Karma Chameleon

I played hooky from work on Monday. I didn't have much of a reason for this decision. I was not hung-over, more disillusioned with my job than usual, or suffering from any physical maladies. I simply didn't feel like going. When my alarm went off at its appointed time, I played my usual rounds of snooze bar roulette before finally turning it off for good at 7:30. I slept for 2 more hours and then fired off an email to my boss telling her I wasn't feeling well and that I'd be sleeping and working from home for the rest of the day.

My day was a good one consisting of many fine activities including yelling at the construction workers who have been stealing our parking for the last several weeks. A sample of that conversation goes as follows:

Construction Worker: Can you move that moving van parked behind your house?
Me: You mean the van parked in our spaces that we pay for that you regularly use without our permission? I don't think so. And as long as we're talking, I don't appreciate being woken up at 8:00 am on Saturdays with your drilling and hammering either.

There was also a trip to the gym, which I had almost entirely to myself; some takeout sushi for lunch from Tono; a jaunt to the Whole Foods; and several hours of outdoor time with a glass of wine and Sunday's New York Times. In short, it was a nice day. Nothing Ferris Bueller would be especially impressed by, but I did what I wanted, when I wanted.

But since then, karma has caught up with me. I blame my parents for my almost crippling dependency on karma. Throughout my childhood it was constantly drilled into my head that whatever I did would come back to me a million-fold if I wasn't careful. It's resulted in a bit of a guilt complex.

First there was my date last night with boring lawyer guy (BLG). BLG was perfectly charming over email, wildly funny, even. And the photos I saw of him suggested that he'd be cute in a blond preppy kind of way. I was extremely excited to meet him thinking I had finally found the perfectly disheveled preppy guy with a good sense of sarcasm, an appreciation for irony, a liberal mindset and a slight wild streak. Wrong-o. BLG was a total clone of thousands of other young-30 something men in DC. You know the type--average height, a little stocky, boring facial features. The ones whose idea of a good first date is drilling you about what jobs you've had for every minute you've been in the city, who can't understand why somebody would just move somewhere on a whim, who certainly aren't particularly funny or unique in real life. The ones who are all suited up with no place to go.

BLG downed three beers in the 90 minutes that we spent together and made up some reason to cut out around 8:00 pm. Lame. I'm beginning to think that there are no appropriate boyfriends for me in this area. I need somebody a bit artsy and cultured without being totally pretentious about it; dryly funny; liberal without being a drum-beating patchouli-soaked hippy; gainfully employed but not career-obsessed; and cute. He doesn't even have to drop-dead gorgeous nor does he need to be rich. You got that, universe? In case there was a confusion, that's what I'm after. Okay, now that we've cleared that up....God, that paragraph was rather obnoxious wasn't it? I've never considered myself to be rigid in my dating standards, in fact, recently I've been pretty flexible. I've never wanted to be that girl who only dates men who fall within a rigid mold. And I'm not, but in an *ideal* world, that's what I hope to find. Okay, moving on...

Karma really got to me this morning though, when I looked in the mirror before my shower to realize I was once again suffering from puffy eyelid syndrome. This happens once every couple of years. My left eyelid swells up for day and during that day, I withstand funny looks from my friends and co-workers and people remark that I look "different, somehow." I usually wear my reading glasses all day when this happens, the frames of which semi-obscure the issue. I expect this to be healed by tomorrow.

Oh, and my Gmail is totally f*cked today.


I'm convinced this is payback for lying to my boss, which I understand to be a terrible thing to do. Yes universe, I read you loud and clear.

I have high expectations for the rest of the week. Tomorrow I have yet another date, and Friday is chock-filled with about four different social activities. Moreover, a certain inappropriate so-and-so seems to be angling for some special alone time, a rarity in our relationship. Normally he just pounces when drunk, but now he's making pains to tell me how pretty I look in my client-meeting-at-work ensembles and IMing to ensure that I'll be at certain drinking activities. I can't imagine what he has up his sleeve this time, but I'm looking forward to being buttered up a bit more as I find out.

Then Saturday is shopping, a baseball game and a party.

Hopefully the universe believes I have paid my dues and doesn't throw any more of wild curve balls. With my luck, they'd be likely to break my nose.