Under Promise. Over Deliver

Meg Ryan-failing to live up to early expectations

I recently came to thinking about the notion of under promising and over delivering spurred on by a conversation with some girls from my office as we waited for the elevator. The girls were talking about a crazy friend of theirs who was actively stalking a guy she was dating . I had always thought dating and stalking to be mutually exclusive so I dared asked the girls to define both for me and they quickly obliged:

Stalking is:
-Drunk dialing: a universal institution that will never grow old
-Calling then hanging up-:when adults behave like tweens
-Apartment cruising: the convenient habit of randomly finding yourself in close proximity to his digs is not nearly as popular as it used to be pre Internet days but still alive in Manhattan
-Having your birthday at his local bar: "oh..what are the chances..."
-Friending his friends on Facebook: let's start referring to Facebook as what is really is- another channel for dating.
-The daily google search, now made easier by 'professional' social networks like Linked In: this is about bringing work home.

Dating is:
- when he pays.

"Ahhhh..his city makes people crazy" I said to the office girls.

"Especially women" , said one of the girls and at once, we united as one against all the Manhattan crazies and it was almost like a scene from Sex and the City 2 without the camels.

"I think I'm an excellent girlfriend" said my new friend and we all nodded, just as all the girls did in Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants. Some more bonding ensued " OMG ..reallllyyy?, "that's soooooo funny", " awesome", "so cute" etc etc.

And then one of the girls went on to share her wisdom of under promising and over delivering.
"I mean, I don't ask for much from my boyfriend" she said. " Like, all I really ask of him are to follow 3 basic rules:
1.Don't do heroin
2. Don't cheat
3. Don't die.

"How's it going?", I asked her, thinking that surely, her man could over deliver here.
" Well he's not dead yet" she said.

And then we all held hands and said a silent prayer that we would never become as pathetic as Meg Ryan.

This little piggy went to market

"Dinner for Two" He says

"Over my dead body" She says

If today isn't officially the world's longest Friday on record, then call me crazy because I have been functioning, it seems, for hours. I've had to pop a left over percocet, scored from a party last weekend to try and calm down. I don't know why I'm so worked up, perhaps it has to do with the fact that I am an idiot. Let me explain to you how I know I am an idiot by presenting you with this sorry little scenario:

Scene 1:

Hot, hot, hot guy standing at hot, hot, hot soup section in Gourmet Garage in SoHo.

In walks, tired 30 something lady, looking a little weary but reasonably approachable in new spring jacket. The lady is hungry, she's really hungry. She shouldn't be, but she is.

The lady makes a beeline for the aforementioned soup section. She has seen the boy but not really seen the boy, if you know what I mean. She's been off her game a little recently and is thinking that maybe she has lost her mojo.

She reaches for the super size container and starts to weigh up her options. She knows she should have the lentil soup, but it seems a bit boring for a Friday night. You know what you can do with your ten vegetable soup, says the voice in her head. She chuckles, that voice inside her head can be so funny sometimes. The beef and barley has her name on it, she can see that now. It's raining outside and the consistency comforts her immediately and she dives right on in.

She's only two scoops in, the ladle working it's magic, filling the ginormous cup full of hearty beef and barley when she remembers the hot, hot, hot guy standing by her side. He's watching her. She immediately feels fat. I was too eager, she thinks. Did I knock him out of the way to get to the beef? Shit...I think I did. I think she did.

The lady is starting to freak out and knows the only thing that will calm her down is a cookie, a chocolate chip one, only two isles away.....

Suddenly the hot, hot, hot boy says to the hungry, crazy lady " Is that your dinner tonight?" and nods towards the hideously massive soup the mental lady is holding in her hand. "Ummmmmmm", she says.

"Is that for you and your boyfriend", the cheeky little Pete Wenzesque dude says to her.

The bat shit crazy lady starts silently freaking out again. This is a potential opening, she is thinking. She must answer this question correctly, her night depends on it.

But what should she say? Does she lie and say , "Yes, this surely is a soup serving for two, I couldn't possibly be eating this all by myself". Or does she say "No" and deliver a bulimia inspired monologue about how she hasn't eaten all day, back to back meetings, this soup will probably last me until at least the summer etc blah blah blahhh rah rah rah. Is bulimia still even cool, she wonders and stares off into the distance.

A little while later (4 hours in her mind, in reality, just 2 seconds), she looks at the boy, smiles coyly and says "uhsndfgefifohfnfhivvvudwe", drops her umbrella, (but not her soup), bends down to pick it up, still with the alphabet running backwards in her mind and returns to an upright position, where the boy is gone.

Damn it, she thinks. He was cute. She was idiot. And you can't cuddle soup.

Accidentally On Purpose #1

If someone was to "accidentally on purpose" set fire to Christian Audigier, that might be nice.

The thing about Ikea and Revolutionary Road..

Kate and Leo discuss the pro's and cons of Ikea bedroom storage (She likes the Elga series and he's a Pax man)

There is only one thing worse than going to Ikea alone and that is going with your partner.

Today, I witnessed first hand, not one, but 4 relationships hit the skids at Ikea in Brooklyn (two words I promise to never speak of again: Ikea and Brooklyn). I saw one couple go down even before they hit the store. She had misplaced the tickets to the water taxi (insert some comment about an over sized handbag) and he had to rush back to purchase new tickets and only just made it back in time. If he had been forced to wait another 40 minutes for the next boat, the lady with the big leather hand bag would've been flying solo this coming Valentines day for sure. Thank you Mr. Jobs and friends for the ipod, as while she was hanging onto her relationship, I was hanging onto my sanity.

I'm not ready for Ikea, which means, maybe I'm not quite ready for what Ikea means. You know, joint decision making, building a foundation, starting a story and sentence that starts with we not me. The wounds of "Revolutionary Road" are perhaps still too fresh and maybe this whole Ikea thing was too soon and I wasn't ready because Ikea is my Revolutionary Road.

When Kate hooks up with Leo at the beginning of the film, she never envisaged shopping at Ikea with him. She didn't flash forward to sofa choices and start smelling cheap candles and staring at curtain rods for an afternoon. She didn't ask for that. He was, after all, "just a guy who made her laugh at a party once" (ouch- totally using that one, cheers Kate)

I totally get it when the old guy at the end of the movie turns down his hearing aid as his wife, Kathy Bates, starts prattling on about the new tenants at 60 Revolutionary Road. My selective hearing aid (ipod) was on and activated today at Ikea.

The reality of Ikea scares me more than the fictional Revolutionary Road. What if he likes the Karlstad collection and I like Extorp series? Does that mean we will be incompatible for life? Maybe I could learn to love the Karlstad? It could totally work in a different color, perhaps the aforementioned teal. It could work. I could make it work.

I can't get this fffffing chair together!!! %^&*(()_+++ hell.