“What is THAT?”

He is pointing at a plastic bag.

“It’s a ziploc bag,” I say, narrowing my eyes.  He still looks confused, so I elaborate. “It is an empty ziploc bag on your coffee table.”

“Yeah, but HOW did it get there?”

“Same way the rest of the mess did. One of us put it down and didn’t pick it up.”

Am I talking to a four-year old?

He picks it up and pushes it at me, as if I need a closer look. “No,” he says frantically, “I didn’t put it there. I don’t HAVE ziploc bags. I never have ziploc bags.” This is true, he covers all of his leftovers with napkins and they always go to waste. Bachelor boy. “Someone else put it there. Did you bring over a ziploc bag of something?”

I give it a little thought. “No.” He’s starting to look a little crazy around the eyes as he starts opening drawers and rifling through papers. “Honey, WHAT?” I exclaim, exasperated.

“Did you lock the door when you left this afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“ARE YOU SURE?”

“Positive. Because I thought for a minute that I didn’t lock it, so I came back up and checked.”

Is my boyfriend seriously suggesting that an intruder might have come in and LEFT a plastic bag? He goes to check the back door. It is also locked. He comes back into the living room and flops down onto the green couch next to me, hand pressed to his forehead dramatically. “I don’t get it,” he mumbles. “Why would someone come into my house and leave a plastic bag, but take nothing? All of my money is here, everything important.”

I don’t know what to do but point out the obvious. “Your brother has a key.” He closes his eyes and says nothing. “Maybe he came over to watch the game and he brought something to eat?” It’s the best I can come up with – E’s brother doesn’t have cable, so he comes to watch E’s TV once in awhile. Of course, his brother also doesn’t have money and he knows where E keeps his. But there is no money missing.

I soothe him with a bag of Cheetos and a Budweiser, and we watch TV for a little while. He keeps looking at the coffee table and shaking his head. At one point he picks up the bag and sniffs it as if to determine what might have once been inside. “Are you sure you didn’t bring in something in a ziploc bag?” I ask tentatively. “This coffee table is a mess, it could have been there for days and you just forgot.”

“It wasn’t there this morning,” he hisses. “SOMEONE left it there and it wasn’t me.”

“It wasn’t me either,” I snap, getting irked that I am getting irked about a freaking plastic bag.

Later that night, he lies awake and stares at the ceiling. “Where did that bag come from?” he asks out of nowhere.

I pretend to be asleep.

When I was 22, I broke off my engagement 3 months before I was to have gotten married. He was a wonderful guy, but it just wasn’t right. Took me awhile to figure that out, but it’s better than getting divorced, I say.

So I re-entered the dating world in the summer of 2003, fresh out of a long-term relationship with a very conservative man who didn’t like me to have male friends or short skirts. I was free, free! I wanted male friends and boyfriends and short skirts were the way to get them!

After my first post-engagement boyfriend threatened to commit suicide when I broke up with him, I sought refuge in the arms of The Next Guy, a very handsome Indian doctor with a sophisticated lifestyle and a Very Important Job as a surgeon. We went to trendy restaurants and bars, and I spent way too much money buying trendy clothes in a desperate attempt to blend in. What this fellow saw in me and my Gap-based wardrobe was beyond me. We didn’t have any major sparks, but Next Guy was fun to hang out with and a lot more low-maintenance than Suicidal Rebound Ex. Plus, he taught me how to shop.

Suicidal Rebound Ex was still on my case, though, and I made the mistake of saying something about it to Next Guy. A few days later, he told me he didn’t think we should date anymore.

“It’s just kind of hard to deal with the baggage thing,” he sighed.

“What ‘baggage thing?’” I asked.

“The ex-fiance, the crazy suicidal guy, I don’t know…”

“You’re almost thirty years old,” I pointed out. “Everyone has exes by now. You’ll have to go back to high school girls if that’s too much baggage for you.”

“Still. Yours just seems really complicated. I like things to be simple, and there’s just a lot to deal with here. I just want to have fun.”

I didn’t pursue the conversation further. Next Guy and I still ended up being good friends for awhile and it was just as well that we didn’t date, since it turned out that he did have a thing for high school girls… or at least girls dressed up as high school girls in the “Barely Legal” variety of p-o-r-n.

But what he said stuck. Was my stuff really baggage? Until then I’d just thought of those things as life. Experiences. Things that happen to people, things we deal with, things we leave behind. Maybe he had a point, I considered. Maybe I wasn’t good at letting go. Maybe I’d been scarred for life. Maybe, I thought, my life at 22 had already encompassed enough emotional highs and lows that I had become unappealing to others.

At 27, I named this blog “She’s Got Baggage” because last summer, I thought I’d gathered enough that I could try and make a joke out of it. Ex-boyfriends were baggage. Certain health issues were baggage. Navy, Fireman, Copper and Captain* were baggage. Tim was a freaking steamer trunk. I had to make fun of the fact that I honestly felt like I was doomed.

And now?

Things are actually pretty great. Light. As though everything I thought was awful about my past experiences has actually pushed me in the right direction. Maybe it’s because I’ve learned a few things and let go of a few others.

Even if it has irrevocably changed you for better or worse, is it still baggage if you’ve learned something and moved on?

Sometimes I stare at my blog header and wonder what I was thinking. Because really… DO I?

——————

* See June – September 2008

Okay, I can’t be THAT uncool…

…OR CAN I?

Brand About Town has graciously asked me to hostess a party for their “Girlfriend’s Guide to Gaming” promotion of the new Nintendo DSi handheld. Some other lovely lady bloggers have done these in their hometowns and it looks like they had a blast. I’m really flattered that I was asked to host. And seriously? Nintendo party? Squee!!!

Tiny blip.

“Girlfriend’s Guide to Gaming” is obviously targeting a female audience; therefore, my invitees must be female. And I’m coming to the scary realization that even though I was born and raised in the St. Louis area, I don’t know many girls in this town anymore. Most of my friends are boys.* And complicating this is the fact that one of my two good girl friends has a wedding to be in that weekend and the other is on-call to work the All Star game.

And I’ve realized on perusal of my Facebook friends that the girls I actually consider to be friends (i.e.: I really care what their updates say) don’t live here.

I’m going to try and get the date changed so my good friends can come at least. The other little quandary is the fact that the girl friends I DO have come from different parts of my life and don’t really know one another. I might take the “bring a friend” angle to get the numbers up, meet new people, and encourage mingling. It’s also an awesome chance for me to try and gather some of the previously un-met St. Louis lady bloggers together and get to know them. And what better way to do that than with food, drink, and Guitar Hero?

Tonight I’m going to holler at the girls in the St. Louis group on 20-Something Bloggers to see what they’re up to the weekend of July 11th.**

Still feeling uncool, though.
——————
* Because I heart boys.
** Join my group! Join my group! LOVE ME!

Dear Olympic Paint,

I purchased one gallon of your Interior Flat Paint (15 year warranty, tinted C11-2 River Reed) at my local Lowe’s store yesterday.

This paint is awful.

River Reed is a pale green color. I was painting drywall over a white primer and using a smooth-surface roller. A quality paint in this light of a color would have covered the primed surface cleanly in one coat. A mid-quality paint might have taken two. And while I am perfectly aware that this is not the top-of-the-line paint that your competitors Behr and Ralph Lauren produce, there is NO REASON that you should sell a product that takes THREE COATS of a pale color to produce a decent finish on a smooth-surfaced, primed, previously white wall. I’d hate to see what this paint looks like in a dark color. Even Glidden does better.

I followed all instructions and stirred the paint thoroughly, prepped the surface, used the correct roller type and so on. All I wanted to do was put a quick, fresh coat of paint on a room as I am preparing to sell my house. This paint was a waste of not only the cost of a gallon, but also the cost of the paint roller, the tray liner, the painter’s tape, and the dropcloth. Is this shoddy result and waste of money what Olympic intends for its cost-conscious customers?

I sincerely hope not.

Tomorrow, I will happily spend the extra $15 for a gallon of Behr or Ralph Lauren paint (total: three times the cost of this rotten paint) at my local Home Depot and save myself the hassle of dealing with the inferior Olympic paint I wasted my money on yesterday. When a paint is such a low quality that it cannot produce a clean finish of a light color applied with the recommended tools on a properly primed wall, you would do well to make some improvements in order to maintain your reputation as a dealer of quality paint products.

Sincerely,

Rebekah

Well, shoot.

My sister’s bridal shower is the last weekend in June. Same as the 20SB Meetup in Chicago.

*mumbles expletives*

I’m probably fired as a sister if I skip the shower. And my mom might amputate my head if I miss it, even if my sister said I could skip out.

But I want my trip. I am selfish and awful and I want to see my friends and make new ones and go shopping and drinking with them.

Doooooom.

Update, 3 hours after original post:

My sister is so cool. I didn’t even ask her about it but made the mistake of posting on Facebook** that I was bummed to miss the meetup. She read that and texted me, said I can absolutely go and she doesn’t mind if I miss the shower. But… I can’t miss it. She’s my sister, my (taller) baby sister. And even if she doesn’t mind that I want to go on a trip, I WANT to be there. I’m really feeling pretty dumb because I knew when the shower was – except in my head, I “knew” it was the weekend before the meetup. So I kind of set myself up for it. Boo on me.

But it’s the right thing to do, and I’m okay with that. I’ll make sure there are swag bags at the shower.

___________________________________________

**Accidental Facebooking? Yeah, and I know I’m not the only one.