The Benihana Bumble Blunder 17 Apr 2017, 3:12 am

Last year I met a guy on Bumble, and we ended up dating for a few weeks. If you have been out of the dating game for a while, let me explain to you what Bumble is. Bumble is an online dating app, kind of like Tinder. Each user downloads the app to their cell phone and creates a profile. Your profile is then presented in a baseball card like fashion to a member of the opposite sex on their cell phone screen (or same sex, whatever you’re into that’s cool).

If you see someone’s profile that tickles your fancy, you swipe right. If you don’t like what you see, you swipe left. If both users swipe right on each other’s profile then it’s a match. Here is the tricky part that separates Bumble from other “swipe right” dating apps. After you are matched, the woman has 24 hours to “make the first move” and contact the man, otherwise the match disappears.

I honestly think that my married friends have more fun playing on my Bumble account than I ever have. This is especially true for my married friends that have been with their spouse/significant other since before dating apps existed. I can attribute many of my Bumble “matches” to my married girlfriends swiping right on a guy for me.

Alright, now that everyone is up to speed on what the Bumble dating app is, back to the Benihana Bumble Blunder story. The guy I met on Bumble last year, we’ll just call him Travis (FYI his name is not really Travis). Travis and I did the whole Bumble swipe right thing and talked through the dating app for a week or two before we met in person.

Our first couple of dates were casual and pretty great. We had good chemistry, and we both loved Game of Thrones and alcohol. It was a match made in heaven, ish. During one of our dates it came out that we both loved hibachi food. Travis proudly announced that on our next date he would take me to Benihana’s. I was impressed; one because I love hibachi, and two because Benihana’s is not cheap.

Cute haircut, fresh makeup, new nail polish, and a stunning Kelly green dress later, I was ready for my Benihana’s date. Not to brag on myself, but I looked goooooood, y’all. I looked real good, and polished, put together. Not that I don’t normally look nice, but any given day I’m usually running late, doing my makeup in the car on the way to work, my nail polish is chipped, and my hair is pulled back into a messy bun.

Dinner was fantastic. The food was amazing like always, and the company was pretty high up there as well. Travis and I shared a bottle of wine, and giggled like school girls throughout our conversation. I think he giggled more than I did, which in retrospect might explain a few things. The other couples at the hibachi table didn’t seem too thrilled with us. I think it was obvious that Travis and I were newly dating, and hadn’t begun hating each other yet like every couple inevitably does. The guy to my right stared down at his fried rice and steak the entire dinner, ignoring his wife, which was just fine since she was too busy posting on Facebook and Instagram to notice her food or husband.

Travis and I went back to his house to have a drink. Travis bragged about his collection of Comic Book hero figurines and even played a game of Show and Tell with them. I pretended to be interested in Travis’s monologue about Star Wars this and Deadpool that, but I couldn’t really follow or relate to half of what he was saying. Thank goodness he had a dog there for me to pet and play fetch with.

Halfway into the Deadpool monologue I started feeling a little rumble in my tummy. At first it was just a little rumble. No big deal. I had just eaten dinner, clearly my stomach was merely digesting the food. A little rumble turned into a lot of gurgling. I started to sweat, and hoped that Travis hadn’t heard the gurgling or noticed my sweating.

“Hey why don’t we turn off the lights and watch a movie or something,” I suggested. Anything to make the Deadpool monologue stop, plus I needed a distraction from the awful sickening feeling in my stomach.

“Yeah. Cool. Great idea,” Travis said.

We started watching Rick and Mortey. My idea, actually. Who’s the nerd now? If you haven’t watched Rick and Mortey it’s probably for the best. The sweating increased and intensified, as did the now audible volcano brewing in my stomach.

“He can you turn the volume up please? I’m having trouble hearing the show,” I lied. I needed a lot of loud noises to cover up what I was now pretty sure had become aliens trying to force their way out of my body. I was dripping with sweat. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat and crossed my legs.

“Are you alright?” Travis asked.

“Umm yeah, no. I don’t know. I’m not feeling so hot,” I stammered.

Oh god. Time was up. These aliens were coming out one way or another.

“Be right back,” I yelled over my shoulder as I ran into the bathroom.

As I sat on the toilet, I whispered a short prayer to the Benihana gods…

Dear Benihana gods, I thank you for the wonderful gifts that you hath bestowed upon me tonight at dinner. Thow gifts were delicious and nourished my body. I knowith that every Benihana worshiper must offer penitence in return for such delicious gifts, but please Benihana gods, let it not be tonight. Not with Travis ten feet away in the other room.

Shockingly, my prayers went unanswered, and I offered much penitence to the Benihana gods right there on Travis’s toilet. It was like a dormant volcano had come to life, and the hot lava would not stop flowing. I was horrified.

I turned on the fan, and let water run from the sink’s faucet, anything to cover up the noise. I even tried coughing in unison with the volcanic eruptions. God I was sweaty. And mortified. It was awful. I coughed some more as I doused myself and the bathroom in Febreze.

I walked awkwardly back into the living room and sat down on the couch next to Travis. Play it cool. Play it cool. Maybe he didn’t notice? Best case scenario he heard me coughing and assumes I was purging due to my bulimia condition. I think I would have rather he thought that, than what I really did in his bathroom. So shameful.

Rick and Mortey continued playing on the TV, and the rumbling continued in my stomach. Just then, Travis’s cell phone rang. Phew a distraction.

“Oh god! Oh no. NO! Please no! Are you sure, mom?” Travis screamed into the phone.

A million scenarios flashed through my brain. His dad had a heart attack. His uncle had a stroke. His brother was in killed in a car accident. His childhood home burned to the ground, killing the beloved family cat Mittens. Luckily, nothing so horrid as any of these things transpired. Travis’s sister had been arrested for a DWI. Not an ideal situation, but things could have been a lot worse. She could have killed herself or someone else driving drunk.

Over the next hour or so Travis placed phone call after phone call. Many to his mother, multiple to his father, some to the jail where his sister was being held, one to a bail bondsmen, and more phone calls to his mother again. I sympathized, and offered my support as best I could.

Deep down I was somewhat relieved though. Every time Travis made a phone call, I snuck off to the bathroom to offer myself as tribute to the Benihana gods. Travis was too distracted with his sister’s predicament to notice what I was doing, plus my transgressions had not been the most egregious act of the evening.

I haven’t had Benihana’s since this incident, and likely will not for a long time to come. If there is such a thing as Benihana PTSD, I think I have it. I saw Travis one more time after that night, then we amicably parted ways. It was probably for the best. That was an emotional night for each of us for different reasons, but we both needed to bury the memory of that night deep down somewhere hidden.

-Katie

Lamborghini Mike 5 Apr 2017, 1:08 am

My junior year of college I still had the same boyfriend that I mentioned in my previous post The Infamous Teddy Bear Massacre. If you haven’t had a chance to read that post yet, I would highly recommend it, as it gives some context to this story.

My college boyfriend and I had a nasty habit of drinking and fighting. It seemed that neither of us could handle our liquor, and neither of us could handle having a normal evening of drinking without some sort of argument breaking out.

The night of Lamborghini Mike was no different. My boyfriend had taken me to a BBQ at his friend’s house, which was only a few miles away from my house at the time. This was a BBQ, people. A FREAKIN BBQ. We weren’t pounding shots, dancing and raging at some night club. Nope, just at a simple BBQ, casually drinking, and hanging out with friends. We still managed to get into a fight.

I can’t for the life of me remember what we were fighting about. Who knows if either of us really knew what we were fighting about at the time, but somehow we ended up in my boyfriend’s friend’s bedroom yelling at each other.

My boyfriend snatched my Coach purse that he had given to me for Christmas a few months back.

“I’m taking this damn purse back!” my boyfriend yelled as he proceeded to unzip the purse and dump all of its contents out onto the bed. Lip gloss, tampons, eye liner, car keys, you name it. All of my belongings had been dumped into a pile on the bed.

“Fine!” I yelled. “I’m going home.”

I grabbed a pillow from the bed and removed the pillow from its case. I then began stuffing all of my purse contents into my boyfriend’s friend’s pillow case, like a freakin hobo. A freakin drunk hobo.

I stormed out of the bedroom, stumbled through the kitchen, and ran out the front door. I hadn’t driven there, and it was the middle of winter, so naturally I decided to walk home. This was before the time of the iPhone, so my simple flip phone was not equipped with a GPS device.

Nonetheless I slung that pillow case over my shoulder and set out on my journey home. My phone was blowing up. Phone call after phone call. Voicemail after voicemail. Text message after text message. My boyfriend was desperately trying to get a hold of me, but I wasn’t having it.

I could have called any of my friends, sorority sisters, or roommates to come pick me up and take me home. But nope. I had embraced the temporary life of a drunken hobo and was determined to make this journey on my own.

An hour went by and I was starting to get really tired. And lost. I wasn’t exactly sure where I was, plus my fury boots were made more for looks than they were for hiking.

Suddenly, out of thin air, a red Lamborghini pulled up beside me on the road. The scissor door on the passenger side opened up vertically, and there was a guy sitting in the driver’s seat.

“Hey,” he said. “Need a ride?”

I knew better than to hitchhike or get into a car with a strange man, but the life of a drunken hobo was rough and it had worn me down. Plus this guy was wearing a beanie on his head, and it’s a little known fact that rapists and murderers don’t wear beanies (it’s not, actually). I quickly agreed and jumped into the red Lamborghini.

It was short ride to my house, and Lamborghini Mike and I didn’t talk too much. Just enough to exchange pleasantries, and him ask me if I was alright. He never hit on me or tried to make a pass. He simply took me home (although I’m not so sure my boyfriend believed that part of the story).

I still think about Lamborghini Mike from time to time and wonder how he’s doing, usually when I’m drunk and telling this story to my friends. I wonder too if Lamborghini Mike ever thinks about me, the drunken Irish Hobo he rescued from the side of the road in the middle of winter.

The world may never know.

xoxo Katie : )

The Infamous Teddy Bear Massacre 27 Mar 2017, 10:30 pm

In college I had an on again off again boyfriend for about three years. It was the most emotionally turbulent relationship I’ve ever been in. We’d fight. We’d break up. We’d get back together. Then we’d do it all over again a month later.

Usually we’d fight about stupid crap like him wanting to go hunting and get drunk with his friends rather than spend time with me. Or we’d fight because I hated his meddlesome mother and the Oedipus complex that she had created for her son. We yelled, we screamed, we called each other names. It was awful.

After one such fight, break up, then reconciliation, my boyfriend gifted me with a teddy bear from Build-A-Bear that said “I love you baby” when you pressed the red heart on the bear’s chest. I’m guessing this bear was my boyfriend’s mother’s idea because he was far too selfish to think of something like that on his own. Regardless of the inspiration for the bear, it was a sweet gesture (read peace offering), and I promptly named the bear Scooter.

Fast forward a few months to the night of my 21st birthday. My boyfriend and I got into one of the worst fights of our relationship, but this time we weren’t fighting about hunting or his mother. Nope, we were fighting about his interactions with other girls.

Hell hath no fury like a drunk 21 year old girl finding out that her boyfriend had been frequenting strip clubs with his friends and lying to cover it up. To add insult to injury, just minutes before I found out this information, my boyfriend had been playing “boob basketball” by trying to throw skittles into my roommate’s low-cut shirt. My boyfriend and I exchanged some harsh words (in front of all my friends), then he grabbed his belongings and stormed out of the house.

I was upset to say the least, but I wasn’t going to let this fight ruin my 21st birthday. My friends and I downed a few shots, then decided to leave my house and head for the bars. When we walked outside, the front yard of the house was covered in white fluff. For a few seconds there, we thought that it had snowed. We determined that it wasn’t snow, but were baffled as to the white fluff’s origin. I shrugged it off and continued on to the bars. I was ready to celebrate.

So many bars. So many shots. I can’t really recall exactly how much alcohol I consumed that night, but it was a lot. At some point in the night, my boyfriend met back up with the group. I was still mad at him, but I decided that I would allow him to hold my purse and buy me drinks. At least he was good for that.

After a long night of dancing, pounding shots, and glaring at my boyfriend as he stood across the room sheepishly holding my purse, I decided that I was ready to go home. I rode with my boyfriend back to my house. I still wasn’t thrilled with him, but I had decided to let this one go so as to not initiate yet another break up.

As we pulled into the driveway of my house, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye in the backseat of my boyfriend’s car. I unbuckled my seat belt then turned to the backseat to investigate. It was Scooter, but something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. I scooped up Scooter into my arms, and he was lifeless, just a heap of shredded fur and eyeballs. No fluff. I looked at lifeless Scooter, then at the white fluff in my front yard, then back at poor Scooter again.

“Scooterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!” I yelled.

I panicked. I looked at my boyfriend. He panicked. Then I slapped my boyfriend across the cheek, dropped Scooter, and ran into the house sobbing hysterically, tripping in my high heels all the way and nearly falling into the bushes.

I refused to talk to my boyfriend the rest of the night or allow him into my house. Naturally, he went and spent the night with his brother who lived just a few miles away.

The next morning my boyfriend was waiting on my front porch desperately trying to apologize. I let him inside. He looked awful. Like really awful. I was no prize myself considering how hungover I was, but my boyfriend looked really awful.

“I couldn’t sleep. I was up all night trying to fix Scooter” he explained.

My boyfriend pulled Scooter out of a bag, only it wasn’t Scooter. It was a Frankenstein Scooter. Sure, the fluff had been stuffed back into him, but Scooter wasn’t his normal chipper self. His heart still worked, which was a relief, but his entire little teddy bear body was covered in stitching from head to paws.

“Happy birthday, baby” my boyfriend muttered.

Happy birthday to me, indeed.

xoxo Katie : )

Hot Stove Don’t Touch 22 Nov 2016, 12:33 am

You know when you’re a little kid and your parents tell you not to touch the stove because it’s hot, so you touch it anyways…And you burn yourself. Then you do it again. And burn yourself…AGAIN…Yeah…that’s like me and dating, except I’m 29 and I keep touching the hot stove (guys) and getting burned, and most of the time they’re not even that hot (good looking). That was a pun. I think.

So I decided why not share my misery with the world. I mean…I am literally a walking dating disaster. Don’t worry though, it’s not all gloom and doom. For every story I have about some douchebag ripping out my heart, stomping on it, then flushing it down the toilet like a dead goldfish, I have ten other dating stories so awkwardly hilarious that even your MeeMaw would pee her pants with laughter. That plus the fact that she’s ancient as balls and has lost control of her bladder. Either way.

I know what you’re thinking. What is MeeMaw? Don’t worry about it. Just enjoy the stories. Oh and if you’re a guy reading this blog…Don’t date me. Ever. Trust me.

xoxo Katie : )

Edit: It should be noted that for the most part these stories are in no particular order, and all material on this site is copyrighted.