace hack.  I’ve lost the sole documentation of the past two years of my life, and I feel nothing.

The past two years have been exciting, formative, and important. They really meant something to me. So why didn’t my blog?  Why don’t I care?

I think it’s because I stopped being shockingly honest with what I wrote.  I’ve become so aware that I’m a role model that I stopped truly writing what I thought and felt.  If I did something obscenely stupid, there was a time in which I would have shared every delicious, gritty detail of my failure for the entertainment of anyone who dared to read. Those of you that know me probably recall a good many of these misadventures.  I guess the problem is twofold. One – I’ve grown up and I’m not as amusingly misguided as I once was, and Two – when I do mess up, I haven’t wanted to publicly document it.

But, the truth is I’m not perfect. My imperfections have guided me on an exciting journey thus far, and they’ve made me into the woman I’ve become. My imperfections are also great blog fodder.

From now on, I intend to be a lot more real and frank in my writing.