Egads. You know what I feel like these days? Like the leftover Thai food you forgot about while you went on vacation for three weeks and left in your refrigerator to rot.

Yeah, that's me. Is summer over yet?

Meanwhile, despite feeling like a mess of rotted, moldy, disgusting leftovers, I manage to limp towards the finish line with my book. Just now I had to change seats in the coffee shop where I'm working, because a an obese, lonely-looking, depressed-looking, 40-something female writer keeps sitting directly in my sight ever time I come here as if to say: "Hey, look, it gets worse! Try writing your damn book while you have to look at me and see how depressed I am!"

I hope I'm at least covering it up better by wearing skimpy clothing and looking like a hottie even though I feel like the take-out that time forgot.

P.S. In other news, there has been a slight change in plans and the blog is not going away quite yet.

xo
BB

Here's what I feel like.

I feel like I broke up with someone three years ago and it was horrible. Really bad.

So instead of letting that wound heal, I grabbed for someone - anyone - who would make it feel better. Once, twice, ten times, fifteen times...

Each time, things felt better for a little while. The wound started to heal over time, but things always ended with whoever-it-was (pick an acronym, any acronym) and the band-aid was ripped off too soon. Again and again.

Now that it's been ripped off for the umpteenth time, and I'm all raw and oozing and panicky, I know I've got to make a change. Sigh.

Meanwhile my novel is nearly completed,

Darlings,
I was busy composing my farewell post today when the orders came from People Who Matter.

Do Not Retire Breakup Babe. Yet.

Apparently, the news of my death has been greatly exaggerated. Our lovelorn purple darling is still on the road to retirement, but I guess it's not happening today. Lucky us! (And just remember, when I *do* go away, I will not abandon you but take you with me somewhere new. Somewhere better! Somewhere the men are hot and intellectual and adventurous and want to settle down!)

Meanwhile, my writing powers seem to be in full force. But my charisma is at an all-time low. My friends have been doing their best to fix me up with anyone single, but here are just a couple of excuses I've gotten lately:

• I'm too busy having a meaningless fling with a 23-year old
• I'm not allowed to date at this point in my 12-step program
• I can't get a pass out of the home for the weekend

Etc etc.

But whatever. Someday I will find someone who says, "You are the smartest, funniest, most beautiful, adventurous, amazing person in the world and I cannot believe no one has snapped you up before this!" (here I must, however, offer a word of thanks to BB's Greatest Fan for telling me this on a regular, though not frighteningly stalkerish, basis).

So what does that mean exactly? That I get to break up a few more times? Well, one might imagine so, but since it looks unlikely I'll ever find anyone to date again, perhaps not.

Of course, I could always go online. I always do go online! But I do it out of boredom and fear and loneliness. Like, oh my God I haven't had a date in two weeks, bam, refresh ad, find boys to date, date them for two months, breakup. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Well this time, I'm just going to gut out this period of post-breakup relationship despair without rushing to the Internet for a quick fix that doesn't fix anything. It's just one little thing I can do to try to break my destructive patterns.

Meanwhile, I'll be working on that farewell post. It'll be a real tear-jerker.

Wait! I spoke too soon! I do have a prospect! My friend F., who shall heretofore be known as The Boss, is setting me up with a "mountain-climbing, world-travelling [name of country deleted to protect the innocent]-an" who will be in town for a while starting Monday.

Sounds like great husband material, doesn't he?

Right.

Just like any day now I'm going to stop writing this blog.

A prospect. That's all I want. A PROSPECT!

You know, just so I have hope - however remote - that I am not going to die old and alone!

It's been a full five minutes since I've had one and I'm getting *very* impatient.

So nice of you all to write and BEG me not to leave. BB likes begging!

But seriously, I'm in a pickle. Ever since I lost my anonymity, this blog just hasn't been the same. For one, I can't dish as nastily as I used to, which is probably a good thing. And even when I don't dish, I still dish. Witness the Celebrity. I swore up and down I wouldn't write about him and I still did. Just in a half-a*ssed sort of way.

So now, all my future husbands can log on read and about my fast times with the Celeb (lite on details as they may be), and get themselves all tied up in a knot. At least now that I've hidden my archives, you can only get about one boyfriend deep, but it's enough to make a lot of men think twice.

The problem is, I'm seriously addicted to writing about my love life. Hell, I've been doing it since I was thirteen years old, it's just that up until three years ago, I was doing it in a journal, which now seems impossibly staid and boring. I mean, what would I do without the Greek chorus (that is, you?) to comment on every little thing?

(For the record, I did not have a love life at age thirteen. My entries went something like this: "Oh my God, Mike Robinson looked sooo cute in those white carpenter pants he wore. It would be toto cool if he asked me to dance at the dance on Friday night!)

I also seem to be addicted to having a crazy love life as much as I'm addicted to writing about it. I could chalk some of it up to bad luck and bad choices, but I think there's some secret part of me that is deathly afraid to settle down. I now associate "settling down" with betrayal. Also, for the first time in my life I have a stable job and a mortgage and a book to write so that kind of limits me in the adventures I can have - so voila - I find my adventures in the dating realm!

Since this blog seems to be a key part of my addiction - date, write, date, write - I figure that silencing BB for a while might help. But she really does not want to be silenced!

I figure all dating blogs are meant to self-destruct, though. Dating is supposed to help you find love, and once you find love, you don't need a dating blog anymore, right? In the meantime, you play a dangerous game when you write about people without them knowing it. Or you try, unsucessfully, like me, to be open about your dating blog and still keep it lots of fun. But what guy (or girl) is gonna say sure - go ahead and write about all the stuff that's f*cking lame about me!

So my plan of the moment is to start another blog, where I don't write about dating. But I just write about stuff. I'm gonna start it someplace brand new and once I've got it established, I'll tell you about it. This is not the final Breakup Babe entry, but I'm getting close. I swear it.

Must. Stop. The. Addiction.

Here are some things that don't go together:

• pants that are too tight
• Monday
• not enough sleep

Sigh. But I am trying (rather unsuccessfully) not to get cranky, because really. Are those things worth getting cranky about when terrorists are bombing buses and Seattle will soon be a tropical country?

I think not.

In other news, I am continuing my rampage in nightclubs about town. After flashing the twins at the Mirabeau Room a couple weeks ago, this last weekend, I nearly got thrown out of another hipper-than-thou Seattle bar for calling the hostess a bitch.

The problem, see, was that she was one. After I nicely explained that to the manager, as well as apologizing in a sh*t-eating tone, I was allowed to stay in the bar and they excused the butch lesbian security guard from the task of throwing me out. (I could have taken her).

What can I say? I am normally sweet as pie and very polite (really!), but I had low blood sugar at the time, and I can't stand it when people to whom I am giving money speak to me in snotty tone! Plus, as you might recall, I am a celebrity-in-training! Like Russell Crowe, I have thrown telephones, not just directly at anyone. But be careful what you say to me - especially when I haven't had dinner and my pants are too tight!

In other news, I'm not going to discuss my date last week because we all know I don't do that anymore. Last time I checked, however, I'm still single.

Which is why I had to bribe a series of no less than three men into my condo this weekend to help put together disassembled furntiure and stereo parts that were the result of getting the place painted last weekend. With the result that everything is now reassembled, except my stupid remote control doesn't work. Helllooo, anyone like to take on that challenge?

Finally, the moment we've all been dreading. This site is going to have to come down sooner or later. BB has certainly served her purpose - and more! She got me a book deal, after all. But it's time for me to move on to a new phase in my life that doesn't involve me breaking up with someone every two months just so I have something to write about. After all, I can't freakin' write about it anymore anyway!

This is an early warning. I'm not quite ready to do it. Yet. As we all know, breakups are hard.

xo, BB

Hello, hello! I just came back from a whirwind trip to Hollywood where four different directors wined and dined me for the opportunity to direct the film adaptation of my book, and I conducted private interviews with the hottest males stars today (including Jake Gyllenhaal and Johnny Depp) who are dying to play one of the various amours de Breakup Babe.

Aw just kidding. Really I just came back from idyllic Whidbey Island, where I spent many hours tearing through the rough draft of Breakup Babe - The Final Section, biking beside blue water, and eating chocolate chip pecan pie. I also went to bed at 10 p.m. every night, and shamelessly devoured chick lit, the chocolate chip pecan pie of the literary world!

Only to return to a condo, with books all over the floor, furniture pointed every which way, and the walls painted strange, pale orange and yellow colors that make it look like some cushy spa in the Carribbean.

Oh wait. I chose those strange colors. I paid someone to paint them on my wall and tear the place apart. Right. Duh. That is right, after months of procrastinating; after months of sampling colors on my wall (8, 9, 10 different colors!), I finally, FINALLY chose some damn colors, ultimately ignoring the advice of my interior designer, and the results are.. I'm not sure yet. Perhaps when the place looks like less of a disaster zone I'll be able to figure it out. In any case, at least it's done now.

In other news (the kind of news you all love the best), I have a date tonight with a boy who really sounds too good to be true, so no doubt he will be. My big dilemma for the evening is not what to wear but whether to tell him upfront about my blog or let him discover it.

Because all it takes is one little Google of my name to find it, and for all I know, he might have done that already. Hmm. I will have to play that one by ear. But I have decided that from now on I won't write about someone unless I get their permission. Yes, BORING, I know! We've established long ago that I'm boring, though, so let's move on to other subjects. Like how much gray hair I have.

Eegads! I've been in the rather expensive habit of coloring my hair every couple months for the last year or so, and now that I' m overdue, there are all of a sudden a whole bunch of gray hairs that were not there before! Let's have a somber moment, shall we, as BB really faces for the first time the fact that she has actually started to age. Waahhh! Never mind the lithe body and the face the looks, oh-mid-twenties, and the fact that she is the same age as many of American's hottest and most beautiful female stars - Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts, Katherine Zeta Jones!

Well. I may be moving into the ranks of the middle-aged, but my life seems to hold more possibility than ever before.

So there you stupid gray hairs!