Would You Like Some Cheese With Your Whine?

Goldi ordered a glass of champagne at a sports bar on Saturday.
It arrived in a chardonnay glass.
On my second drink, I asked our waitress - a sloppily put together version of Princess Leia,

I'd like a glass of champagne too, but do you have splits? No? Oh, well... Can I have mine in an actual champagne glass then?

She explained that they didn't have any champagne glasses at the moment, so I agreed
-sigh- to take my bubbly in a chardonnay glass as well. Goldi and I exchanged a Look.

Goldi's second drink, & she politely asks the waitress if they had any clean champagne glasses yet.

Still no.

What kind of restaurant is this?!?


"Can you believe they didn't even have Vueve?"



Finally the waitress came over, waving an empty champagne glass and leaned in,

This is why we don't use the champagne glasses, she explained - tapping on the cloudy watermarked flute.

They're plastic, and as you see... Cloudy.

That shut us up realquick.
But as she walked away, Goldi & I laughed,

Oh good Lord, we are high maintenance. 

You see, I can get ready for a date in less than an hour - showered, shaved, primped and plucked, the whole shebang. I can usually pick out an outfit without trying seventeen on beforehand. I do my own manicures. I do my own pedicures. Hell, I even cut my own hair sometimes. (Just a small trim.) I don't wear push up bras, I don't spray tan (though sometimes I'll use the rub on stuff). I dye my hair my natural color only to cover the family of grays that has taken up residence on & around my right temple. I am ridiculously cheap when it comes to well... anything & everything other than patios & brunches.
But you know what? All this aside, I'm really fucking High Maintenance.
I want champagne in champagne flutes. I want steak dinners, I want flowers sent, I want nice bottles of Pinot. I want adoration, I want compliments. I expect to be treated like a lady. I want doors opened, I want drinks bought. I want beautiful men, smart men. I want a cultured man in a Hugo Boss suit to woo me.
To court me. Is this too much to ask!?
When I am being seated at a restaurant, I am notorious for pointing to another (far superior) table and requesting,

Can we sit there instead?

I've come to realize, being high maintenance isn't about looking like a cast member of the Real Housewives of New Jersey; its way more than that. It's a general mindset. And honestly, I don't know where I got the  mindset from - maybe my mother? But its there.
Now, I understand that the phrase 'high maintenance' has some negative associations, but that's not how I choose to use it. I am not stomping my foot, huffing and puffing while screaming, "Give me Tiffany's or give me nothing at all!" I'm not on the hunt for a Sugar Daddy to replace my Dolce Vita pumps with the Louboutins they're knocking off.
But... If I'm being honest....
When my Australian took me out on my twenty-ninth birthday, he first sent flowers to the shop. He ordered a verrrrrrrrrrry expensive bottle of Pinot Noir off the extensive wine list. We went to one of the nicest restaurants in the city. I loved every minute of it; & at one point during the night I said to him,

'If I wasn't one of half of Us, I'd hate Us...'

To which he enthusiastically agreed.

My heart aches a little for that Australian boy.
My heart longs for that Dutch one, too.
I really miss being Wined & Dined in a restaurant lit by The Spark.
Is that too much to ask?
No, but it has started to seem as though I have stopped asking.

Why can't I just meet a nice boy in
a Starbucks like everybody else?

I just keep wondering why in God's name have I taken up with someone who... is none of the above?!? Someone who does adore me, but in every other possible way is not not not NOT what I am looking for? And while I am not yet ready to rid myself of the relationship (or nonrelationship), I need to take a few steps back... or ten steps back. I haven't gone on a proper date in over a month, I have no inspiration for this little blog of mine - but I am content, I guess. Not capital C. And going back to what I have said before, maybe its just that I am not ready for a full blown Boyfriend, and the little high maintenance me is just keeping Apt F to maintain a certain level of  'someone loves me-ness'. I do care for him too, though he makes me roll my eyes & complain to my girlfriends that he is smelly & won't stop texting me with dorky little phrases that sound more like they are being sent by Carlton from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air than a thirty six year old man. (My attempt at classic conditioning: every time he texts me with something akin to 'You go girl' or 'Stay sexy hot-stuff' I don't respond.) Sometimes I feel as though I have been dating him for years. We skipped the courting and went straight to comfortable faux-cohabitating. And I feel like I am settling. Because I am. And, if I am being honest - there are a lot of things about Apt F that remind me of the Ex. Some good, some not so good.
A girlfriend of mine was in the shop venting not long ago about her own mail-order Brit boy who was driving her crazy on his extended stay, which led me to vent about my neighbor who also seems to be on extended stay... She looked at me, threw her hands up in the air and said,

I just want to date someone successful for once!

To which I responded, But I usually do! So what the hell am I doing with my neighbor?!

Last night, he referred to our relationship as 'Casual'.

Which allowed me a sigh of relief; however, he then went on to say,

'But, if we're still... (pause)... hanging out a year from now...'

Gulp.
I was away for most of the weekend - so I did not see him for two days. It was refreshing; and although one thing I like about our 'relationship' is that it doesn't take time away from my 'real' social life - but when I got back he told me that he had missed me and that he found that frightening. It frightens me too; only because I don't want him to get too invested in 'Us' because there really isn't an 'Us'.
Not in the way that there was an Australian 'Us', or a Dutchman 'Us'... or even a B---- 'Us'.
The truth is, I am way too High Maintenance for him & I to ever be able to maintain Us.
Yet there I go, marching up the stairs night after night.

Sidenotes: This is bad, considering how absolutelyfuckingterrible I am at break offs. But this past weekend was a good one - Beauty and Goldi & I had a raucous good time in LA. Halloween weekend was yet another wonderful (and spirited) weekend with my girlfriends. It was the first melding of Goldi's world with the Doctor's and it went... Hilariously.

Also, now that summer is over & our town has calmed down, I haven't been hiding out as much. I haven't had a weekend in a long time where I woke up Monday thinking to myself, "Oh God, well we can't go back there for a year" in a very very long time.

Also, I loved my Halloween costume. Its was a ballerina kind of like this, but I wore a hair peice that gave me a dramatic yet natural looking high bun.

I felt pretty & elegant.