You mean Friday comes every week?

Good morning, Internet. The good mood continues. I woke up at 5:30 AM today and just bounded out of bed. It is SO WEIRD. I keep waiting for my usual snarky self to return, but instead I’m just nice. I think that’s so boring! Anyway, I know yesterday I said I was going to write about important things like this and this and this, but clearly something more pressing (read: not even close) has happened that I need to discuss with you.

My friend Cailin, who I’ve featured here before, and I were talking last night. Cailin is that girl who has that “thing.” Most girls have a friend like her, and damn, if I could bottle it and sell it I would be a very rich woman. Guys flock to her. That’s not an exaggeration. On the street, on the subway, at work, at clubs, at bars, at grad school, in the laundry room of her building…it’s just part of her charm. She thinks it’s hilarious and has a good amount of fun with it. I enjoy it because she always has THE BEST stories. Anyway, last night as we gchatted away, she told me about her latest predicament: boys who call too late/at bad times/without enough notice. It went like this:

Cailin: I’m so over it. It’s like, “Hi Curly, do not contact me Friday afternoon for Friday night. I have plans!”
Me: I hate that!
Cailin: Hi Larry, do not call me at 4 AM. I am asleep. OK, great.
Me: LOL
Cailin: Oh what’s that, you’d like to take me to dinner on Wed? Yeah, I’m busy, but you know Tuesday does. See you at 7:30 PM and thanks for thinking ahead! And you know what else? Hello, Moe, do not summon me to Inwood!
Me: Inwood?
Cailin: F*cking bottleneck of Manhattan
Me: Yeah, I’m sorry. My boundary is 160th.
Cailin: Haha. It’s above Washington Heights! No, sir!

We continued on and talked about how guys who call at 12:30 PM and then leave a message giving her crap about not answering are clearly lacking in the critical thinking category (for all you TFAers out there, it’s totally a CT flag). And Inwood? This is going to sound really snotty, but, in Manhattan, if you are geographically undesirable, you need to step up your game. Maybe you love Inwood, but the girl you’re seeing lives at 135th and you live at 201st. Get your butt on the ABC or 123 and go see her in civilization. She can start going to Inwood when you guys are more than people who see each other a few times a month. And yes, I realize this is unfair, but I remain old-fashioned about maybe five things in life. This is one of them. I am a contradiction in terms. Deal.

But really, my issue is with the Friday day call for Friday night plans:

Friday night is not a surprise phenomenon. Neither is Saturday night. They come once a week. They’ve come once a week for as long as you’ve been alive. You should plan for them accordingly. I do. So no, when you call me on Thursday night or Friday morning, I can’t go somewhere with you. I have plans. Because I have a life. Of my own.

Sometimes it is the lack of planning, but more insidious than that: the need for a last minute replacement because someone cancelled on you. Look dude, we’re not exclusive, we expect you’re dating around, it’s 2009, no shocker here. But you know what you should not do? Call a girl on Friday morning and say something like, “I have tickets to _______” or “I have reservations for _______” because now we know that we’re going on a date you intended for someone else. Honestly, I’m mean. And if it’s good tickets or good dinner, I’ll go and definitely not go home with you after, because that’s what happens to boys who don’t think before acting.

Never throw an instance where we turned you down back into our faces. This was your fault. We had another date, plans with friends, or something else because YOU were late in asking. And please don’t feed me a line right now about how you guys have to play it cool because girls don’t like it if you show interest and if you call too early in the week, it’s not “cool.” This is not MIDDLE SCHOOL. This is real life. I don’t know if you noticed or not, so I needed to make that really clear. If you like a girl, like a girl. It’s ok. She might like you too! (But I can’t imagine why if you can’t plan anything more than a day or two in advance.) Take a chance, call her on Tuesday.

So now the ornery among you are saying, “It shouldn’t matter when he calls, if you like him you should just go.” Oh, ornery people…it does matter. You know why? Because should this be a rare instance where dating morphs into a relationship, now one person is accustomed to the other person dropping their life whenever he needs something. Girls complain about boys’ bad habits a lot, but frankly, we encourage them when we don’t stand by the things we want/expect. You know what I hate? When my friends start dating someone and they disappear from the face of the earth. There’s a natural drop in the amount of time you’ll see them, but don’t make plans with me and then cancel because Todd needs you. Unless Todd is ill, on the verge of suicide, or crying, he does not need you. It’s obnoxious. It’s rude. And it’s the kind of codependency that dooms a relationship from the start, in my humble opinion.

So go forth, ye of the Y chromosome, and call a sister up before midnight on Thursday. I promise you, some of us are actually worth it.

I'm Pretty Bored...

I’m in a surprisingly fantastic mood on this Monday morning. I woke up earlier than usual, had more time to lounge in the morning, go to work early. I think it’s the lounge time. I’m a lounger. Fifteen minutes of local news while I sip my coffee makes all the difference. But on top of being a lounger, I’m a snuggler. And I’m never a more hard-core snuggler than the minute before my alarm goes off. I snuggle my pillow and blankets like they will be ripped away from me like they took Sophie’s kid away from her (sorry, that was bad, but I don’t have plans to remove it). And then my snuggler and lounger fight each other to the death. I won’t lie; the snuggler is in WAY better shape. So then I’m running around like a crazy person in the morning and that pace kicks off my day. Those are usually the days where I am snarkier than usual and my friends suffer at my hands (sorry again). There’s another theory that my mood has to do with the weekend (specifically white chicken chili with a cheddar hushpuppy topping…OMG), but despite having a great weekend, I continue to think it’s the lounging.

So that was 200 words about nothing. Sorry about that. Some thoughts not long enough to stand alone in posts:

- Girls are hard to please. This isn’t inherently bad. Too often girls will take what is handed to them and tell themselves it’s all they deserved, which makes me sad/angry all at once. I’m hard to please (don’t hate), but that’s acceptable. I expect a lot from friends, family, significant others because I put effort into those relationships and expect it to be reciprocated. (And the first person to hand me a load of BS about how you’re not supposed to expect things in return in a relationship can sit their contrary ass back in their chair. OF COURSE you expect reciprocity. Don’t lie to yourself. I’m not talking about material things. I’m talking about consideration, respect, friendship, time, etc.) But that’s not the kind of “hard to please” I’m talking about. And I’m not talking about that either, get your mind out of the gutter. Girls spend their time whining about boys, and there are no good ones left, and if they could just find a guy who treats them right. But even when they do find a good one, girls suck. Guys are people. They are not perfect. Sometimes they are annoying. I have news for you, girls: you are annoying A LOT. For goodness sake, don’t write off someone you’re otherwise crazy about for one off night. If a guy did that to you, you and your friends would excommunicate him and hatch a plan to do something dumb. Be a grown up. Thanks.
- When I have a desire to write about something on here, I usually send myself an email with the subject, any thoughts I have on the topic, and then I leave it unopened in my inbox. It serves as a reminder that says, “Sarah, get your life together and write this blog post.” And the longer it stays in there the louder it mocks reminds me. Eventually, I will label it (love you, gmail!) “blog” and archive it because I can’t stand the constant ridicule reminder in my inbox. Why don’t I write about them? Well, part of me really wants to produce legitimate documents on these topics, present you all with facts and figures, and find credentialed people who agree with me. But this isn’t my Philosophy of Law class, so that hardly ever happens. And even when I do get my act together, things like this happen and become much more pressing to report. What? At least I’m honest about my priorities. All this to say, I owe the Internet a blog about hate crimes, tanning beds, and personality tests. I know you’re all waiting at the EDGES of your seats. This is an experiment to see if by publicly talking about what I will write about, I will actually write it.
- Some of the most social people I know refuse to karaoke. It’s fascinating. These are people who will go up to anyone in a bar and strike up a conversation. These are people who are loud, outgoing, and very lovable. But the singing in front of other people freaks them out. It’s karaoke. The entire idea is that you WILL be bad. You will not sound like Mariah Carey, Vanilla Ice, or Jennifer Nettles (but damn, if you sound like Nettles we need to be friends). You will sound like a normal person singing. I mean, I usually need to be in the mood to sing, going up with a friend helps, as does a little liquid courage, but I’ll do it. Here’s a secret: most people only pay attention to the person singing when they know them. So please stop thinking everyone in the bar has stopped their lives to watch you for three and a half minutes.
- Whoa. Insight. A lot of these people are the same people who refuse to dance. I love dancing. I don’t need the mood, friends, or liquid courage. I will pretty much dance anywhere at any time. I chair dance at work a lot, to the delight of my co-workers who come in to drop something off and stand there for about 15 seconds until I can feel them watching me. The curse of headphones, man, they distract me from noticing these people sooner. I dance in the car, waiting in line, sitting on the metro, ALL THE TIME. I’m not a great dancer. I did not take dance my whole life. I just like to shake my stuff. It brings me enough happiness that I don’t really care if I’m good or not. And people won’t dance in a club. Where there is music. And a dance floor. WHY DID YOU COME HERE IF YOU DON’T WANT TO DANCE? Ugh. Pet peeve. But maybe there is a link between the singing and the dancing. Is there a performance phobia in the world I don’t know about?
- In honor of seeing my best friend in ten days, I will mock her and her kind. I know it’s mean, but there is nothing funnier, in my head, than watching her go OFF about typography. She’s a terribly talented designer and takes this stuff SERIOUSLY. She uses words like “serif” when she gets going and gets annoyed when she has to explain to us laymen what she’s talking about. I like to think about sending her things in font like Jokerman or Gigi and wait for her to silently freak out at her desk. I know, I am SUCH a good friend. And for goodness’ sake, don’t call it font. Say typeface. Mostly I included this article as an homage, but also for this quote at the end: “In France recently, I drank some nice Côtes du Rhône wine with a fairly dreadful typographic dress. I was less bothered than I used to be; after all, it’s the wine that’s important!” If typeface is what is keeping you from boozing, I don’t even want to know you. End of story. See you next week, SK8!

Being the only girl rocked...and not just because of the no sharing clothes bit...

I was talking to some guy friends today about having brothers and siblings, in general. It started with me asking them for Christmas gift advice but that spiraled downward very quickly. But as we continued talking, the conversation morphed into how having a sibling of the opposite gender gave you perspective, taught you life lessons, etc. I don’t often think about the what if, it’s a waste of time and energy. I like the here, the now, and the what will be, not could or should, but will. I’m practical that way (and maybe stubborn). And so I took a thought trail that is uncharacteristic of me. I started to think what if I didn’t spend my childhood outnumbered by boys? What lessons would I have missed? What would I not know? The answer is: quite. a. lot.

1. I wouldn’t have my fine appreciation of all things comic book and superhero related. And don’t laugh number one off as not serious. This IS serious. Growing up it was my two brothers, my cousin Eric, who lived next door, and my cousin David, who lived downstairs…and then me. I don’t know if you remember how childhood works, but basically it boils down to this: what the majority wants, the majority gets. Now, I don’t really know if I ever had a desire to watch My Little Pony, I just know I never watched it. Same for Strawberry Shortcake and all that nonsense. I did watch some Care Bears, but so did my brothers, so I don’t have a barometer for how girly Care Bears are. Cartoon time was sacred and you watched the important things only. In our house, the important things were Batman’s Adventures, Superman, Spiderman, James Bond, Jr. X-Men (this was my favorite), Captain Planet, Power Rangers (original season, that’s right), and a host more. As a result, I can talk to you all about Bruce Wayne’s tortured psyche, the properties of adamantium, and how weird the kid who had the “Heart” ring was (you know you thought so too) with surprising expertise. I’m a big fan of the first and second X-men movies (the third had a plot that both the comics and the cartoon would have laughed at), I love Batman movies (except Batman Forever, that was regrettable), and my love for James Bond, Jr. has been replaced with a strong love for James Bond. Now let’s talk about My Little Pony. To be honest, I don’t even know what it’s about, why the show title is in the first person, or why the horses have Technicolor manes, but I know this: watching My Little Pony would have been a childhood experience only. I couldn’t have continued that love in any kind of adult, or public, way for the rest of my life. And I doubt My Little Pony taught the poignant life lessons we find in Batman, for example. Batman teaches us that even when someone is a bad person or has done bad things, killing him, while easy, is not the answer. X-Men is a lesson in being different. Celebrate your differences, embrace them, they’ll make you stronger. Captain Planet showed us that Mother Nature is not to be trifled with lest she come back and end you. So not only did the boys give me a lifelong love…I learned life lessons that Strawberry Shortcake and her freckles don’t know anything about.

2. They’re listening on some level, even if it doesn’t look like they are. For girls, listening is an active thing. Eye contact, head nodding, thoughtful questions. It’s work. I know my friends get annoyed because I’ll be doing three things while they’re talking to me. It’s called multitasking, people! Sorry, got sidetracked. Back to the point, my brothers remember random things. Sure, it’s mostly stuff they glom onto because they know it will annoy me in the future, but that’s beside the point. The point is that the ability to listen and recall are there. This is helpful when dealing with boys now, romantically or otherwise.

“You know I don’t listen!”

“You know I don’t remember that stuff!”

Excuses. Don’t take it. Don’t accept it. Boys try to play dumb and live up to the stereotype society hypes up. I am ON TO YOU, males. No go.

3. I learned how to argue with winning as the goal. Everyone argues. It’s human nature. One person thinks they are more right than another and feels passionately enough to argue. No problem. It happens. But few people treat arguing as an art form. I do. If I don’t see a clear win is possible, it has to be a damn fun argument to keep me in it. You know who can’t recognize when they’ve been beat in an argument? Girls. They repeat themselves over and over again. They don’t adapt their arguments to respond to your rebuttals. They invariably end the conversation with something wimpy like, “I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree,” before they send themselves into pout mode. It drives me crazy. Recognize that you’ve been beaten, that your skills were not up to par, and move on with your life. It doesn’t mean that you agree with me, it just means that you couldn’t articulate yourself clearly or persuasively enough to be declared the victor in this situation. Guys get this. Granted, they don’t like to lose, so pout mode might still happen, but usually they can recognize when they’ve lost the fight. So I avoid arguments with girls. Girls get mean, personal, and then they cry. I HATE IT when they start to CRY. Lose with some dignity!

4. How to pick a battle. You know what's not worth fighting about? The toilet seat. Put it down. They have to pick it up, so put it down. Don't fight about it. It's not a political statement. It's a piece of a toilet. Fight about real things. When they're important. If you complain, pick fights, or whine too much, you will be written off as a hysterical woman. It's not a pretty reality, but it's true. You can complain about that too, but I've already explained what will probably happen.

5. Keeping secrets is your life when you have two nosy little brothers. It’s not even that I did super secret or super interesting things. But brothers will pry and pry until they can get something they can use against you. Diaries and journals? That’s for suckers. Sex tapes? Incriminating photos? Not a chance. No matter how well you hide something, how much you trust the person you told, it WILL get out. Just stay quiet. Keep the secret. Don’t create evidence by documenting it for Pete's sake. It won’t kill you to keep your mouth shut; in fact, your life will be less stressful.

6. The difference between a semi-automatic and automatic firearm. I don’t have anymore to say here, it’s just one of the things I learned.

7. How to punch someone. Follow through. Power it with your body, not your arm. Plant your feet. And for goodness' sake, don't tuck your thumb into your fist or place it across your fingers. Save yourself a broken thumb.

What did you learn from your siblings?

Big Leaps...and making fun of Georgetown...all in one post

I like that I'm about to go from talking about global women's issues to talking about Tyra Banks...among other things.

Buckle your seat belts, kids.

I used to be an avid Top model fan. And by avid I mean I would watch an entire season on VH1 on a lazy Sunday while making a me-sized dent in the couch. So while waiting for Glee to come start this fine evening, I figured catching some Tyra action wouldn't be that bad, and it's the season for short people, so there's a new venue for humor. And then

during the ultra dramatic judging time, Tyra used the word "smeyezing" and I went deaf from the idiocy of the word. Any fan worth her salt knows she meant "smiling with your eyes," however, and human being worth the oxygen they breathe should cringe when hearing "smeyezing." This is like in mean Girls when Gretchen kept trying to get people to say "fetch" and Regina kept yelling at her, except no one is yelling at Tyra. No. No yelling. Instead, Nigel used the "word" when critiquing the same model. If Nigel jumped on that bandwagon, I don't know what the world is coming to...

Other ideas that I would like to share with no one in particular:

- Why does American Apparel make clothes for children? Being a kid was way hard without things like this mucking up your chances of being one of the cool girls:

Photo Credit: American Apparel

She'd be fine without the weird belt and the awkward leg bend. This is what happens when parents dress their kids as adults instead of like children. Another great example:

Photo Credit: American Apparel

This POOR girl. She is wearing pink. acid-washed. denim. shorts. REALLY? When did this happen? Who decided this was OK? Someone should let AA know that denim shorts are considered popular by residents of Gainesville, FL and pretty much no where else. So yeah...

And finally, my favorite:

Photo Credit: American Apparel

Is she a Batman villain? She looks like some weird version of the Riddler/Catwoman with the different colored legs. Are her legs different chess pieces? WHY? WHY?

(Random note: The football team just started dancing the "Single Ladies" on Glee. The roommate looks up and says, "I believe that is offsides," and continues computering. I love my house.)

- Sometimes I don't have much patience. And usually I recognize that people suck, they will be in the way, they will stop walking at the end of the escalator. But I hold my tongue, because you know, I don't know what kind of day they've had, if they have heavy thoughts weighing on them, etc. But sometimes I can't hold it. SO I was at the deli across the street from work waiting in line for my sandwich, when this guy is trying to walk out of the door. Well, this woman is in front of him and she is literally not moving at all. And so my day hadn't been great up to that point and I can feel the Yankee bitch boiling up inside of me...and then her friend turns and tells her quietly to move and I see the......RED TIPPED CANE. Yes. I almost berated a blind person in public for not moving out of the way. I almost ruined my chances to ever enter this establishment again. I'd like to say this will decrease the chance that I will yell at someone in the future, but that would be a lie, and that's not the kind of relationship I have with the Internet.

- Have you thought at all about how swine flu is messing up college students game? A kid being interviewed on the news said something about having to be careful when "interacting" with people at parties. Everyone knows that is college code for "making out with random people." The careless make out can now catch you swine flu! What the hell! That's not what college is about. College is about making questionable decisions. How will these kids do that now? Well, I guess they chose Georgetown...which, let's be honest, is questionable enough.

What other awkward is happening right now? Let's just say that I had an inappropriate dream about a friend and it's made all of my interactions with them an exercise in not blushing. I might share more about that. I might not. It all depends if I sit down in front of the computer drunk at some point in the near future.

I feel like there is more in life to comment on, but this will have to be all for now. This is already a super long post. I actually have work to do at work now, so I write less, which is sad, because there's so much ridiculous shit happening that deserves mockery. Sometimes life is sad like that.

More than 100 million women are missing...

…but it’s not news.

The statistics in this first article alone are mind boggling.

Five thousand honor killings a year? One percent of the world’s landowner’s are women?

Forgive me, but when people sit up on pedestals and preach to me about different cultures doing things differently, I usually think they’re full of it. It’s one thing to not eat pork. It’s quite another to beat your wife to “discipline” her. Throwing acid on girls going to school is another good one. You know, because we wouldn’t want their education to give them ideas about contributing to society. They need to stay home behind an abaya or burqa and not be exposed to the world. Other men might get the wrong idea.

Did they ever think that if a man gets the wrong sexual idea about seeing a woman’s face or arm or ::gasp:: leg in public, that there’s something wrong with the man? That maybe he only sees women as sexual beings and that’s all they’ll ever be to him? Oh wait…that was the idea all along…

Once again, the New York Times comes through with three amazing articles about women around the world.

I consider myself fairly well-informed on international women’s issues and I was staggered by this article (it’s long, but worth it):

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&em#

Again, I’m not a big fan of Hillary, but she does stand up for the double-X chromosomes out there. What kills me the most about this interview, and is mentioned in the article I listed previously, is the fact that maternal health is ignored in so many of these places. It doesn’t make any kind of sense.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23clinton-t.html?pagewanted=1&hpw#

You would think that if you didn’t value women except for producing more sons to continue your horrible culture, you would make sure that having those sons didn’t kill them. Evidently that’s a silly thought, I mean, there are plenty of other wombs available right? Whether they’re willing or not doesn’t seem to matter either.

Also, way to avoid the explosive topic of Saudi Arabia, Hillary…they’re our “friends” who killed how many women and girls last year?

I am physically affected by this next story. That sounds overly dramatic, but it’s true. I don’t know anyone who can read about a government agency orchestrating an acid attack on school girls and not shiver a little. $1200 cash payment for each attacked girl. I suppose that’s fine. They’re girls. Not worth much anyway I suppose…who knows if they would even bring that much money in for their bride prices. I guess, economically speaking, these monsters were paid handsomely to ruin young girls’ lives. And it’s not an isolated incident either. Apparently, resorting to violent, cruel means to keep girls from getting an education is popular in the region.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23school-t.html#

Even sadder than the attack is a father’s unwillingness to help his daughter at no cost to himself and his selfishness to want to gain personally from his daughter’s suffering. I might have cried a little. Don’t judge me.

Now it’s time for an article that’s not like the others! Development is a powerful and, at times, dangerous force. Logically, having more money and education should increase your status in a society, but apparently this is a false notion. Life is hard for all of these women.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23FOB-idealab-t.html#

Do you ever wonder what kind of person commits infanticide? Or what kind of person lets their daughter die of neglect? Are they even people? It also begs the question: how can women do this to their daughters? If you spent your life suffering at the hands of men, and you have a daughter, how do you just ignore her and LET HER DIE?

I suppose the appropriate way to end this is to make some cute little comment about how this all going to show how afraid men are of empowering women, but I feel like that doesn’t even begin to describe what is happening in the world. The systematic hate of an entire gender is happening in front of us. I don’t really know what else I can say about it.

Office Etiquette -- How not to be one of "those people"

I sit in a corner cube at work. Aside from the wonderful space it affords me (decorating ideas anyone? I seriously have a lot of gray-fabric-wall here that needs help.), I can also hear pretty much everything that goes on in the bosses’ offices. Normally I just plug in my headphones, because no one likes a nosy Nancy, but sometimes I hear things on accident. It’s not a big deal, but sometimes people feel the need to talk loudly in Spanish. Thus begins the rant:

As someone who speaks Spanish and works at speaking, reading, and writing it properly…I get annoyed when people try to speak Spanish to hide things, which is the only reason you’d do it at work, and then end up doing it poorly! If you’re going to talk (loudly) about people, talk about projects, or just shoot the breeze, do it in a language you can speak rather than speaking an amalgamation of Spanish and English that makes no sense. Or, here’s a thought, you have an office, not a cube, CLOSE YOUR DOOR and talk in whatever language you’d like.
It’s rude. Plain rude. Sure, I can understand everything you’re saying and I know it’s not important, but other people don’t know that. It makes them uncomfortable. What happens when people are talking in a language you don’t speak around you? You get self conscious, right? Duh, you’re human! It’s like when you go to the nail salon and you sit down and immediately the manicurists start chattering in a language you don’t know. So you’re sitting there decoding body language and context clues and you convince yourself that they’re judging you for your cuticle beds, when they’re more likely having a conversation about their plans for that night. RUDE.
It’s unprofessional. This is a continuation of number two, but I like lists better when there are three items. It gives them more weight. Anyway, it’s unprofessional. You shouldn’t engage in secretive behavior at work. You’re perpetuating a clique culture which is never productive. Besides, how secretive is it when 15% of the floor can understand your secret, coded messages?

To be fair, I don’t think I would care as much as I do if it was someone else who orchestrated these linguistic parties. But I don’t like this person much, and I don’t trust her – she’s all about Eve. So kids, don’t be exclusionary, linguistically or otherwise.

Dinner is dying and I don't like it one bit...

I feel like I should preface this by saying I’ve read way too many articles lately that start to talk about the Julie & Julia movie and just end up talking about Julia Child. And beef bourguignon. And butter. And spies. Really, I like anything that mixes cooking and espionage. It makes for good reading.

You know that feeling you get after you eat a REALLY good meal? You spend the fifteen minutes after the meal thinking about the flavor, texture, and aroma. You are content to bask in the feeling of fullness and even welcome to food coma that will set in shortly.

My next step is usually to figure out how I can recreate the meal. What spices and ingredients went into the sauce? What was the meat marinated in? Would I change anything? How can I make it better? How can I make it mine?

I find that I am too often alone in this next step. My friends don’t cook. I mean, some of them heat up, bake, or microwave, but none of them actually cook. Some of them try, but they don’t try on a regular basis. I get phone calls asking about everything from baking (which usually involves me telling them to read the box they’re most surely using more carefully) to what is missing in this salsa I just made (it was salt). I don’t know when cooking fell out of vogue with the 20-somethings. Sure, we didn’t really cook in college, but we were probably too drunk to operate the stove safely. But not that we’re starting our careers and have our own places, why does cooking still not happen?

I grew up cooking. Really. I lived next door to one grandma and not far from the other. Both of my parents are excellent cooks (like their mothers). I can remember watching dinner being made and wondering about things:

How do you know when the chicken is done?

How do you know how much salt to put on the raw meat?

How do you know when the bell pepper is bad?

How do you know if the steak is well, medium, or rare?

How do you fry things without burning your arm off?

How do you coat the pan with caramelized sugar without dripping the candy on your hand? (Oh, the successes, failures, and scars of flan…)

I mean, I really watched, and as I got older I started asking questions. All those years of watching, combined with food television and the power of the internet, developed my culinary skillZ. (Yes, I just invoked the “Z” because sometimes you need that bit of sarcasm in your morning.) But apparently I was alone in all of this developing. I mean, my friends WATCHED Nigella, Emeril, Rachael, etc. but they didn’t think to replicate what was happening in their own kitchens. As I think about it, I have ONE friend who cooks every day, which to be fair is more than me right now. And he COOKS. Yes, I said he, not she. I like it when my friends confound expectations. We compare culinary skillZ and I can’t wait to leave my sublease and have a kitchen of my own again so we can compare skillZ in my own home. I love these nights where we plan meals and make them happen. They’re fun. Cooking becomes the main event of the evening and while we’re waiting for something to finish we can have cocktails, play games, and just enjoy the company of our friends.

My dad and his friends have Iron Chef challenges (I’m not kidding, they pick the ingredient and everything. I gave him a roll up case for his knives last year because of these gatherings.) The wives encourage this behavior and sit like judges at the counters with martinis and watch the entertainment. I am jealous of this bit of my parents’ lives.

The idea of “grandma’s kitchen” is a popular one with its cozy warmth and delicious surprises simmering in pots and pans on an ancient stovetop. I have very old memories (yeah, all 23 years of me and my very old memories) of dinners in family kitchens. I can remember what was served, what I was wearing (proof that my love of clothes was nature, not nurture), who was there, but mostly you remember a feeling…of comfort? But not comfort the way a blanket is comfortable or the way you feel when you settle into the couch for a movie. It’s a different thing. It’s like comfort combined with safety? Security? Love? Sometimes there’s melancholy mixed in if the people starring in your memories aren’t with us anymore. Comfort with a cinnamon-sugar-nutmeg-pecan topping?

My worry is that such memories are behind me. The kitchen isn’t a place where things happen anymore. Usually my cooking involves cooking for myself and eating leftovers for the week because I cook in quantities for families, not for individuals. Let me tell you, eating alone is not happy. I look around the dining room or kitchen and find myself wishing for people to be there, to share dinner with. I miss the daily ritual. More than that, I worry that it’s dying out, that other friends don’t miss it, and that when we have families of our own, the idea of “dinnertime” won’t exist.

So I’ll fight the dying ritual of dinner in my own way. Dinner parties, cocktail parties, cooking parties. Even just having a friend over for dinner. Slowly, I’ll bring dinner back like Justin brought sexy back (you saw that coming and couldn’t do anything to stop it…poor reader). I’ll go finish planning my housewarming party menu now.