you don't need love, all you need is pants!

Lately I've been paying a lot of attention to relationships -- mine, yours, my friends', the neighbors' (which, with the way they yell at each other, is sometimes hard to miss) -- and they continually fascinate me. The things you need to hit to make a burgeoning relationship successful are almost endless (and, when looked at in the wrong light and without a glass of wine could make a single girl feel like it's never gonna happen...). There's attraction, availability (both emotionally and geographically), timing/the last guy/girl/alpaca you were with, your own internal bullshit (not to be confused with the last guy/girl/alpaca you were with), your family, the speed at which you're willing to progress the relationship, the politics of the stupid dating website you're on... (I could go on, but the lighting here is bad, and where the hell is my waiter??)

So to make everyone else feel as good as I do today, I'd like to share some Things I've Learned or Done Lately Which Have Made All Those Irritating Criteria Seem Not Quite So Daunting and Heck, Almost Ok.

1. My friend Lisa made a really good point when I was in the mucky, mucky throes of being dumped by the last alpaca I went out with -- if he were the right alpaca, she argued, none of the (myriad) mismatches would matter. I wanted to take things quickly, and he wanted to move as slow as... well, I was going to say a glacier, but even they seem to be kicking it up a notch these days, so maybe dirt? Dirt is pretty lazy. I wanted to be in a relationship and he wanted... hell, I have no idea what he wanted. So, see? Wrong alpaca.

[brief sidebar: when you date online, sometimes you don't want people to know off the bat that you're an actor. We have a reputation for being flaky and stupid. (Who knew?) So my profile online says that I'm an alpaca farmer. They're well known for being reliable, trustworthy and super-hot. Hence, alpacas.]

2. H&M is having a huge sale. I just bought two new pair of pants and two new sweaters. You can't think about boys and sales at the same time, it's neurophysically impossible! So if it gets too overwhelming, grab $14.90 and get yourself two new pair of pants!! (skip the underwear, though. The whole sale says "buy one get one free" but if you get, say, four pair of underwear for $2.90 apiece, and then four pair of underwear for $1.00 apiece, instead of charging you $7.80 (buy-one-get-one-free), they'll charge you for all four $2.90 pairs, and they'll give you the four $1 pairs for free ($11.60). I know, they bamboozle you with MATH, when you think it's just underwear!)

3. Thea and I went to this seminar the other night that told us some very useful information. For example, did you know men find you sexually attractive because you have shiny hair? According to their research, it's true! Ladies, you know what this means? NO MORE SHOWERING!

Ok, no, that's disgusting, but you can do it for a weekend and still get away with it. As long as you're around men who are (and I quote) "diggin' on your bottom," you'll always get some attention.

Actually, the seminar had some good advice. They said that men will fall in love with women who are a) self-confident, b) authentic, c) passionate and d) receptive. I've got all that down (she said, passionately, authentically and self-confidently) except for the receptive part -- and here's what's tricky. You can't just be receptive of the gifts you want to get. You have to see all of his attempts at giving you gifts (even if they're wildly off the mark) as something you want to receive. So when he's giving you advice about what to do with your stock portfolio, that's technically a gift. Not exactly what I asked for for Christmas, but...

However, the best part about the seminar is that the woman leading it didn't say "men will fall in love with you," she kept saying that men will be "charmed and enchanted by you." And she couldn't really pronounce her r's. So it was "chahmed and enchaaantid." You can imagine all the fun Thea and I had with that afterwards. "You're so chahmig and enchaantig, could I walk you to the subway?" "If you could tell me where to meet you tonight I'd be so chahmed and enchaaantid."

4. Read some Carrie Fisher -- preferably Postcards from the Edge. After just a few pages, you'll feel smarter, funnier, and gratefully blessed to not be Suzanne Vale (i.e., Carrie Fisher in the 80s).

5. I think nerve reads my blog. The day after I posted how stupid it was to list results backwards, they switched it, and now I can see in the blink of an eye (ok, the slowest-moving-tortise-eye-in-the-galapagos, but a blink nonetheless) who's been diggin' on my bottom. (Thank god!)

6. Completely unrelatedly (but it did contribute to the I-feel-good vibe of today: remember these guys? Extra points to whoever can remember the name of their show without looking it up!