Did you ever see the musical Oklahoma? Do you know the song "I Cain't Say No" that Ado Annie sings? Well, that's pretty much an accurate theme song for my life. Although according to Wikipedia the song is about Ado Annie's sexual awakening and a big, fat Joey Lawrence "WHOA" because that's NOT what I'm talking about. More like if someone asks me to do something, I'll basically say yes because I don't know how to answer any other way.

Which is why when my friend-hairdresser-all-around-aweseome-girl The Stylist asked me to live model for her, I said yes.

So here's the backstory: The Stylist is, among many things, a photographer, and a few months we did a "just for fun" photo shoot of me modeling some of my grandmother's vintage clothes. And it was tons of fun and I loved it and the pictures are GORGEOUS. Seriously. I do not look that good in real life and I have contemplated having an 8x10 made of at least 1 photo and walking around with it stapled to my face. (If you want to see the photos by the way, click here, click on Clients, and I am in the second row, second photo in from the right. Click on my photo and that will take you to the entire gallery.)

Anyways. Our wee little town had an Art Crawl this past Friday and essentially downtown businesses and shops featured the works of local artists and food and drinks and entertainment and people could walk around from shop to shop and enjoy the art and eat and buy the art and it's free and awesome and really good for the community. So The Stylist was managing one of the "galleries" and displaying some of her work including...photos of me. And she had this awesome idea to put big prints of her subjects in the storefront window and then have the actual subjects live model next to the print for about 30 minutes and she asked me if I would do it and I didn't hesitate to say yes because 1) I cain't say no and 2) I love to be the center of attention. USUALLY.

Apparently being a supermodel makes me nervous as fuck and I spent much of Friday fighting with hot rollers and curling irons trying to recreate the perfect bedhead hair I had in the photo and wanting to vomit. Seriously. Why do I commit to these things?

And it didn't get any better once I got there. I mean, I thought that a reassuring "You'll be awesome girl" from The Stylist would soothe my nerves but it didn't and what's worse? The model before me was an adorable little 5yo girl in a tutu with a bow in her hair and if there's one thing I've learned from Hollywood it's never share the stage with or follow behind small children or animals. It's a lose-lose.

Long story long? Those 30 minutes sitting in that window and having people look at me lasted exactly 743 hours and I am pretty much lucky I didn't puke in front of anyone because I don't think models are supposed to do that. I mean - I know they puke. Just not in public. And I am now very certain that I DON'T want to be a supermodel when I grow up.

In other news, I dipped my toe into the waters of online dating the other night and afterwards I renacted the shower scene from Silkwood to scrub the horrifyingness of it all off because OMG: online dating is equal parts horrifying and HORRIFYING.

I know it's worked for some people.  In fact, I have numerous friends who have met online through various sites (Match, JDate and eHarmony) and most are married and some have kids and I know it can work but seriously? I just felt dirty. There was something about scrolling through these men's profiles and judging them on:

* their photos

* their user names (OMG - tip to any single guys out there: do not incoporate "dawg" into your username because you will basically come off like a giant asshat.)

* their interests/hobbies (Sewing? REALLY?)

* their grammar/spelling (Yes. I was editor-in-chief of my high school newspaper and proper grammar and spelling is too important.) 

* their physical height/body description

* their job

* their political orientation

that just made me feel dirty. Like who was I to say whether someone was simply not dateable because he's only 5'8" or because he has an asshatty username or because I didn't like his photo or because he got "their" and "there" confused?  And worse? If I'm being this judgy? HAHAHAHA - pretty sure I'm being judged back. And oh yeah, while it's totally free to join and browse, you do have to answer some questions and so my personal profile and description are pretty much CRAP because who can be clever at 11:30pm at night? (Although courtesy of The Stylist I have a kick ass photo.)

Still. I figured I wasn't really doing this seriously. I was just taking a test drive. Clicking on 15 a few photos. Just *seeing* who was out there. And then? Do you know what happened? I realized that everytime I clicked on a profile, the person whose profile I clicked on would ACTUALLY BE NOTIFIED that I, she of the awesome photo and lame personal description, had actually viewed their profile. FUCKING HELL. Why don't they warn you about this shit?  And this was the moment I pretty much died. Especially because one of the profiles I clicked on belonged to someone I actually know. Professionally. In real life. So yeah. I died. And then I scrubbed myself with a Brillo pad.