She's arching her back she screams for more

It's been a while since I last shared any of my music with any of you. I meant to post this mix a long time ago, but apparently I never got around to actually doing it. Better late than never though, right? It's a mix I put together for an ex-girlfriend who'd moved to Germany, hence the title: Since She Went Away (click to download).

It's dated, but remains one of my favorites*.

Track Titles/Artist Names
Magheeta - My Morning Jacket
Me vs. Maradonna vs. Elvis - Brand New
Rapture - Pedro the Lion
Consequence Free - Great Big Sea
The Guitar Man - Cake
Static on the Radio - Jim White
Mr. Brightside - The Killers
That's Me Trying - William Shatner
Easy - Faith No More
Hey Pretty (Remix) - Poe
Bend and Break - Keane
Rue the Day - The Walkmen
Gravity Rides Everything - Modest Mouse
Sweet Jane - Cowboy Junkies
Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own - U2


Enjoy!







*All except for one song which I'm embarrassed to have on there. I skip it every time I play this cd now. I'll let you try to guess which one it is.

Don't wanna wake up with noone beside me, don't wanna take up with nobody new

Earlier this week I had breakfast with my ex-girlfriend. She was in town for the weekend and called to see if I wanted to see her before she flew out. To be honest, I was a little surprised that she called, but I've said before that we wanted to stay friends, so it made me feel good that she did. I was beginning to have my doubts about whether that was still going to be the case.

The timing was a little weird because I have been thinking about her lately. That's not to say that I'm sitting around moping, but occasionally I think about what might have been if she hadn't moved 2000 miles away.

She looked good, as always. We had a lot of catching up to do, but in some ways it was almost like no time at all had passed, even though I haven't seen her in nearly a year. It's funny how you forget about the little things though. Like the fact that she always eats weird stuff for breakfast (seriously, a chicken panini?).

She's basically the reason that I have so many rules for who I'll consider getting into a relationship with (well, that and the fact that I don't want to end up in a relationship like I had with my ex-wife again). There are women out there who fit my criteria, it's just a matter of finding them, getting them interested and then keeping them nearby.

I'm a negative creep, I'm a negative creep, I'm a negative creep and I'm stoned

One of my friends looked up my personality traits based on my date of birth, and sent me a message with what she found. I was talking to my ex-girlfriend on the phone when I got the news. I said, "Hmmm. Apparently I am 'nurturing, protective, expressive, smothering, moody and narcissistic.'"

She said, "Does that surprise you?"

I guess it didn't surprise her, so maybe I do fit the bill. I can be moody at times, but I don't really agree with the smothering or narcissistic part, but if it's in the stars I guess there's not much I can do about it. I'll just have to go along with my fate.

Now, dictionary.com lists four definitions for narcissism:

1. Excessive love or admiration of oneself. See Synonyms at conceit.
2. A psychological condition characterized by self-preoccupation, lack of empathy, and unconscious deficits in self-esteem.
3. Erotic pleasure derived from contemplation or admiration of one's own body or self, especially as a fixation on or a regression to an infantile stage of development.
4. The attribute of the human psyche charactized by admiration of oneself but within normal limits.

I'm not sure which of these applies to me, but if one must , I cast my vote for number three (but just the first half).

Maybe I'm just damaged goods, and baby you're a babe in the woods

Given the nature of what I do, and the fact that I have little social life outside of the people I work and/or go to school with, most of the new people I meet are a bit younger than me. It's not a problem as far as just hanging out with people goes. I got over the rule that you can only hang out with people in your same age group in high school. If I only would have been able to hang out with kids in my class, I would have been going to rodeos all the time and hanging out with cowboys who had belt buckles the size of their grandma's turkey platter. Luckily I had other options. However, the age difference is getting to be big enough that it's something to think about when considering a relationship that is more than friends.

My last girlfriend was 7 years younger than me, which wasn't a big deal, but I thought it was at first. It's one of the reasons that I didn't dare ask her out once I started getting a crush on her. In fact, I probably never would have if she hadn't said something about it first. After we broke up there was another girl who was acting quite interested in me, but she was even younger, and while nothing ever developed with that, it forced me to think of where I need to make the cutoff. How young can a girl be and have me still consider getting into a relationship with her? After some deliberation I came up with the following rule: If a girl is closer to my daughter's age than she is to mine, then I couldn't do it without feeling like a creep.

I was talking to my brother about this a week or so ago and told him about my rule. He said, "That's fine for now, but at some point you should be allowed to get rid of that rule. Once your daughter gets old enough."

I said, "You're right. I think the rule should go away as soon as she turns 18. Then I can date her friends."

Can't call it cheatin'

I was riding in the car with my brother yesterday. We were listening to a cd, and I was telling him about the time I saw the band play in Vegas.

Me: "There was this Brazilian girl who was hitting on me that night."
Him: "Brazilian girls are hot. Why didn't you do anything?"
Me: "Well, at the time I was still going out with my ex-girlfriend."
Him: "Yeah, that worked out real well for you. See that's the problem, if you keep being faithful, you're going to miss out on a lot of opportunities."

He claims he was talking about being committed to a relationship that's clearly not working out. That I should have realized that mine wasn't a long time before that, and then I'd have been free to take advantage of the opportunity that presented itself.

I'm a Creep

I went to dinner with a friend of mine last night. He and I haven't really talked for a while so it was nice to catch up. I gave him the updates on the girl situation (or rather, told him about the lack of a girl situation). I told him all about the past few weeks regarding my ex-girlfriend, but also about the girl I was interested in before all that went down. As I was driving home I recalled one of my last phone conversations with her, and think I may have pinpointed why nothing developed. See if you can find the sentence that should have remained un-uttered:

Her: "There, I just ordered some new panties from Victoria's Secret."
Me: "This late at night?"
Her: "Yeah, I got them online."
Me: "Well, what do they look like."
Her: "I can't really describe them, but they're really cute."
Me: "I'm sure they are."

A little while later:

Her: "Well, I should probably go. I still have to take a shower before I go to bed. Now don't go to sleep thinking about those panties. I wouldn't want to feel like you're undressing me with your eyes the next time I see you."
Me: "Do you usually feel like I'm undressing you with my eyes when you see me?"
Her: "No."
Me: "Good, that means I've been doing a good job of hiding it."

Not that clever

A lot of times when I post something on here, I come back to it a day or two later and wish that I would have spent more time getting my thoughts together, or at least think of something clever to include. I was thinking that I should have titled my last entry "I might smash up all these windows, and set fire to the curtains." It's a lyric from Halloween by matt pond PA that seemed to suit my mood, even if it would have made me seem more crazy than I am (no really, I promise, I'm not that crazy).

I have to admit, I'm still a little depressed about the whole girl situation. But I've realized that I'm doing the exact thing that I've said here that I shouldn't do, and that is rely on someone else to make me happy. I mentioned once that I'm trying to get to the point where I'm happy with my life the way it is, and that if I find love it's just an extra bonus (it's something that someone close to me once said). When I look at it from that perspective, I'm totally overreacting to this whole thing. Instead of being upset that we're not going to be together, I just need to be glad for the time we spent. Like I said, it was a good weekend, and thinking about it over the past couple of days, I wouldn't have done anything differently even if I'd known it would end up like this.

Maybe I'm making progress after all.

About ready to give up

As a couple of you know, my ex-girlfriend was in town a few weekends ago to visit with her friends and her father. She'd told me she would be here, and that she'd give me a call if she got some time to see me. It was the first time I'd seen her since before our break up, and I was very nervous because I wasn't really sure what to expect. Luckily, everything went well and we ended up spending a little bit of time together. It was nice being around her again. I realized that I wasn't as over her as I thought I was, and she had a similar reaction. Unfortunately, I only got to spend two evenings with her before she had to go back home, but all things considered, they were two very good evenings.

We've been in contact a lot more regularly over the past few weeks. I don't want to complain about that, because we agreed to still be friends after we broke up, but it's been good enough to have me seriously thinking about whether it would be worth it to get back together with her. Long distance relationships suck, but at the same time, when you find someone that you're compatible with it can still be worth it. After all, good matches are hard to find. I decided that I was going to tell her that I thought we should give it another try, but when I brought it up, she told me that she had just decided not to. She's tired of long distance relationships, and would prefer a boyfriend she could actually spend some time with. She'd been trying to get the nerve to tell me that for about a week, but didn't know how to bring it up because she didn't want to hurt me. Of course, being the retard that I am, I took the fact that she was calling me more regularly as a sign that she was thinking along the same lines as I was. Boy was I mistaken.

Needless to say, I'm in a horrible mood today. I don't know if I'll ever be able to read a woman correctly because I obviously haven't figured it out yet. I can't hold it against her, she didn't do or say anything to lead me on, I just have a tendency to read the wrong things into what other people say and do. As pessimistic as I am about most things in life, you'd think I'd save a little of that for love.

(note: before you leave a comment with encouragement telling me how it will all be o.k., and that she's not worth it, you should know that I don't want to hear it. She's still a good friend, and we're not going to stop talking to each other because of this. At least once I stop my moping around)