Here in Katie’s Head

[Background: Kyle is thinking about buying a new bed. He is a reasonable (cheap) person and I am sure he will make a well-thought-out decision. However, I have a slight shopping addiction, so I have been trying to "help."]

Update! You must get this bed: http://ultraking.com/index.php?pr=Extreme_UltraKing

IT IS TWELVE FEET WIDE. That’s like…a first down. That is exactly 2.2994 Katie-heighths wide. You wouldn’t need to change the sheets more than once a year, you just scoot over to a clean section of the bed. WHO DOESN’T NEED THAT KIND OF MODERN CONVENIENCE?

I expect he will ignore this email.

But I will be dreaming of doing cartwheels across a four-yards-wide bed.

Posted: 10:00 pm · Category: Kyle · Comments: None

[I first drafted this entry back in August. I thought the second-to-last night of NaBloPoMo was a good occasion to revisit my draft and finish it off.]

A few months back a friend and sometimes-columnist asked me how many dateable guys I thought there were in Wichita.

My answer got edited out of her column. But I said 5. Because I’d decided to be a little pickier than in the past. Because I’d written off all the following categories:

1. Guys who are age inappropriate in either direction
2. Unemployed guys
3. Guys who have personality disorders
4. Guys who don’t get my sense of humor and are completely oblivious to the lightheartedness in posts like this
5. Wichitards (which is, of course, hypocritical; also, see #4)

So I had this brilliant idea: Move to greener (younger, hipper) pastures.

But I wasn’t in a huge rush because (a) being single for a more than a few months for the first time since I was 17 was actually pretty awesome and (b) I am paranoid that I can’t write for shit when I’m in a relationship.

And then a nice guy asked me out. Over email, in fact. Some guy who’d been commenting on my blog for years. And I ran over and told my columnist friend and she thought I was a freak for considering it. I told her I had nothing to lose, and if nothing else it was blog fodder. (This is how she and I excuse all questionable dating practices.) She accepted it once I framed it that way.

So he and I went out for dinner and ended up sitting and talking for a few hours without a single awkward pause. And I recited to myself, “But I don’t want a boyfriend right now.”

And we went on a few more dates and they were great too. And I recited to myself, “But I don’t want a boyfriend right now.”

I convinced myself that he was too nice for me. Inevitably I would break his heart because I am not so nice. And I kept reciting to myself, “Next time I will tell him that this isn’t going to go anywhere.”

But it was nice to spend time with someone kind and interesting who was going through a lot of the same early career issues that I was. Someone both fun and grounded. So I consented to another date. And another.

At last, someone who’s not the kind of guy who’ll IM me drunk after months of silence, cry about how things are going with his druggie stripper girlfriend and tell me I was the best sex he’d ever had. (We had sex?) I was done with the “artistic” (pothead) type. And now I was faced with this guy who was the anti-jerk, who was exactly what I want, yet I was fighting the impulse to cover my eyes and ears and wait for someone more destructive to come along.

All at once — in the middle of a late night discussion about what the hell we were doing — I realized I was being a colossal wuss.

Being someone’s girlfriend did not have to carry all the baggage I was projecting onto the title of “girlfriend.” Not every relationship needs to involve exchanging “I love you”s within two weeks of the first date. Not every relationship has to start with true love forever. Maybe it could start with a simmer and take some time to reach a boil, instead of starting at a boil and quickly boiling over.

So I explained my fears and cautiously donned my girlfriend badge.

I quit telling myself that I wasn’t going to truly fall for him and that I’d soon start to feel smothered and freak out and leave. No, instead I lowered my guard and — thwack! — found myself lovestruck.

And now I walk around with this stupid grin all the time.

Meanwhile, columnist friend has found her own dateable guy who leaves her with a stupid grin. That leaves three left for the rest of Wichita. Good luck, ladies.

Posted: 11:08 pm · Category: Kyle, Wichita · Comments: 4

Waking up at four a.m. to the sound of someone lightly snoring next to you is infinitely better than waking up to the sound of nothing for no reason.

Posted: 8:21 pm · Category: Kyle · Comments: 3

Dear internet,

I have a boyfriend now. His name is Kyle and he has a blog, too.

Love,

Katie

Posted: 9:12 pm · Category: Boys, Wichita · Comments: 6

I took one history course in college, History of Journalism (subtitle: four hundred years of news and booze). The professor told us if we learn one thing, it should be that there’s nothing new in the world. Everything’s been done before, history just repeats itself.

This year I’ve been obsessed with making forward progress. Take better care of myself, lose weight, do good work, make my home into a place where I actually feel at home, let my hair down and enjoy being single, etc.

And for the past couple of months, the universe is making it increasingly clear that it’s time to loop back into the next iteration of whatever cycle I’m stuck in.

Last night I had a date. I’m driving to this guy’s house and marveling at how fluidly my muscle memory guided me there. Because my first serious boyfriend once lived just a couple blocks away. I drove that route countless times. I resist the temptation to pull onto his street and see if his old roommates still live there. Their kids must be, damn, five years older now? They probably don’t even remember stealing my glasses and making me hold them up in front of the mirror and giggling as if babies wearing glasses are the most hilarious thing that will ever exist. They don’t remember posing for countless pictures. They never knew their photographs decorated my blog for a couple of years.

On this date, I go off on my age-old rant about how frustrating I find it that a good half of my brain is taken up with the most useless information ever: song lyrics. We laugh about how we still remember the words to all the Raffi tapes we had as children. I may not be able to recite the song off the top of my head, but if you start playing it, the words spill from my mouth. Every lyric from every tape I listened to as a child, every Top 40 song I’ve heard more than a couple songs, every album I’ve ever owned, it’s all taking up space in my brain. And what utility is there in that? None.

Sure, they might help out with a few trivia questions. But because so little space is available to the vast world of non-song-lyric trivia, it won’t net me a win.

I could use that space for remembering work stuff or my schedule or those errands that I keep forgetting. I could use that space for attaching names to faces. But no.

And on my way home — remembering the many times that I tried to see just how fast I could take that highway onramp in my inherited Grand Marquis, the times I drove home floating on air because I was young and in love, the times I drove home in tears because I was young and in love, the times I drove home at 90 mph because I was young and under curfew — I listened to an album I haven’t heard in five years and sang along with every word.

Oh, and that five-years-ago boyfriend? He’s moving back to town and wants me to play banjo in his band. (Note: I do not play banjo. I do not play anything.) We’ll see.

Posted: 11:02 pm · Category: Boys, Memories, Music · Comments: 1

Since I got a cell phone that can play mp3 ringtones, I’ve had a very specific system for how I assign custom ringtones. Because I am a crazy person.

I hate the stock ringtones. So as soon as I got Bluetooth working, I transferred a few not-fucking-annoying musical clips over to my much loathed RAZR. The exact clips are unimportant. The point is how they are assigned:

• Default ringtone: A short little ditty that reveals my smartypantsedness. A catch-all for miscellaneous friends.
• Work ringtone: So obnoxious that there’s no way I’ll miss it. Applied to coworkers in my department and bosses.
• Family ringtone: When I hear this one, I always know what the call is about before I answer it.
• Cute boy ringtone: A short clip of a favorite song. Applied to only one person at a time because, uh, it would feel slutty to do otherwise.

What I don’t understand is why when I hear any of the first three, my hand reaches for my phone right away, but when I hear the cute boy ringtone, my brain goes into a frenzy of “I love this song! Where is that coming from? Whoa, it’s coming from my pants — I mean my pocket. OH WAIT. That’s my phone. OH WAIT. That’s him. OMG. Answer the phone. WHERE IS THE PHONE? Oh yeah, my pants. Pocket.”

And then I have to answer the phone and pretend to be all cool and collected.

Which is obviously right up my alley.

Posted: 6:23 pm · Category: Boys, Eccentricities · Comments: 3

Dear future Katie,

If your ex from many years ago ever IMs you while drunk, walk away from the computer.

You know what he’s going to say. And the fact that you already know means you can save him the embarrassment of realizing tomorrow morning that he said it, again.

You can get your affirmations elsewhere. For your sake and his.

Love,

Present-day Katie

Posted: 11:19 pm · Category: Boys, Letters · Comments: 6