Let them eat cake

As a professional bridesmaid, I have seen (and tasted) my fair share of wedding cakes.

And while I don't even really like cake that much (other than cassata cake, which I could quite possibly eat by the truckful), I do admire the craftsmanship that goes into creating a showpiece that serves as the sweet ending for a bride and groom's big day.

That said, some brides can definitely go overboard when designing their wedding cakes. I mean, have you seen the pic that accompanies this post? Nothing says "This day is all about us" quite like a life-size statue of the bride only, right?

(Side note: how many friggin' people were at that wedding? How could they possibly need that much cake?)

Anywhooo... as a single gal who is often home alone, I randomly read a lot of blogs when you people are on dates with your husbands and boyfriends. And whenever I mosey on over to a blog called Cake Wrecks, I get sucked in for hours reading about professional cake decorating gone bad.

Imagine my delight when I found this recent post all about wedding cake fails (where the brides provided "inspiration" cake pictures to their bakers and received... well... you be the judge).

Whoa. I think I just discovered what the opposite of a "sugar high" is. Yikes.

Raphael, Nicholas... and, now, Anthony

I had no idea how many religious rituals there were to find a potential mate until I started this blog.

I got a text from blogaunt last week telling me to burn an orange candle next to a picture of St. Anthony on Tuesday to find a husband.

Sure enough, I did a little online research and discovered this item on several sites:

Saint Anthony of Padua
On a Tuesday, burn a brown candle for special requests, a green candle for financial help or an orange candle to find a husband. St. Anthony is a wonder worker when it comes to finding lost articles, improving the memory and bringing back a strayed lover. His emblem is the lily.

Geez. Now I've got to pray to St. Raphael, St. Nicholas and St. Anthony? That's a lot of praying. I might as well have become a nun!

Then again... I sort of am a nun lately...

What women want

My friend Nikki forwarded me this hilarious list of what women look for in men over their lifetimes. What's scary is that I am 32 and agree with pretty much every single thing on that age's revised list... which makes me very nervous to turn 72.

What I Want In A Man: Original List

1. Handsome

2. Charming

3. Financially successful

4. A caring listener

5. Witty

6. In good shape

7. Dresses with style

8. Appreciates finer thing

9. Full of thoughtful surprises

10. An imaginative, romantic lover

What I Want in a Man, Revised List (age 32)

1. Nice looking

2. Opens car doors, holds chairs

3. Has enough money for a nice dinner

4. Listens more than talks

5. Laughs at my jokes

6. Carries bags of groceries with ease

7. Owns at least one tie

8. Appreciates a good home-cooked meal

9. Remembers birthdays and anniversaries

10. Seeks romance at least once a week

What I Want in a Man, Revised List (age 42)

1. Not too ugly

2. Doesn't drive off until I'm in the car

3. Works steady - splurges on dinner out occasionally

4. Nods head when I'm talking

5. Usually remembers punch lines of jokes

6. Is in good enough shape to rearrange the furniture

7. Wears a shirt that covers his stomach

8. Knows not to buy champagne with screw-top lids

9. Remembers to put the toilet seat down

10. Shaves most weekends

What I Want in a Man, Revised List (age 52)

1. Keeps hair in nose and ears trimmed

2. Doesn't belch or scratch in public

3. Doesn't borrow money too often

4. Doesn't nod off to sleep when I'm venting

5. Doesn't retell the same joke too many times

6. Is in good enough shape to get off couch on weekends

7. Usually wears matching socks and fresh underwear

8. Appreciates a good TV dinner

9. Remembers your name on occasion

10. Shaves some weekends

What I Want in a Man, Revised List (age 62)

1. Doesn't scare small children

2. Remembers where bathroom is

3. Doesn't require much money for upkeep

4. Only snores lightly when asleep

5. Remembers why he's laughing

6. Is in good enough shape to stand up by himself

7. Usually wears some clothes

8. Likes soft foods

9. Remembers where he left his teeth

10. Remembers that it's the weekend

What I Want in a Man, Revised List (age 72)

1. Breathing

2. Doesn't miss the toilet

Here we go again

Blogdad is back at it.

I received an email from him last nite regarding a potential new boy toy for me. Here it is (with some minor edits to delete identifying details):

SUBJECT: Potential s-i-l (I can't make this stuff up)

I have identified a candidate for my beautiful daughter. The Italian Stallion. (Trust me. If you knew his real name, you would agree with this choice.) He will be 31 in January. He is very close with his family... he has one married sister and two nephews. He goes to mass weekly. He works out daily and sells pharma. He ended a very short engagement last spring. She cheated on him. Approx 5' 11", good build, really big dark eyes. He owns a home. He is interested in calling you and setting something up. Can I give him your phone number?

Love,
BLOGDAD

MY RESPONSE

RE: Potential s-i-l

Potential s-i-l? No pressure there. LOL.

Yes, you can give him my number. As long as you donʼt tell him about the blog and/or get pissed if I write about him.

Is it wrong that I now immediately think of what potential blog stories I might get out of a fix-up? (INNER MONOLOGUE: Yes, Always a Bridesmaid. That is wrong.)

Anyhow, I then proceeded to forward the email to my sisters because, well, we're sisters and I knew they would totally appreciate what blogdad wrote.

Sissy #1's response:

Very funny. I’m pissed he’s never called me a beautiful daughter.

Sissy #2's response:

Is that why he is an S-I-L??? Stallion-In-Law???

Just Do It.

Love,
Michael Jordan

Now I don't know what's funnier. My dad's initial email or my sisters' responses.

Or the fact that I now have a guy in the queue that I'm calling The Italian Stallion.

Ciao, bellas -

Always a Bridesmaid

Laying down the law

I had another voicemail from The Lawyer last nite, calling to say hi and asking if I wanted to grab a drink sometime soon.

Side note: he started the message by saying, “Hi, stranger.” This is now the third time he has started a voicemail and/or email like that, and something about it just really annoys the crap out of me.

Anyhow, last nite’s message was a follow-up to the voicemail he left for me a couple of weeks ago and the email he sent before Thanksgiving. I didn’t return his call (was busy with Molly’s wedding stuff anyhow), but did send a nice – yet curt – email response wishing him a happy Turkey Day in return. However, I did not suggest getting together again (or ever talking/emailing again, for that matter) at all (e.g., there was no “Maybe we can catch up after the holidays” or “Talk to you soon” thrown in).

But he obviously hasn’t gotten the hint.

So this is just weird for me. I have never had to have the “I think you’re really nice, but we’d probably be better off as friends” discussion. I just feel very uncomfortable with the whole idea of that talk.

Because the truth is... he didn’t do anything wrong. (Unless, of course, you count admitting that you own leather pants wrong. I'm still on the fence.) I’m just not interested.

So what’s meaner… or nicer? To just sort of ignore him and let him figure it out on his own (which every other guy I've felt this way about has always done), or to flat out tell him I’m not interested (scary!!!)?

And do I owe it to him to have that discussion (knowing that it is going to give me severe anxiety to do so) when we’ve only been out twice?

Ugh. I am so bad at dating. (Lucky for me, apparently so is he!)

Time for a diet

Just got off the phone with a new potential, The Teacher. How did we meet, you ask? Well, we technically haven't. His sister is friends with my friend Aimee, and the two of them conspired to introduce us. (Plus, Aimee's got two kids to feed and I think she wants in on the finders' fee.)

What. A. Nice. Guy.

I mean, I guess anyone can fool you into thinking they're nice in the span of 20 minutes, but he just seemed genuinely nice. And not in the too nice sort of way either. (Unlike a guy I once went out with who literally said, "Wowee!" instead of swearing. Shit you not.)

Sounds like he's close with his family (a plus), has a job that he likes (a plus) and has a good sense of humor (a definite plus).

HOWEVER... I'm sure you're wondering why I titled this entry "time for a diet." As if I'm not self-conscious enough as it is about my body, The Teacher told me that he did an amateur body building competition a few months ago for the first time... and won. (Also weird: he sounds almost exactly like The Banker on the phone.)

(In his defense, he only brought up the body building thing because he was worried that they sent me a picture of him from the competition and he thought that would have been queer.)

Holy crap! I just ate fifty pounds of stuffing on Thanksgiving! I mean, I need to wear Spanx under my Spanx right now! I can't date a freaking body builder!

Side note: in true six degrees of separation form, The Teacher knows a kid that I went to high school with (who stalked me after the Cleveland Magazine singles article I was in a couple of years ago). They played baseball together for a little while in college. Is it just me, or is Cleveland shrinking?

Anyhow, the conversation ended without discussion of a specific meeting day/time, but with the intention to talk again soon.

Guess that gives me some time to wrap myself in Saran Wrap and garbage bags and jump on a treadmill.

Aaahh... I'm not the only one (and boys feel this way too!)

My friend Colleen started reading this blog about... oh... two days ago and already forwarded me an article that I immediately knew I had to post. (Sorry this entry is so long, but the article is hard to find/link to online now.)

I especially relate to the author's part about the fix-up (though I'm not sure he had issued a finders' fee!). While I 110% appreciate my lovely friends and relatives trying to find me happiness, I sometimes wonder how well they really know me if they think I would want to go out with, say, a guy who asks about my lady parts on our first date.

So without further ado, please enjoy this little ditty written by Michael Kramer, an Emmy-nominated television writer living in Los Angeles. (Hmm... maybe HE'S a potential for me.)

What’s so bad about being single?

“You know what your problem is?”

Who doesn’t love a conversation that starts like that? But if you’re over 35 (Always a Bridesmaid sidenote: I am 32, but I still relate) and single, people somehow think it’s an open invitation to diagnose why you’re still single. “You don’t have room in your life for a woman.” “You’re too picky.” “You’re not picky enough.” (Sadly, I’ve dated a few women who have elicited that response from my friends.) The very term “singles” practically sounds like a disease (oh, wait, that’s “shingles”), and for those diagnosing us, being single seems to be our defining characteristic.

As the last of my peer group to remain single, I’ve noticed that friends, colleagues, family members, even shop owners, are quick to diagnose me. I bought new eyeglasses recently and the salesman asked my female friend whether we were a couple.

“No, we’re just friends,” she said.

“Good,” he said, “because based on how long it takes him to decide on a pair of glasses, if you’re waiting for a proposal, you’re gonna wait forever.” As if choosing eyewear were somehow related to choosing a spouse.

Is there something wrong with being single?

Comments like these, repeated over and over through the years, were making me start to doubt myself. Maybe something was wrong with me. Maybe I did have the dreaded singles disease. After all, people never give flattering reasons for why you’re still single. The diagnosis is never, “You’re too good-looking” or “If only you were less smart.” It’s always something negative. “You don’t know what you want in a woman.” “You’re looking for a woman who doesn’t exist.” If everybody’s saying these things, after a while you start thinking maybe they’re right.

It got to the point where even I started to wonder why I was still single. So I decided to put my fate in the hands of my happily married friends, Andy and Lisa. (Names have been changed to protect the guilty.) I agreed to let them set me up.

Andy and Lisa wanted to double date, so the four of us went to dinner. It turns out that the woman they set me up with had started a new job that day, and she joked — three times, so I sensed it was more than a joke — that she’s just not cut out for work, and she really just wants to marry a rich guy. That’s a nice thing to hear on a first date, because that’s exactly what guys are looking for in a woman. It’s the equivalent of a man telling a first date that he’s considering quitting his job to devote more time to chewing tobacco.

Then poker came up in conversation, and my date said she loves to gamble, but she’s having a bad year. “How so?” I asked. She said she’s down $19,000. Nineteen. Thousand. Dollars! I thought, Wow, so you don’t want to work AND you’ve got a gambling problem? You’re quite the catch.

After the date, Andy pulled me aside and excitedly asked, “So… what do you think?” Not wanting to be insulting, I said I thought she was nice, but not quite my type. To which Andy replied, “You know what your problem is? You don’t want to be happy.”

Now, wait a minute! I may not know myself perfectly, but I do know that an unambitious gambler is not my road to happiness. And that’s when I came to my senses and realized that the so-called “experts” who were diagnosing me didn’t know any more than I did. Being single isn’t a disease, yet so many married people think they’re Jonas Salk with the miracle cure. But with over 50 percent of marriages ending in divorce, maybe single people should be diagnosing married people.

What single people need to remember

The fact is, we all go through life on our own timetable. I know many people who found their true love a little later in life. It wasn’t because they were crazy or afraid to commit or told too many corny jokes on dates or any of that stuff. It was because they found their true love a little later in life.

I have a well-meaning cousin who, upon hearing I wasn’t dating anyone, sighed and said, “There’s gotta be somebody out there for you.” She used the exact same tone that Dr. Frankenstein would have used if he were lamenting that his monster was still single. I told her, “It’s not like I’ve never been loved!” But then I realized that I didn’t need to get defensive. I mean, even Frankenstein’s monster found his soul mate, and I’m not sure he even had a soul. I have to believe I’m a better catch than he is. Just imagine what people must have said about him before he found his lovely bride. But did he listen? No. Ol’ Frankie’s monster just kept trudging along, with the bolts in his neck and his flat head held high. And until the rest of us find our soul mate, so should we.

Thanks, Michael! I feel better about myself already.