Dear Horoscope,

Since you informed me that as soon as I solve a problem today another will develop, I have decided that I quit. If I don't solve any problems, then hopefully no more can develop. I'm putting the universe on notice that I am taking a break from participating today.

With more stress than affection,
Lauren

Dear Single Women*,

You know how we chat on the phone and text back and forth during the day or get together for brunch on Sundays for a real life Sex and the City girl talk? Is it just me, or does it always come back to dating and guys and guys and dating and sex politics and does-he-like-me what-is-he-thinking? We're always giving each other advice on when to call and what to say and how to talk so we don't scare off male suitors. We are constantly trying to figure out how to be "good enough" so that guys want us.

To that I say BOOOOOOO. If you are being yourself, nay, if I am being myself (I need this pep talk too), and a guy doesn't like that, or is scared off or doesn't think I'm worth hanging around with, then he isn't good enough for me. And when it's you, girl, and he isn't calling or initiating time to hang out with you, or is giving you mixed signals like crazy, it is him that isn't good enough for you.

You cannot be any different than yourself to accept love or affection from someone else. You'll always know that it isn't really you he is into, it's the perception of you he has based on what you show him to make yourself seem desirable. Who wants that? I've been known to say, "You either like me or you don't," and I mean it, but in practice, it's hard. It's so easy to get attitude in your voice and say that, but it's hard to silence the voice inside your head that is saying, "Am I good enough? Did I say something wrong? Should I explain it then? If I do will I seem neurotic?"

We have got to do it, womenfolk, we have got to silence that voice and say, "Listen boys, you either like me the way I am or you just don't like me, and in that case, see ya." We are good enough. We are desirable with our quirks and vulnerabilities and so-called imperfections. If some guy you're seeing can't appreciate that without a bunch of game playing, he isn't the right guy for you. He fails, not you.

Call him when you want to talk to him. Text him when you want to text him. Let him know what you're thinking. If he can't handle that, it's because he is flawed, not you. Get love and affection for the quirky, wonderful person that you are.

Yours forever in sisterhood,
Lauren


*I truly apologize for blatant heterosexism in this post.

Dear Well Meaning Friends,

When I tell you about something upsetting going on in my life, it is not helpful to respond with a ton of OMGs or a barrage of questions I have clearly already asked myself. It isn't about you or your participation in my drama. You should be there to support me. "Ohmigod what are you going to do?" isn't helpful, nor is it any of your business until I decide to make it so. Especially when I say that I don't know and you ask me again and again and again.

Try, "That's tough. I'm here for you when and if you need me." No seriously. Try it. Just because I confide something in you doesn't mean I am giving you license to make it into some big drama fest you can use to make your own life feel calmer or easier. This is my life, not a movie; nor are we in high school anymore. Try considering that you're my friend and you care about me, and think about the impact your words and actions have on my life.

I remember when my dad died and everyone had some B.S., "He went to a better place," type of comment for me. I wanted to punch some of my closest friends and relatives in the face multiple times a day. Sometimes, even the most comforting words have an unintended negative effect.

So what I'm saying is: if you were using your brain for 3 seconds before you responded to me, your response might not have had as much to do with your need for excitement and might have actually been helpful and comforting.

I'm trying to overlook it because you're the only friends I've got,
Lauren

Dear Mercury Retrograde,

It's been sort of fun watching everyone's lives fall apart in the last two and a half weeks. Especially my life; that's been really fun. It's comical when everything that can go wrong does, in fact, go wrong. I kinda feel like I'm living inside a Ben Stiller movie. You know, where you squirm in your seat because you just wish that for once something good would happen.

The joke's over now, Mercury Retrograde. I am so officially over you. It really isn't funny anymore. I'm over all the broken cars and appliances, the injuries, the snafus, the impossible catch-22s, and every other miserable thing that comes with you. You are Murphy's Law incarnate and I can't handle the wrath you are raining down around me.

Hoping this will post before my wifi cuts out or my laptop crashes (or I have an emotional breakdown and throw it on the floor),
Lauren

Dear Neighbors,

I spent tonight giving myself a mani-pedi, papaya enzyme facial, touching up my hair dye and tweezing my out of control sasquatch eyebrows. (Not to mention blogging and watching Cujo- alone.) Suffice to say, I am pretty darn pathetic tonight.

Now, you know and I know that our building has airshafts. I'm sure you heard me chatting on the phone earlier while I was in the bathroom applying my facial or tweezing, talking to a girlfriend about how badly I need the different beauty treatments I was in the process of applying, or about how difficult it is to tell what the guy you're interested in is really thinking about you. Did you notice how I left the room to finish chatting as it got late at night? I'm polite like that.

Here's my problem, and it's twofold: I am a pathetic loser tonight, and I can hear you two going at it through the airshaft. I thought it was terribly cute how you were chasing your girlfriend around the apartment and spanking her as she squealed. I was enthralled, really. And when you guys playfully fell into bed and started mattress dancing, I was enraptured. When I closed my airshaft and bathroom door so that I wouldn't hear you anymore and I could still hear moaning interspersed with screaming and profanities, well, I can barely begin to describe how ecstatic I was.

Do you really have to rub it in that I am a lonely, single girl who spent a Friday night in a beautiful city with a bustling nightlife painting and repainting her toenails? Would it be possible to, oh I don't know, close your airshaft and bathroom door? I know I'm talking crazy here. Who wants to take the time to create a little privacy when the mood strikes? It's more exciting and naughty when everyone can hear! Open your windows and let the sound echo back and forth across the alley so all of our neighbors can hear it. I mean, if you have something to say, please, tell the whole class!


I'll just be sitting on my bed, adjusting my nerdy glasses and turning up the volume on Cujo as high as it will go without waking my daughter. I'll be bunking down under the covers trying to focus intently on the movie so I forget that sex is, in fact, something people actually engage in. Please, don't tone it down on my account.

With admiration (for what seems to be an ability for never-ending porn star sex),
Lauren

Dear Tourists,

Is it really necessary to amble down the street, zigging and zagging back and forth across the sidewalk? I know that you are just shopping and sightseeing, but I have things to do in this neighborhood. I live here. I'm one of the locals you look at like a zoo animal from your tour bus as I sit on my front steps in my pajamas smoking and drinking coffee with a neighbor. I realize San Francisco is a really fabulous place to be, and that folks will flock to downtown of supercool urban areas to get their fill of touristing behavior, and I am terribly grateful to live in a place everyone wants to visit.


Some days though, I see your butt, and it's clothed in ill fitting sweat pants that have a mildly offensive logo across the backside and a strange formation of bleach stains, and each cheek pops up individually because you are walking. so. slowly. and shaking those hips so they are hard to get around. Other times you are making a line outside of Sears Fine Foods or a cable car stop you think is better than the turnaround because the line is shorter (oh hey guys, by the way, San Francisco isn't an amusement park!) and blocking the whole sidewalk.

So you all know, there are over 700,000 residents of San Francisco. Over a million people commute into the city for work on weekdays. Your vacation is our business as usual. Consider that as you stroll out of your hotel in the morning, bloated from eating overpriced, bland, midwestern fare that doesn't represent our city's incredible epicurean delights in the slightest.

Condescendingly,
Lauren

Dear MUNI,

I love it when synchronicity is the word of the day and the 27 meets the 71 perfectly, or the N picks me up at the beach when I'm wet and cold and tired just after sunset. In those moments I think I could kiss nearly any of the contaminated surfaces you provide me with day after day.

It's just that when I have to wait through 179872343 T's to catch a J and I end up waiting 45 minutes for a train when I could just WALK to the Mission if I had the right shoes on, (but of course I don't because I'm busy being so darn cute all the time), I want to punch you in your face. And I imagine that could hurt my hand, seeing as you're a huge bureaucratic government run agency and all. I'm scrappy, but I ain't that tough.

Perhaps we could compromise and you could finally work out the kinks the the Third Street Corridor project and get my trains running in some kind of reasonable fashion again? Please?



The girl who relies on you whether you're working for her or not,
Lauren

Dear Kid,

Shut up and go to sleep already.

More love than you'll ever know,
Mom

Dear Men in My Life,

I realize emotional unavailability has probably worked well for you in the past, but it freaks me out. I'd really like to know what you're thinking. When you sit there and think things but don't say them out loud I feel like you're having a conversation with someone about me right in front of me, but we're in a really loud bar and I can't make out what you're saying. Then I start to imagine what you might be thinking and that's just asking for trouble. So, you know, feel free to let me in on what's going on inside your awesome brains.



Affectionately,
Lauren

Dear Skin,

If you could stop breaking out now I'd be eternally grateful. Okay thanks.

It's not that I don't value what you do for my body, and I realize your response to stress and environmental toxins is sort of beyond your control.

I should be saying thank you to you for protecting me from harmful bacteria and viruses and for drinking water for me in the shower when I'm dumb and dehydrated but really need fluids. I should be grateful for all the work you do to filter the dirty, dangerous world from the delicate inside of my body.

But seriously. With the oil plus skin cell shedding at an exponential rate. Is it that necessary? Really? Last time I checked I wasn't an adolescent any more!


Love (but not feeling it in this moment),
Lauren

Dear B.O.B. (battery operated boyfriend),

You are so not cutting it. I'd break up with you if I thought I could get more earth shaking, soul quaking sex elsewhere.

But I can't.

Yours forever in times of excitement and desperation,
Lauren

Dear Bank Account,

Why so low, buddy? Chin Balance up, dude!

Wishing-you-would-stop-depleting-yourself-ingly,
Lauren

Dear Remote Control,

WHERE ARE YOU!? Cartoon Network is getting old. Adult Swim is rad, but their daytime programming sucks. I'm paying $30 a month to watch one channel because you decided to get up and walk away. Not cool. Get back here!

Yours in times of happiness and frustration,
Lauren

Dear Guys in Bars,

You'll have a lot better luck with the ladies if you actually talk to them instead of telling your bartender that you think they're hot. That really doesn't get you anywhere.

Truthfully, the majority of you won't get anywhere anyway, but a few of you just might have a chance if you just go talk to that pretty gal over on the other side of the bar.

Sincerely,
Lauren

Dear Kitchen,

Is it too much to ask that you stay clean for more than 10 minutes!? I don't eat THAT much food, so I don't understand why there are dirty dishes all over you.

Yours in times of orgasmic food and sinks full of gross dishes,
Lauren

Dear My Comfy Bed,

Thank you for enveloping me in your warmth and cushiness this morning as I stumble in at 5:30 with a sore throat and a desperate need for sleep and comfort. You're always here when I need you. And you smell good too.

Love,
Lauren

Dear Chocolate,

I am so.feeling.you right now. Thanks for being in my life to increase my ass size positive endorphins. You're a true friend.

Make out with me some more,
Lauren

Dear Miserly Landlord,

Thanks for being a big jerkface and never fixing anything while charging illegal arbitrary fees for anything and everything. No really. You've given me new tools to inspire me to stand up for myself.

By the way, I hope the leak in my bathroom ceiling causes it to collapse before you repair it so you have to spend ten times as much money fixing it. Nothing would make me happier than to see your giant bank account depleted by the cost of crappy repairs on my apartment.

No love,
Lauren