Reasons not to date me

Surprise! I have a day off the island! Huzzah! Internet access is always a reason to celebrate! And what better way than with a hastily-put-together list of reasons not to date your favourite mango?

Reasons Schmeasons!

• I hate using little pieces of soap in the shower, so when my bar gets too small for comfort, I just leave it sitting in the soap dish and open a new one.


• I never mush all the discarded soap pieces into a big bar, so I've accumulated quite a large collection of soap shrapnel.

• I prefer the ocean to swimming pools.

• I have been living on a beautiful island all summer and have yet to go in the ocean.

• I'm always cold in the daytime.

• I'm always hot in the nighttime.

• Hot or cold, I will cuddle you within an inch of your life.

• As a rule, I don't eat beef.

• As a rule, I don't follow rules. (This doesn't usually end well for me if I break the beef one).

~g.mango is four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie

Reasons not to date me

• When walking, I cross the street multiple times to ensure that I am always on the sunny side. I do not care how inconvenient it is, or if it means that I will be late to whatever meeting or event I am headed to.

• I will find a way to be late to whatever meeting or event I am going to anyway.

• There is often a sock collection at the bottom of my bed between the fitted sheet and the top sheet due to my inability to fall asleep without socks on, the magical sock fairies who remove my socks at night without my knowledge, and my frantic morning routine which does not afford me the luxury of the time to de-sock my bed before work.

• I like brownies. But not chocolate cake. And I like hot chocolate. But certainly not chocolate bars.

• As a child I fought tirelessly with my sister over which of us would be the one to play this song at her wedding.

• I have since deferred my claim to the above,¹ and now have called dibs on Somebody's Getting Married ² from The Muppets Take Manhattan and Burl Ives' version of Froggy Went a Courtin'.³

• I am serious about that last bullet point.
  

~g. mango went down to miss mousie's house mmhmm


1. But I still know all the words!
2. I figure I have enough friends who would sing and dance in the ensemble if given enough practice time or alcohol.
3. I have picked two frog-related songs to express my truest devotion. Wonder what Freud would say about that?

Reasons not to date me

• My self-worth is directly connected to the number of comments I receive on my blog.

• I am not nearly as funny in real life as my writing would lead you to believe.

• I get my best ideas for writing from reading Craigslist or daydreaming in the shower.

• Combine my daydreaming and my shoddy short-term memory, and it means I often forget which parts of me I've soaped up, prompting me to soap-up multiple times when I bathe.*

• I use bathe (v) and shower (v) interchangeably.

• This is the first time in four years, and only the second time in my life, that I have had to work a five-day work week. Even including all those times when I had two jobs.

• I am exhausted.

~g. man. . . zzzzzz

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*The good thing about multiple soaps is that I'm extra clean. The bad thing is that I use enough water to power a small city in my twenty-minute shower every morning. Representatives from Greenpeace have threatened to come to my apartment and chain themselves to my shower-head. But even that won't dissuade me from my long showers. They'll have to pry the soap shrapnel from my cold, wet hands!

Reasons not to date me

• Chances are at whatever time you are reading this, day or night, my underwear is showing.

• I was totally serious about that leg hair thing.
  

• I am allergic to the following:

• raw apples, peaches, pears, plums, apricots, nectarines, cherries, carrots, almonds
• cats (raw or otherwise)
• artificial food colouring
  
• Spring
  
• vacuuming

• I often forget that I am allergic to most of the above until it is too late.

• I have freakishly long appendages, and almost no torso to speak of. If I were a grasshopper, I'd look ridiculous.*
  

• I haven't posted a drawring in ages.

• I am prone to the overuse of parentheses. (See below).

~sgm seeks team of hair removal specialist for LTR, must have own tools

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*As it is, I am a human being (not a highly intelligent mango as I have led you to believe), and I still look ridiculous. But unlike a grasshopper (or a mango), I can create the illusion of having a somewhat normal torso-to-leg-proportionality with cunning use of extra-long rib-knit tanks.** I've given up on trying to disguise my orangutan arms, and have just taken to wearing knuckle guards so I don't get too scraped up.

**And yet my underwear still manages to reveal itself over the top of my pants. This is a mystery to me.

Native CanLit

I've been taking an English course by distance ed for about six months now. I suppose a more accurate statement would be that I've been taking my sweet old time with a distance ed course.

It's a first-year English course that I have to take to qualify for Teacher's College. When I did my previous degree I convinced my school to let me out of the mandatory English 101 type class that every undergrad has to take. Let me take this way cool second-year English course instead, I said, oozing charm and so very excited at the prospect of not having to read another "classic" Canadian novel or write another dreadful literary analysis.

But nine years later, my new school has an English 101 prerequisite, and they seem immune to my charm (and stunning good looks). Anyway, you can imagine that after trying to hard to avoid this course the first time around, it's with good reason that half a year after my start date I've still got two outstanding papers and an exam approaching.

If you are having trouble imagining the aforementioned reasons, here are a few to start you off.

1) Papers do not write themselves. I am sure this was a phenomenon that I was familiar with about a decade ago when I started my undergrad, however old age robbed me of my memory and the motivation to write thousands of words analyzing theme, plot, and other things I do not care about. I would be much happier to just read the short stories before bed, and maybe write a song about them, or make a new dish and name it after the story. Why can't profs offer to do assessments like that?

2) I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to schoolwork. And I spend far too much energy trying to make sure my essays compare and contrast in a manner suitable to someone who has a degree in language expertise.

3) I am also a bit lazy as far as reading all the extraneous garbage I am supposed to read in order to complete this course. "The Difference between There, Their, and They're" is the actual title of an actual section of my text that I was supposed to peruse about halfway through the course. Yes, there are people who don't know their pronouns, but they're probably still in grade three. See what I did there?

4) Regardless of my efforts, I always get the same respectable yet mildly unsatisfactory mark on everything I hand in. If I didn't have morals (albeit questionable ones) I'd hand in a blog post see if he could tell the difference. Oops! Too late, already did that. And I got the same mark I always get! Hoorah.

The one saving grace in this course is that the final assignment has me doing a research project on a really excellent topic! I am so excited to write that paper. But first I have to see to this compare and contrast nonsense.


~g. mango is a non-traditional use of characterization to carry both plot and theme to their obvious blah blah blah

Reasons not to date me

• I think scrambled eggs are legitimate dinner fare.

• I am certifiably bilingual, and yet still hesitant to speak French within earshot of a francophone.*
  

• I am unable to resist manhandling the produce at the each of countless markets on my walk home from the train station.

• Inexplicably and without trying to, I will remember the make and model of the car you drive before I know you well enough to warrant such a thing.
  

• I do not own a bike helmet.

• I do not own a bike.

• I wouldn't wear a helmet anyway.

• I fantasize about shooting relocating the birds that sing cheerily outside my window at 4 am every morning.

• Despite being intimate with unemployment, I never seem to qualify for employment insurance.

• Despite having been a child when their best work came out, my most recent music downloads include songs by Naughty by Nature, Young MC, and Skee-Lo.

• I'm down with OPP.

• I wish I was a little bit taller.

• I wish I was a baller.

• I wish I could sing that song without thinking about how someone should have introduced Skee-Lo to the subjunctive tense.
  

~g. mango souhaite qu'elle ait pu se souvenir comment parler francais (et aussi ou se trouver les accents sur le clavier)*
--
* You can see why i am so terrified to speak French; I don't even know if that sentence makes sense. Yeesh.

Reasons not to date me

• My first celebrity crush, at five years-old, was Tom Selleck. (Or more accurately, Magnum PI.)

• I am unnaturally good at word games, and will school you without shame.

• I try to avoid playing games that are picture-based, and when I do play them, I am often in a sour mood on account of my terrific ability to lose. Every. Single. Time.

• I think carbon offsets are dumb, but social and environmental responsibility are rad!

• Typewriters? Also rad.

• The word rad? Lame. Dated. And an essential part of my vernacular.
  

• I get a lot of satisfaction when my dentist compliments my flossing habits.

• Children's Lit is my favourite kind of lit. I only read Grown-up Lit if it is exceptionally well-written, or if it will teach me something new.

• I will read picture books to you at the most inopportune times.

• I end lists abruptly.

~g. mango is rad to the bone

Reasons not to date me

• I will unfriend you immediately and without question if you are over the age of 18 and use OMG or LOL in any form of written communication with me.

• I will excommunicate you for life (no matter what your age) if you use OMG or LOL in oral communication. Unless you do it ironically; in which case I will just look at you with contempt and call you a hipster.

• I harbour no ill-will against those who use FYI or btw.

• I am a hypocrite.*
  

• I only have a vague idea of what bandwidth is, but I know I will be angry if you steal mine.

~g. mango looks just like buddy holly and you are mary tyler moore trying to t'ief my internet signal

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*I mean with the OMG and the FYI thing, not in general. Although if you do a thorough investigation, who knows what you'll dig up?

Further reasons not to date me

• I have the attention span of a grapefruit.

• I have the heart of a lion. I bought it in Chinatown for $14.

• I might be arrested for aggravated assault the next time I hear the words "female" or "male" used as nouns.

• I listen to Prince, Ella, and Timbaland without even so much as one ounce of shame.

• I ain't got no money.

• I ain't got no car to take you on a date.

• Can't even buy you flowers.

~g.mango is your perfect soul mate

Reasons Not to Date Me (v. 2.0)

1. I cannot assemble IKEA furniture without adult supervision and/or constant encouragement.

2. I get sad when it rains, and I live in a rain forest.

3. I mercilessly judge people who have a tenuous grasp of (on?) punctuation or grammar.

4. I answer my cell phone when I am out with other people.

5. I like lists. A lot. Especially bulleted ones.

6. I am too short to reach the top shelf.

7. I am too tall for these jeans.

8. I have an astonishing propensity to forget things.

9. I am dsylexic.

10. I just misspelled dyslexic.


~sgm seeks charming dyslexic for long wakls on the beach

Reasons not to date me

• I have an unhealthy obsession with kitchen gadgetry.

• Even after seven solid attempts over the last six years, I have yet to finish Anna Karenina.

• I'm a married woman.

• I gave you no warning that I am retiring this blog.
  

The Intern and I have tied the knot! Hoorah!

~ g. mango is looking forward to gardening, lawn bowling, knitting and other relaxing activities enjoyed by retired people everywhere.

Reasons not to date me

• Can keep neither cacti nor bamboo plants alive for any significant amount of time.

• Severe Earl Grey addiction.

• Immune system is decorative at best.

• Verbal processor.

• Teenagers are my favourite.

• In vino I'm hilarious. For like five minutes, then I fall asleep.

• Irrational fondness for the sentence fragment.

~ sup, g?