A Sunday Tale at Jazz Martini Night

It's Sunday night and it's not like I went to the football game the day before and indulged in a bit of tail-gating or anything.

But in Missoula, a thing called Jazz Martini Night* happens every Sunday evening and it's about as classy of an opportunity for college students to add some sophistication to their weekend without dropping $30 on two drinks at John Mayer's favorite bar in Montana. And there's nothing better, if you ask me, than an adult chocolate shake after completing an entire ecology "semester long" project in just an afternoon. Some things just have to happen and showering for the first time all weekend, putting on a dress, and listening to jazz is sort of the best way to let the weekend simmer down a little more slowly than breezing through three episodes of Pretty Little Liars. 

Walk into the bar. Get ten feet before I spot the Bouncer who is nodding off on a stool and he leaps out of his chair to chase me down.

"ID, gimme your ID," he says, grunting. It's already in my hands. I've just learned by now that my chances of not looking like a sixteen year old with a fake are nonexistent. I hand it to him. He looks at me, wondering I'm sure what sixteen year old is allowed out on a Sunday night and who my parents are, but lets me pass with an eyebrow raise. Nothing unusual.**

Find our friend who is waiting for us. Be introduced to a gal I sort of think I know because I'm pretty sure someone told me my ex hooked up with her and stuff. She's really awesome and watches Supernatural and seems to genuinely enjoy my excitement over the One Direction album leaking on Tumblr. Bond over other girl things and I remember that her article in the school newspaper this week was about wanting to have more friends that are girls and how hard it is to impress other girls when you want to be friends with them. Think to myself, I'm down with being this girl's friend and maybe we can talk about how uncomfortable my ex's stubble was. Maybe. I'm now not on a double date with my boyfriend, she is my date and how on Earth do I impress this girl enough to be friends by the end of the night?

Slurp on chocolate shake. It's so good I want to stop at the Liquor store on the way home to buy a bottle of this Godiva chocolate stuff, just to top off my Sunday night right. Girl gets up and also orders a chocolate thing. When she comes back, she mentions Seattle and how she's from there and I die inside and she becomes not just girl, but Girl Crush.

Boyfriend ordered some sort of concoction that has garlic flavored vodka in it. Reaffirms that I am no longer on a date with him but with Girl Crush.

Suddenly, turn around at the sound of... a child crying? Sure enough, it's like Baby's Day Out if they included a bar scene. A baby in a fluffy Patagonia onsie snow suit is sauntering around the bar. Two seconds later and a lady at the bar looks under the counter to see him missing and springs after him. Baby. At. A. Bar. Is this an "only in Montana" thing?

Be introduced to boyfriend's jazz playing friend. "Oh, you're THE Maggie. You're famous in the music building."

After a half hour, Girl Crush says she has to leave. She gets up to shake the hands of the dudes and when she gets to me, she hugs me. Facebook Friend request sent the next day. Success.

*dating someone who is a music major is awesome because you discover things like Jazz Martini Night because he knows the people in it and sometimes performs in similar things that happen around Missoula. 

**I really did get ID'ed to go to an R-rated movie last week, so I seriously do look 16 to people. 

a Tinder tale

It's Friday, I said. We have to do something! I aced every single one of my midterms this week and we have to celebrate the fact that I managed to pull that off when I've spent my every Saturday night staying awake until the wee hours of the morning making it incredibly difficult to study on Sundays. I mean, it's time to quit while I'm ahead, you know? One last night of fun and then a productive weekend of getting stuff done...!

Where's the fun at tonight? My friend wants to meet up with us downtown and he says it's his friend's birthday, so we should join!

Shower. Put on cute-ish shirt. Minimal makeup because I'm only looking to have fun with my best friend who I laugh with more than anyone else. Skip the eyeliner. But yes on mascara. Bangs are much too long and even straightening them does nothing to prevent them from parting down the middle. Pants, for once. Because it has dropped to under 30 degrees at night for the last couple weeks.

Bus ride downtown. A guy I recognize from the cafeteria freshmen year directs us to the bar where friend and friend's birthday guy are hanging out. New place. Never been here before. People I think I've seen sleeping in tents by the river on my jogs are swing dancing in Carhartt jackets and plaid next to a jukebox. They've never proved to be harmless. Shrug. Ain't above having fun with ANYONE.  A poker game is happening and I are so happy you didn't wear a short dress or lipstick. Okay, so I might be above having fun with the poker players who look older than your dad.

See friend.

Wave hi to friend excitedly. Hug friend. Friend's friend whose birthday celebration is under way turns towards me with a drink in hand smiling. Immediate recognition. Wonder if long bangs can hide my eyes and if my glasses are that recognizable. Nope, nope. They definitely are.

"Maggie, haven't we been talking on Tinder?" he says.

Crash the birthday party of someone I've only talked to through 2 truths and a lie games in a chat window of a dating app.

how {not} to be a gilmore

yesterday began as a less than satisfactory type of monday. womanhood. that's all i need to say.

i went home to take care of some things and because i had to go home to do those things, there was no making it back to class. so instead, i sat down and pumped out my four hour long timed essay i had to submit online. woot. by the time i was done, i was ready to be mindless for a while and also regain feeling in my fingertips. before i knew it, i had a plate of bagel bites, a homemade latte, and just so i could feel better about the 16g of saturated fat i was about to consume, a bowl of fruit ready to be devoured. i turned on none other than gilmore girls because nothing can capture my undivided attention like those two and thought to myself: holy crap, i am a gilmore right now. coffee, unhealthy processed food, bed, and tv sitcoms. i have finally done it. i have achieved all that i could ever hope to achieve in life. and purely by accident proving once and for all, i could have been rory's younger sister.

*mid way through i will follow you anywhere that you tell me to if you need, if you need-*

just kidding. maggie, you are not a gilmore.

as i reached to grab my coffee sitting on top of the inch and a half thick base of my headboard, i flipped my plate of bagel bites simultaneously as i tipped my coffee mug completely over so that it drenched my hair, covered my WHITE down comforter i got for christmas and treasure more than anything else, and nearly drowned my phone in coffee. 

yeah, okay. i'd say that it was the stupidest thing i've ever done, to drink scalding hot coffee in bed while eating in bed, but no, it isn't. it was just pretty stupid and definitely did not place me in the effortlessly cool ranks that lorelai and rory pretty much dominate. 

so, no. i'm not a gilmore. it was cool to pretend for a few minutes but let's be real, i can't pull effortless off.

there's the way i look when i drink coffee...

and then there's the way they look when they are DANCING.
clearly not a fit.

that one winter dance

this one time, i accidentally kind of got tricked into asking this boy to a dance. it was embarrassing, to say the very least. there was a new kid in school who had a really goofy grin and really goofy ears that i thought was kind of cute and maybe someone i wanted to become pals with, that is, if i could get past my awkward tendencies to act really awkward around people i've never talked to. that was the disadvantage of a small high school, i suppose. essentially, at some point in my life, i had probably shared a class with or talked to every single person in my school. everyone did. everyone just knew each other. so talking to someone new was not a practiced skill (and i quickly realized how out of practice i was when i got to college)(mom and dad, how do you make friends!?!?).

so the annual girls-ask-boys dance was around the corner my junior year and when my friends asked me who i wanted to ask i jokingly said goofy grin and goofy ear boy just because i really wanted to befriend the really funny kid that also stayed after school to do trig homework in mrs. mckennon's class and i had that silly wanting-to-be-friends-with-a-person kind of crush on him but not in a i-actually-want-to-date-you kind of way. anyways, on the monday before the dance (i repeat, the MONDAY before the dance), one of my friends who had a class with him texted me saying that someone else had asked him and i had better get on it if i wanted to ask him because he hadn't given the other girl an answer. um, okay? five minutes later i get another text saying, "WE DID IT!" in my mind, i kind of imagined the entire scenario of me asking him being really awkward and i could never do it because we had never actually spoken and for that matter, i doubted that he even knew who i was but in reality, it was so much worse. i freaked out and sent her ten texts in a row not even bothering to hide my phone in my sweatshirt during class demanding to know what she meant. what she meant? they had written all over his next teacher's board in class with dry erase markers asking him to the dance... with my name attached scribbled with hearts and flowers and bright pink writing. i could have died right there in my math class. there was no undoing it. he had that class the very next period. i was screwed.

so of course he saw it and of course i was more embarrassed than i'd ever been in my life because i was certain that he didn't know who i was and he'd only been at our school for maybe a few weeks so i only imagined what he was thinking about this totally strange girl asking him to a dance. i avoided the hallways for the rest of the day and hid from him at lunch. unsuccessfully, i ran into him, and i mean, i literally ran into him while trying to sprint through the hallways after school to get outside and go home but he thankfully did know my name and stopped me nicely. i tried my best to regain some sort of composure and play the whole thing off like it was just a "friendly" gesture. in the end, he was super nice about it and thanked me for asking him (i'll be honest, mormon boys can be some of the sweetest boys around and while i don't like to stereotype people, that is one stereotype i feel okay acknowledging because some of the most respectable boys i knew in high school were mormon) but said he was going to go with the girl who first asked him because she asked first. but he suggested we hang out sometime and over the semester, we were friendly and while we weren't really "friends" we shared a lot of mutual friends and ended up hanging out with our groups of friends at times.

anyways, to make a very long winded embarrassing story short, i never in a million years would have asked a stranger to a dance, but afterwards, it felt really good, even if i couldn't take any real credit. i thought he was going to think i was a freak. i thought he was going to take things the wrong way. and while i didn't do it, "i" took the first great leap to make him my friend and i've since learned that if you want to do something, you should just do it. 95% of the time, a person won't think you're too weird for approaching them first and getting all awkwardness out of the way right off the bat has a huge pay off. you always think something is going to be way worse than it turns out to be. i made some of the best friends i've made in college by just taking the plunge and striking up a conversation with the girl holding a book i like on the elliptical next to mine or sitting by the cute kid on your soccer team in genetics (*cough* that's actually my next plan of attack).