My three beliefs

Today is going to be a little different from the rest of my posts. Right now, I cant think of any of womanly issues beside my own. As I have enclosed in the past, I am a Marine Girlfriend and this upcoming week is one of the big ones. Tomorrow, my boyfriend finally comes home from his 8 month Deployment in Iraq.

The thing is, I was not expecting this. His date to come home was April 25, but it was changed, due to the fact that one of his grandmothers just past away. They made an exception for him and let him leave Iraq about a month early so he could be with his family in their time of need.

Everything is just very bitter-sweet. I never thought that the first time I would be seeing my boyfriend in 8 months, would be spent with our first two days at a wake and funeral. I also didn’t think that I would still have final projects to do and classes to go to while he was here.

Things are going to be different then we wanted, but we have made a pact. We are not going to let anything get us down. We are going to make the best of every situation and every issue.  The only thing that we need to make sure happens is that we both continue to smile for the next 12 days that we have together, under any circumstances.

Nothing in this world could make me happier than finally getting to touch his skin, see his smile or kiss his lips.

 So I wanted to use this as an opportunity to tell all of you a few things that I truly believe in. One, I believe that everything happens for a reason. If something ever happens to you and you question it, just think to yourself that it happened for a reason, which is going to benefit you in the near or distant future. Two, real true honest love is possible. I do not believe in soul-mates, but I believe in two people working for a common love and making it last forever. And last but not least, your loved ones are one of the most important things that a person could ever have in their life. Without my family and friends, I probably would have never gotten through these 8 months without my boyfriend. They were there when I was sad, when I was happy and when I needed to go out and have a drink. They were constantly by my side and I will thank them for the rest of my life.

Keep these three beliefs in mind…. I promise, they will help.

The deal breaker?

Okay, so all women have different tastes when it comes to men. Some women like tall, dark and handsome, while others like short, blonde and sexy. When it comes to finding a guy, many women have  specifics that they always look for. You can call it, ”The type”. My type is tall with broad shoulders and a great smile.

But women also have that thing called, “the deal breaker.” When you just know that you wont be able to handle it, even if he is the cutest and nicest guy in the world. My shallow deal breaker is a uni-brow (I just don’t understand how a guy could not care that his eyebrows are connected!) and my profound deal breaker is when a guy is lazy (I just hate when a man has no ambitions).

Well, I came across a short article  in Glamour Magazine called, “He lives with his mom. Deal Breaker?” Now I am not sure what most women would think about this. I would say that it all depends on the time in his life and his goals.

If he just got out of college and is trying to save money to get his own apartment: not a deal breaker. If he just likes living with his mother because she cooks his meals and does his laundry: Deal breaker. If he just got divorced, is paying child support and trying to get back on his feet: not a deal breaker. If he doesn’t have enough money to move out because he spends it on booze during the week and strip-clubs during the weekends: DEAL BREAKER!

Let me know your thoughts on this! What are your deal breakers?

Modern love

Last week my aunt gave me a ripped out page from the New York Times. On the top it read: Modern Love College Essay Contest. On the bottom it said that they were having an essay contest. “From hippie culture to the AIDS epidemic to the Internet revolution, love has gone from “free” to fraught to Facebook. What is love now, in this age of 24/7 communication, blurred gender roles and new attitudes about sex and dating?” It then asked for college students to submit personal essays that “illustrate the current state of love and relationships.”

 I decided to enter this contest. Last night I sat at my computer and wrote about Chris. Wrote about how our love is very old fashioned, but without the new-age technology that we have at our fingertips; like cell phones, laptops and webcams, our relationship might not have lasted.

After 2,000 words, I was truly pleased with what I wrote. It also made me think a lot about relationships in general. Technology was helping my relationship… but was it ruining others?

As a 21-year-old female, with two younger sisters and six best girlfriends, most of my days are spent hearing about ‘boy’ troubles, which I am completely fine with… but when I start hearing, ”He said he loves me, but he did it over AIM!” “He dumped me… in an email!” “He hasn’t called me. Do I call him or should I just text him?”… that’s when I start to worry.

I have always been the friend that makes her friends realize when they are being over dramatic. It’s not that I always stick up for the guy.. (because sometimes you just want to call them every name in the book), but I believe that most fights are due to mis-communication, which is due to the fact that the genders just truly don’t understand each other.

Maybe it is because of this day in age. The New York Times contest got me thinking… back in the day not everyone owned a cell phone. A woman wouldn’t be able to call or text her boyfriend every two minutes if she didn’t have a cell phone. Ten year’s ago there was nothing like Match.com or EHarmony.com. People had to actually go out and find people to meet. There was also never AIM or other instant messengers. People had to actually pick up the phone and call someone if they had something to say.

Are all the new gadgets and technology that keeps getting better and better, putting a damper on relationships? Is it making males and females mis-communicate even more? Is it making relationships less personal, less romantic, less intimate? Is it giving people easy ways out?

The tanning phenomenon

There are so many myths about the tanning bed that I am not sure what I should believe anymore.  One day I hear that it will cause skin cancer more than the sun will, another day I hear that it is a better tanning alternative because you can control how much exposure you receive.  Then the day after that I hear that tanning beds can also affect my eye sight. With all these myths getting thrown at me, one would think I would question the whole tanning experience, but I have yet to worry about tanning and its affects. Why is this?

Every single one of my girlfriends have been in a tanning bed at least once. My sisters both are avid believers and my mother doesn’t really question us at all. I don’t tan very often but when I do go, I go because I feel more confident with a tan. For whatever reason, I feel as though my clothes look better, my makeup looks better and my attitude just changes. Maybe it has something to do with the whole ’seasonal depression’ theory (which I have diagnosed myself with plenty of times).

My best friend goes tanning every single day but her reason is completely different from mine. “Alicia, even if I am only in there for 8 minutes, I feel like my whole mood changes when I come out. It might be the heat but I just feel wonderful every single time I step out of there.”

This makes me compare tanning to smoking cigarettes. I have never smoked a day in my life, but I have always heard people saying that after a cigarette, they just feel better about their day or whatever situation they have to take on. Is tanning addicting like cigarettes are?

Now-a-days, people know how bad cigarettes are for their health, but even so, they don’t stop smoking. We all know about how nicotine is addictive and now with all the new ‘Truth’ commercials one can realize how the makers make the product addicting.

Do they do this with tanning beds? Is it all about making money and making tanners always come back for more? Has tanning become as big as it has because it is actually addicting?

(I found this Youtube video.. it is kind of extreme… but it proves my point that we know how bad tanning can (or might) be for us but we still do it…)

Want a car?

I love BMW’s. I have a 318i 1996 red convertible BMW with only 80,000 miles on it. It is in great shape and its perfect for me, but my father requested that I try to look for a newer car before this one becomes unsafe.  My mother and I decided to go to a certified pre-owned BMW spring sales event and I was very excited. After finding a great car in the price range we wanted, we called my father.

Now, while looking for the car, I looked at the price range and the mileage first, but then I looked at the year, body, interior, design and if it has enough cup holders for my coffee and water bottles and also tons of storage for my makeup, hand lotion and all the other little goodies I keep in my car. But when we called my father, he didn’t ask about the cup holders or the storage. He asked about the all-wheel drive, the engine power, the heated seats and so forth. Obviously we have very different ‘needs’ when shopping for a car.

Then I found this article titled “What women want…in a car”on CNN.com and it made true that men and women definitely look for different things when looking to buy a car.

The article talked about how women look for more features compared to men, but why? Do men only worry about how fast the car can go? Or how loud the stereo is? The article also talked about how women spend more time to find that perfect car for them. They go to many different dealerships and shop around for the perfect fit, while men just see something they like and go for it.

Car dealerships have realized that women look for different aspects in a car than men do, so some are deciding to market to women in a different fashion.

“Marketing to women, is definitely different, Connelly said. ‘Men respond to things and women respond to people,’ she noted. ‘It isn’t that men won’t respond to people, but women just respond differently. So, we look at this in the types and ways we advertise.’”

Like I have always said from my first post, men and women are just different. We will always be different. We want certain things, we value certain aspects and that is just a-okay. So next time your husband or boyfriend have this brilliant idea to get a little 2-door sports car that you know is not practical, not safe or just not in your price range. Speak your mind…. you both look for different but important aspects, and you just need to put those thoughts together and compromise. =)

Girl Fight

Last night, my friends and I went to a dance club. We always go. We love having a few drinks, dancing and just being together. Most nights everyone is usually well-behaved, but there are those few special nights where things  might just get out-of-hand. Last night was one of those nights.

We were minding our own business, dancing on the dance floor with huge smiles on our faces and drinks in our hands, when all of a sudden, a girl weighing probably 105lbs soaking wet, pushes into my best friend; not once, not twice, but three times. After the third time, my friend turns around and screams excuse me (obviously a little ticked off at this point). What happened next was kind of a blur.

All of a sudden this girl jumps in my friends face and starts screaming, swinging her arms all which ways. It didn’t look good and I knew my friend wasn’t going to have amazing patience in just a few seconds. When the girl finally pushed my friend backwards, I knew a girl fight was about to break out.

To make a crazy and long story short, I jumped in the middle and handled the whole situation without anyone getting punched, but what I question is the security at the club.

About 10 minutes before this ‘almost girl fight’ happened between my best friend and this little monster, there was a confrontation between two guys at the other side of the bar. This confrontation got immediate attention from the 20 bouncers lined around the dance floor. These men actually knocked over girls dancing to get to the spot where the fight almost broke out, breaking up the fight before it even got started and kicking out the both participants. Why did this not happen with our girl fight? Why did the bouncers pretend to not see that my friend almost got punched in the face?

After the little monster finally walked away, I turned to the guy next to me and apologized for ruining his dancing space. He then said to me, “Oh, it’s okay, I kind of wanted to see a girl fight.” I looked at him in complete disgust. Was that the reason why the bouncers didn’t automatically stop the tiff? Do bouncers at club not pay attention to the ‘girl fights’ because they want to see them?

There had to be some reason why the 20 huge men wearing ’security’ on their shirt, surveying the whole dance floor with flashlights, just happened to ‘not see’ this happening. How could this be? Does this have something to do with sexism? Is this right? Fair? Do the bouncers feel a girl fight would provide entertainment, for themselves and the clubbers?

I do not have any answers for you, but next time you are at a club, look out for something like this. Maybe we women can start doing something about it.

(These YouTube video’s might be a little rough to watch. I couldn’t finish watching them, but notice how in both videos there are many people watching and cheering on the fight. In the second video, a guy is taping it and even says at the end ‘oh man, my battery is dying’… obviously he loved what he was witnessing.)

 

Think you can drink as much as your man?

Why do women get drunk faster? Why can’t we drink as much as the guy sitting next to us at the bar? Yes, we weigh less, are shorter and just normally smaller than most males, but that’s not the only reason why.  According to David J. Hanson, Ph. D., women have a “higher proportion of body fat than men.” Because fat does not absorb alcohol, it is concentrated at higher levels in our bodies. We also have less enzymes in our stomach, so we “absorb up to nearly 30% more alcohol into [our] bloodstream than men of the same height and weight who drink the same amount of alcohol.”

This is not all. Have you ever noticed that if you don’t eat dinner before you go out to the bar, you get drunk quicker? Or if ‘flow’ is visiting for the week, you feel like one beer already made you tipsy? There are many factors that contribute to why we can not and should not drink as much as our men. “The bottom line is that a woman who hopes to ‘hold her own’ in drinking against a man is putting herself at great risk,” said Hanson.

So why do women go out and try to drink more than men? Could it be to impress them? According to an article titled, “Women on a Binge” from time.com, a college student said her two main goals of the year are to drive a stick shift and ‘drink a guy under the table.’  The student in the article states, “I know it’s juvenile, but I’ve had boys comment how impressed they are at the amount of alcohol I’ve consumed… To be able to drink like a guy is kind of a badge of honor. For me, it’s a feminism thing.”

Why do women feel this way? Why do we always think we need to prove ourselves to men? Why would we get ourselves sick or have the worst hang over in the morning to make a man think we can drink more than him? Why do we have to prove anything?

Females will always be different than males. We are made differently, and this is a good thing! Let’s embrace the ‘different’ and stop trying to ‘get to’ the man’s level. Our level is more than enough!

Is sex really that important?

I came across an article titled, “Sexual incompatibility troubles marriages” on CNN.com. It instantly drew me in to read it, but once down a few paragraphs I started to question it all. A husband was talking about how him and his wife are compatible in everything else besides sex. It then goes on to say how people sometimes put blinders on because America is so obsessed and focused on marriage. A sex therapist in the article states, “People choose partners who have the right resume but maybe not the entire package.”

Okay, so obviously sex is included in that ‘entire package’, but should it be a top priority? I agree that sex is very important. But would I marry a man if we didn’t have great sex? Would I be able to live my life as a faithful and satisfied wife if my husband didn’t pleasure me? This article does have a point.  

The article talks about how marriages do not work because some people just want to get married, just to get married… and they don’t think about all the factors that should be ‘on point’ in their relationship. The sex therapist states, “couples wondering where the sex went should be asking if it was ever really there.”

Some of this article makes me angry because I believe that marriage is something sacred and that people should get married for the right reasons. Yes, everyone is different and everyone has different beliefs, morals and values, and everyone gets married for different reasons, but wouldn’t there be less divorces if people got married for the right reason?

If you love someone enough to marry them, you should love someone enough to work things out with them. Not everyone has a perfect marriage. Marriage is probably one of the toughest things men and women go through in life, but why get married if you aren’t sure about it? Or if you aren’t pleased with everything your partner has to offer? It is definitely a good question to ask before you take that leap into marriage-hood.

To tip or not to tip… that’s the question.

I have always wondered if men or women were better tippers. Some women I know say that women are, because women are more generous. Other women I have talked to feel men are because most waiters are women. “Men are definitely going to tip a waitress better than a waiter,” said one of my friends.

I still am not sure about all this. Growing up, my father was always the better tipper. When the bill came, my dad would look at it, put money down on the table and my mom would count it.  A normal tip is about 20% of the bill, so if the bill was $100, the tip should be $20. My father would leave more like $40. To my mother, it was stupid to do this, and I felt the same way… until this summer.

This summer I became a waitress at an Italian pizzeria down at the Jersey shore. I was never a waitress before but I wanted to make some quick cash. Well after three weeks of working, I concluded that it is neither men nor women who tip better, but it is the age of the tipper that matters.

Teenagers always tipped me horribly. I remember I once had a table of 8 teenagers. Their bill came out to $85. So I should have been getting a $17 tip but I got a mere $3.

I also found out that older adults aren’t such great tippers either. There was this older man that always came in every Monday. He ordered the same thing everyday, which came out to $14, and every Monday I would walk to the table and see a 50 cent tip. Wonderful, just wonderful!

I also experienced how men did tip me better. Maybe it was because I was female, maybe not, but they actually did. And when men were just with other men, they tipped even better. Why is this? Do women really make their man tip less? Does this imply that women worry about money more than men do? Do they worry more or are they just smarter with their cash?

There are a lot of questions one can ask on this topic, but my last thought is this… waitress/waiters work hard and work off of tips, so yeah, maybe they spill your soda or put peppers in your salad when you asked them not to… everyone makes mistakes so be generous and at least tip 20%!