i want you to want to

I’m girly. I fantasize about wearing pearls, heels, a cute dress covered by the cutest apron you’ve ever seen and serving dinner to my angelic children and husband all while listening to Sinatra. I have this 1950’s housewife inside of me that occasionally seeps out—often unexpectedly. A couple of years ago in Vegas my cousin and best friend witnessed this first hand when they found me wearing heels as I ironed my clothes for the evening. A college roommate once had a guy coming over to our house and I met him at the door wearing a large hat and sundress while twirling about with a martini in hand listening to ‘ol blue eyes. I’m not sure to this day whether he was completely freaked out or just entertained, but we’re friends on facebook, so I’ll assume it wasn’t too traumatizing for him.

Housewife tendencies aside, I often get lumped in the “guy’s girl” category. I find myself in the guys’ group at most social and family functions. In my defense, it isn’t the men that are the draw, but they tend to occupy the room with the biggest T.V. to watch the game. And whatever game that is, I want to be watching it too and getting my two cents in on what’s happening in the world of sports. I’d rather watch Sportcenter than any local or national news and the only vacations I sign up for are those that revolve around diving or my favorite sports teams. In 2005, a diving vacation conflicted with my team being in the World Series and I’m convinced to this day that they lost because I had to watch every game in Spanish from my hotel room.

Needless to say, I pride myself on being able to balance my femininity with my logic and understanding of men. And that is why I sometimes knock my own socks off with my ridiculousness. I will only tell one story of my ridiculousness for now and it began on Christmas Eve.

That evening the whole family was coming over for Christmas Eve dinner. My mom and I love playing hostess and the house is always ready for an instant party. Despite this, for some reason we always decide to cram something else in or get something else done right before our guests arrive. It’s pretty much what we do and I’ve resigned to the fact that it will never change. So we went to bed the night before thinking we didn’t have much to do the following day. I wake up and piddle around making desserts and then suddenly remember that I have these cute boxes to wrap goodies in to give everyone. So I begin to rummage through the cabinets and see what I can throw together to bake for the boxes. And now I’ve done it, I’ve started a project and will not rest until it’s done—forgetting that I have yet to take a shower or change out all of the pictures in the house. Yes, I just said change out all of the pictures in the house. You see, I had this grand idea at the beginning of December to start collecting old Christmas photos to display instead of the ones we normally have on the walls, however, this grand idea does not come to fruition until the day of the party. So while brownies and cookies are baking I start rummaging through pictures and pulling frames off every wall. One frame doesn’t make it and two others are dropped, but do not shatter. The pictures make it up and the oven timer is buzzing. I pull everything out and am running around in my sweats when out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of my amazing boyfriend doing what I can tell by the squint of his eyes and movement of his thumb is playing brickbreaker on my Blackberry. Since I am sometimes passive-aggressive, I ask him what he is doing, even though I already know exactly what he is doing—not helping me. In a not-so-sweet way I ask him if he would mind helping and helping right now is cutting the brownies. I know he hates cutting brownies, because I make gooey brownies and there is really no flawless way to cut them into squares, and I probably have the time, but he isn’t doing anything to help! He cuts the brownies, I shower, the party is a success and the gift boxes are neatly stacked on the bar ready to be taken home by the guests.

And then, a few nights later, mom’s bunco group comes to the house. While we’re cleaning up my mom asks me what my dad is doing. I know this is a loaded question, and what she really means is that he isn’t doing anything more important than helping us. So now, my understanding of men kicks in and I tell my mom I will take out the trash, and there really isn’t anything we need his help for. It wasn’t even a party he got to participate in and she wants him to help clean up? She then says she just wants him to want to help us even if we don’t really need it. I remind her of the line from The Break Up where Jennifer Aniston’s character tells Vince Vaughn’s character: “I want you to want to do the dishes.” And he replies: “Why would I want to do the dishes?” The words escape my mouth and suddenly my advocacy for my dad turns into guilt for making PJ cut the brownies on Christmas Eve. Did I really need his help or was I just mad because he wasn’t buying into my ridiculous theory that all of these extra things needed to get done? I didn’t need him to cut the brownies, I just wanted him to want to cut the brownies. And yes, I now see how ridiculous that sounds. So I call PJ and tell him this whole revelation that I’ve just had and that I will never be so ridiculous about things like that again and you know what he says? I know it verbatim and it went exactly like this: “I really didn’t mind cutting the brownies, and I really haven’t thought about it until you brought it up again.”

And there, my friends, you have it. I’m girly. I overanalyze everything, and now instead of taking pride in understanding men, I will take pride in the fact that I have begun to understand myself. Now if you’ll excuse me, Sportcenter is about to start and I need to put on my pearls.