One year later…

It’s a little hard to believe that it’s been one whole year since I posted on this blog.  I kept meaning to give an update to what few remaining readers I may have, but the days and months kept escaping me, until here we are!  A new year, a new decade, and that’s right, my 30th birthday is tomorrow.  In 3 hours, I will officially kiss my 20s goodbye and move on to the next phase!

I must admit having mixed feelings about turning 30.  I’ve never been someone to get particularly worked up over my birthday, but this is the first birthday in a long time that has seemed like an actual milestone.  And even though I am very happy with my life, there is something about this birthday that has gotten me a bit wistful/nostalgic.  Still, I am trying not to dwell too much about the past and the coulda, woulda, shouldas.  Of course there are things I regret in my last 3 decades of life, but I know it doesn’t do me any good to think about those things and I need to just keep moving forward.

So what has SF been up to in 2009, you ask?  In a nutshell, 2009 was a year of long hours at work but also numerous special occasions to celebrate and lots of travel.  I worked on two trials.  I traveled to New York and Chicago (for work).  I traveled to Colorado, Oregon (twice), Mexico, Las Vegas (twice), Indiana, Washington DC and Jamaica (not for work).  I was a bridesmaid in two friends’ weddings and attended two more as a guest.  I met some of my oldest friends’ new babies and learned that others will become moms and dads in 2010.  I continued to grow even closer with my wonderful boyfriend, and spent some time with his immediate family.  And I made some steps forward in thinking about what I want to do with my career.

With respect to my career, I decided to look into moving out of the firm world and into the law school world, as a Legal Research and Writing professor.  Most recently, I applied for a teaching position at a West Coast law school that shall not be named.  While I am still unsure about whether I would want to move to the city where this partcular law school is located, it makes me feel good to be putting myself out there and getting the ball rolling.  Yesterday I received a thin envelope from the law school and I assumed that it was the standard, “Thank you, but no thank you” letter.  But instead it was a letter informing me that consideration of applications will now continue after winter break, and that I should let them know if I get another position in the meantime.   So we shall see!

It’s really difficult to know what will make me happy in my career.  Sometimes I think that I would really love to work less hours, to have more time for myself, to do something less stressful.  Other times I feel like I love the challenge of my job, the level of clients that we represent, the problem solving and intellectual aspect of it.  And I’m trying to decide not only what is good for me now, but what will be good for me if I get married and if we have kids.  On the one hand, I feel like I should be working as hard as I can and saving as much money as I can right now, before I get to that stage; on the other hand, once I want to start a family I know that I will want to already be settled in the job/career that will be good for that life, so I should probably figure it out now.  Sometimes I feel like I’m looking at a giant puzzle, and so few pieces are set in place that the rest of the puzzle is a mystery.  To work at a firm?  At a law school?  Somewhere else entirely?  To live in LA, or to move somewhere different?  To have kids?  Not to have kids?  In a way the uncertainty is exciting, but I also would really like to have things more figured out.  And I don’t know how to get out of the limbo phase because all my decisions hinge on each other and will also be affected by conversations that my boyfriend and I will need to have, but aren’t having just yet.

The bottom line is that 2010 is a huge question mark.  The only thing I have no doubt about is that this will be a year of change, and that I am very excited to find out what those changes will be!

Till next time, dear readers, Happy New Year!

xoxo, SF

Year 30

Even though my posts have become much fewer and much farther between, I haven’t resigned this blog because I know that the moment I do, I will be instantly struck with the urge to write another post.  I am keeping the blog here so that I can return periodically with updates on the life of SF.  So, for my dear readers (if any), here is a brief recap of the last couple of months.

1.  I was stranded in L.A. for Christmas because of the freakish weather in the Pacific Northwest, but happily I got to spend a lovely Christmas Day with friends.  I also discovered that one of the perks of being an only child is that my parents saved our Christmukkah celebration until I got home, so we opened all our presents and had a nice meal with my grandfather on Dec. 27th.  I was so happy to see my family, albeit belatedly.  I also had the good fortune of seeing my best friend who lives in England and was in town.  And the whole week, my wonderful BF was taking all sorts of photos on his camera phone (he was back East with his own family) and texting them to me so that we felt like we were together.  Shmoopy?  Who, us?

2.  Yesterday was my 29th birthday, or as I was reminded by several people, the beginning of my 30th year on this planet.  This is poised to be a very interesting year.  In some ways it will be a scary and uncertain year, with the state of the economy and the general feeling of flux.  But I still (perhaps naively) have high hopes that this will be a fabulous year.  I think it will be a year of change and a year of growth.  And I can’t wait to see where it brings me. 

3.  This year I will be in two wedding parties (so far – you never know what might happen!), attending at least two bachelorette parties, and going on a couple of cool vacations (in just a few days, Vail; at the end of the year, Australia!).  

4.  In sadder news, the girl who has been my best work friend and lifeline since we started as summer associates together in the summer of 2004 is leaving me (what about my needs?!) and moving up north.   I am still in complete denial about my life after she leaves the firm, so I am trying not to think about it.  (SF covers her ears.  La la la la la la!)

5.  My relationship, which is now four months old, is still swimming along perfectly.  I am at a loss for what to say about it that will adequately describe it, but I have been feeling a LOT of warm fuzzies.   I don’t think I ever realized that I could love someone so much, and I know we are just getting started.

6.  My New Year’s resolution is to dust off my elliptical machine and use it for something other than a clothes hanger, and so far so good.   My trick is that I am totally obsessed with renting DVDs of the show “Friday Night Lights” on Netflix (I am at the end of season 1.  It’s so good!!)  So I put on the DVD and watch an episode while I ride.  I know it’s a bit premature to boast about my resolution-keeping on January 12, so hopefully it will continue!

7.  This weekend I am going to try to learn to snowboard.  Again.  Wish me luck, and no severe injuries.

8.  Noodles is doing well, and I only sustained minor scratch wounds when I tried to get him in his cat carrier over the holidays (and two holes in my sweater).

With that, dear readers, I am calling it a day.  If anyone is still reading and you have particular things you are curious about, feel free to comment or email me!

Till next time, happy 2009!

xoxo

SF

At Last

My dear readers (if I even have any after my long blogging hiatus!):  I know it’s been almost two months, which is practically an eternity in the blogosphere.  I know we have a lot of catching up to do, and that it will be near impossible to really do that justice.  I have been lurking on my favorite blogs, but not commenting as much as I used to.  I guess you could say I’ve been taking a blog-cation of sorts.

But here I am, having tied up my work-related loose ends before being out of the office at a hearing tomorrow, and then up in Oregon for Thanksgiving.   I’m looking for something to do, and I’m thinking that I want to blog again.  I feel rusty, and I don’t really know where to start.

*Deep breath*  Diving right in, I suppose!

So last time you tuned in to the Single/Fabulous show, there were two promising guys on the horizon.  And for the past two months, there has been just one.  One guy who is, in a word, amazing.  Somehow, after all the heartaches that I have poured out to you, and after all the douchebaggery (sorry!  I love that word) I have endured from the male persuasion, and after all the first and second dates that went nowhere….somehow, when I least expected it, this guy virtually fell out of the sky and into my lap.  (Ok, so I met him at a friend’s party.  But it felt as unexpected as if he’d fallen out of the sky.  Even though we had met once before, he was totally off of my radar when we “re-met.”)  And our relationship is honestly exactly the kind of relationship I’ve been looking for.

I’ve been having sort of a quandary about the blog.  I haven’t wanted to write about him because I respect his privacy.  I haven’t wanted to tell him about the blog because I think he should learn about my past history from me directly, not from the blog.  And I have felt strange about the idea of keeping a secret blog from him because I don’t like the idea of keeping anything important a secret.  Besides, secrecy is not my strong suit.  I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve, especially with people I care about.  And even if I made thre effort, inevitably at some point I would slip and say “In my blog, I wrote…”  and then the rest will be history.  Not to mention the more simple issue of time.  I just don’t have the hours that I used to devote to blogging each week anymore.  Anyway, I have not reached any real conclusions about those things…still thinking about it.

In the past I haven’t written about relationships so as not to jinx them, but in this case I’m not worried.  Even though it’s only been a couple of months, we’ve fallen head over heels in love.  Not in the all-consuming drama-filled angsty way of my past, but the lovely, happy, peaceful-yet-exciting way.  We’re spending a ton of time together, we’re meeting each others’ friends and families, we’re learning new things about each other every day, we’re making lots of plans.  He prompted my friend J. to say, “He doesn’t give off the tool/douchebag vibe.”  (Sad to say, none of the other guys I’ve dated in the past two years earned this endorsement.)  He even has the Noodles stamp of approval.  🙂 

I don’t even know how to explain how good it feels.  I’m just so, so happy.

Thank you, Universe!

Douchebaggery, Ivy Style

***Warning: Ivy League insults ahead.  Ivy leaguers who read my blog (ahem, KB), close your eyes and/or promise not to be TOO offended.***

Tonight I went to an event put on by The Ivy Plus Society.  (Also known as “TIPS.”)  This is a group whose members are exclusively people who went to one of a short list of schools — Ivy league or similar.  You don’t have to be a TIPS member to go to an event, you can be invited by a member, which is good… being that I don’t qualify for TIPS since neither my undergrad nor my law school appear on the short list of sufficiently-elite institutions.  (Though, the med school and business school at the university where I did law school ARE on the list.  Hmm.)

I was originally supposed to go with my co-worker R., who went to Harvard Law, but she had to work late so I persuaded my dear friend T. to accompany me.  “I hope you know how much your friendship means to me since I am going to hang out with a bunch of snooty Ivy leaguers with you on a Tuesday night,” she emailed me.  After we left the event, she remarked, “Yep, that was the level of douchebaggery that I would expect from the Ivy League.”

The event was put on at a swanky bar in Hollywood.  When we arrived, we checked in under my faux name and we headed to the bar to get drinks (the typically obscene $11 for a vodka/grapefruit juice, when really I should have just gotten a soda cause it was so damn hot at the rooftop bar.  What is up with it being 90 plus degrees in almost-October?  Sheesh).  Then we went up to the roof.  It was a really well attended event – the roof was teeming with people, and I was sort of startled by how good looking some of the people were, both men and women.  We talked in our own huddle for a while before venturing into the masses.  It didn’t take long for us to be approached, and from then on we were talking in groups.  I even gave out my business card to a few people — my  firm’s marketing director would be so proud.  (Is it bad that I am hoping to God none of them call or email me?)

There was one particular guy who stood out as receiving the Douchebag award of the evening, however.   He approached us with the winning line, “So we have new question other than ‘What do you do?’ Instead, we’ll ask ‘Where have you been lately?'”

Douchebag had recently been to the East Coast, where he’s from.  Douchebag’s Friend (DF), who was actually really nice, apparently had been somewhere soooo cool that he had to save talking about it till the end.  But when it came around, DF said he’d recently been to Burning Man and he was telling us all about it.  Now, I know Burning Man is a huge event.  And call me a snob, yuppie, prude, what have you.  But seriously, a big party in the desert?  Are we still in college?  As Sarah Palin claims to have said about the Bridge to Nowhere (ha!  HA!), “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Douchebag is a software engineer but was wearing the Hollywood Douche uniform of jeans, T shirt and white blazer.  When talking to me and another girl, he gave insightful (not) commentary on how he wouldn’t mind a Great Depression if it would sort itself out afterward.  He kept making comments that would have us glancing sidelong at each other, mouths agape.   He said he really likes body language more than just spoken language.  He said it with a seflf assured way and a cock of the head that implied, “Why don’t we go communicate through some body language in my apartment, baby.”

Douchebag also was the second person in as many networking events I have attended recently to tell me that I am “unassuming.”  T. started laughing and told him that wasn’t the first time that I’d heard that recently.  He then tried really hard to say “that’s a good thing!  Really, don’t change!”  (My dear readers said the same thing, I guess it must be true.)   Not that I want to be the opposite of unassuming — but I don’t know, I think I’d rather that not be the first adjective that jumps to mind.

Douchebag also apparently told T., while I was talking to someone else, that she is “sensual.”  Yeah, hi, Creepy McCreeperson.  Don’t let the gorgeous engagement ring stop you.

And he told T. and me, eyes shifting and rolling drunkenly in his head, that men didn’t know how to be men anymore, that the club scene has changed since he moved to LA in 2001.

And because I, unlike T., have not perfected the art of clean escape, and because we had talked to these guys so long at this point that I felt bad despite myself, I gave them both my card.

Here’s hoping they don’t use it.

Question

Is this cute Halloween decor or crazy cat lady?

In case you were wondering

Hello dear readers,

I know that I have been MIA on the blog circuit this week, both in terms of writing in this here blog and reading/ commenting on the blogs I follow.  So I just wanted to reassure you that things are going quite swimmingly in the life of SF.  I am totally exhausted from a long week and a long weekend of travel (drove up to Monterey on Friday, spent the night, drove back yesterday for a wedding, and am so tired now that I am passing out at 10 pm on the dot tonight) but I am also very happy.  My life seems to be at this wonderful state of zen that I am loving, after struggling for months earlier this year with constant state of angst/anxiety/malaise.  Now I feel very peaceful and content and it’s a great feeling.

Also, though I am not going to go into detail to respect his privacy, I am dating an awesome guy now and things are going great.  This is the first time in as long as I can remember where I really connect with the other person on every level and where the interest and attraction is 100% mutual.   I don’t want to get too ahead of myself, but this guy is something special.

Off to get some shut eye, more later!

Inspiration

**Yes, I know I promised this post would be about the result of my mom’s matchmaking attempt.  But I wanted to write about something else, so this is a slight detour.**

Every so often, I will be plugging along in my everyday life when something inspires me and I have to take a step back and think about it.  Tonight that inspiration came in the form of V., a woman who just joined the committee of the domestic violence awareness/prevention nonprofit that I’m involved with.  V. is probably in her 20’s like me, and she has a full-time job doing something in finance.  She explained to us that her “other” job is working for a different domestic violence organization, answering the hotline on Saturday nights and sometimes during the week acting as a moral support companion to domestic violence victims testifying in court.  She also organizes several performances of the Vagina Monologues every year.  And now here she is, giving more of herself by joining our committee.  As you might imagine, she is very energetic and competent.

Wow.  I, for one, am inspired. Here’s someone who’s a real doer.  It takes a certain personality type to be so passionate about a cause that you will devote so much of your time to it.  And she, and the other people I know who are like this, do all that they do in such an uncomplaining and vibrant way.  I find myself so often getting overwhelmed in my own life and my own schedule, but in reality I could be more efficient with my time.  I could be doing much more.

If you were to devote yourself to a cause, dear readers, what would it be?

We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby

Back from the reunion, dear readers, and I promised stories!

Overall, I must say that the reunion was more fun and not at all traumatizing like I imagined, and I’m very glad I went because I think I’ve laid rest to a few of my neuroses – it’s about time!

As you know, I had worked myself up into a near panic over the horror of going to the reunion by myself.  And yet, in the end, I was actually really happy to be there on my own and to be able to talk to everyone I wanted to without torturing somone else!  (Case in point – my friend A.’s husband spent most of the evening by the bar getting progressively more drunk.) 

And even more than feeling ok being there by myself, I felt genuinely ok being single.  It was good to see people, and it was good to catch up.  Most everyone looks great (the girls more so than the guys, actually), and seems happy with whatever they are doing.  But listening to everyone talk about their lives, there isn’t anyone I’d want to switch places with, for all the husbands and babies and all that.   There isn’t anyone I’d rather be than who I am right now.  Which is not to say that my life is perfect – it is a work in progress, of course – but it’s my own.   And I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

On another note, at the risk of sounding narcissistic, several people told me I looked great, and for once I believed them!  I don’t even mind that I was sort of nerdy in high school because I’d so much rather look better in my 20’s/30’s than have peaked in high school.   (On a related note: they were showing videos of school assemblies from our senior year, and in one of them I and the rest of the cast of Steel Magnolias, which I had a lead role in, had to do a little dance in front of the WHOLE SCHOOL to “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.”  I was mortified watching this.  I was such a dork, I was wearing a totally fugly sweater, a black skirt and black tights.  Oh, how happy I am not to be in HS anymore!)

Anyway, the most entertaining encounter of the evening was with a guy named KM.  Before my mom became a professor, she was a 5th grade teacher at a different elementary school than the one I went to, but one that fed into the same high school as mine.  So one class of my mom’s students ended up being in my graduating class.  One such guy was KM.  My mom loved him, and I thought he was totally cute in high school, but he never ever gave me the time of day. 

This weekend I was showing my mom the Facebook photos of some of my high school friends and some of her former students, including KM.  She requested that if he were at the reunion, that I get a picture with him.  (I thought yeah right…I’m going to ask a guy who barely spoke to me in high school for a photo.)

Later in the evening, A. and I were getting a second drink at the bar when a guy we didn’t recognize started chatting with us.  (Not to digress too much, but this guy was in the running for the biggest douche in the universe prize.  He kept appearing all night with such winning lines as “I’m a corporate lawyer and a professional asshole.”  No shit, Sherlock.)  Anyway, I asked him whose husband he was and he said no, he was a friend of KM’s.

Right.  I spotted KM and smiled, and he gave me a quizzical look like he was trying to place me and I figured that was that.

But later in the night I was in a circle of people and KM snaked up behind me, started running his hand all over my back, and said “You look so beautiful.”  Then he told me that he’d seen some pictures of me on Facebook, and commented, “You just got back from a trip, right?”  I responded with, “Oh yeah, I saw some pictures of you too.  And your really cute girlfriend.”  Then he got all weird and was like, “Oh, that;s just a girl I used to date…it’s complicated.”  (Who puts pictures of an ex on Facebook?)

He came up to me several more times, his eyes looking more glazed and drunk by the minute, touching my back and saying I was beautiful.  He was like “we need to catch up!  Give me the update!”  But of course, when  tried to ask what he was up to, he’d give totally evasive answers like “Just living the dream!”  Then he’d say “we should go to a quiet corner to catch up…we keep getting interrupted.”

It was such a funny feeling, to have a guy I used to think was so hot (and who is still quite good looking) be trying to put the sleaze moves on me, and I just stood there thinking “Ugh, pathetic.”

I figured I might as well make my mom happy so this wouldn’t be a total waste, so I asked KM to take a photo with me along with another of her former students (who is now a math teacher and football coach at our high school and is totally the wholesome young teacher who all the girls must have crushes on).  KM then launched into, I love your mom.  If I could date your mom, I totally would.  Your mom is such a panther.

A PANTHER?

Yeah, you know, a panther.  30 to 39 is a Puma.  40 to 49 is a Cougar.  50 to 59 is a Panther.  And 60 and up is a Silver Panther.

Oh holy mother of god.  Yes, he actually called my sweet, innocent mom a Panther.  Happily, her other student was looking suitably skeeved/horrified.

I told my mom this and she cracked up.  If I had known he was like that, I would never have had you talk to him, she said.

I wonder if she’s flattered to be called a Panther?

Homeward Bound

Home, where my thought’s escaping…

Isn’t my hometown pretty?  I don’t have any plans to move back to Oregon, but sometimes I really do miss it.

I will be blog-free for a few days, but I promise a full report on all things reunion when I return!  xoxo!

Flashing Back

These are scary times, dear readers.  Politically, economically, things are more than unstable.   I’m sure at some point I will write about all of that, because you’d best believe it’s been on my mind.  But for now, I am going to try to stay in denial and write about a different time in my life.  Because in a few days I will be traveling in a time machine, back to 1998.

That’s right – I’m talking about my ten year high school reunion.

What was SF like in high school, you ask?

I was smart.  I was awkward.  I was dying to fit in.  I wore baggy sweaters and flannel shirts my freshman year because I wanted to be like Angela Chase on My So-Called Life.  I was boy-crazy.  I was in theater.  I had long straight hair and bangs.  I studied a lot.  When I was 15, I tried to befriend the popular girls by going to JV basketball games with them.  I never became a so-called popular girl.  I didn’t swear, drink, or have sex.  I hated doing anything athletic.  When I was 16, I thought I was in love with a boy who was Mormon and I went to church with him.  When I was 17, I dated a boy from the “wrong side of the tracks” and took him to prom with me.  He dumped me in favor of a girl who would put out.  When I was 18, I fell in love with C.  When they handed out joke awards in the drama department, I got the “Sorry I’m such a sweetheart” award.  I wanted nothing more than to be swept off my feet.

My, my, how times have changed.  But sometimes, I still feel like that Oregon high school girl.

And on Saturday, I’ll be going to some new restaurant/bar in Eugene that I’ve never heard of, and I’ll be seeing a lot of people who haven’t seen me since I stopped being that girl.  And even though my life has come so far since 1998, when I think about going back and seeing all those people, I feel like maybe I haven’t let go of all those old stupid high school insecurities.

(Random non sequitur: I am watching Fringe, and Joshua Jackson is even hotter now than he was on Dawson’s Creek.  Rowrrr.)

Anyway, I know that the mild dread I feel about going to my reunion is silly.  I have a good life.  I have great friends.  I have a good job.  (I’m a frickin’ lawyer in Los Angeles, man!) 

But there’s that needling part of me that wishes I were …well, while I’m being honest, let’s be honest… less single.  (Or maybe supermodel gorgeous.  That would work too.)  I know I’m going to be meeting a lot of husbands and wives, and seeing a lot of baby photos, and even at the same time that I know that things happen in their own time and blah blah blah, I still have that slight feeling of Why isn’t that me?  And it will be even more exaggerated because instead of, for example, Facebook, where I can look at the husbands and wives and babies from the comfort of my couch, I will actually have to face the reunion alone in a sea of couples.

*Shudder*

Now, of course, I signed myself up for this, so I obviously feel that the pros of seeing some of the people I am excited to see outweigh the cons.   And at the end of the day, it will probably be fun to a degree.  I just need to remember this isn’t high school anymore.

I mean, I’m grown up now…right?