TOOLBAG TUESDAY

File this under real-life Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde:

My friend Cassie had been dating this guy Heath for one month and he decided to break up with her after a drunken night out, with thoughtful points like, “you’re a loser, and have nothing going for you."

...And then he called her the next day to see if she still wanted to meet his parents for dinner.

LOL

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Who asks someone to meet their parents after just one month of dating??

LOL

Things had started pretty intense between Cassie and Heath right away. They met when Cassie was a bartender at a new hot bar and Health was a hot new customer.

He had pursued her, coming in nightly, tipping her well, and generally being charming. 

He was a finance guy and bought her little gifts, cooked her dinner, made her feel awesome, etc., etc. (basically a perfect Dr. Jekyll .)

When he asked her to meet his parents for dinner, she was so flattered that she said yes.

Cassie said everything was going 100 percent great between them until the night before meeting his parents.

They were celebrating Cassie’s friend’s birthday at the bar and she said they were all having a really good time when Heath snapped.

Mr. Hyde came out of the drunkedness.

“When we went back to his place, he decided to tell me what a loser I was, that I had nothing going for me, and ‘broke up’ with me in a drunken stupor,” she said.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was a complete shock (on top of an embarrassing life evaluation.)

This whole time Heath had told her nothing but sweet, wonderful things. 

And now she was a LOSER?!?!?!

Cassie didn’t know how to respond to these accusations and left his house in a cab sad, angry, hurt and confused.

She woke up the next day and saw two missed calls from Heath.

Maybe he wanted to apologize! Maybe he wanted to take everything back!

No.

“Are you still planning to come to dinner tonight to meet my family?” he asked, casually.

“What?” Cassie said.

“Dinner. Tonight. With my parents, remember?” Heath said.

“Um...do you want to talk about last night?” Cassie said.

“No,” he said. 

LOL

Cassie remained silent.

“Look, Cassie, we were both drunk, and I doubt either one of us really remembers what was actually said,” Heath said.

Ahahahahahahahaha

Hahahahahahaha

(Wait, in the books, does Dr. Jekyyl forget what he said when he was in Mr. Hyde mode?)

“He actually assumed I forgot the conversation,” Cassie recalls. "That I forgot he broke up with me."

Also: “He didn’t even ask me how I got home.”

Rude. 

Haha

NEWSFLASH: A girl doesn't forget when a guy she’s sleeping with calls her a “loser” “with nothing going for her."

Cassie ended things with Heath, of course, telling him that technically they were already broken up, reminding him of exactly what he said, and that no, she didn't want to go to dinner and subject his family to such a loser.

...Which is why he should stay home, too.

LOL

-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

The number one complaint among my female friends about dating, especially with online dating, is this: they meet a dude at a restaurant, order two beers and a taco and he still asks the server to split the bill.

Ugh.

Uhhhhh

Do I need to remind guys that paying for dinner is a way to impress someone???

This is another shitty thing about dating in the X or Y or millennial or whatever else they’re calling this generation:

Dealing with cheap guys.

WHEN DID THIS BECOME ACCEPTABLE????

WAIT UNTIL PAYDAY BEFORE ASKING A GIRL OUT!!!

(Also, your chances of being considered for a long-term relationship go down considerably when you can’t afford to pay for two beers and a damn taco.)

There are many ways guys try to squirrel out of not paying for dinner, even though they definitely were raised knowing it’s the chivalrous thing to do.

“You get this one, I’ll get the next.” (eye roll)

“You make more money than I do.” (eye roll)

“I’m out of cash.” (eye roll)

Or, the most infuriating no explanation (explanation: cheap asshole) of nonchalantly asking the server to split the bill and then continuing on the conversation like nothing had changed.

This guy Charles, who my friend Katie met online, decided to take it up a notch.

He decided to SQUIRREL out of paying for the bill with a new tactic: by invoking the women’s movement.

LOL

When the bill arrived for his beers and for Katie's TWO BEERS, he thoughtfully said, “Hey...you’re a progressive female...right?”

LOL

LOL

“Um...yea...” Katie said, suspicious.

She worked in a male-dominated industry and was subject to assholes all the time.

“Ok, so then you DON’T want me to pay for your beers,” he said. 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Of course Charles phrased it so that if Katie accepted him paying for her beers, she’d be a bad empowered woman.

A cheap, manipulative asshole. 

As an empowered woman, Katie (after her eye roll), turned his very argument on him.

“Well...when women make as much as men do, then I’d agree to split it,” she said. 

“But since I make 80 cents for every dollar you make, you can pay the bill.”

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Charles laughed but didn’t change his stance on the bill though, because Katie learned HE DIDN’T HAVE A JOB, and therefore makes zero cents for every 80 cents she makes.

!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously!

Here's a guy with NO JOB asking out girls online and then instead of admitting that he’s too broke and cheap to pay the bill throws an, “you’re an empowered woman” line at her.

LOL

EQUALITY!

GROSS.

Charles is the absolute last person any girl would want to waste their time on.

...Or their 80 cents.

-Jenny

Cool Greyhound Mom

I ordered off Amazon “Adopting the Racing Greyhound,” but I didn’t make it to the end of the book because it told me I was doing everything wrong, so I closed it and threw it in my closet.

I’M A COOL MOM.

You may remember, I started fostering a retired Greyhound dog at the end of August, and, no surprise to anyone who’s ever fostered a dog...I officially adopted her.

YAY!!!

SHE’S ALL MINE!

MY FIRST DOG!!!

Hahahahahahahahaha

(Yes, I think it’s just as ridiculous when you post that with your human babies.)

The thing no one tells you when you first adopt a dog (or, apparently, have a baby haha) is that your phone’s camera roll will turn into nothing but pictures of your dog.

I can’t help it. I just find everything she does hilarious, especially the fact that she sleeps upside down in seemingly uncomfortable yoga-like positions (I think that's yoga) with her teeth showing.

Like so:

sleeping with her eyes open

And while there are a few kinks to work out, she has been a wonderful addition to my life.

The main thing that I didn’t consider when I decided to foster/adopt a dog (also with babies I hear): they get up really F-ing early.

No matter what time we eventually go to my bedroom and properly go to bed...it could be 10 p.m. or 2 a.m., her internal clock wakes her up at 6:45 a.m. to eat and be let out.

Sometimes she even wakes up at 5:45 a.m. and then I tell her half-asleep “go lay down,” which someone else must have trained her to know, because she sighs loudly and goes and lays back down and that generally buys me about 45 minutes more of sleep.

I am working on a solution to this: on my list for Santa is an automatic dog feeder. This way, she can count on a robot to give her food in the morning.

I’M A LAZY COOL MOM.

Hahahaha

Another issue is whining. She whines a lot when I’m not 100 percent looking at her or paying attention to her, at least for the first 20 minutes I arrive home after work.

She whines outside the door if I go pee in the bathroom, she whines when I walk in with 15 water glasses stacked up (when I get a wild hair to clean out my car) and can’t bend down and hug her ASAP.

But I have found another solution for this: THROW MORE TREATS AT HER.

Just kidding. I’m going to pay a trainer to come figure out how to curb the whining.

I envision the trainer will be like the human form of the automatic feeding robot, i.e. do all the work for me.

Haha

Since she’s my first dog, I was paranoid about everything (same with babies, no?)—IS THAT A SPIDER BITE??? WHY IS SHE DRINKING SO MUCH WATER??? WHAT IS WITH ALL THE FARTING???

But thankfully, Greyhounds are the oldest breed in the world (they are mentioned in the Bible for crying out loud...uhhh according to “Adopting the Racing Greyhound” anyway) and as such, they’ve been heavily studied and written about ad naseum.

And since they’ve been purebred for centuries and centuries and haven’t been EFFED with, they are exactly the same as what everyone says. 

Once they are “retired,” Greyhounds are smart enough to turn into couch potatoes and sleep for a million hours a day.

WHO NEEDS TO RETRIEVE ANYTHING??? IDIOT BREEDS! BE MORE LIKE CATS!

And that’s exactly what she is: A 68-pound cat.

CATS THAT ARRIVE ALREADY HOUSE-TRAINED!

Here are some other Greyhound universal truths:

-Greyhounds sleep with their eyes open.

-They like big, soft mats because they have no meat on their bones. They won't lay down on a hard floor and will whine if there is no soft mat option. 

-They become confused looking at themselves in a mirror, and often growl at their reflections.

-They don’t bark.

-They only like soft, squeaky toys.

(My twin sister, Joy, tried to challenge this theory and bought her a non-edible hard bone. It has not been touched.)

This is the only toy I will play with!!!!!

-They sleep on their backs and in weird stretchy positions (seen above, and confirmed by the hashtag #greyhoundsofinstagram that I constantly look at).

It’s nice having a dog that’s already all figured out. It calms my neurotic mind. When I type into Google “why does my greyhound have diarr...” (lol) there are 1,000 pages addressing it already.

The best part, though, LIKE BABIES!, is seeing the world through the greyhound's eyes. 

While you never really know the background of a rescue dog or what it’s done and what it’s seen, you pretty much know that a greyhound hasn’t seen anything its whole life besides a track and the inside of a kennel.

Swimming was a huge, new experience, and she cautiously put her paws into the little lake at the dog park and immediately ran away. 

Greyhounds have never swam before. Why would they need to? 

Stairs were also a challenge, since Greyhounds have never had to use stairs (we’re still working on the “down” part)

But she also has her unique qualities. 

She scales the perimeter of my bed rubbing her face along the side of it every morning, which is odd, but I guess she’s never had anything like that to rub her face on before. 

...Or else she’s marking me.

She loves to hate cats and thoughtfully chases squirrels while on a leash and runs in circles in the backyard. 

She has no hair on her butt from sitting in a kennel for 23 hours a day her whole life.

BUT SHE’S STILL MY NEW BEST FRIEND!

And she’s positively impacted my life. 

I’ve stopped taking afternoon naps because of her (dog walks and trips to the dog park take precedence), which in turn makes me go to bed earlier because when you stop taking afternoon naps, you go to sleep at appropriate times at night.

She’s made me more responsible about money because she eats 3 cups of food a day plus TREATS THROWN AT HER after work and all those soft, squeaky toys aren't cheap.

But most importantly, I think about her all day long, and can’t wait to come home and drop to the floor and hug her and tell her that she’s a needle nose but that’s OK because she’s the most beautiful greyhound in the whole world.

:)

BECAUSE I’M A COOL MOM.

-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

It’s safe to say that your romantic relationship is over when the guy you've been seeing calls you but there’s a GIRL on the other end instead, telling you to leave "her man" alone, stop going on afternoon runs by his house and STOP PETTING HIS DOG.

(Not a euphemism, his actual dog.)

LOL

This happened a few weeks ago to my friend Jenna, who had been dating this guy Greg on and off for three years. I guess this was an “off” time.

Jenna, who is over 30 years old, said getting a call from another girl from GREG’S PHONE was the lamest thing that had happened to her in a long time. (Just wait, Jenna. Just wait...)

First, don’t let your new girl ambush your old girl like that by letting her use your phone.

Also, if Greg had a problem with her usual jogging route that she had established well before she met him, then he could tell her that himself.

And it was creepy to know that someone had been watching her stop to pet his dog through the fence.

Jenna didn’t respond to the girl and promptly hung up.

It wasn’t very shocking; Greg always seemed to have another girl around, using his mildly attractive looks to get away with too much.

But that was the last straw. 

She and Greg were officially, definitely OFF.

But then, TWO WEEKS LATER, as she was still trying to shake him off, she was on her front porch talking to her roommate and saw Greg’s golf cart drive by her house and then slow down.

Golf carts weren’t even allowed at nighttime...and her house was not on the way to anything.

LOL

"Greg?” she called out and then the golf cart carted away.

Hahahahahahaha

So...she gets specific instructions to not go on her afternoon runs by his house, but he can CREEP-CART her at night?!?!

She wished should could find a guy to call Greg from her phone to tell him to stop it.

Ugh.

Several weeks after that, and still no actual communication, Jenna bumped into Greg at a Halloween party. The party was thrown by a mutual friend.

Jenna didn’t see any girl with him, but she avoided him all the same. 

It was really awkward having to exit every room that he entered, but that’s what happens when you play games with someone.

Anyway...HE STARTED IT. 

(And for the record, she hadn’t run by his house in a month.)

The party went into the wee hours and Jenna actually forgot all about Greg until she went into the backyard to stand around a firepit. Greg was on the other side.

“Hey Jenna,” he said, loudly, in front of everyone in the circle.

She looked at him.

It was their first conversation in a month when he broke up with her via another girl.

What could he possibly say to her now?

Maybe apologize for the weird phone call? Maybe mention the golf cart incident? Maybe tell her Happy Halloween?

No. 

Greg chose this line: “Hey...wanna do it in the butt tonight?”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

His eyes gleamed in the flames.

Everyone stopped talking.

“What?” Jenna asked.

“DO. YOU. WANT. TO. DO. IT. IN. THE. BUTT. TONIGHT.” he repeated.

He was drunk, but he wasn’t kidding.

“NO!” Jenna yelled and walked back into the house. Greg followed her. 

(Ed note: Followed her from behind heyooooo)

“I’m serious!” he said. “DO YOU?”

“NO!”

“He must have asked me 50 times and I said NO 50 times and then finally I just called an Uber and left,” Jenna said.

“Everyone at the party heard him ask me, like that was something we DID together, it was so embarrassing,” she said.

THE WORST!!!

Ugh.

At least now she's no longer interested in petting his dog ever again.

-Jenny 

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

When you live with someone you’re dating (or your parents) it’s common courtesy to let them know what you’re doing ALL THE LIVE LONG DAY and let them know if they should wait up for you (or feed you dinner, etc).

I suppose that if you like someone enough this won’t seem like such a chore. Haha

But that's the thing about dating: you care about where someone is, what time they get off work, etc.

So when they pull a God damn Houdini act, it’s not only annoying, but scary.

Like....when is a reasonable time to call the missing persons hotline?? 

OR CHECK THE COUNTY ARREST RECORDS (more people I know have done this check on their significant others than not.)

My friend Julie’s boyfriend, Clay, had a particular problem with not letting her know where he was. 

It was like he had this warped “ask for forgiveness rather than permission” philosophy. Even if he was doing something totally innocent that she'd totally be OK with.

SHE JUST WANTED TO KNOW WHAT HE WAS DOING. 

THAT'S HOW IT WORKS LIVING WITH SOMEONE YOU'RE DATING.

But not only would Clay not tell Julie where he was or what he was doing, but he would make up these elaborate lies about where he was instead.

Very specific lies.

Like, “Oh, yea, I’m taking your car to get detailed Saturday morning and I’ll be back around noon.”

!!!!!!

Normally that would be a dream boyfriend line.

...But NOT when said boyfriend doesn't return calls or texts all day and shows back up at the apartment at 6 p.m. with a DIRTY car on empty, saying something about "too long a line."

Hahahahahaha

WTF

“Where were you????” she asked.

“I told you...waiting in line,” he said.

LOL

This situation went on for way longer than Julie likes to admit, because Clay always seemed like a stand-up guy.

But when they lived together, his name was on “auto-fill” in the arrest records search after not being able to reach him.

Ugh

The final straw came when he lied about a home-cooked meal.

DON'T NOBODY LIE ABOUT A HOME-COOKED MEAL!!!

Julie said it was a cold and rainy day and she called Clay on her lunch break having a supremely bad day.

“It’s OK, baby,” Clay said. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll cook you a delicious meal tonight and we’ll get into comfy clothes and watch a movie together, how about that?”

That sounded perfect.

“How about pot roast?”

OMG PERFECT.

Julie drove home that night, windshield wipers on full blast, her mouth watering as she pulled up to their apartment. 

Then she frowned. None of the lights were on.

WTF?

Did he fall asleep?

Julie walked into the apartment and instead of finding a warm home with a delicious meal on the stove, it was cold. And empty.

WTF!!!!!!!

She texted Clay all night long—Where are you? Hello? What about dinner?—and got zero response. 

She went to bed scared and furious that night still hearing nothing from Clay.

Until he walked in...at 3 a.m.

UGGGGGHHH

“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN??” Julie cried.

“Oh...yea, I started drinking with my co-workers and we just drank all night!” he said nonchalantly.

“WHAT ABOUT ME AND DINNER? YOU SAID YOU WERE GOING TO COOK ME DINNER AND WATCH A MOVIE!

He ignored her.

!!!!!!!!!!!

Uggghhhh

Who does that???!?!?

!!!!!!!!!!!

How incredibly infuriating. 

Why specifically say POT ROAST and a movie??? And then not call or text to say you got held up or changed your plans???

Why would you let someone down like that?? 

Over and over???

It was doubly disappointing. 

OH AND HER CAR WAS STILL DIRTY.

Julie kicked Clay out soon after that.

She didn’t ask for permission.

Or forgiveness.

-Jenny