If You Don't Know What "I'm The Baby, Gotta Love Me!" Means, Then I Can't Know You.

There's a cute guy in my neighborhood, right up the street from me. We always see each other when we're outside walking our dogs. We sneak quick glances and try to act like we're not providing our pets exercise simply so we can bump into each other. We've never spoken a word to one another and, in fact, have never even walked on the same side of the street. But that's part of the fun.

At least, it was part of the fun. One fateful afternoon not so long ago, I was walking Kirby up the street and saw my oh-so-attractive neighbor walking into his house. With a backpack on.

Because he was

coming

home

from

school.

I tried desperately to think of alternate reasoning for this situation. Maybe he's one of those guys who brings a backpack to work. Maybe his high-level executive job with a corner office allows him to wear hoodies and basketball shorts to work. Maybe I should accept the fact that it is 2:50 pm, the exact time the high school bus has been pulling into our neighborhood for as long as I can remember.

Insert a split second of sympathy for Mary Kay Letourneau here.

Insert two split seconds of astonishment at the insane spelling of "Letourneau".

Insert feelings of nausea and premature cougardom as memories come flooding back of this past summer when I blatantly stopped and checked him out as he was doing yard work for a neighbor.

And THIS is why I always like to go for guys who are blatantly 10 years older than me. Wrinkles, grey hair, indications of male pattern baldness- these are all just beautiful little reminders that I won't go to jail for dating them.

A little while back I was talking to a guy in a bar and for whatever reason mentioned Fraggle Rock. His response?

'What's Fraggle Rock?'

I shook his hand, told him it was very nice meeting him, and moved to the other side of the bar.

It is quickly becoming apparent that my friends and I are at the age where people just a couple of years younger than us may as well have been born in an entirely different century. You know how there's Generation X, Generation Y, etc? Well I feel like one of them was capped off after 1986. Maybe 1987 for a select few advanced individuals. And I'm not trying to be a snotty bitch here. I wouldn't even be making this argument if it weren't for the fact that I keep noticing solid evidence on multiple occasions.

Now here's the kicker:

It seems weird for a 25 year old woman (that's right, I just referred to us as women, not girls. How bout that?) to date a 21 year old guy. But it's no big deal for a 35 year old woman to be dating a 31 year old man. I know these are our 20's and we're all less than a decade out of college and we're just discovering who we really are and yadda yadda yadda, but it is a weird little hypocrisy we've got going on here.

Maybe it all comes down to a theory that my friends and I have been mulling around for awhile:

At this point in our lives, guys aren't worth dating unless they're at least 26.

At 26, they (hopefully) have the whole college mentality out of their system, they (hopefully) have a steady job, they (hopefully) have moved out of their parents' basement. And since it's a scientific fact - and who are we to mess with science - that women mature more quickly than men, at age 26 a man is almost as awesome as we ladies were at 23.

Just to be clear, my intentions in this entry are not to bash guys. I'm just, let's say, giving a field report of some social data that I, as well as many other women I know, have collected over the years.

And besides,

I'm the blogger, gotta love me :)

(Not the mama!)

...god I hope you all got that...

How About YOU Cook Dinner And I'LL Cheer You On From The Sidelines

I will never be the kind of girl who cooks, cleans, and loves being around kids.

And I'm not saying this because I believe in all that feminism crap, where suddenly everyone is making a big hoopla about how the women should work and the men should stay home and be Mr. Mom. No, I'm saying this because I suck at the three aforementioned tasks. Like, really suck. To the point where if I ever do have kids, they will most likely not only be living in squalor, but will also be living off a diet of toast and mediocre instant oatmeal. And if they cry or poop or vomit, chances are I'll run in the other direction screaming.

'This can't be true,' you may be saying. 'Give yourself a little more credit, Alexis.'

Well, luckily for you, I have examples. Because who doesn't love an entry packed full of solid evidence that I'm destined to be the worst adult ever.

Let's start with the cleaning. Now, if you knew me from college, you saw first hand that I actually kept my room quite tidy. Immaculate even, on some days at least. Everything on my desk and shelves was carefully arranged and there was never a rogue shirt on the floor. In fact, if you opened up my closet, you would see that my clothes were arranged in size order; from tank tops to sweaters. What you didn't see was what was under my bed, hidden in the drawers, stashed in plastic bins. And that, my friends, was clutter. Piles of papers that I put to the side with the intentions of sorting through one day and then forgot about. Tangles of wires from various electrical equipment collecting clumps of dust because I had no idea what wire went to what plug. And so on and so forth, you get the idea.

These little hidden gems of crap were nothing compared to my bedroom back at home that I had slept in since I was 2. Walking through those doors was like walking into an episode of Hoarders. Well, borderline Hoarders. I didn't have bugs and mice crawling around, I just had a very, very, very messy room. It essentially was a dumping ground, especially in recent years when I was spending 99% of my nights sleeping at other people's houses.

You know how when some people are stressed or upset, they clean? I'm the opposite. I equate the mess in my head to the mess on my floor.

All I can hope for is that when I finally get my own big-girl place without roommates, or parents, or whatever, I can use it as a fresh start in my cleaning life. But probably not. Have you ever tried to successfully vacuum with a dog that practically jumps on the hose and goes 'Wheeeeeee!' all around the house until you're done? It takes awhile.

Ok, now on to cooking. The best example for this would probably be the time I tried and failed to make pasta. And by "time", I mean "times". Because it took me three tries.

D and I were at the apartment and I decided to be a doll and cook him dinner in a weak attempt to get his attention off of Xbox and onto me. So I opened the cabinet, got a giant bag of egg noodles, and placed it on the counter next to the stove. Then I took a little saucepan and filled it 3/4 of the way with water. Now, let me explain a little something in my defense. The stove in that apartment was crap. All the coils were lopsided so you had to constantly move the pan around if you hoped to even get close to heating the contents evenly. That is, if you didn't first spill everything in the pan because it slipped to one side or the other. But I guess none of that really affects what I did next.

So like I said, I put the water in the pan and then, in my mind, did the next logical step. I poured in all the pasta and cranked the light up to high. Throwing in a pinch of salt (because growing up I always saw my mom doing it), I capped the pan off with a lid and walked away in satisfaction.

After about 5 minutes of half-reading, half-restraining myself from throwing D's Call of Duty out the window and telling him that he was about to experience his own Modern Warfare if he didn't start paying more attention to his girlfriend (and family and friends and pets and life in general), I went to check on what was sure to be a fabulous meal. I lifted the lid off the pasta and was disappointed to see that nothing had happened. There was just a pile of semi-crunchy pasta sitting in the bottom of some lukewarm water.

Miracles of miracles, I hear D put his game on pause and come up behind me.

"This isn't working." I said, frowning at the pot of fail sitting in front of me.

D looked over my shoulder and then looked at me.

"Tell me you put the water and noodles in at the same time." he said, half grinning half judging.

"Yeah, why?"

D shook his head and tried not to laugh. "Sweetie, you need to wait for the water to boil first."

"It can't all just happen at once?"

Needless to say, a minute later I was pouring semi-unraw noodles into a bowl off to the side, and putting new water in the pan to boil. First. Cause that's how you do it.

This still didn't stop me from completely and utterly losing at the making-pasta-game two more times. Apparently, a boil and a rolling boil are two different things. And just because some of the pasta seems to be cooked all the way doesn't mean it all is. Especially on a crooked stove. You should really check all the noodles before you serve them. But, you know, they're also scalding hot when you pull them out of boiling water. But really, who needs full feeling on their tongue anyway?

Last, let us explore that roller coaster of a relationship between Alexis and children.

I know they say even if you don't love kids in general, you'll love your own. And I really hope that's true because up to this point, I don't care for younger people much. I just feel like I have nothing to say to them. Every time I have to talk to a kid, I feel like I'm on a terrible first date and have lost all communication skills. I'm essentially the opposite of my brother who within 2 minutes can have kids looking up at him with glazed eyes of awe and worship.

When it comes to babies, they're cute and soft and look adorable in tiny little sneakers. But they also cry. Loudly. And they have stuff shooting out of every hole all the time. When my nephew Josh was a baby, my sister was over and we were in my backyard. I was holding Josh in front of me, so his back was to my stomach. He then proceeded to vomit all over my arms and hands. Granted, it was just milk and formula but at the time that was besides the point. I remember closing my eyes and yelling "Oh my god, oh my god!", all the while reminding myself that this was an actual human I was holding, and it wouldn't be politically correct to just drop him and run.

My mom took Josh and walked away while my sister came up to me, laughing and holding out the bottom of her shirt.

"Here," she said, "wipe your hands on here."

I then vaguely remember dramatically spraying down half my body with a hose.

There was also the time I babysat my other nephew TJ when he was a baby. The older boys were downstairs watching TV and playing video games, so it was just me and Teej. I assumed that since he was only 8 or so months old at the time, he would be perfectly content to just sit. No. He crawled around faster than seemed humanly possible. I was only there for the afternoon but I was exhausted after about 20 minutes.

There's also the whole fact that babies and toddlers seem to burst into tears the second I try to talk to them or hold them. I think they can sense the fear.

So that's that. Hope any future husband and baby daddy is prepared.