Sardines and Chocolate Milk

Ten minutes after working out I jump into my car and chug pastuerized organic egg whites from the carton.  I drive home and eat a splendid meal of sardines and hot sauce and wash it down with chocolate whole milk.  I give my cat a piece of the sardines and a little dish of whole milk (not chocolate).  This is not exactly how I thought my life would be like and it’s moments like these where I wonder, “why haven’t I met that special man in my life” and then I continue to plan my move to the suburbs and subsequent purchase of a rocking chair, thick ugly sweatpants and adoption of 50 cats from the local pound.  My poor mother keeps trying to get me to date more, “go for older guys, they will appreciate you”, “maybe stop spending time at the gym so much”, “it must be hard for you to date being an attorney, men are intimidated by you”, “do what the sex and the city girl does and pretend you are a flight attendant”, “please be nice to him”, “please don’t swear a lot”, “please act like a lady,” “please brush your hair,” “please get a pedicure,” “please don’t mention to him that you lift weights.”  God bless her, she tries.  I’m pretty sure she keeps thinking to herself, “Damnit, this is NOT what I had in mind when I raised girls.”  My father, I’m sure he’d like to see me dating and married again but he’s pretty happy with me so long as I’m not a Yankees fan and so long as I can fix the computer and the television when something goes wrong.   Regardless, it’s their fault that I am who I am and I love them for it.  I was born to two cheap ass, profanity laced LA County Sheriff officers.  My parents bought a house in Huntington Beach, California a few years before they had me.  We lived in a very nice neighborhood but my parents were lower middle class; they could afford the house because they were the ultimate savers.  I grew up in an environment where material things weren’t important because we couldn’t afford nice things.  Being “girly”, especially in Orange County, requires a huge emphasis on material things otherwise they revoke your membership and so I did not fit in with the girls in school or in most of the other social situations in my life until...well I suppose forever.  My father was also really fucking smart about raising me, much smarter than I originally thought.  He has a son from a previous marriage and didn’t get to see him as much as I’m sure he wanted to and when I came around I was doomed to be a tomboy.  When I was really young I loved everything pink and girly and Barbie dolls and My Little Pony and She-Ra and Gem and the Misfits and Rainbow Brite and oh my world the thought of it now makes me sick to my stomach.  He saw that and two things went through his mind - 1. Oh hell no; and 2.  I’m going to turn this one into a socially retarded tomboy that way she’ll NEVER date when she’s young and I won’t have to worry about her.  And he was right.  Barbies and pink and all that crap gave way to little league baseball, the Red Sox and Angels, making nachos and getting dad a beer from the fridge (the first Spanish phrase I ever learned was “Cerveza, por favor” from my white ass father), learning how to fix the cable and the computer so Dad didn’t have to learn, profanity and insensitive jokes.  Beating the boys at athletics or in school was highly preferred to dating boys.  When my friends started dating boys I didn’t understand the point, it took me a few years to get on board with the whole liking boys thing as I am and have always been a super late bloomer.  Even now I have absolutely zero game; I’m a super bad date because I’m a retarded mess but also not really willing to try and be anything appealing.  I was so bad at dating that in high school my father sat me down and told me that they would love me no matter what or who I ended up falling in love with.  It was a thinly veiled, we love you if you are gay conversation.  Now I don’t care about anyone’s sexual orientation, but when you are so bad at being straight that your parents think you are playing for the other team that’s really really sad.  I sat there in the living room and processed what had just happened, sighed and held my head in my hands, laughed at my own patheticness and turned on a baseball game.