Under the Hill

I was driving to work the other day and I ran into the old object of my obsession, Nick. Now, Nick was the one guy that made me break all my rules. Handsome and very good at making you think he cared, I ignored the little fact that he had a girlfriend and dreamed of making him my own. There had to be something between us, right? I mean one look at him and my heart was jumping out of my throat and my knees were buckling, he had to feel it too! I, of course, like many women who make this mistake was just playing myself because on that happy day when Nick finally did tell me he had broken up with his girlfriend and wanted to date, he literally disappeared on me days later. I tried to call him a few times and no response. A few weeks later I heard he had hooked up with a woman I knew, a Hook Nosed Girl that I had met a few times and frankly found a little emotionally unstable. Not only was I cast aside but for a less attractive girl who could barely string two sentences together and needed Prozac? I was deeply hurt.

So, running into him again after that humiliation was something I wasn’t really prepared for. My plan was just to wave and keep on driving, but he followed me into the parking lot and when he got out of his car I did a double take. He wasn’t nearly as cute as I remembered and was he always this short? He fumbled around asking me if I still had his number. I replied no and he offered to hand over the prized digits again. I passed and the look on his face was priceless. It had been a year since I saw him. What made him think that I was still interested?

I asked him about Hook Nose and he told me that they had broken up months ago and she was “cool. That was about all.” He said, “he’d call me.” I said, “I won’t be waiting by the phone” and that was that. The funny thing about the encounter was that I always wondered how I would feel if I saw him again. The answer was surprising. I felt zip. Zero. Nada. The feelings that I thought were so strong, that I even thought were love was merely a strong infatuation that I held on for a ridiculously long time. I was free and I had to tell you. I felt like break dancing. That’s when I knew that I would never lower my standard to try to win a man again. Infatuation fades, love for yourself is forever.

The funny thing is that when I told the story to a mutual friend of ours she informed me that Nick and Hook Nose were “still going strong.” I was shocked. When I last saw him he was trying to play me and a year later he was trying to play me again? I realized that Nick would never change and that it was foolish for me to think that Nick would ever be any different. You have to take people as they are and any thoughts of changing them or them magically changing is ridiculous. I think that’s one of the great things about entering your thirties. You know what you want and you just won’t take the crap from guys that you use too.

Nick did actually call me, but I didn’t even bother to answer. That old feeling was gone and in its place, was the unshakable confidence that I can do better.

till next week…

I’m a journalist and I spent a majority of my career working alone. I’d write my story, turn it into my editor and move on to my next piece. When I changed careers and had to start working very closely with co-workers it was a shock to my system. My co-workers were clearly what I called toxic co-workers and my courage was faltering at each slight. Blaming me for their failures? Check. Appropriating my ideas as their own? Check. Trying to keep me down so that they still felt relevant and superior? You betcha. The whole experience was so traumatic for me that I even toyed with quitting. Cooler heads eventually prevailed, I still liked eating, sleeping indoors and above all shopping, and I decided to stick it out. I don’t regret that decision. I’ve learned a lot at my current job, but the whole experience got me thinking, how much courage do we need on the job?

Sometimes going to work seems like preparing for war because working with Toxins can drive you bananas. You’re literally at your wits end and have to steel yourself to go to the office. The good news is that if you recognize the signs early you can stop them in their tracks and save yourself tons of stress. So pay attention because Toxic co-workers tend to fall into a couple of categories:

The Passive Aggressive: This person will smile in your face and talk sweetly to you, all the while talking about you behind your back. They tend to take everything you say and do as a slight or a threat to their authority, so when you actually do something they can comment on they are particularly nasty. These are the most annoying Toxins of them all because they do such a bad job hiding their dislike for you. Fortunately we tend to be smarter than them and easily find ways around their idiotic- ness.

The Butt Kisser: These people are so far up your bosses butt that you’re tempted to send a search party out just to see how long it takes to find them. They live to stroke the boss’s ego. In fact, their still employed because the boss likes them. Just ignore these chumps. Your work will speak itself.

The Saboteur: These people feel threatened by you and try to run you and your ideas down at every turn. Be ever vigilant. They’re out to get you! Once you have them contained, though, feel free to feel sorry for them. After all, only somebody with such low self-esteem would be so threatened by your job that they’d neglect to do their own.

The Ditz: Do you remember how hard it was for you to get hired? Do you really think that office “dummy” had to go through any less hoops than you did? These office challenged individuals are rarely as ditzy as they seem. In fact, nine times out of ten they are using their dumb act to keep you off guard. These people tend to be very manipulative and will play dumb to either pump you for information or to get you to do their work for them. Don’t fall for this game.

The Rival: From the moment you started working you and such and such hated each other like poison. You’re always trying to one up each other and everything seems to be a battle of wills. In my opinion, this Toxin is actually help. They push you to the limit and let you know exactly what you’re capable of. Keep it civil and may the best co-worker win!

till next week…

I, like everyone else around the country, was stunned by last week’s shootings at Virginia Tech. The original report on the carnage was terrifying, but looking at the pictures of so many young people cut down before their time just brought me to tears. We cannot understand why something like this happens, nor will we ever be okay with the idea that innocents always seem to be the ones to pay when the dark and twisted want to bare their ugly souls. The whole incident did leave me wondering, though, what am I doing with my life?

Since turning thirty I have become very aware of the passage of time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very aware that I am still a very young woman, but I’m also aware that “I’ll do it tomorrow” just doesn’t seem to cut it anymore. In the last few years, I have made death’s acquaintance. I have buried grandparents, mentors, and friends, all with an understanding that life is all too brief. When you’re young you think you’re going to live forever. As you get older, you realize the foolishness of that line of thought. I can’t tell you guys how many times I have thought: “If only I could go back and do that over.” But life can only go forwards, not backwards and we do ourselves a disservice when we get too comfortable with waiting for things to turn out the way we want them too.

I’m not afraid die, what does scare me is looking back on my life and realizing that I have done nothing with this precious gift. It’s the fear that I have not told my family how much I love them, have not seen enough of the world, and have not made enough of my dreams come true. If we take nothing else from last week’s tragedy, we should take with us the utmost gratitude that we are still alive and that as long as we are a live we still have a chance to be the person that we have always wanted to be.

I was moved by the story of Virginia Tech Engineering Professor Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, who placed himself in front of his classroom door to keep the gunman, Cho Seung-Hui, away from his students. This gesture allowed his students to escape and saved dozens of families from having to bury their precious sons and daughters. Librescu sacrificed his life so that his students could live. His death brings home the fact that the true measure of a life is not how much money we make or all the things that we accumulate, but how much we have enriched the lives of those that we have known and loved.

till next week…

I finally found the perfect man for me and true to Angie’s Luck he just wants “to be friends.” I’ve been trying to be mature about this, and more importantly realistic about our non existent romantic future, so imagine my surprise when the man in question, we’ll call him Conrad in the column, ended his last text message with I love you. Not, luv ya; much love; love Conrad, but the big three words that I have been dying to hear all strung together in one commanding sentence. This, of course sent me into a tailspin. What does this all mean? Was he coming around and falling in love with me? Did he love me like a sister? Like a friend? Was he filled with Christ’s love? What was the deal? This whole thing got me thinking; just how much power does the L word actually have?

People use the word love all the time. We love our friends, our family, our new pair of Jimmy Choos, but can a man who you share an attraction with say the words to you without changing things? Now that he has said the words does this mean it’s fair game to use the words to each other whenever we feel like? And if I am throwing “I love you Conrad” around am I allowing myself to hang on to the fantasy that he and I can still come together the way I want too?

I love you is not a sentence that I toss around casually. It’s certainly not something that I say to men who I don’t share DNA with, so why do men feel like it’s okay to toss it out to women and expect them not to feel the least bit confused or lead on? Men need to realize that I love you still has the power to send women’s imagination into overdrive and turn men into something they might not want to be: the current Mr. Right Now. If you are a man and you feel the need to say, text or write the words for whatever reason to a woman who you don’t want to be with, can you at least clarify it? How about “I love you like I love my car?” That will clear things up real quick and save you and her lots of complications in the long run. As for Conrad, “he loves me like he loves his loved ones.” Ain’t love grand?

till next week…

I have a confession to make. I love reality television, the trashier the better, which is why I have been glued to VH1’s I Love New York. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the show, it features twenty men fighting for the heart of one loud, obnoxious woman named New York. Think a ghetto version of The Bachelor. Now, in one particular episode New York forces her men to provide a financial portfolio because she needs a man “who can bring home the bacon.” In fact, New York has a lot of needs in a man and it suddenly occurred to me that she really didn’t have anything to offer in return. Here is a woman who smokes like a chimney, screams like a banshee, shows her buttocks when she’s angry, and can’t keep her lips to herself. She’s nobody’s prize, yet she expects her man to be perfect. This got me thinking: Does a woman really think about her worth?

There is an old saying that when you pick a mate you need to be equally yoked. If you are successful, you need to find somebody else who is successful. If you’re a Christian you don’t want to marry an atheist. If you’re a High School drop out who lives on welfare well…you get the picture. So, why do so many women seem to think that they can expect so much when they offer so little? Let’s face it ladies when an unkempt, bus riding, unemployed male asks for the digits we’re insulted. Finding a man worthy of your time is hard, I know believe me I know, but when we start listing off the qualification that we want in a man maybe we need to count how many things on the list we have. I’m guilty of this too. My dream guy was always a doctor or a lawyer, yet I was perfectly happy with my B.A. and was struggling to find stable employment. It wasn’t until I took a hard look at myself and was honest about where I was in life that I knew I was being unreasonable. Now don’t get me wrong, all women should have standards, but if you’re going to set your standards high you need to be able to reach the bar yourself. Once I started to work for and achieve the things I wanted in a man, I realized that I had become the person I always wanted to be. I had become successful and accomplished and I didn’t need a man to get me there. Now, I’m a fantastic catch and any man who steps to me has to be doing at least as good as me or what’s the point, right? My man has to have a lot to offer because I have a lot to offer. It maybe asking a lot, but, hey, I’m worth it.


till next week…

I was having lunch with a friend of mine who just turned twenty-six, and Oh My God is now four years away from being thirty, and she was fretting about getting fat. She couldn’t stop lamenting about the fact that she was getting too old to drop weight and that once upon a time all it took was a week of water and fruit to get her body in shape. I felt her pain, but unlike years past, it didn’t send me into a tirade about my own less than perfect figure and I realized that I had finally and happily turned a corner.

Turning thirty had not only ushered in a new found comfort with my personality and beliefs, it also finally helped me make peace with who I was on the outside. I had finally matured to the point where I could look in the mirror and see more good than bad. Yeah, me!

Everybody struggles with his or her appearance. My struggle has always been the battle of the bulge. For as long as I can remember I have struggled with weight. I saw myself as fat girl even when I wasn’t and tended to go into denial when my weight started getting out of control. Fat has been my life long enemy and has lead to a life of nitpicking about every facet of my appearance. I mean, how can a fat girl be anything but ugly?

When you’re young every flaw is magnified. You’re so insecure about yourself and your place in the world that it’s tempting to believe that if only I could look like <> my life would be perfect. Right. Just because being the most beautiful of them all equaled happily ever for Snow White doesn’t mean that beauty is the magic cure all for life’s ills.

Thirty is when I realized that I was not going to be young forever. You know, once upon a time people grew old gracefully, but in the age of botox and boob lifts the concept of aging gracefully has all but disappeared. Age is no excuse chickadees to look old when the plastic surgeon is on speed dial. But as I get older and reap the positive benefits from living three decades on this earth, I realize that I don’t want to be younger and I don’t want to be perfect. I just want to be me and that’s a realization worth getting older for.


till next week…

I was recently enjoying my favorite past time, shopping, when I realized that I was in the Junior Section. This is a place that I have been at home in for as long as I can remember, but I was thirty now and there couldn’t be anything in there for me, could it?

The first time you pick up a short skirt and realize that you are too old to wear it can be a traumatic experience, not so much because you really want the thing, but because for the first time, you have to think about yourself in a more mature light. I know that a thirty-something wardrobe is suppose to shout out to the world that you are all grown up, but as I looked at the trendy threads that belonged to my past I had to wonder: Is 30 the Age of Appropriateness?

When you turn thirty people look at you differently. There seems to be more scrutiny in what you say, what you do and what you wear. It’s like people expect that one-year to make a man or a woman out of you. Club hopping? Fun when you are in your twenties, but everybody knows that the thirty-something year old brotha at the club is an object of ridicule. Chronic unemployment? Understandable at twenty, but pathetic at thirty. Bike riding? Great if you’re at the beach, but if you’re riding down a major street you are going to get talked about. Most men seem to love a feisty young girl, but as a woman ages that same attitude seems to grate on the nerves, since some men find that what is attractive in a young women is inappropriate in older one.

So, here we are fellow thirty-somethings slowly learning that the way we have lived our lives up until now no longer flys and you know what, it shouldn’t. The truth is if you’re still acting the same way at thirty that you did at twenty than something is wrong. A decade is a long time and our life, be it our clothes, speech and lifestyle choices, should reflect that. I am getting older, but as I paid for that little skirt, which I am going to tastefully pair with stockings and a blazer, I realized that being appropriate is more about getting wiser than it is about getting old.

till next week…

I recently turned 30 without ever managing to become somebody’s Mommy. I’m fine with this, more than fine, but some of my very well meaning family members can’t understand why I haven’t gone forth and multiplied.

Take this past weekend, where instead of celebrating my Mom’s birthday, there seemed to be an awful lot of focus on the fact that I wasn’t one. See, my brother recently had his second daughter. She’s about three months old, gorgeous and content to just lie there. I was asked if I wanted to hold her, I said "no." I don’t hold little babies. Never have. They are very delicate and I tend to break very delicate things. Why take the chance? Of course, nobody is ever permitted to decline the honor of holding somebody else’s pride and joy, so she was in my lap faster than I could say, “spinsters are people too.”

Major uncomfortableness followed. I mean have you ever tried to hold a very young infant? They squirm; look very uncomfortable and they don’t talk, so you can’t ask them if they are all right. I sat there for all of five minutes cooing and stuff and handed the baby back. The first thing my brother said was, “I can tell that you are never going to have children?” Huh? Angie and Mommy don’t mix because I’m not instinctively an expert at Baby Holding 101? I mean she is only 3 months. It’s not like we can play around and stuff. All she can do is stare and smile. Five minutes of that is a good amount of auntie/niece playtime if you ask me. Then, my other relatives took turns trying to make me feel guilty or worse incompetent, and this got me thinking: Is the “M Club” for everybody?

In an age where 30 is the new 20 and life seems to just get good as you inch towards 40, is there still a thing as being too old to be a mom? Should I go out and have a rugrat by the first man that strikes my interest or risk being childless forever? I think not. I can’t afford a kid right now. I can barely take care of myself. I still have so much that I want to do with my life. When you have kids they have to become your priority, sacrifices become in order and I’m just not ready to abdicate my numero uno position in my life to anybody else…yet. Also, this may be a newsflash for some, but I know a lot of successful older women who have no children and are, brace yourselves, happy and content. Being a Mom is great. I love my nieces and they have brought a richness into my life that I could never have imagined, but not everybody wants to be a mom and just being you, sans that Mommy title, doesn’t make you any less of a women.

As for me, I intend to be a Mommy one day, but on my timetable and when I can afford to give the kid the time and attention he or she will need to be happy and healthy. So, count me in as a future member of the “M Club,” but in the present, just being Angie is enough.

till next week...

A friend of mine recently discovered that the man in her life has not only been seeing another woman, but had recently crowned the other woman his girlfriend. Making her mouth twitch, voice rise and eyes narrow in rage wasn’t the fact that she felt played, and boy did she feel played, but the fact that it was someone else, a mutual friend of theirs, that told her the news. Her "man" just stopped calling.

I agreed that he was a lying, cowardly worm, but when I told the story to a guy friend of mine he told me that said lying, cowardly worm had done nothing wrong. “They were just dating. He didn’t owe her a thing,” he said. “The problem is women expect too much. If you go out on more than one date they start calling you their boyfriend. Women need to start listening to men. If we say it’s just dating, it’s just dating.”

Now, I’m sure that it’s not just men who will tell you this. You’ll find a number of women, usually and coincidentally happily coupled up, who will tell you the same thing. Women lie to themselves and then want to blame the man when she is forced to face the truth. But it is really that simple?Let’s face it, women are still looking for princes. Men know this, in fact, on some level they count on this. They love that women are willing to give so much so quickly and feel that as long as they throw out a disclaimer (Warning: this is just sex) or (Warning: I’m not looking to get serious) their conscious is clear. Unfortunately, it is not that simple. Especially when these disclaimers are rarely followed up with: “By the way, I’m also dating and sleeping with other women.”

Men, despite what some women like to think, know exactly what they want. The problem is, a majority of them don’t have the guts to say: “It isn’t you.” The guy that my friend was dating didn’t just wake up one morning and randomly chose which girl he wanted to see exclusively. He knew this for a while and just kept mum.

Women are guilty of this too. I’ve “forgotten “ to return calls and have lied about having a boyfriend because it was easier, but the difference between men and women is that women rarely pretend that they are into somebody, while courting somebody else. For the most part Women Serial Daters (WSDs) are usually up front with men. “I like you, but I like David too” and they go from there.It seems that somewhere along the line we have lost respect for ourselves and for each other. Women need to stop “dating” men who can’t be bothered to get to know just them. Women also need to walk away from men who don’t respect them enough to let them know where they really stand.

For their part, men need to stop feeling like they need to have the entire bakery before choosing a pastry puff. If you are not really feeling a girl DON’T DATE HER! If you are a Male Serial Dater (MSD) let a sister know. If it’s obvious that a woman is feeling you more than you are feeling her, please man up and tell her straight out, “It is never going to happen.” It may sting, but it’ll squash those pesky, unrealistic great expectations that can only lead to shattered dreams and broken hearts.

till next week…

“They” say that 30 is the new 20.
I don’t know who “they” are, but I’m pretty sure it’s a bunch of people who, like me, woke up one day, realized that they were 30 and didn’t feel the least bit old.

I would say that 30 snuck on me, but I’d be lying. It was more like it jumped me from behind, clubbed me over the head and pulled me into its lair before I even had a chance to realize I was being stalked. How did this happen? Wasn’t I just 16? Didn’t I just turn 21?

When I was in eighth grade my teacher made us write an essay about where we saw ourselves at thirty. Don’t ask me why, I guess it was one of those ploys they use to try to get their pupils to focus and to think about where they were headed. At the time 30 seemed so old and I was convinced that I would have everything that a successful adult was supposed to acquire: husband, kids, house, big-time job. I was going to have it all.

Now here I am at THAT age and I don’t have any of those things and a dark cloud seems to be looming overhead. I am 30- years- old and what do I have to show for it? More importantly, why does turning 30 mean that I am suppose to have my life together. Who made up that rule? Did the fact that I am a 30- year- old woman who is still trying to figure out where my life is heading make me a loser? I am still young, I still have plenty of time to decide who I want to be, right?

I think that people my age fail to realize that becoming an adult just doesn’t happen over night. It’s a long process that takes your entire life. At 30 I’m just really beginning to own this process. I’m not young, but I’m not old either. It’s time to take control of my life and I can’t decide what is scarier, being over the hill or under it.

So, where exactly is this new chapter of life entitled “in my thirties” headed? I don’t know, but I can’t wait to find out.

till next week…