Archive for August, 2009

Written by Kristen Escovedo

I’ve met many women who tell me that the reason they spend so much time sitting across the table from uninteresting men, laughing at jokes that aren’t funny and eating a dinner salad when what they really want is a big juicy steak topped with bacon with a side of bacon is that these dates, no matter how horrid, help them create a checklist of they are looking for in a mate.

Is he the one? Or should you send him packing?

- Bob may have been obnoxious but he had great teeth.

- Seth had bad breath but he held the door open for me.

- Tyler slurped his soup, talked about his ex-girlfriends all night, tried to grab my breasts when we got in the car, and ate my cucumbers, but he has a job.

- James dresses great, talks to his mom three times a week, loves musical theater, has never been married, offered to take me shopping, give me a make-over, and set his roommate Brian up with my best friend . . . wait a minute.

I view dating from a different perspective. I believe dating allows you to create a list of things that you don’t want in a life-long mate. Once you find someone who doesn’t match that list, you know he (or she) is the one.

Since this may be a new concept for you, let me illustrate with my personal example. Other than my husband, I’ll use descriptors rather than names. However, it is important to keep a couple of things in mind.

- These examples are 10-15 years ago (I was very young when I started dating).
- Most importantly, just because I (or you) place something on this type of list, it does not make the associated person bad or flawed (barring physical or verbal abuse). It just means they weren’t The One. When it comes down to it, most of my ex’s could list a flaw or two of mine (I’m not eliciting a challenge).

The Things I Didn’t Want In The One – As Learned From My Ex-boyfriends

- High School Obsession – Drank too much.
- Long Term High School Boyfriend – Didn’t get my sense of humor.
- Short Term College Boyfriend –More interested in my body than my mind.
- Long Term College Boyfriend – Wanted me to be a mild mannered, size 4, blond, Southern Baptist vegetarian.

Then I met Richie and he wasn’t all of the things I didn’t want.

We met in college, so I won’t tell you we didn’t enjoy a few cocktails on occasion, but there were distinct differences between him and my High School Obsession. First, he was 21 not 17. Second, he knew the difference between having a drink, and drinking to get drunk.

Not only did he get and appreciate my sense of humor, he made me laugh.

Richie and I both majored in Communication Studies, which provided a common interest, but even outside the academic realm there never seemed to be a shortage of areas for discussion. I won’t say he wasn’t interested in my body, but he always respected my decision to wait until I was married to have sex.

Richie and I were friends before we started dating, which has its advantages, one of which is by the time we started dating he had already seen the real me. The loud, silly, bacon loving, frizzy haired, charismatic, size 8. That is the girl he fell in love with.

The advantage to creating a checklist of traits you don’t want as opposed to a never-ending list of must haves is that you enable yourself to see your potential mate for who they really are and not who you want to make them into. Because the truth is, as much as you may believe you can, you cannot change another person, no matter how much you love them or how much they love you. That is why, whatever your expectations, if a potential partner does not meet them, you will both be much happier if you cut your losses and move on than if you spend the next ten years trying to change that person. I tell you that as someone who spent three years a very miserable size four, blond vegetarian.

But, then it happens! You find someone who isn’t all the things you don’t want. It may be someone you have known for years or it may be someone you just met. All you know is that this is the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. And you should. Because when you know, you know. And when that happens, I promise, you won’t need to date one more person to figure it out. Because your list will be complete.

How did you know he or she was The One? Share your thoughts.

Kristen Escovedo is a writer, a communications pro, a wife and a mommy of two. Her blog, The Waiting Room is a place where all these varied aspects of her life come together as she takes a look at life from its various Waiting Rooms ranging from the silly to the poignant. Follow her on Twitter @kescovedo.

The books, ah, beloved books, how I wish I could read you all forever. Here are the ones I read over and over, good friends that have a special shelf all their own.

I follow in my mother’s footsteps with devotion to Gone with the Wind. Despite having varied feelings on the subject as I have gotten older, I still basically respect Scarlet, and wholeheartedly love Margaret Mitchell’s writing, and her descriptions of the south.

Also, anything by Jane Austen. Persuasion is my favorite, along with Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice – who couldn’t like them? Tales filled with a cunning eye for character and denouements that are worth coming back to over and over.

Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden, is another. I have listened to this on tape multiple times, as well as read it in print. Every time I go through I am stuck by the juxtapositions he describes of wealth and servitude, glamor and entrapment. Again, an ending that is so fulfilling it surprises every time.

To be fair, I do not actually only read great literature. A sick-bed habit of mine is re-reading Harry Potter, by the British J.K Rowling. I admit to having read each of the books at least three times. Guilty pleasure, much?

Speaking of guilty pleasures, it doesn’t get any better than Elizabeth Young, another British author, who writes about twenty-nine-and-a-half year old women who live in London and either a) have no male prospects or b)discover their prospect is rotten. In the course of the joyful chapters, the woman finds a prospect and through some fairly painful process is able to catch him – and in the end we learn he loved her nearly the whole time, finds her fudgy bits lovable, her sometimes-obscenitied speech charming, and her entire self utterly sexy. My favorites are A Girl’s Best Friend, in which “he” is a veterinarian who saves her beloved dog, and A Promising Man – and About Time Too -in which a woman falls for a guy, but is 75% sure he is with her worst enemy from high school. Her friends are always catchy, and you just want to hug her parents. My copies are all falling apart from being read in the bathtub a few too many times.

Okay, my friends, the twitter statisticians and rule makers have finally gotten me a little hot under the collar. They have now defined “status updates,” where you tell what you are doing on Twitter, i.e. “I am watching my teenage sons struggle against their father for the TV remote control,” as “pointless babble.”

Attention Pear Analytics, “status updates” are what Twitter was born doing, and, albeit that these days status updates have slipped to being the minority of tweets (41%) they are not “mindless babble,” they are the core of Twitter’s meaning. Like phonics being necessary before a child can read, status updates are needed before you learn to retweet, reply, link and network. Beginning twitterers use them a lot, and experienced twitterers too like to say what they are doing, too, as long as it’s perceived as funny and relevant.

Okay, now that I’ve calmed down (you see, I make a lot of status updates, and so the idea that my tweets are “mindless babble” was bound to get me going) here  is the  breakdown of the Pear Analytics research on types of Tweets:

“Pointless babble “40.55%

Conversational 37.55%,

Pass-Along Value  8.7%

Self-promotion 5.8%

Spam 3.7%

News 3.6%

The news story: Twitter Filled with “Pointless Babble.”

The entire white paper from Pear Analytics (this is actually a great resource which answers a number of questions, such as the proportion of “dead” (or inactive) accounts.

This morning I biked to school in the semi-dark. A meeting on campus at 7am sharp meant the front door clicked behind me at 6:22, as I walked to the garage to get my bike out, and sped off into the dark. I went quickly along the streets of my neighborhood, realizing a car would not be likely to see me. The greenbelt I ride through was peaceful, and the night air hung about like a mobile, slowly being lifted out of a cradle. This sure beats biking at three in the afternoon, I thought.

As the bike path curved into a wooded area, past the duck pond and before Tanglewood, the cool air – probably the coolest of the whole day – spun past me. The usual heat that hangs around me like Horace’s bore was absent. I passed back into a residential area, and quickly learned to keep my mouth shut, as bands of gnats flew through the air unseen. As I reached one of those abysmally steep hills near TCU, and got off my bike to walk it up, I had my doubts. Few cars were out, in fact there was hardly anyone. I panted as I reached the top of the second rise, and there it was all worth it: at the crest of the hill, I was graced with a beautiful view of the sky: dark blue to teal to off white, then back into pink at the horizon, a peach color similar to the color of crayon I used to use to color skin in pictures as a child. Clouds made rounded shapes against the colors.

The total absence of people changed as I neared the campus; the miles-long path winding around the outside of the gates was filled with runners and walkers and dogs. The light seemed to fade for a moment – I looked up at the streetlights, now dying embers braced against the sky.

As I entered campus, I made a mental list: bike light, so I am not as a ghost flying through the streets. A bike basket, so next time I carry my Psychology text to school I don’t show up looking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Clips, so I don’t ruin my other pair of good jeans on the gear wheel. And, a camera, so next time I can stop at the crest of the hill, and share the sky, coming alive, with  you.

From a press release by the City:

Effective Sept. 1, drivers will no longer be able to use cell phones in school zones except in specific circumstances.

Under a bill passed this year by the Texas Legislature, using wireless devices in school zones is allowed only if the vehicle is stopped, the phone is used with a hands-free device or is being used to make a call to emergency authorities.

The offense is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $200.
Fort Worth’s Transportation and Public Works Department is installing about 600 new signs to warn drivers when they’ve entered a no-chat school zone.

The National Safety Council is calling for a total ban on cell phone use by drivers nationwide, based on estimates that the practice contributes to 6 percent of the 636,000 annual crashes. About half the crashes result in injuries, including 2,600 deaths, the NSC reports.

The air is warm. Seven tired students and teachers, satisfied by dinner, flop down in the house. They are tired, their uniforms are untucked, the backpacks deposited by the door. The chores are moving slowly, and in the background Hotel California plays. We have finished our first day back, and though the heat of summer lingers, the somnolence is over. We no longer estivate.

For myself, it was a full day, starting at 6am when I alit from bed (alright, it wasn’t that fast, or glamorous) so that I could walk the dog and get ready before it was ninety degrees outside (I’d like to avoid roasting myself more than once daily during my bike commute).

We had never walked that early – at first Brise was cautious. But, soon the sun started to peek out, pink, over the tops of the trees. It was peaceful.

After riding to school with a broken bike seat, standing on the pedals (the seat tipped back if I sat on it) the whole way, I arrived an hour early. I sat and read the paper.

I found my first class – large, a hundred students. Psychology. It shouldn’t be bad – show up, keep your nose clean and you can make it. Then came Organic Chemistry. Here I met up with an old friend, always good. We gave each other dark looks as the grading was explained. “What are we doing here?” we thought. Finally, an Honors Philosophy course. I looked around to see if the honors students looked any different from the rest of the student body. Nope, pretty normal. The 60/40 female/male ratio held up. The professors were characters.

After, I checked my email, and saw some loose ends had been tied up. I checked the bookstore and decided a second time against supported the College Bookstore Racket going there and at campuses everywhere. Realizing my lunch was at home, I started back – but not before stopping in at Colonel’s Bicyles, where they fixed my seat in about two minutes. I rode home, saw my dog, ate my lunch. Put the syllabi into my planner. Made bread. Bought my books from Amazon.

Not bad for a first day.

I think I’ve done everything I can to get ready — lesson plans are in the bag, and the prep work is done. I’ve created an activity for social studies where the kids make, in four separate quarters, our Texas map, then we tape it all together for display. I’m kind of excited about this but also worried it won’t work.  Another thing — Southwestern Texas doesn’t have as many map details as the rest of the quarters. But perhaps we will include a few details from Mexico in that portion.

Dean told me I should not be so worried about my first day, because the real “first” time you teach is the first time you stood in front of a class. It’s true, I was a substitute teacher.

But tonight, I feel as if I’m in the calm before the storm. I’m not cooking dinner, someone else was recruited for that, so I’m just blogging and listening to the kids play video games. I’ve got my roll sheet and my policies and procedures, and if my classroom looks rather bare compared to the rooms of the teachers who’ve been there a while, nevertheless, it does look ready, with stacks of books on the desks, an icebreaker activity waiting for the kids, and the seats and lockers assigned in four table groups — the reds, greens, blues and yellows. Tomorrow, they will make up their own names for their tables and chose a leader for each workgroup. But tonight, I will not think about these things. I will enjoy myself, watching another Bollywood movie from Netflix with Dean, and just assume everything will be okay. Because whether it is or it isn’t, there’s not much I can do about the outcome for the next 12 hours, except wait and see what it is.

Credit to tigress1 of stock.xchng

Well it’s that time of year. Living in a house with six other people who are also in the midst of their educations, it is inevitable: those days, summer waning, when people run about gathering uniforms and making lists, getting classes, making late night runs to Ross to get gym shorts, arguing about who has the worst teachers, frantically running about like Scarlett O’Hara – “The Yankees are coming! The Yankees are coming!”….”School is starting! School is starting!”

Did we get everything on those grade school supply lists? Is the ninth grader in the right language class? Do we have enough fruit for lunches? The editor is starting a new job, and has to be gone every day going to what sound like pretty boring meetings, then rushing to set up her classroom. Mr. Cassella doesn’t start for a week or so, but you can tell he’s sorry the summer is over. Heck, we all are. The boys realize all too late that today is their last day of freedom – but is it? They are doing summer essays, digging up sports equipment, and generally going through a wringing of hands.

Meanwhile, I am deciding where to live, the youngest children’s ride fell through and we need to choose a school for them to go to from which they may be picked up easily, and the oldest of the family, here for a few weeks before starting graduate school, is depressed because she doesn’t start school for a month.

It never ends. School lists, books, supplies, uniforms. So much money to be spent! Ross, Wal Mart, Famous Footwear, Office Max, calling Grandma to get the few things we couldn’t find…Everyone needs shoes (that’s about 7 pairs…), notebooks (we’re talking dozens at that point), and thinks they need all kinds of other things. The ninth grader tries to help – “I don’t need a new graphing calculator at least!”

Meanwhile, I am on my own frantic search – to get a hold of the head of the Honors program at TCU so I can get my classes. It’s Friday afternoon. Classes start Monday. I sit in the office, waiting for the receptionist to come back from lunch so she can introduce me. A guy walks in, chats with the woman I need to see for twenty minutes. I start to get restless. I cough. I move. I’m here! Take care of me! This is urgent, I need classes! Finally, I am rescued. Introduced. “This poor girl has been calling the office every day this week, can you see her about her schedule?” The director looks nervous, thinks, then starts talking fast. We get things done – at the end, she apologizes for the rush, for my wait. “It’s been so crazy with meetings and everything before school starts.” I look her in the eye. “I am one of 6 children. My mother is starting to teach at a new school. My stepfather is returning to UNT. Everyone starts school this week. Trust me, I understand.”

Yesterday, today and tomorrow is the annual Sales Tax Holiday. There will be no sales tax (of 8.25%) on the following items:

• Clothing and footwear under $100
• Backpacks under $100 for elementary and secondary students
• Schools supplies including paper, binders, crayons, lunch boxes, etc.
• Includes layaway items

I was not able to put off shopping for all the kids until this weekend. I already bought (with a little help from my friend, my mother) all the school supplies, and all the clothes. All that remains is the annual Famous Footwear trip. This Famous Footwear trip alone can be almost as much as the rest of the clothes and supplies.

What do we buy? Nikes, Sketchers, Aasics, Adidas, Converses, maybe a pair of Pumas or New Balances, plus a pair or two of work shoes for the adults. How much do we hope to save? Well, it’s buy one get one for half price, resulting in an overall reduction of 20% or so (because they take the half off the cheaper pair.) Then we’ve got a 20% off coupon, now we’re at 40% Then the sales tax for another 8.25% reduction. Overall if we do it just right,  it will work out to a reduction of almost half the price of the shoes.

I’m not convinced, I must admit to you, that the shoes haven’t been marked up 2-300% to prepare for my clever bargaining. Since when did it cost $80 to put together a pair of mid-range Nikes in a third-world country where workers make just fifty cents a day? Nevertheless, we live in this society, so the annual family “shoe binge” is inevitable. My kids are Americans, they need their athletic shoes. The choices they make will tell everyone, the first day of school, who they are, even if there are five other kids in their grade with the exact same shoes.

Our local Famous Footwear store is in the mile-long strip mall with OfficeDepot, PetCo, HomeDepot and TJMax just north of the intersection of the 820 and Hulen Blvd. If you go there this afternoon you might see us. We’ll be the family with the 6 foot tall son who claims he needs a pair of $100 shoes because there are no other shoes in the store that are “right.” He is like a Gila Monster — once he gets ahold of his prey he will let go. His parents can either buy the shoes or leave him in the store forever.

For a detailed description of the sales tax holiday rules, see Window on Texas Government, 2009 Sales Tax Holiday.