what sandra thinks

he didn’t come.

I guess this can be filed under “sandra’s terrible luck with boys/men“.

At the end of my eighth grade year, we had a school dance. It was a tradition at my school. Maybe it was to distract us from the anxiety of starting high school the following year. But I wasn’t anxious about that. I loved school. (I know, nerd.)

Some of my friends had dates for the dance. I thought it would be nice to have one, too. I had a crush on this hot high school guy, but that wasn’t going to happen. I also had a little bit of a crush on a boy in my own grade. I knew he didn’t have a date to the dance so I thought I’d ask him. I wasn’t going to wait around for him (or any boy) to ask me because I didn’t think I was popular enough to be asked. I had to take the initiative if I had any hope of getting a date.

To my surprise, he said yes. Well, more accurately, he said “sure“.

The night of the dance, I made myself pretty and put on my beautiful dress. I waited by the front window for my date to arrive. He was a little late. That’s what I thought. But then he was a little later. Then he was forty-five minutes late. I was in tears. Mom wanted to take me to the dance so I could forget him and have fun with my friends, but I thought I should wait a little longer.

But he didn’t come.

(Not me.)

After an hour, I wiped my tears and made myself pretty again. Mom took me to the dance, and I found a few of my friends shortly after I arrived. They asked why I was so late, and one of them asked where my date was. Telling them he never showed up was humiliating. But my friends were supportive—and very angry with my so-called date.

As my friends and I talked by the bleachers in the school gym, I noticed one of them looking over my shoulder. I said her name a couple of times before she turned to me. When I asked what had her so distracted, she said “nothing“. I knew she was lying, and I was pretty sure I knew why.

When I turned around, I saw my date on the other side of the gym, laughing and having fun with his friends. I stood there watching him, wondering if he’d even notice me. He didn’t. I watched him take a girl by the hand and lead her to the dance floor. One of my friends took my hand and give it a squeeze.

I wondered if I was a joke to him. Did he say yes just so he could stand me up and laugh about it with his friends later? I felt like such a fool. Thankfully, I had amazing friends back then. They made sure I had fun, but what happened stung. I never forgot it. And I never forgave him. Not that he cared.

I think that incident was the start of my terrible luck with boys/men. It was also when I started thinking I’d never be good enough for any guy.

And now, sometimes I wonder—is it really all of them? Or is it me?

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They would never abandon me. Since they only exist as pictures for me. 

p.s. — Seriously, is it me? I think it might be me.  

©2022 what sandra thinks

drunk.

Christmas Eve last year was… different.

My brother-in-law does the cooking. He’s a natural in the kitchen. He used to cook for a living. This year, though, dinner got a little delayed.

N (brother-in-law)  hadn’t eaten anything all day. He was busy prepping some of the food and taking care of completely unrelated things at his home before coming to my mom’s for the holiday. While he was working in Mom’s kitchen, he had a few drinks. I’m not sure how many, but on an empty stomach, they affected him more than they would have otherwise. He got really drunk.

My daughter and I had to run out for some (unrelated) emergency items (I use the word emergency loosely—we bought chocolate and artificial nails). When we returned to Mom’s, my husband and son told us all about how hilarious N was in his drunken state. We missed that part. What we came back to was the horrible sound of him throwing up. Then he was ok. Then he threw up some more.

We finally ate, about two hours after we usually do. I think N was embarrassed. I just felt awkward. I don’t really know how to handle drunk people. (Hell, I don’t know how to handle sober people.) I barely drink. (Ironically, one of the only times I drink is at Christmas Eve because of Mom’s punch. Yum.)

As bad as it was for N, I thought it was a fun night. For someone who doesn’t like change, I enjoyed that night being different from other years. I think it made it more fun. Also, no offense to my aunt and uncle who didn’t come because of covid, but I kind of liked that they weren’t there either. My mom was mad at her brother anyway, coincidentally, for drinking too much at Thanksgiving.

I, personally, haven’t been drunk since college. And I don’t find it all that appealing. It makes me too hot and tired.

Some people seem to love it, though.

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I’ll have a drink of these guys. I mean with these guys! With! I meant with!

p.s. — Beer is disgusting. I don’t understand how anyone can drink it.

©2022 what sandra thinks

missing remote.

These are *my* stupid random prompts, and I hate this one. I guess when I feel like the world is against me, I’m leading the charge.

No one puts the remotes (yes, plural) away where they belong in the container thingy I have on the end table beside the sofa. I am always picking one or more of them up from some other surface—sofa, chair, floor, a different table. I don’t understand why it’s so hard to just put them back. Sometimes, they are even on the same table as the container, but they still aren’t in the container. One time, one was actually missing. I found it in the kitchen. What the hell is that about?

There are so so many worse things in life to irk me, so this one is rather insignificant. And so is this post.

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No need for a remote with these guys around. I’d prefer a hands-on experience.

p.s. — I don’t watch nearly as much television as I used to. I leave usually the missing remote problems to the other three people living in my house. So there.

©2022 what sandra thinks

suicide.

Is it true that everyone has thought about committing suicide at least once in their life?

I’ll be honest. (I don’t know why I always say that. I’m always honest here. Anonymity rocks.) Anyway. I have thought about it many times. I’ve never tried. And now that I have children, it’s not even an option. But damn, some days my kids are the only reason I’m still here. And maybe my cousin is another reason.

When I was fifteen, my cousin killed himself. He was sixteen. He didn’t leave a note. No one really knew why he did it. His parents were going through a divorce at the time, but it was amicable. Maybe it hit him harder than anyone realized. Or maybe that had no bearing on his actions at all.

My cousin was the oldest of three boys. His brothers and parents were devasted. Of course.

A few years later, when I was nineteen, my second oldest cousin, also nineteen at the time, died in a car accident. A part of me always wondered if he did it on purpose. But from the outside, he seemed happy. You never know, though, what’s going on inside someone’s head. Not for sure. However, I prefer to think his death was an accident.

[Unrelated to suicide, my third cousin in that same family died at 45 from a brain tumor that wouldn’t quit.]

My point is—I could never do it to my family. I could never put them through that kind of loss. I harbor no ill feelings toward my cousin, but I do think suicide is a selfish act—because if you’re thinking of anyone but yourself, you wouldn’t do it. (At least that’s what I think.)

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I have nothing witty to write about these guys today. We’ll just take a moment.

p.s. — I was going to apologize for the serious and rather upsetting nature of today’s topic, but I’m not really sorry. I did want the list to be random.

©2022 what sandra thinks

bad idea.

When I was in college, I met a girl who I considered my best friend. Later in life, I realized that what we had wasn’t true friendship at all. I’m not sure what to call it.

We had some good times together—lots of fun. But she was manipulative. And she pushed me without me even realizing what was happening. Things she said to me influenced some important life decisions I made. And taking her “advice” or “suggestions” turned out to be the wrong choice.

At the time, though, they didn’t seem like choices at all. She pressured me until I felt like I had no choice. She led me to believe that making certain decisions would be better for me or would make me cooler/more fun/more popular. I never even cared about those things. But she made me care. She made me think they were important. Fun, sure. I want to have fun. But I was already cool, and I didn’t need to be popular. She made me believe I wasn’t cool enough, and I did need to be popular.

It’s on me that I let her influence me so much. I know that. It was a bad idea to listen to her. A severe lack of self-confidence will do that to a person—make you do what someone else “suggests” because you figure they must know better than you do.

I can’t know for sure, of course, but I firmly believe that not letting her pressure me into certain decisions would have led me to a much different and far better life than I have now. In fact, I should have dropped her from my life the moment she started basically telling me what to do.

I often wonder if she was pushing me into poor decisions intentionally so she would always be better than me. Because everything with her turned into a competition (follow link for much more about my relationship with her), and she wanted to “win“.

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I do not believe either of these delicious men would be a bad idea.

p.s. — By the way, one of the the first things I think of whenever I hear “bad idea” is a really old SNL fake ad for Bad Idea Jeans. Even though it’s very outdated, when I saw it on an SNL fake ad compilation, it totally made me laugh. For some weird reason, it stayed with me, and to this day, whenever something is a bad idea, instead of saying that, I say “Bad Idea Jeans” in a commercial voice-over type voice. I know, something is seriously wrong with me.

©2022 what sandra thinks

you knew?

It was summer break after my junior year of high school. I had a boyfriend, a part-time job at a toy store, and a bunch of friends. Things were going well. Or so I thought.

That summer, my boyfriend seemed a little distant. He was headed out of state for college at the end of the summer, but I still had my senior year of high school. I thought that was the reason for his mood. Apparently I was wrong.

My friend Matt worked at a restaurant lots of kids in our town frequented. He would always tell me who was there with who, and if anything interesting happened. It was all in fun. Until that day.

Matt was telling me about the night before at the restaurant, and in the midst of our conversation, he asked me why I wasn’t there last night with my boyfriend and Jennifer. As soon as he asked the question, his face went pale. Matt knew something. And in that moment, I knew something, too.

My boyfriend had told me he couldn’t see me on the night in question because he had to do something with his brother. Lie. If he and Jennifer were just friends, why would he lie about being with her?

I asked Matt if he’d seen my boyfriend with Jennifer any other times. Matt confessed that he had, and not just at the restaurant. I was devastated.

Me: “He’s been seeing her behind my back. And you knew?“

Matt: “At first, I thought he was just hanging out with a friend because you were busy. That’s what he said when I asked where you were—you were busy.”

Me: “But…?”

Matt: “I started seeing them together a lot. Holding hands, even. I’m sorry. I should have told you. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

I forgave Matt. But I never forgave my boyfriend.

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They would never cheat on me. You know, because they’re only mine in my fantasies.

p.s. — I’m so happy that a few people said they might participate in my not-really-a-challenge, even if just occasionally. Thanks to them and to everyone else for supporting me.  

©2022 what sandra thinks

(Not actually a picture of the two feet of snow we got over the weekend.)

It’ll be February tomorrow and [horribly named] Bloganuary is over. I said I was going to make a wrap-up post, but I don’t think I have anything to say that hasn’t already been said—many of the prompts were terrible, a few were good, and the name was bad. There. All wrapped up.

Writing/posting every day was good for me. My plan was to continue posting often—maybe three or four times a week—but I wanted inspiration. I’m sure you are sick of reading about my many neuroses. Oh, I know I’ll fall back into talking about them whether I intend to or not. It just happens. (I think that’s what a lack of friends does to me.) But I wanted something to trigger new or different thoughts. Something that might spark my creativity. I searched google and pinterest. I found all sorts of lists, but I didn’t like anything enough to use it.

So I made my own.

It’s not a bunch of questions or directives. (Well, there are two very open-ended questions.) Instead, it’s a list of random words, thoughts, and phrases. They are vague and very much open to interpretation.

I am not sure how/if this is going to work. Maybe it’ll be good. Maybe I’ll fall behind and catch up. Maybe I’ll skip days.

I didn’t give my February list a cute (or terrible) name. I think I’ll just call it wst february (wst = what sandra thinks) [Aside: I like using all lower case letters. I don’t know why.]

You may certainly take my list and play along. Or just read through the list and use whatever you like, whenever you like.

If you do join me (even just for a day here and there), link back to this post so I get a notification and can find your post(s).

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Come keep me warm, boys. I’m cold.

p.s. — I always thought it would be fun to start my own challenge, but I don’t think this really qualifies. It’s just a random list. Besides, February starts tomorrow. It’s kind of short notice. 

©2022 what sandra thinks