Who's gonna drive you home?

O/G is five weeks older than me. Most of the time we were dating, it was barely noticeable, but there were a few age-restricted activities that always seemed to fall in those five weeks that made life complicated. One of such was renting a car.

As everyone knows, if you rent a car before you're 25, you are tagged with all sorts of extra fees. It's grossly unfair because I was no bit a better driver on my 25th birthday than I was the day before, but it's based on accident data and I understand a business has to make a decision about risk so whatever.

O/G's 25th birthday was on a week day in early April. I planned to fly to Georgia the following weekend to celebrate. The previous time I had visited, I had flown to Jacksonville, rented a car (taking the hit on extra fees), and driven 90 minutes up I-95 to his house (it had been cheaper to do this than fly directly to Savannah and I was visiting for a long weekend so the drive wasn't a big deal). O/G really liked that I had a rental car because it meant he didn't have to put miles on his car and we could go out to the bars and cab home and then retrieve the other car the next morning. He liked it so much that he requested I do it again for his birthday. And by requested, I mean demanded in his whiny-baby voice.

The smart thing to do would have been for him to rent the car in his name, as by the time I arrived in Savannah on Friday afternoon, he would have already been 25 and thus wouldn't have to pay the extra fees. I suggested this as I was planning my travel but he didn't want to do this. His reasoning? It was his birthday so he didn't want to pay AND it was my turn to visit him and therefore my turn to pay for the travel costs.

I offered to write him a check for the amount of the car rental (since the fee itself usually has to be charged to a credit card in the driver's name), but he didn't like that idea because he didn't feel comfortable letting me drive a car that was rented in his name. Plus, in his words "the travel thing is your problem this time babe". Sort of like how I made it his probably to get him to and from the airport when he came to visit DC or how I left him to deal with his problem when his flight home got canceled during a snow storm. But that's probably why our relationship soured: I never made anything his problem and therefore he did not know how to solve his own problems.

In the end, I rented a car and paid the extra fees and spent the weekend driving him around on his errands because he didn't want to put miles on his car. After all, it was his birthday and I was a complete pushover back then.

A kiss on the hand may be quite continental

A few weeks ago, my sister stumbled upon a website called Ex-Boyfriend Jewelry where girls (and I suppose guys) can sell the jewelry their exes gave them. I had a complete "why didn't I think of that?" moment.

Over my years of dating, I have accumulated many pieces of jewelry and until I dated O/G, I had only returned one piece, a fraternity lavaliere, because I couldn't really wear the letters of someone I wasn't dating. Until I dated O/G, I never had an ex ask for his jewelry back. This includes several pieces of nice jewelry (Tiffany, David Yurman), several pieces of fine jewelry (diamond earrings, pearls, nice watches) and a decently-sized engagement ring, in addition to the other, more sentimental pieces. Of course, like many things, O/G was different about jewelry.

When O/G broke up, he sent me an itemized list of the jewelry he wanted back. I'm sorry, I meant he called my mother with an itemized list of the jewelry he wanted back because I wouldn't take his calls. We had been dating on and off for five years so one would imagine this list would be fairly extensive and it probably would have been, had he bought me jewelry that I liked from the beginning of our relationship. See, O/G spent the first three-quarters of our relationship buying me jewelry that he thought I should like, rather than the pieces I actually did like. And it wasn't that he didn't know what I would like: he'd take me shopping, I would pick out pieces that I liked, he would pick out things he'd like, I would reject his choices and three days later he would present me with one of the rejected pieces.

It was a real struggle to work rose gold heart necklaces with matching earrings into my wardrobe, but he would whine and complain if I arrived at his place not wearing something he gave me.

Finally, after a particularly big fight, he randomly started buying me jewelry I would actually wear. And I did wear these pieces regularly.

Those were the pieces that appeared on the itemized list. I have no idea what he did with a David Yurman bracelet and necklace and a pair of John Hardy earrings that he wouldn't do with the rose gold heart set and Tin Cup-style pearl illusion necklace. All the jewelry he gave me cost about the same, so if he just wanted to pawn the stuff, he should have asked for all of it back. All of it was long past its return date so it's not like he could bring it back to the jeweler.

I'm starting to think he saved it for his next girlfriend, which is creepy. And, judging from her Facebook picture, she's more the down-home rose gold heart set type.

Cleanliness is Godliness

I will admit that I hate art. Not “the arts”—I enjoy music and dance and theater and have actually participated heavily in all of the above. I hate visual art. I have some hanging in the apartment because I hate bare walls more but I am physically unable to appreciate sculptures or paintings or galleries or displays or anything else.

However, if I hate modern art more than I hate the general category of art. By modern art, I am referring to ambiguous images spattered on canvas or created out of clay or cans or dead bodies or whatever “artists” are calling “medium” today.

Keep that in mind…

The first time Officer/Gentleman was living in Savannah (before OIF III), we weren’t very serious. There was an intimacy to our relationship that came from knowing each other for so long, and having dated seriously in college and when we were together it was like we had never broken up, but by virtue of living 1,362 miles from each other (before he went to Iraq), it couldn’t be that serious. I visited O/G in Savannah three times before he got deployed.

The first time I visited Savannah, it was June. His apartment was both messy and dirty. You could see the dirt on the floor of his shower. There were crumbs permanently affixed to his counters. Worst of all, there was a pile of plastic blue Super Wal-Mart bags that covered a 3-square foot area in the corner of his living room. It was about two feet high. I cringed when I thought about what sort of critters were living underneath that pile. But being young, foolish, in love and desperate to get our relationship back on track, I chose not to comment on them or the general condition of the apartment.

Then I visited in July. His apartment was filthy, as I expected (O/G was never a tidy person), the shower floor was black, so was the kitchen floor, there were chunks of pizza crust, dust, and dirt stuck in the carpets, there were six empty shampoo bottles in the shower. The pile of plastic blue Super Wal-Mart bags had now spilled out to encompass a five-square foot area of the room. Still about two feet high. This time, I decided to ask about the bags.

It’s just handy to have some plastic bags around for stuff.

Granted, but you clearly go to Wal-mart often, so the supply looks to be renewable.

The last time I visited was right before I went to work on the campaign in late August. The living conditions were deplorable. As in, if I had called his chain of command, he’d probably still be pulling staff duty. Luckily I wasn't staying there--we had planned a getaway to the beach and were just swinging by to pick up his stuff. The pile of plastic bags had overtaken a third of his living room. But it was no longer justified by the necessity of plastic bags.

It’s modern art.

He was so very proud.

We talked about getting together after the election but we could never seem to make plans. I think it was my subconscious telling me to stay the hell away.

Old MacDonald had a farm...

There is a Mexican restaurant on the Hill that I frequent, not because it is particularly good but because it is cheap (when I was an intern they had 10 cent wings and 25 cent beers on Wednesdays), centrally-located and known by everyone in Washington, including cabbies (this is important because I never know addresses of places I want to go, just names and general locations).

No longer an intern, I usually visit this place during the week for lunch between meetings but Saturdays are all-you-can-eat chicken fajitas for $9 day and so in the past year I have been twice on a Saturday when I was craving fajitas. Both times I went with my boyfriend at the time (two different men). Both times I was horrendously embarrassed.

The first time I visited this restaurant, my date was going through this weird phase where he liked to eat everything Mongolian barbecue style: everything mixed together in a bowl. He would do this with everything: bacon and eggs, filet and mashed potatoes, the insides of a turkey sandwich--it was a weird phase for him. Anyways, I figured this behavior was reserved to our at-home dining and assumed he'd be fine in a restaurant.

Then he ordered.

"I'll have the fajitas. No tortillas though and can you bring me a really big bowl?"

My recount of this story does not do it justice, but he took all of the meat and vegetables on his skillet and dumped them in the bowl and then dumbed the pico and guacamole on top and then drowned everything in queso dip. And he ordered three more orders of fajitas. It was one of the grossest displays I have ever seen.

The waitress looked at us like we had been raised in a barn.

The next time I went to fajita night things went great until my date noticed I had eaten my last tortilla and interrupted the waitress while she was talking to another table to tell her I needed more tortillas. Chivalrous? Perhaps. Except for the fact that I had finished the rest of my food and really had no use for three more tortillas.

This fact was not lost on the waitress. She gave me my tortillas, which of course I could not eat, and spent the rest of our visit pointedly looking at them whenever she walked past. I almost wanted to put the tortillas in my purse so that I was no longer subject to her wrath.

Of course, the date was oblivious the dirty looks because she wasn't directing them at him. She had assumed (like a rational person) that he wasn't a complete caveman and that I had directed him to order me more tortillas as if it were entertaining for me to watch both of them dance. So he was fine sitting there for the next 30 minutes nursing his beer.

I have stopped eating at this restaurant until their staff changes or they take the poster with my picture and a big red x through it off the wall. Whichever comes first.

Waiting on the World to Change

The Officer/Gentleman refuses to shop at Target. We visited the local Target when he first returned from Iraq to get towels and bathroom decor and being a Saturday afternoon at Target it was very crowded so we left the cart in the main aisle while we went to look at towels. Officer/Gentleman is slightly prissy about some things, including but not limited to his linens, the stripes on his shirts, his silverwear, the blanket on his bed, hotels he stays in, restaurants he eats in, bars he drinks in...pretty much everything, actually. So while he was choosing between aquamarine and turqouise towels, a Target Team Member saw his cart, assumed it was abandoned and reshelved the items in it.

When Officer/Gentleman returned (with no towels) to find his cart missing, he went ballistic and marched right up to the front of the store and demanded the store manager explain why his selections had been reshelved. The manager politely explained that Target Team Members were told to reshelf stock in abandoned carts to avoid having them blocking aisles. This pissed off Officer/Gentlemen so he told the manager we would never shop in Target again (speak for yourself, sweetheart, I still visit Target at least weekly--it's the Minnesnowta in me) and that we were only shopping at Wal-Mart from now on.

I enjoy the trip to Wal-Mart as much as the next Republican but everyone knows it isn't even in the same league as Target. I mean, I will wear clothes from Target. I own a pair of sweatpants from the Wal-Mart in Bedford because there wasn't a Target for 20 miles and it was the middle of the night and I was freezing. The Target store manager looked at us with the same contempt as if we had asked if salad was included in a prix fixe menu.

Months passed and Officer/Gentleman only shopped at Wal-Mart until one day when he was looking for some plastic storage drawers and they were on sale at Target. Officer/Gentleman's frugality outweighs his principle so we jumped in the Mustang and headed to Target (I think we were also just coming out of a major fight at this point and he was trying to make a concession by taking me to one of my favorite stores). He got his drawers and was happy and we could go to Target again.

Then one day, we went to Target to get a vacuum cleaner (he fired his housekeeping service out of a principle that I didn't exactly understand but at least he was making an effort to keep his apartment non-gross). As we were paying for the vacuum cleaner, he asked the Target Team Member checking us out if he could have a roll of quarters. She told him he'd have to go to customer service so we got in the customer service line. After waiting in line for ten minutes, we get to the counter and the Team Member informs us that it is corporate policy not to give out rolls of quarters.

Knowing him very well, I could see he was pissed off by this policy but he did not go apeshit like I would have expected, instead he put the vacuum cleaner on the counter and said "then I'd like to return this and may I have $10 of my refund in quarters." The Team Member told him credit card purchases can only be refunded to credit cards and this sent him over the edge (I was waiting). We stormed out of Target (without the vacuum cleaner) while he was loudly questioning how a store with such shitty customer service policies can stay in business.

Um...because they are not a bank???

CMS and RGB lament waitresses in fine dining establishments looking at them with contempt, but ladies, you have not experienced humiliation until that look of contempt has come from trailer trash wearing red Target shirt.

To my knowledge, he has still not been back to Target. He probably doesn't own a vacuum cleaner either. That's sad.

There's no way to deny she's lovely

There are a lot of derogatory comments that one could make about my appearance. Since high school, my weight has fluctuated between a healthy size 8 (where I am now--my "normal" weight) and a pushing-obese size 12. Most recently, my weight tipped the scales after the Bush campaign when I completely blew my ordinarily-regimented lifestyle to help the President win an election. Priorities. So 18 months ago, it would have been pretty accurate to call me fat. Even today you could remind me that I'm not exactly slim--I was blessed with my Mom's curves. But I don't look bad--seriously, I don't.

You could also point out that I'm breaking out pretty badly right now from a nice cocktail of chemotherapy drugs and stress (induced by my professional and personal lives simultaneously going nuts) and that would be pretty accurate. But I'm hooked on Philosophy Crisis Intervention products and some retinols from the dermatologist and that's keeping everything in check.

I've had bad haircuts (the really short job freshman year of college), bad color (chocolate brown in the winter of 2005), probably bad makeup and once upon a time (early in high school when I was still using my mother's cast-offs) made bad clothing choices (in my defense, this was at the tail end of the grunge era and so if I wasn't in my cheerleading uniform--which we had to wear to school like three times a week, I was a strange mix of as much grunge as my Ralph Lauren-wearing mother would let me get away with, resulting in an ugly preppy-grunge experience). You could have called me out on any of those: I've had bad hair and bad outfits. Haven't we all?

The one thing I have never been called is "plain". I am not plain. In the interest of not sounding narcissistic, I am going to try to tone this down a lot but I am naturally very attractive. According to Cosmo, I am "cute-sexy": big blue-grey eyes, dark blonde hair (which I highlight so it's lighter blonde), classically pretty facial features, full lips (more Scar-Jo than Angelina), a killer smile (thanks to thousands of dollars spend on orthodontic work when I was in middle school and Crest Whitestrips). I used to be a dancer and now I run five days a week so I am in decent shape and my skin gets enviably golden in the summer. I'm pretty and I know it, and so does everyone else.

I am also very conscientious of my wardrobe. I know my body and what sort of clothes flatter it. I know what colors I look best in. It's the result of a subscription to Cosmo, a decent eye for style, a family that loves to shop, and a lot of trial and error (reference the previous comment about preppy-grunge). Furthermore, I take pride in being the kind of girl who is almost always appropriately dressed for any event. Cocktail reception on the Hill/Army Ball/tailgate picnic at a steeplechase in Potomac--check, check, check--I look good. I am not the kind of girl who is going to wear jeans a and t-shirt to a nice restaurant (at least not without a blazer, pearls and heels--did I mention I have the ability to make a t-shirt look like a million bucks?) but I'm also not going to get all slutted up to go to the gun club and watch my boyfriend shoot through 20 boxes of ammo.

So imagine my surprise when my boyfriend told me last week that he wasn't confident our relationship would last because he didn't see me being someone he was attracted to in ten years because I was too plain.

What he was trying to articulate (and failing miserably) was that he wished I would dress up more often and bring some sexy underwear to bed. And if he had said it like that, it would have been fine. Of course I would have countered that if he wanted me to dress up, he should take me places where I wouldn't be out of place wearing a nice dress, and that place is NOT the sports bar that we always end up going to on Saturday night (and even then, I wear jeans, a cute top and heels). And if he wants cute underwear, we need to get down to business as soon as we get back from dinner and I'm still slightly buzzed from the wine. You can't keep me up until 2AM watching stupid action movies that star the Rock (is that really his name?) and then expect me to be ready to change lingerie (since the lingerie that looks good under clothes is different than the lingerie that looks good on its own) and jump in bed with him. Here's a hint--if I'm curled up in your lap, sleeping off the bottle of pinot we shared at dinner, sex is NO LONGER on my mind.
But to tell me I am plain?!?! That's not even close to being the truth. My chin almost hit the floor in shock. Before I could point out that I had a bar full of men downstairs who would line up at the CHANCE of buying me a drink (I was in a hotel room on a business trip), he threw out "you save your A-game for work and I get the practice team."

Work gets A-game because my livelihood depends on A-game, but you want A-game? Game on, asshole.

Friday night came around and I put on a black dress, heels and eyeliner, pulled my hair up (in a real up-do that involved pins and hairspray--not a hair shark) and demanded to be taken to wine tasting and dinner at a tapas bar. And then I demanded that we stay to listen to the jazz band at said tapas bar (knowing damn well that he hates jazz). And then I demanded to dance (knowing damn well that he can't run in cadence and clap his hands at the same time). Because those are the activities that one does when she is dressed up.

Saturday night, I played even dirtier. I put on a strapless red number that I bought to wear to a girlfriend's wedding next month, spent 75 minutes straightening my hair and doing makeup and announced that I wanted to eat halibut while sitting on the river, knowing damn well that there were only two places where I can do that, and neither one of them was inexpensive.

Two dirty martinis, a shrimp cocktail, halibut, asparagus and the "special" ring-ding dessert at Chart House Savannah, the bill came. One hundred fifty dollars and I was actually a little disappointed that I didn't drive it up higher.

Sunday morning, I repeated the whole ordeal in a white sundress at champagne brunch. Only after "discovering" religion and forcing him to sit through mass with me. And then when we were done, we went antiquing instead of to the gun range because I wasn't dressed to sit around the nasty-ass gun range and watch him play with his toys.

If he wants A-game, I can play the A-game. But he should be careful what he wishes for. Several times he told me I was being "combative" or "pretentious" and unfortch, that goes with the territory--if I'm feeling physically high maintenance, I am also feeling emotionally high maintenance. If he wants the girl that I was this weekend, I am more than happy to oblige, but he can't complain when I start to play the part, so to speak.

"Oh CCG, this is so going on Loser Ex."

Friday night the boyfriend and I met up with my sister and her boyfriend and Officer/Gentleman at Cap City. O/G was on his best behavior: he looked good (OMG, he looked great), he wasn't being a princess, he was treating me like a princess--all the makings of a great night. Until late in the night when the TV at the bar changed from the O's to some NBA game (I don't know which one).

Boyfriend loves baseball. I can always get him in a good mood by taking him to baseball (and it's a good thing when he's in a good mood because I usually get stuff like jewelry). He'll probably propose on the scoreboard--actually, he'd better not because I'll say "no" on account of it being a dumb proposal. But I digress...boyfriend loves baseball. Boyfriend HATES basketball. Especially the NBA.

I was proud of him, he didn't throw a fit, he politely asked the waitress to change the TV back to baseball. She disappeared for a few minutes and came back and told him someone else had requested to watch basketball. That's where shit hit the fan. Yes, he was justified in being angry (we had been there throwing back beer for close to four hours at this point), and yes, it was appropriate to ask for our check and announce we were going to find a bar that was showing baseball. And yes, it was very good of him to pick up my and BRG's tab. But it was COMPLETELY out of line to not tip the waitress and then write "next time keep it on baseball" on the credit card slip".

Luckily my sister had cash, which she slipped me (after making the aforementioned declaration) and I slipped the waitress while boyfriend wasn't looking, but I was aghast. I think what made the situation worse was that he was proud of it. Gentlemen, if you're not going to tip your waitress out of principle (and you should ALWAYS tip your waitress, at least ten percent), PLEASE never tell your date. And especially don't tell your date's sister and her boyfriend and expect a pat on the back. That really only makes you an asshole.