When I Say INTRAUTERINE! You say DEVICE! INTRAUTERINE!...

This year, I'm celebrating Mother's Day, my own mother and our Mother Earth by getting an IUD.

Thanks Obama!!!

But in all seriousness,

Most people would applaud a 12 year old for getting one, but some people don't think it's very cool that a childless, 29 year old, married woman with a strong support system is considering putting it in her "About" information.

Children aren't a good idea for me at the moment. I don't need to explain, but I will.

Everyone's all like, "You and Jaime would have the cutest, olive-skinned, red-headed bilingual babies! And you'd be like the best parents ever!"

False. Jaime's family is super white.

Also, I'm not convinced that we would make good parents mostly because Jaime hates children, and we're completely self-involved. Sometimes we forget that we have a spouse. I don't want us to forget that we're parents, too. 

But enough about how horrible we are...

There are other legitimate reasons to choose not to be a parent indefinitely or for awhile.

Do you know how many stupid people we have on this planet (correctly assuming that every person is stupid)?

7,316,069,472

I don't like that. It's gross. And in the words of Paul Giamotti as God on Inside Amy Schumer, "I really need to stop making so many white girls."

Not to mention the financial aspect. We can barely afford the five vacations we need to take every year. Jaime was born the size of Danny Devito. We wouldn't be able to lie about our kid's age like my parents did at Shoney's and movie theaters.

He also keeps checking out books with titles like, Self-Sufficiency on a Shoestring! and How to Tell Your Wife that Everything She Does is Bad for the Planet. We recently slept on the floor of an RV during a tornado watch, and he thought it was the bee's pollen press, which leads to insane comments such as, "Hey! Can you believe that they'll give you land in Kansas and Minnestoa for free!?"

I can.

All this just makes it clear to me that we don't know what we'll be doing or where we'll be doing it in six months much less five years. I will die if I have to care for a human child inside a railroad car in the middle of Kansas. I really will.

So, I will apologize to my mother, the best mother, who wasted a perfectly good egg on me. May she be a grandmother, the best grandmother, and may my younger siblings be responsible for that because I cannot wait to be an aunt. 

In the meantime, I'm still trying to figure out how to raise myself and an adult Spaniard.

  Auntie Em and Tio Jaime long after he has stopped 

plucking my beard. We should be so lucky.

Living With a Conscience

I've been living with a conscience for about a year now.

Its name is Jaime, and it sucks.

I prefer to choose a few of my own causes and make believe that other travesties and human rights violations don't exist so that I have time to get on Facebook and Buzzfeed and read disreputable "news" stories.

It's kind of like saying, "I'm okay with pillaging so long as you promise no raping." Or, "I mean, in this case, I think the guy deserved to be feathered but certainly not tarred. Or, "How dare you loiter while I'm trespassing!?"

Next to me, Jaime is taking notes from Democracy Now and imploring me to watch a documentary with him about the United States' involvement with The Killing Fields in Cambodia at 11 o'clock at night.

Jaime's against bad things, so he doesn't support bad things. I'm against bad things, too, but sometimes I need stuff or YOLO. 

I was telling my coworkers that Jaime is really upset that all the produce at Costco is from Mexico, so he doesn't want us to buy it even though we spent $50 on a membership. Another teacher who studied abroad in Alicante for a semester chimed in that yeah, Spaniards really hate Mexicans.

Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

I had to explain to her that my husband isn't a racist, but he is concerned about exploited laborers in Mexico meaning, I guess, that he loves Mexicans.

I just love guacamole made with avocados bought cheaper in bulk.

I never went shopping in Barcelona, and if I did, I went to second hand markets. Therefore, the most appropriate work clothes I had were hot pants, skirts missing one or more buttons and torn jeans. Mom and I ran to J.C. Penney during a super sale the week before my first day, and I got an entire work wardrobe for under $50. The manic high I got from "robbing" J.C. Penney quickly wore off in the car, as I thought about Jaime's disappointment and the lives of the men, women and children who made the clothing for far less than I paid for my super deals. I look really good, but I feel really bad.

We just bought Jaime some shirts and shoes at a thrift store, and he was just giddy about them the whole way home. See what a guilt-free conscience can do? He looks sorta good but feels awesome.

But I think the thing that hurts the most is when he disses my girl, Obama. He isn't some ignorant, racist redneck who doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. He has lots of clues about what he's talking about, and it's because he doesn't refuse to read foreign printed articles criticizing the behavior and *gasp* politics of the man who has the worst job on Earth...like I do. 

Living with someone who has such a strong moral compass really does make me want to be a better person no matter how much I complain about it.

It also helps me to ignore him when he says nonsensical things like, "Comparisons are hateful," and "Spain has much higher safety standards than the U.S.," and "Society is very accepting of fat women, but is really tough on overweight men."

Because we could all stand to be a little more Jaime and a little less Walmart, Gap, Apple and Monsanto.

Fuck these guys and not in the good way.

Here's some light reading:

http://www.laborrights.org/in-the-news/14-worst-corporate-evildoers

http://www.globalexchange.org/corporateHRviolators

Higher Ground (Teachers Keep On Teachin')

I love my job because each day scholars in the school of life trust me, their sensei, to connect with them on a spiritual and mental level at a small point on their endless journey to enlightenment.

I'm just kidding.

I love the sound of my own voice. That's why I'm a teacher.

My new job is like my old job in that I teach English. However, my new students are like my old students in no way at all.

My old students kept entire hoofed legs on their kitchen counters, drank beer all day and wiped their butts with toilet paper.

My new students don't eat pork or drink alcohol, but they do wipe their butts with their hands.

I love this. I think it's great. My preferred spice of life is interacting with different people from different cultures all the live long day. Why? I have no idea.

What I do know is that 24 people depend on my help to get to Level 3 of a 7 level program. I also know that 23 of those people are from Saudi Arabia, and 2 of those people are women. We'll get to the 1 person who's unaccounted for.

I want to start by saying that I adore my students before I shred them. I value them for who they are and where they come from. They teach me an awful lot more than I teach them.

And here we go...

What in the fuck is going on in Saudi Arabia right now? I tried to prepare myself, but egads, guys. E...gads.

I'm not arrogant enough to think that I can compete with twenty-five years of being told it's this way when I think it's that way, but I am arrogant enough to think that I can prepare these adults for a bachelor's or master's program in the United States despite the fact that they're not giving much to work with.

For starters, I've warned them not to cover their male friends or new acquaintances with kisses...especially on the nose. They just wouldn't believe me despite my threats of public humiliation or much worse. We role played, I professed my love for the kiss in spite of my culture, we hypotheticaled ourselves silly until I said, "It would be like if I had a problem with my right hand, so I went to shake your left hand instead of your right" (ensuing pandemonium).

And no, I cannot just change your grade. I know that I can, like, open the gradebook and erase a grade, and like, put a better grade there, but like really I can't. This is considered a serious question.

The phone goes in your bag or in my hand. It does not go in your pocket. No, it doesn't go in your other pocket, and it sure as hell doesn't go in your face when I'm lecturing. It goes in your asshole. 

Dating. I don't want to talk to you about it either, but this chapter is on dating because the ESL gods hate me. Yes, I have ex-boyfriends. Yes, that's okay in my culture. I'm serious! No, you don't have to marry the first person you go on a date with freaking thankfully. You can date more than one person at a time if you want to. I know dating is forbidden. You don't have to do it, but I did notice that you cut all the pictures of women out of our book. Gross. 

I hate that I have to sit across from a grown man for forty minutes with unbroken eye contact because he can't not cheat or write on the tables.

I also hate that I have to say everything ten times (this is not an exaggeration), and they still do the exact opposite of what I say. 

But what I hate the most is that during an I agree/disagree exercise, they all looked straight at my face and told me that yes of course men are smarter than women. The only person who disagreed was the one person who is a woman and VIETNAMESE in the class. She also has by far the best grade, though her vagina makes her the dumbest person in the room (except for me cause she's Asian).

My job is really hard, and that's okay because I need a hard job to keep my mind from imploding.

But my job is really easy when I forget my lunch and multiple students bring me theirs. It's also really easy when I bring the most unpopular guy in class a week old cookie from the teachers' workroom for his birthday and catch him taking a picture of it on his phone. It's easy when they remember my own birthday and sing to me. And it's really, really easy when we make each other laugh, as we do every day.

So, I'll teach a woman in a burqa even though I really want to see her face, and I'll teach a man who thinks I'm inferior to him. I'll even do it in a green snake skin skirt wearing heels and a v-neck blouse while constantly tucking my uncovered hair behind my ears. Because if they can come sit and listen to a godless slut all day, this godless slut can at least listen to them.

Not so much here...

or here...

but riiiiiiight here.

What I Thought and What I Said

I worked at Starbucks for three and one-fourth days, and I can never undo that.

What I can do, however, is force my family to refer to Starbucks as "Insurance," so as not to mutter its name any more than we have to. Although, if you're like my husband, you won't remember that and have no idea what I'm talking about. 

What's worse is that I'd been actively avoiding Insurance for over a decade because my white hipster privilege allows me to go to my local coffee shop and work in a locally owned gourmet cheese store without realizing that people sometimes need real life.

The call for an interview came right after we decided that we were going to rent an RV with pretend money and travel around the country eating air until Jaime's work permission from the Department of Immigration went through; we just weren't finding jobs that inspired us and included a Googleesque work environment with full benefits and three months vacation.

I kid you not, my eyes welled up, as I agreed to an interview because we need health insurance no matter how much my socialist Spanish husband doesn't understand it and watched our dreams of bathing in rest stop sinks roll behind me like a giant hub cap.

But I feel like this story will be less painful for both of us if I present this in 

WHAT I THOUGHT vs. WHAT I SAID

form. So here goes...

The manager asked for an interview. 
What I thought: Oh my god. I have a master's degree. Why the hell do you think I want this job even though I applied for it!?
What I said: Yes, absolutely that works for me.

The manager asked why I think I would make a great Insurance employee.
What I thought: I wouldn't. I am your worst nightmare. You will regret this.
What I said: I'm great with people, and I would represent Insurance proudly.

The manager called to offer me the job.
What I thought: You're freaking joking. You couldn't see through that? This is the worst day of my life.
What I said: Oh my gosh! Thank you so much. I'm excited to start. 

A customer orders two white chocolate mochas whole milk with two extra pumps of syrup and FIVE packets of sugar stirred into the drink.  
What I thought: Oh, I get it. You want to die. You want to kill yourself, and I am going to help you do it. I watched a documentary, so I know about this.
What I said: Okay! Can I get your name? Your total is a bajillion dollars.

A drive-through customer orders a eioehtetnvrnglakrhaiohgirgrnlgakraghrkahgroiaetaigaigbiarhgklarglargh.
What I thought: I can't do this. I can't do this any more. I hate everything. I'm working a drive-though, and the worst part about it is that it's too hard. At least I'm not wearing a visor.
What I said: I'm sorry. Could you repeat that? It's my first day, and I'm having a hard time locating the buttons.

The drive through customers get angry with me because I ask them to repeat their order.
What I thought: I will come through this window. I will come through this window so fast. I will spit my hang nail into your drink. I will fling this boiling hot fake coffee on your face.
What I said: I'm so sorry about your wait. Enjoy it!

My manager says, "Don't say frap. Frap is the Insurance 'F' word. Don't say it," after I repeated a customer's "frap" order.
What I thought: You wanna know what my F word is? It's fuckstarbucks; that's what it is.
What I said: Really? Okay.

An incredibly rare customer orders a black coffee.
What I thought: Slow clap.
What I said: That's what I drink. 

A man lectures my co-worker on the evils of corporations, and tells her that Insurance doesn't pay her enough to put her above the poverty line. She makes fun of him.
What I thought: He's right. I'm leaving with this guy, and we're burning this place to the ground.
What I said: Nothing because she wasn't talking to me.

A group of teenage girls order the most ridiculous, diabetes inducing, prissified drinks possible, and I stumble through finding all their custom shit on the stupid screen.
What I thought: This is not coffee! You are NOT drinking coffee, but you are pretending to drink coffee, and that makes you horrible.
What I said: What's your name? That will be a bajillion dollars. 

I could go on and on, but I think you get the gist.

Have you ever felt too good for something, as you're realizing you're not capable of doing it? Guys, working at Insurance is hard. I have been the only adult in a room with 22 kindergartners in paint smocks, and that does not even begin to come close to the stress level I felt taking orders for caramel drizzle on white noise from a never ending line of cars.

I was shown how to make macchiatos, lattes, cappuccinos and cinnamon something somethings. I was shown twice. Can I make any of those things? No.

It made me feel awful. I felt fake, stupid and defeated. And how could I have abandoned my principles so easily? I mean, would I set foot in Hobby Lobby? God's name in vain no.  

But I also felt in awe of the women (only women worked there even though the regular men call them "his girls") who not only can make those complicated glorified cups of liquid death but genuinely smile while doing so. They're not stupid and fake. They're really good at the job that they enjoy.

So, the only thing I learned while there is that I'm absolutely not too good to work at Insurance. 

If you go to "Insurance", and that's okay if you do even though you'll never catch me dead in another one, please tip them well. That job suuuuuuucks, and they probably hate you.

I usually can't with this, but this is exactly it.

How Sting Ruined My Wedding

I didn't want to get married. Jaime didn't want to get married, either. And it's not that we didn't want to marry each other, we just didn't want to marry anyone. We're alternative like that.

But even though marriage is a separate thing from love, to continue loving each other in the same place (which we both did want), we had to prove it to government bureaucracy workers whom we do not know and be married.

So, here's the story of two people who whined their way into a happy marriage despite themselves.

Some people have asked how he proposed. Good one guys.

I technically proposed to Jaime in the parking lot of Wal-Mart when we were visiting my family in July. We were arguing about my creative visa status in Spain and the danger that put our relationship into. At one point, I yelled, "Well, let's just get freaking married then!" And he said, "Okay."

Then, we ordered our get married stuff, drove through and picked it up at the window. It was that easy! I'm kidding!

After months of dealing with the fresh hell called immigration, we finally got to ask our families how soon they could get to New York.

Why did we get married in New York?

1. It is much easier and cheaper for his parents and brother to get to NYC than St. Joseph, MO.

2. Missouri is not rainbow colored yet, and I have a big fucking problem with that.

3. I love that city so much, and when my boyfriend posted "Full lap run at Central Park. 2 raccoons (first time I've ever seen them), fireflies, drum and bass without the bass with a bagpipe, super parents running and carrying their kids in a pram, cool people on their pimped bikes listening to rap, beautiful people, hip hop dancers, and yes, the rest of the views to Manhattan and the park. Want it to be my new casa," on Facebook, I knew that I wanted to make him my husband there because he doesn't usually write that kind of sap.

4. I didn't want to plan anything, and Jaime literally didn't know what a wedding was...conveniently.

Why did we only ask immediate family?

1. Our irresponsible lifestyles mean that our family and friends are littered all over the world, and if we couldn't have all of our most importants there, we would only have our very most importants.

2. We can't afford to feed that many people.

So, on 1.23, a date that is cool in the United States and significantly less cool (23.1) in Europe, I woke up thinking, "Shit. This is supposed to be the best day of my life, but there's no way it will be." It was also on this date that my mother, sister, best friend and I figured out that we can't do hair...or makeup. We did the best we could and four hours after everyone else was ready, I put on a green dress before my mom helped me into the most bridey thing I could muster, a lovely, perfect tulle skirt she had made for me.

Our entourage burst out of the hotel clipping along while taking photos because our goal was to piss off every native New Yorker we passed, as we tried to beat the lunchtime rush at the marriage bureau.

I love the marriage bureau because everyone there is either picking up their marriage license or attending a wedding. You take your number, sit on one of the green sofas along the long hall and wait with the stockbrokers, the coke heads, the pregnants, the Asians, the young ones, the old ones, the weirdos and the perfectly normals who all found someone stupid enough to marry them.

Our number, C719, was quickly called, and I made sure that my new last name wasn't "NO CHANGE" on our marriage certificate because I had to specify earlier that my name wouldn't be changing. We signed and asked my sister and his mother to sign as witnesses. My sister knew this would be her job and had been referring to herself as "witness-of-honour" I assume in opposition to my robbing her of her birth rite.

Before we could sit down again, we were called to the Ugly Room (thankfully we weren't in the Uglier Room) for our fifteen minutes of fame, which was really only about two minutes.

We were married by an Angel...

whose last name was Lopez, as the people we love and who love us the most stood in spots too awkward for a decent picture. 

Everyone was starving, so we stopped at a pizzeria that hand to Jesus had the best pizza in the world on the border between Chinatown and Little Italy before taking the subway to Central Park.

It was freezing cold, but I was not about to let my ten-year-old coat ruin my wedding photographs. Everyone else figured their bulky coats were good enough, so thanks for that, guys. We didn't stay long because we cared more about actual warmth than the warmth of memories, however, my mom insisted we stop by Strawberry Fields before going back to the hotel, and I'm so glad we did. 

We came up on the John Lennon memorial after it had been covered in flowers by what Jaime calls, as you know, beggars. It was beautiful, but having come from Barcelona, we were reluctant to trust anything that was "free," while one of the men thrust a yellow rose at me. I finally relented, and he didn't ask me for money. Instead, he asked if he could give us some marriage advice.

"Never, ever let anyone or anything come between the two of you because what you have is very special," is how I'm choosing to paraphrase his nonsense. It was one of those rare, urban, human connection moments I love so much, and no one took a picture of it. Damn it.

After changing our clothes, we all went to dinner in Times Square. As we sat around the table, Jaime and I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed and flabbergasted that our families were in the same place at the same time while I tried really hard not to think about how few times that would happen again. It was awesome.

Later, after we had been interrupted for the fourth time on the only night we would get to sleep in a room alone while away for our wedding, we agreed that it was somehow impossibly one if not the best day of our lives. That's neat.

But the point of this post is to explain how Sting ruined my wedding. Okay, so my mother is in love with Sting for obvious reasons. My sister's got it pretty bad, too, while I can bandwagon myself on the Sting train if the time is appropriate.

The closing night of his Broadway show The Last Ship was the 24th, the day after my wedding, so we absolutely had to go, right? Right. We're there, and the show is great, and he gives this heartfelt adieu at the end, and all I can think about is my mom meeting Sting because that would just be everything to her. We're still on the high of our great wedding day, so we are really channelling all the powers of The Police and Roxanne and that guy who plays the udu on Desert Rose as we wait outside the stage door. I'd even written to The Last Ship beforehand asking if there was any possibility of her meeting him...they hadn't said no, but they hadn't said yes...

He comes out. It's Sting. It's definitely him, and my tiny, little momma is being pushed roughly to the front by us, but then he makes a beeline for his car, breezing past us, really, really close to us and is driven away.

What the hell, Sting!? Screw you, man. 

My mom and sister have forgiven you, were never even that mad at you, but I never will, and I still am.

I can't wait for Sting to read this. 

The Long Flight to Home

My love for Jaime is second to my love for money, and I know this because I thought to myself, "Welp, this will be the end of our relationship," as I purchased the crazy cheap plane tickets that would return my sorry ass to North America in five flights. It only took us thirty-fucking-eight hours.

But my friend Melissa told me that Turkish Airlines has good food, so okay. On our ten hour flight from Istanbul to New York, our first meal included a fantastic glob of hummus with tomato purée. After eating, we finished the film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (impressed?), and I fell asleep.

Only an idiot or a person who hates wearing her glasses keeps her contacts in on a flight that length, and I am both of those people. When I woke up, my contacts were glued to my eyes, and I felt that foreboding ache in my head. Jaime asked if I wanted to play a video game on the screens attached to the seats in front of us, and I said, "No, screw you. I have a headache," as I handed him my control to choose the settings and my avatar. After I lost two rounds, I fucked up everyone's world around me and dragged down my 500 lb. carry on bag to look for the ibuprofen I'd packed. I dry swallowed it and immediately decided that I had to vomit.

I don't get migraines often, but when I do, I just have to puke them out. I can't really explain my thought process as I entered the toilet, but I can tell you that I was in terrible pain and used to gagging up just a little bit of bile in times like that. I managed to lock the door behind me and lean over the sink right before what I expected: a dainty bit of clear mucus the likes of which you dab at the corners of your mouth with a hanky afterwards...

...then, I spewed an ungodly amount of vomit not once but twice more into the piss poor excuse for a sink.

"FFFFUUUUUDDDGGGGEE." Only I didn't say fudge.

I began to frantically scoop puke with my cupped hands into the toilet. It looked just like the hummus and tomatoes I'd eaten earlier until the motion censored faucet diluted it with water that filled to the brim.

My shame and fear of telling a flight attendant or that someone was waiting outside the door kept me going far longer than I should have.

I finally washed my arms up to my elbows, folded the door back and explained what had happened to the nearest flight attendant in a language she may or may not have understood.

I padded back to my seat where Jaime, naturally, wanted to know what had taken me so long. When he was done laughing, he said, "Well, you can blog about it. Hey, smell my armpit. I promise it's strong."

In New York, Jaime sailed through customs, as not one but two men expected me to know the job of a customs agent better than they. I ate peanut butter there.

We made it to our eight hour overnight layover in Washington D.C. with the delusion that we would tuck it all in and sleep peacefully through the night under the grand Christmas tree at Reagan like we were presents. Nah uh.

We moved upstairs thinking it would be warmer, but the "beggars" as Jaime likes to call them had the same idea. We couldn't find an empty row of seats, so we strapped our bags together on the floor and took out the toiletry packs the flight attendant had kindly given us before she had to clean up my vomit.

Sometime in the night, I pulled on Jaime's snowpants that I miraculously found in his carry on and managed to sleep with ear plugs, sleep mask and my winter coat for two glorious hours. He wasn't so lucky, as he can't stand to wear a mask and plugs. I think his real problem was the floor waxer that kept driving dangerously close to our heads driven by loudly hablandoing Hispanic men he could understand under the lights and Christmas music that never dimmed and the beggar man who screamed when an employee spilled a drum of some sort of liquid near his things and our bodies.

At 4 a.m., feeling totally refreshed, I headed to the bathroom with my toothbrush and phone. My plan was to take a "woke up like this" selfie, but what looked back at me from the mirror was too horrible to even post on the never ending scroll of shit that is Facebook.

As I was washing up alone, a beggar lady stormed into the bathroom and screamed, "Bitches!" At first I thought she meant me, but I'm only one bitch, so it was okay.

We were the last two souls off the plane at Kansas City; I bounded up the thingy and out of the gate not able to wait another second to run into the arms of my mom and brother. But I had to because they weren't there.

So, we went to collect our bags. They weren't there either.

My cute, little momma finally burst through the doors really not late because we were early, and we had our first hug since I moved back from Barcelona. It was a really good one.

Jaime took a very shitty photo of the moment, but I forgive him because he was trying to keep track of the six bags we used to move our entire lives after he'd flown 7,641 miles over two days to spend the holidays with my family and the rest of his life with me (because he will most likely die first).

And how many times did we fight? Zero. I would call us awesome, but then I remember that we're unemployed and homeless. "Beggars" if you will.

Some highlights from the trip:

If you would like to help your own beggars, you can donate to:

http://nationalhomeless.org/donate/
https://www.justgive.org/donations/help-homeless.jsp
http://www.homelessshelterdirectory.org/cgi-bin/id/article.cgi?article=14
http://nchv.org/index.php/getinvolved/getinvolved/donate/

"Are you going to say that I'm good in bed?" Jaime

I don't like romance. I think it's cheesy and stupid, and I hate it, and I won't do it. I won't read the books written at a fourth grade reading level, and I won't watch the films that I know will make me want to pick my brain out through my nose with a crochet hook.

Cool if you do, though.

Therefore, I think it's hysterical that my real life is now a poorly written cringeworthy cliché of a rom com that sometimes makes me miss the comforting days of assuming that I would die in my room in the spinster wing of the home with my cats that I would never have because I hate cats.

Jaime, my partner, is many men and women's dream according to popular culture.

So, let's break my boyfriend down into each banal detail, and I'll try to convince you that it's somehow different for me because I'm just not like that, shall we?

1. Tall, Dark & Handsome

Few people would argue that Jaime isn't tall (6'3"), dark (he thinks he has got like some Moorish blood or something) or handsome (I'm not calling you a liar if you don't, but I'm saying that you're lying). In the past, I was all over tall, dark and ugly. If you don't look like you say mean things to your mom, were in a horrible nuclear plant accident and/or inspire copy cat murders, move along Jack. Jaime, on the other hand, is a universally perfect specimen. When I catch women checking him out, they avert their eyes in shame, but when I catch men checking him out, we duck face, wink and shoot each other with our finger guns. It's called respect.

2. The Meet Cute

Our meet cute was super cute. On New Year's Eve, I was getting ready to go out but took some time away from my actual friends to scroll through my newsfeed to see what my fake friends were up to. One of my fake friends, Jaime (we were Facebook friends before we'd ever met because the world is so effed up like that), posted a cool song, so I liked it because I'm cool, so he messaged me, and was like, "Are you in Barcelona tonight?" so obviously I was like, OMG, OMG, OMG, he's hot and gave him my phone number in case he wanted to meet up later or something, but then, I went to a predominately gay party, so I didn't find anyone to get over my recent tall, dark and ugly man with, so I sent him a text that said, "Do you want to have sex?", and he replied, "Yes." It's okay to cry.

3. He's a Doctor

When he told me that he was working on his PhD, I felt bad for him assuming that he didn't know what that meant and that he probably thought it stood for physical dudeness. However, it's true. His beauty doesn't eat his brain like was once thought, but there's more...both of his parents as well as his brother are doctors. I learned this while he was away in Australia (we'll get to that) because he told me that if I ever got pregnant, his father could help me out because he's a gynaecologist, or I could go to his brother because he's a gynaecologist as well. It was a non sequitur. 

4. He's Foreign

My boyfriend is Spanish, but he speaks English with a perfect Irish accent. It's as strange and awesome as it sounds. When I first heard him speak Spanish, I freaked out and thought he was an imposter because even though I knew he was from Valencia, he is the least Spanishy Spaniard I've ever met. He doesn't tell people that he went to an English school when he was young and spent his summers with a family in Ireland because he doesn't know how to pick up on social clues. So, when I recognize the look of panic on a Spanish or native Enlgish speaker person's face after they compliment "Jay-me's" Castilian or Catalan, it's left to me to explain why he's better than everyone else.

5. He's Freakishly Strong

Some of you have asked if he's a member of the Avengers. He's not but thank you. We did just discover that he can open a wine bottle by pushing in the cork with his index finger, though.

The list of stupid stereotypical ideals continues:

• The day after we met, he went to Australia and South East Asia for three months to surf.
• He plays the ukulele and sings well. 
• He and his dog have matching sweaters. 
• He makes paella for our friends. 
• He's a Sensitive Sally.
• He played rugby.
• He wants to cuddle constantly (I hate cuddling).
• He paints or runs for two hours when he's emotional...

I feel guilty because I never needed any of that, but I know plenty of people who think they do. He's the stuff Stephen Meyers or Elle Jamison envision when they write about their sparkle vampires and their domestic abusers. I'll accept him as he is, though, because I love him, and I knew that the moment he let his limbs go limp and floppy as he bounded down the stairs of the cathedral overlooking Barcelona like a complete idiot.

Or it was when he told me that Cher's voice gave him goosebumps in a good way. I don't really remember. 

Shut your mouth.