Suck it, Disney

Yesterday I went to see Beauty & the Beast 3D. I think movies belong in theaters, and I'd only ever seen it on video when I was babysitting. How I got a 4-year old boy to watch it is beyond me. Whatever, not the point.

I love Disney stories. This one is no exception. HOWEVER, while I was watching the movie, I realized that Belle falls in love with the Beast in like 3 days, tops. I couldn't believe it, but as I sit here thinking about it, that's really what happens. She goes from being miserable at giving up her life to saved her dad to being in love with a BEAST in under a week. Right.

A lot of other fairytale Disney movies are the same way. Aurora from Sleeping Beauty is awakened by a kiss from a guy who's only ever really heard her singing (he's clearly hoping her coma-induced haze will prevent her from seeing just how tiny his penis really is). Jasmine and Aladdin share an amazing night on a magic carpet (read: vibrating bed at a motel) and she's all gaga for him. After that, he fakes who he is to get her to pay attention to him. Not at all a recipe for disaster. I guess he gets points for saving her from that pedophile Jafar and the guards after she's thieving whore. At least in The Little Mermaid Ariel and her guy spent some time together before getting married. Of course, there's something creepy about crabs singing to you to kiss the girl (you'd think crabs would be an indication to stay AWAY from someone). Cinderella only meets Prince Charming at the ball and all of a sudden he's all over town trying to find the foot for the slipper. (Methinks he just wanted the other slipper for himself. Glass was certainly his color.)

So, let me get this straight: If I go for a ride, get lost as all get-out arriving at some ugly dude's house (hey, he's got personality), as long as I bring along an STD or two a singing animal posse, get him to make the O face take him on a "magical ride," and pretend to be something I'm not act sweetly, I'll wind up happily ever after?

Or, how about this. That isn't at all how it works. I've given this a lot of thought over the last few decades years. From my experience and the experiences of my friends, when people fall all over each other at first, syrupy sweet and doe-eyed, it tends to lead to a few things - divorce and single parenthood, not so much happily ever after.

I always believed that falling in love was supposed to come first. That's what you see in all those Disney movies. You fall in love and then work out the rest (though we never get to see what Cinderella looks like at 40, her three screaming kids, and Prince Charming sitting around watching sports on TV. Just saying).

What I've come to see is that it doesn't have to be that way. I always felt like there was something off with me because that felt wrong. (Yes, I know, there IS something else off about me. Shut it.) I've always been most attracted to my guy friends. You see each other at your best (Why yes, I can take a shot from my boobs) and your worst (I didn't really mean to get so hammered on half a gallon of Captain Morgan that I threw up in your toilet for 12 hours). And, after all of that, you STILL want to be with that person. That's a shitload of trust right there. And trust is sexy.

Look at When Harry Met Sally. They didn't even LIKE each other when they first met. They were friends for years before they romance really bloomed. There was the great (who doesn't love a woman faking an orgasm at a family diner?) and the bad (Meg Ryan snotty and sobbing is just gross). Sure, they weren't all crazy and syrupy about it, but I think they were still in love.

What this has all really taught me is that online dating and I probably can't be friends. It's geared toward the Disney-style romance. You chat with someone for a little before you meet them. (If it's eHarmony, they've matched up on 29 dimensions of whatever, so you can trust that it's a good fit. Um, yeah, that led me to an abusive POS. Thanks, eHarmony. Fuck your compatibility matching. But I digress.) Then, you go on a date! And it's supposed to be wonderful!

But there's all this pressure. You're on a DATING site. The point is to meet people to DATE. As you get older, there's more and more pressure to find someone and SETTLE DOWN, and sort of quickly. It's almost like it turns into some kind of business negotiation - what you're willing to do, what you're not, does it work for the two of you? Each of you is playing a role, putting your best foot forward in hopes of keeping the other attracted to you. I don't play so well at this game. I don't dress up for dates (showed up to one in an Oscar the Grouch t-shirt), I say whatever's on my mind, and reveal perhaps too much information about myself.

I don't want the artificiality. I want to know the good, the bad, and the ugly. How else can I decide if I want to spend the rest of my life with you? If you're going to turn like bad cheese after we get married, I'm going to hate you and I will sue for false representations and intentional infliction of emotional distress on top of divorcing you and taking half your shit.

I'm kidding. Mostly.

The problem is that it's hard to meet people these days without using a dating site. But I hate the pressure. It all feels icky. I'd rather be single than endure it. Is all hope lost?

Who knows?

Maybe I'll one day find myself surrounded by singing squirrels, rabbits and butterflies and run smack into my own ugly-on-the-outside-but-beautiful-on-the-inside Prince Charming and we'll ride off into the sunset in pumpkin carriage pulled by horses that don't poop.

My Memories Suite - A giveaway!

I love to take pictures. A lot. I even get in a few now and then. When Joanne and I traveled to Ireland in 2009, I took over 1000 pictures. Yes. I took over A THOUSAND PICTURES. I just couldn't stop. (The inside of every church looks the same after a while. Kept taking pictures anyway.) When my mom and aunt came to visit in July 2010, I kept snapping photos. Of flowers. Of our food. Of us. Of...random stuff.

The problem is, I never do anything with them after I upload them. They just sit on my computer. Every now and then when someone comes over, I make them look at them with me. But that's rare. I've never really been the type to print pictures. Not sure what it is.

So, when I was given an opportunity to review some digital scrapbooking software, I got pretty excited. FINALLY a chance to do something with my pictures!

And I'll say, My Memories Suite is totally awesome. Below you'll find some of what I've been able to do. Those of you who are more creative than I am will no doubt be able to make more amazing scrapbooks than I have.

The really nice thing about the software is that it's set up to guide you through all steps of creation. You can use one of their templates or you can create something from scratch, which is what I chose to do.

You start with the background, add your photos, text, word art, embellishments, shapes, calendars, imprints, etc. It gives you all sorts of options for color, add-ons, and placement on your page.

You can create a scrapbook like I've been working on. Or cards. Or videos. WITH SOUND! You can NARRATE your album! I've always believed I should have a personal soundtrack and with the My Memories software, you can make it happen in your pictures!!

Now here's the best part - I'm having a GIVEAWAY! All you have to do is go to the My Memories website and leave me a comment on my blog or on Facebook and tell me which scrapbooking kit is your favorite. I'll throw everyone's names in some random generator I find on the interwebs and pick one lucky winner on January 23rd!

Want to know what else is pretty awesome? Even if you don't win but want the software, I've got a code that'll get you $10 off the software AND $10 in the store so you can buy kits! Not a bad deal. To take advantage, use code STMMMS7010 when you check out! (Copy and pasting is probably the best way to take the code.)

For great ideas on what you can do with the software, check out their blog, Facebook page, and Twitter!

Moving. Sucks.

I recognize that I'm stating the obvious here, but holy shit, moving sucks. A lot. My apartment looks like a tornado blew threw it on the best of days. But somehow it's worse now. I have a lot of my crap in boxes and still it looks like some kind of boot camp exercise.

No one has ever accused me of being graceful and an apartment that's basically booby trapped is no place for someone like me. I've already slammed my knee into something hard enough to bruise it. I've tripped over more shit than I count. When I was trying to get something off the wall, I just about broke a toe.

I have tons of boxes already packed. I'm trying to be careful about how much I pack into each one since I have to be able to pick them up and lug them down three flights of stairs to my car. (BTW - the next time I tell you I'm moving into an apartment building that doesn't have an elevator, stab me.) What's awesome (and by that, I mean NOT awesome at all) is that my back has started to bother me. I unearthed my back braces and do believe I'll be sporting one, if not both, of them until I'm done with the packing and moving.

My car is a whole other thing. It's filled. With crap. I don't even know what's in there anymore. There's a giant pink blanket covering the back seat with stuff peeking out from underneath. It looks like I live in there. And I know I have to get it all emptied out so I can get boxes shipped out and then pack it up for the trip, but the thought of doing it makes me want to cry.

I want to skip all of the crappy parts about moving and just be on the road. Where's the fucking moving fairy when you need her?

Hard Learner

I'm what you'd call a hard learner. I get my mind set on something and it can take a bit to bring me to my senses. I keep pushing for something, even in the presence of evidence that suggests I ought to be seeking out another course.

For a while now, I've been saying that I'm waiting for my life to start. I kept doing whatever I thought I could to get it jump started, but to no avail. In conversation today, someone pointed out that life never really starts. It's just going on and on. I recognize that to be true, but I see a difference between having a LIFE and living.

I've done some amazing things in Seattle. But a few months ago, I recognized that it was time to move on. I'm missing depth in my life. I still feel like I'm biding my time until something else happens. Unfortunately, it's been like that for a while. The frustration that comes from that isn't tenable in the long run.

Soon after I decided it was time to go, I was approached by a recruiter and began interviewing for a job at a tech start-up here in Bellevue. The position initially seemed promising. My initial interview was arranged rather quickly. At that interview I was told that the next phase would be starting within 1-2 weeks. Things turned to shit quickly after that.

I went almost a month without hearing anything useful. Then I did another interview with a newly hired consultant. It took over a month after that to get the next set of interviews set-up. It was a series of interviews with 4 people at the company and one with the consultant, starting at 1pm and ending around 5pm. At 10am on the morning of the interviews, I got an updated job description. They changed it to a manager position and added a bunch of job duties they knew I wasn't familiar with. The interviews seemed to go well, but two more weeks went by before I had a final interview with the CEO. He promised a decision the following week and asked if they could start the background check process. The following day, he called to tell me I was their top candidate. He also asked to complete a drug screening and background paperwork THAT DAY so that they'd have all the information they needed to make a decision. Yes, after them dicking around for three months, I had to rush around.

The following week, at 7pm on the day the decision was due, instead of being given an answer, I was told they needed more time - through the next week. I told them I wasn't sure I could continue to be a candidate for them. I emailed the next day and told them I would still ike to be considered. The CEO wrote back and told me that they would absolutely continue to consider me "as a finalist" and told me to "Have a good new year's, meanwhile..." At 7pm on the very last day they told me they would take, I received an e-mail telling me they'd decided to hire another candidate. Seriously? Fuckwads.

Along the way, I'd had misgivings. Some were about the financial solvency of the company. Others were about the man who'd be my boss. I was told to expect trouble, that his way of doing things was causing some tension in the company. Additionally, he seemed overly concerned with how bored I would be. This told me a couple things. There was some miscommunication about the work they'd be asking me to do. My would-be boss thought one thing and others in the company thought another. Also, it told me they probably had NO idea all that needed to be done, but wasn't currently being done.

And still I persisted in the interview process. At one point, I told myself, "Well, at least it will be a way to stay in Seattle." Um, hello? Taking a job to stay somewhere is oftentimes just plain stupid. Misery in your job just causes misery in the rest of your life. No amount of money can make up for that. Besides, I'd already realized that my time in Seattle needed to come to a close.

The biggest indicator that something wasn't right was that I started rationalizing what was going on with the interview process. I was making excuses for why things were taking so long and why it was so hard to make a decision. What I could never rationalize though was the way they handled it. It was completely unprofessional. It defied logic. I won't say that it's an indicator of how they handle all aspects of their business. What they're familiar with, they seem to do very well. However, as a tech start-up, they're bound to encounter a lot of the unfamiliar as time presses on. Trying to navigate that with those people would have been a nightmare. It didn't take me long to see that not being hired was a blessing.

But really, it never should have gotten that far. When the process went sideways early on, I should have walked away. I'm still working through why I didn't. I think some of it is that endings are hard, even if they are for the best. I have people I love here, and not living close enough to just drop by and see them makes me sad.

I like Seattle. The weather is mostly moderate, I live in a central location, it has amazing views, and offers tons in the way of outdoor activities and travel. These things aren't enough to endure more frustration and feeling lost and alone. I can visit friends. I don't take advantage of the views and outdoor activities now, and that's unlikely to change in the future.

I've become independent here, and I worry that moving back home will cause me to lose that independence. I'm not the same person I was when I left Florida, and I don't know how my family and friends there will deal with the person I am now. I love who I am and I don't see changing just because it ruffles some feathers. I just don't want to deal with a lot of conflict around it.

Whatever concerns I had about moving back to Florida, I didn't leave myself a lot of options. When the interview process started, I told myself (and anyone who would listen) it was that job or I was heading back. I painted myself into a corner. After I was notified that I didn't get the job, I kicked myself for trapping myself. Now I'm quite glad I did. I needed this push to start on the next part of my journey. I need to move on. More that that, I'm excited about the adventure that awaits.

It's hard to see this chapter of my life come to an end, but there are more chapters to come. All that I've learned over the last 6 years will only serve to benefit me as I move forward. I have confidence I've never before known and it's enabled me to remain relatively calm through the end of my last job and the interview ridiculousness. I'm ready for whatever comes next, even though I have no idea what it is.