The Perils of Being Unable to Say No:

1. Unable to Say No to Food

- When one of your best friends is pregnant and goes through mad cravings, you run to the supermarket with her in 50-degree weather.

- You try cucumber sticks with peanut butter, carrot sticks with nutella, goats’ cheese with EVERYTHING.

- You gain more weight than she did during her pregnancy.

2. Unable to Say No to Friends Who Are Leaving

- You go out every night with them.

- You go out every night with them and do mad shit that ensures you look like a wreck in the morning (and throughout the day…week...nevermind), but have a blast doing said mad shit.

- You log in late to work every day for a week as a result of only getting to bed at an hour that is both too late and too early to be sane.

3. Unable to Say (a Loud, Rude, Vociferous) No to Guys Who Ask You Out

- Your polite refusal is taken as a sign of weakness.

- They keep pestering you, even when they have a chickie baby on the side (honestly, am I the only one who sees something wrong with that???)

- They eventually turn into psycho loonies who make up mad shit* about you.

(*not to be confused with the more pleasant, enjoyable mad shit referenced in point 2. This mad shit is all bad and bound to earn someone a kick in the nuts).

4. Unable to Say No to Shopping Expeditions

- You get to a point where you’re scared to look at your bank balance.

- Your shoe collection could make Imelda Marcos say: “Whoa there, a little restraint please!”

- You cannot open your closet door for fear of being buried in the fabric avalanche and not being found for a week.

5. Unable to Say No to Books

- Your overflowing bookshelves make your closet look pristine in comparison.

- When an idiot at a club tries to strike up a conversation using the lame-ass line “You know, the dress you’re wearing is the druidic colour of healing!”, you’re actually in a position to say “Um – no, lameass – that’s green, not purple.”

- You can quote William Shakespeare and Pablo Neruda alongside J.K. Rowling and Charlaine Harris, but no one else gets that and you just sound pompous anyway.

So, lesson learned: the new word that I will wear out, and I mean really wrestle down to the ground and make my bitch, is “No.”

Life’s too much bother otherwise.

Things I Have Recently Learnt About Myself: Part 4,782

- It’s amazing winning a shitload of money during the weekly poker session, but it sucks to take most of it off one of my closest friends.

- It’s gratifying to know my friend hates winning money off of me too. Abby, you’re sweetheart.

- It’s SUCH a turn-off when guys talk about their new Porsche / Ferrari/ Lamborghini/ Any fancy-schmancy car 5 minutes into our first meeting.

- It’s also a turn-off when they refer to said car as ‘baby’. Just massively creepy.

- It’s possible to miss my little brother so much that my heart physically aches. And still possible to remind myself that he’s having the time of his life, so I HAVE to be upbeat instead of mopey when I talk to him. Even if I can’t bring myself to walk into empty room now.

- It would be kinda interesting to have an all-vampire episode of ‘Glee’. And they could cover the songs from the ‘Nosfaratu’ musical, or ‘Lestat’, or even- OOOH, the musical episode of ‘Buffy’. Please, Mr. Producer/ Director/ Writer, hear my plea?

- The thought of a brand-new as-yet-unread book will get me through the toughest, crappiest, most horrible-no-good-very-bad day at work. And if it happens to be the new Charlaine Harris, MaryJanice Davidson, Kim Harrison, Kelley Armstrong or Janet Evanovich? Even better!

- I have fantastically pathetic taste in the men I choose as eye candy. This was brought home to me when I bumped into one piece of candy a few days ago and thought “Ew. On a scale of Cough Drops to Godiva Hazelnut Truffles, he’d be a chocolate laxative pill: ergo, so far below the lowest point on the scale, I don’t know what I was inhaling when I thought he was cute.” If hindsight is 20-20, I have Superman’s X-Ray vision.

- I love saying “Ergo.” Why? Dunno, just do.

- I am ADDICTED to fashion blogs! fatsandchints, highheelconfidential, purplepeeptoes and, of course, fashion bombay. And to supplement my daily fix, I’ve taken to trawling Yahoo’s OMG site for their weigh-in on various celebrities’ outfits at appearances. It’s madness, I tell you! The next thing you know, I’ll be watching Joan Rivers on ‘Fashion Police’. Oy vey.

- I love saying Oy Vey, even though I’m about as far from Jewish as a person can get. Why? Dunno, just do. Must be a hangover from a childhood spent religiously watching ‘The Nanny’.

Confessions

Growing up, and attempting to be a tomboy (not very successfully, though…how many tomboys had waist-length hair and were scared to climb up to the garage roof?), I’d rather have submitted to Chinese bamboo torture than admit I had the soul of a romantic. Actually, I’d still rather go through that. And ‘soul’ and ‘romantic’ might be pushing it a bit… it’d be more accurate to say I have the reading preferences of a mushbucket.

In what was an extremely rare occasion in my life, a couple of weeks ago I had dinner with 7 women. I don’t think I’ve ever actually had that many female friends in my life. But I digress. During the course of the evening we all ‘fessed up to our guilty pleasures – ‘Gossip Girl’, ‘Glee’ and, of course, Romance Novels. Guilty on all 3 counts for me. I’ll go into my Chuck Bass and Mr. Schu obsession (not together, ew….although, can you imagine Chuck Bass singing? Sacrilege!) another time, but ah, romance novels…

A friend’s mom got me hooked onto them when I was 15 (prior to that I just devoured Sweet Valleys, remember those? Gawd, what with the teachings in those books, it’s a miracle I didn’t turn out to be a sociopath/ kidnapper/ psychotic loon/ boyfriend stealer…oh, wait, nevermind). I was bored out of my skull after the Class 10 board exams in Delhi, and at that age where I wanted to go out and party but wasn’t allowed out past 10 p.m., so I turned my already-voracious reading appetite into something of legendary proportions (out of sheer desperation, I even read cookbooks. But I never tried out the recipes, of course. That would’ve involved people eating my cooking and dying horrible painful deaths). Then Aunty M, ignoring my upturned nose and disdainful expression, lent me The Christmas Special Bonus Edition 3-in-1 Mills & Boon (I kid you not, they actually fit all that in the title page). And that was the beginning of the end for me… forever after I would expect men to have a tough exterior with a soft heart (like baked alaska?), a cleft chin (face ass!), a strong jaw, eyes like melted chocolate/ summer skies/ leaves/ glaciers/ insert-cliché-here. And be at least 6 feet tall (yeah, that hasn’t worked out too well for me in the past. The last guy? An inch shorter than me. Aiyo). Never mind the fact that I hardly had an alabaster brow or a heaving bosom (not at that age, at least).

Anyway, my absolute favourites, without a doubt, were the ones where the protagonists started out positively loathing each other and then, bam! Ended up in love. As a romantically-challenged (read: deprived, stunted, innocent) 15-year-old, I couldn’t quite fathom HOW they got from hate to love, and the whole sexual attraction thing was mystifying in the extreme, but man, it made for entertaining reading! Sometimes I wonder if that basically screwed me up for my early romances, because I have to admit to being attracted to guys I argued with a lot (but I think that had something to do with the fact that they matched wits with me. At least in the past. Nowadays, I just get annoyed). And I expected (and got) a lot of drama in relationships (which is why it’s SO much easier to live the life of a nun now). But the one thing that I’m ashamed to admit prevailed over the years is the dream that there would one day be a man who’d sweep me off my feet, be as besotted with me as I was with him, and we’d live happily ever after. Shocking, I know, since I’ve always stridently proclaimed that the last, absolute LAST thing I wanted or needed in my life was a man. Not that I lied…I’m happier without one, especially of the caliber I generally meet. But oh, to meet one who’s like a romance novel hero? And not gay? I’ll take that!

I read somewhere recently that romance novels have warped women’s ideas of romance and their hopes and expectations of a man. I kinda agree with that, since I now expect all men to be assholes who are secretly good guys. Turns out, I’m only half right.

Finally!

I am a woman of means again! Not substantial means, mind you, and I'm not going to be gifting my friends Lamborghinis or Maseratis anytime soon (got that, N.M.?), but at LAST I got my work visa sorted out and started working!

Turns out finance companies don't deal with numbers any less than banks do...which is a fairly obvious conclusion. I'm so in the wrong line of work! Is it too late to erase the last few years of my life and sign on for an English or History major instead? I'm sure librarians get paid enough to keep them in a steady supply of Coke and strappy-little-shoes and Lindt Hazelnut chocolates, right? And really, what more does a woman need?

Although, to be honest, it might be more sensible to knock off the Coke and the chocolates - I've been going to the gym religiously for the past month and I've managed to PUT ON 2 kilos. The trainers are all mystified. The little fridge by my bed (which holds my secret stash of After-Eights, Toblerones and Patchis) explains it all, though... Then again, as my friends are always quick to point out: if I was more sensible, I wouldn't be me.

I keep trying to remind myself that I love them.

But sometimes it's hard.