OKC: It works sometimes!

A couple weeks ago I expressed pleasure at the lovely coincidence of coincidence:   Student Driver found herself sharing a coffee table with one of her most faithful (and previously anonymous) readers. 

As you recall, it reminded me of this blog's foremost -- of several, mostly undocumented variations -- small-world story:  The Artist from The Western Suburbs having a poor date with me, telling his next OKC interest (that very evening) about our poor chemistry, said female acknowledging she was a fan of my blog .... and The Artist using it as a reason to suggest a date with her.

I'm notoriously poor at noticing comments that come more than a couple days after a post.  However, I was so pleased to just discover that, 5 days later, the most important person who could have weighed in on that post weighed in on that post:

"Hi Karin - I had to laugh at your favorite deja vu blog moment. I am the lady that you 'helped' the Artist get. We did not hit it off either but I am happy to say that I met a different lovely man on OKC and we've been married one year! Just a little happy ending to that story even though you don't know me :) ... " 

Hey Anonymous:   Woo-hoo!

Hungry

With good credit to MSF, I ate very well while in San Francisco for 5 days.  Two times to Zazie in Cole Valley for first gingerbread pancakes on Thursday and then eggs, homefries and French Toast Tahiti on Monday, the world's biggest burrito al pastor, the 4 tacos for $13 at Tacolicious on Valencia, the world's biggest can of Pabst Blue Ribbon at the Reggie Watts show, the world's most expensive ($14) cocktails at Top of the Mark, a relaxing Sunday-afternoon brunch at The Crepe Place in Santa Cruz, unsweetened cups of La Libertad at Ritual Coffee Roasters in the Mission, everything bagels with sliced avocado twice in NoPa, coffee-toffee ice cream and ice cream with mint-chocolate oreo chunks and flourless chocolate cake and sweet potato fries and In-N-Out burgers....

Yeah.  So much for being a saint on my January diet ... every last bit of it undone.  Albeit, happily and with gusto.

But the story here is the unendingness of my appetite since MSF and I parted ways Monday afternoon.  Starting with cans of Fat Tire Amber Ale on both flights to Minneapolis, sandwiching the platter of fried chicken tenders, coleslaw and a 20-oz Sam Adams Alpine Spring at the Denver airport.  Followed by a salmon scramble at the Longfellow Grill in Minneapolis the next morning.  And a full one-quarter of the below-pictured "snack plate" (note both peanut and peanut butter M&Ms behind)  during our family card game that afternoon.

Followed a couple hours later by several bowls of my sister's chicken chilli and more pita chips and another beer and German chocolate cake and cherry chocolate ice cream and, to end it, chocolate-covered bacon I'd picked up as a present in Santa Cruz.  And a hearty egg and waffle breakfast by Mom the next day.  And a "share-size" bag of Skittles on my first flight and a Hershey's candy bar on the second, sandwiching a large bowl of penne pasta, three slices of buttered bread and a chardonnay at Chicago O'Hare's premier Italian restaurant.  Not to mention what I consumed after I got home at 1 a.m..... a bag of microwaved kettle corn, two mini Luna bars, and a clementine.

I won't even begin to get into today at work.  But suffice to say it included BBQ chicken, Hershey's kisses, a croissant with a smear of sour cream, spoonfuls of peanut butter and handfuls of cereal.

Which is to say:

1)  Damn.  I've been hungry since I left San Francisco. 

And

2)  Amateur psychologists, all.... have at me.

To the coast.....

....the west coast that is. 

Tomorrow morning I'm in-air, enroute to spend 5 days with MSF on his turf; we've a Google doc list full of the things we plan to see and do .... shows, drinks, burritos, walks, drives.    I'll also get face time with cousins I don't get face time with often enough, who live just down the street from MSF.   And early next week I'm flying from San Francisco to Minnesota .... my dad turns 70 on Tuesday, we're doing family time.

Can't say much more at the moment, mired as I am in the desk-clearing that necessarily precludes 6 days out of the office during the busy season.   And then there's the packing, the cat-sitting arrangements, the rent check mailing, the why-is-it-so-taxing-to-get-ready-for-vacation-mundane-tasks-that-are-always-there-despite-best-efforts-and-intentions.

But despite the genial snowlessness, it has been a long January.  I'm exhausted and ready for my MSF face time and a view of the Pacific.

Cheers!

Shakespearean

O blessed, blessed night! 
I am afeard. 
Being in night, all this is but a dream, 
Too flattering-sweet to be substantial.
-- "Romeo & Juliet" Act II, Scene 2

I was not falling asleep quickly last night and then, remembering a half-unwatched Shakespeare in Love idling on iTunes from last week, kept myself even more from falling asleep (because I can watch this movie unendingly for its cleverness and passion even after growing tired), and where I picked it up was the rolling sequence of Will writing the balcony (Act II, Scene 2) scene from Romeo & Juliet as the players are both performing it and he is living it through gauzy exchanges with his half-dressed muse Viola, and I did not of course equate this tragedy and romance with the 3 days and 2 nights just spent with MSF (and the chocolate he brought with him on the Friday-night red-eye), because the 3 days and 2 nights were rife with easeful enjoyment and Kobe sliders from Lucky's and homemade banana bread with sharp cheddar and unexpected moments of realization that after 2 months of not being face-to-face, 3 days and 2 nights of face-to-face are only slightly bittersweet and moreso only luxurious and gratifying and filling, despite the necessary end and the distance so briskly reestablished as the Monday-night sun set along with the plane taking him home, real life crashing its way back in just as quickly.

Impermanence of objects

I last saw C-2 in June.  I last sought him via text in August, when running by Spy Pond late one night and feeling nostalgic.  He last sought me via text late one night in September, in Boston for a candidate's primary election, but it was a highly inopportune time for me and I declined.  He then e-mailed in October, also at an inopportune time, (nervily) asking me to volunteer on said candidates's general election campaign.  I declined.   Last week while in town for the general, on a night I couldn't sleep, he messaged at 2:45 to say, "Hey, you're already up, we should get coffee?"  I again declined.

Please tell me you all are pleased with my behavior. 

I'm pleased with my behavior. Especially since all denials were made without hesitation.

Funny then, my reaction when C-2 showed up in my Facebook feed this weekend -- a new profile photo, because he had gotten new eye glasses "after 8.5 years."  I found myself the tiniest bit depressed.  One thing I enjoyed about kissing him was that moment, after our respective lenses began creating a mild bonfire from scraping together, when he would stop and quite deliberately take my glasses off for me, set them on the dashboard, then take his off and do the same, at which point we'd quite get down to business.

Now those glasses have changed -- they'll never be the ones he took off to kiss me in -- and it's as if a link has expired.

Take that along with my growing conviction that (dictated by deterioration and expense) my car's registration and insurance should not be renewed in 2012, and that perhaps I should donate it for a tax deduction before Christmas.

The memories of that car ... full of so much more than kissing.

Oy.  I'm forecasting un-tiny depression, soon.

Anniversary of sorts

Man From San Francisco and I were up late on the phone last night.   Late-late.  It wasn't supposed to be late.  But when I worked until 8:30 and then stopped by the gym and rode the bus and made and ate a carbo-load feast and put out the recycling and emptied the cat litter, he dozed off while waiting, only waking when I pinged him an hour later on my real way-to-bed and at his request, I called him because we hadn't heard each other's voices since before his pneumonia interlude. Our IM conversation the night before lasted that late, too. This seems to be the habit: we start with the worthy intentions of a Quick Hi or Just 10 Minutes Because I'm Exhausted and We Both Know Better, but it soon becomes 2:56 a.m. Regularly flummoxed at how the time passes and how wordy, rewarding and frustating it can be to try to verbally express what is physically and emotionally craved. Perturbed by the time zones. This morning we circled back on IM from our desks at work, going over things said and heard, when I told him, "It also occurred to me: today is the 3-month anniversary of the night we first hung out," and he said, "Hrm.... I think it's actually tomorrow," and I checked my phone to find his first text and indeed stood corrected, pleased he remembered, noticing that unlike how quickly time goes when we're together, it conversely seems it has been much longer than that since we met.

State of the union

The cats are exhausted. I'm exhausted. The Mazda 626 is exhausted.  MSF is somewhere over Colorado on an Airbus 320 and, I'd guess, also exhausted. I haven't been posting on the blog much this week because it's not as fun to write about being a single woman when, for at least 8 days and 10 hours, I didn't feel like a single woman. Even though I still am. But I'm a satisfied single woman. Who had good company. Who is grateful for that good company and believes that gratefulness might have legs, because it made me realize what good company is and how I shouldn't settle for less. Who doesn't harbor illusions or an upcoming plan regarding cross-country dating or sentimentality about having had good company, other than realizing that it is indeed possible to live in the moment (or 727,000 moments, more exactly), that having a lover's hand on my thigh while I'm driving is one of the best things ever and that, even though they need it, the bedsheets aren't getting changed until (at least) tomorrow. Or maybe the day after.

Happiness is ...

... coming home from a day at work and a 4-mile run to find homemade soup cooking on the stove.

It's good to have company.

20-Minute Monday: Pay-off

It was set to be a good weekend anyway.  Beach weather.  Brunch in Ball Square on Saturday.  Reunion (has it been 2 years?) with the CFO on his turf on Sunday.  These things all happened and were good. 

But, too, on Thursday night I answered a (yes, true) OKC message from a man from San Francisco who had traveled to Boston for a week, whose original travel companion couldn't make the trip after all, who was weary of playing solo tourist, who wanted at the very least a one-night drink special with someone new.

The cliché pickup of the century, no doubt.

So ask me this afternoon how I feel about having said to self, "Self:  why the hell not?"

Could I have anticipated the rejuvenation resulting from our 3 evenings together? A casual encounter that instead became a gelling of tastes, wants, compassions? Of walking the greenway at 2 a.m..... of the beers and sunset at Thomas Park?   Of the Mt. Auburn Cemetery (Longfellow's grave!) and foie gras at the gastropub and the free tickets to The Donkey Show and being able to do it all with someone, and then the breakfast over bittersweet goodbyes? The kissing? The laying-next-to? His skill at knowing I'd feel good about being called sexy and even better, sans sleaze factor, about being treated as if I were? Knowing that had we not gone in that direction that companionship, as fleeting as it would (and necessarily has to) be, would still have been worth it? The sex serving as not the ends but as the the proverbial frosting on this cake, and that it would be the truth?

I just took the elevator down from the office to sit at the Copley Square fountain.   In the reflection of the Hancock tower doors, I definitely look like I had a weekend of being loved. Maybe my own knowledge of what I enjoyed makes me see myself as satisfied. But then, the man who passed me in the doorway as I exited smiled right at me for no reason, as if he knew something too. It has be the calm on my face transmitting my discovery that, occasionally, the risk of temporary pleasure is worth taking.

-- Monday, August 1 (3:31-3:51 p.m.)

Copley Square Fountain

Etc. Etc. Etc.

I knew Bill wasn't going to be satisfied with a cryptic and über-crusty Guinness photo as the only description of my weekend:

Bill: What was up with the blog entry? Did that guy no show?

Karin: Nah. It’s a more involved story ... We hung out both Saturday and Sunday. Didn’t end well last night at 12:30 and I was pissed so I drove over to Foley’s to unwind with a Guinness. Surprisingly, just doing that rather than going home and going to bed being angry was a good approach. I e-mailed him today and apologized – he was a bit of a quirky guy in person and the fallout came because of my frustration with that, which is hardly his fault. He doesn’t seem aggrieved and said he’d write more later. Which is fine. It was good for us to hang out. We’re definitely not worth dating or even romantic involvement, but we do have a lot of shared interests and I’d like to stay in touch.

B: Sorry it didn’t work out so well. Sure this guy is really worth your time?

K: Well, yeah, enough so. Considering our level of interaction the last 3 months, I don’t want to make an enemy and don’t want it to end badly. Even if we just get square and then the relationship trails off because there’s nothing romantic going on….so be it. Better that. Interesting guy, smart guy, definitely eccentric – which, again, is something not entirely apparent until you hang out. Kind of like what happened with C-2, I’m glad to have erased ambiguity. Frustrated to have wasted time on a level, but it’s all a learning experience and this taught me something about me too.

B: Well, what’s wrong with cutting ties now? If you’re going through the motions just to “not make an enemy”, it just doesn’t sound right. Don’t waste more time if there is no potential, your time is too valuable.

K: We’ll see. I’d like to end it on a good note if nothing else. I’m a bad person when it comes to regrets.

B: Well, you probably regret too much in general. You’re a good person that way in that you care about how you treat others, sometime regardless of how they treat you.

K: I know. He didn’t treat me badly. He didn’t misrepresent himself. It just took meeting him to understand that him being quirky made for great e-mail exchanges but less chemistry in person. I didn’t have the patience for his real-life persona. So I don’t have to. I think we’ll just go back to swapping YouTube videos.

Actually, I did that last night, sending along this link of the great mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson singing Handel. It closed the loop on our brunch at the Algiers Coffee House, where we sat for 2 hours on Sunday afternoon dissecting the text and origin of the Bach cantatas playing in the background. Which, again, seems like the kind of relationship he and I should and could have. Those 2 hours of Bach minutiae, in that (speaking of quirky) Harvard Square relic, were easily the best 2 hours of the weekend.

Lesson learned.

(The regret comment probably requires reflection and a separate entry at a later date.  As does my curiosity about whether or not he thought I was an eccentric, too ....)

Meanwhile, The New Yorker yesterday revealed this 10,000-word essay by Nick Paumgarten on online dating, with a heavy focus on OKCupid -- interviews with and discussions of the dating lives of its creators and all.

Well, it's about time .... 2 of my most regular reading habits in one handy location! (Highbrow and lowbrow meeting in the middle, perhaps?) Mr. Paumgarten is gifted and clever and did a mountain of research. I particularly enjoyed learning about the Technical Automated Compatibility Testing (TACT), the first known "computer-penpal" service that originated around the time of the 1964 World's Fair. Nonetheless, that everything (but TACT) sounds like something I've heard before, even in a piece of this length, is a testament to both my well-documented history and the over-ripeness of still writing about it.

Mr. Paumgarten is married. For research purposes, rather than creating an fake online profile, he made coffee dates with women who had OKC histories. His conclusion rings of accuracy .... particularly the highlighted line at the end...

"I talked to men, too, of course, but there is something simultaneously reductive and disingenuous in most men’s assessments of their requirements and conquests. Some research has suggested that it is men, more than women, who yearn for marriage, but this may be merely a case of stated preference. Men want someone who will take care of them, make them look good, and have sex with them—not necessarily in that order. It may be that this is all that women really want, too, but they are better at disguising or obscuring it. They deal in calculus, while men, for the most part, traffic in simple sums.

"A common observation, about both the Internet dating world and the world at large, is that there is an apparent surplus of available women, especially in their thirties and beyond, and a shortage of recommendable men. The explanation for this asymmetry, which isn’t exactly news, is that men can and usually do pursue younger women, and that often the men who are single are exactly the ones who prefer them. For women surveying a landscape of banished husbands or perpetual boys, the biological rationale offers little solace. Neither does the Internet. "

And here's a take on a gender issue:

"Good writing on Internet dating sites may be rare because males know that the best way to get laid is to send messages to as many females as possible. To be efficient, they put very little work into each message and therefore pay scant attention to each woman’s profile. The come-on becomes spam and gums up the works, or scares women away, which in turn can lead to a different kind of gender disparity: a room full of dudes. “There is a fundamental imbalance in the social dynamic,” Harj Taggar, the investor at Y Combinator, told me. “The most valuable asset is attractive females. As soon as you get them, you get loads of creepy guys.”

Finally, this story was my favorite: a woman in her 70s, with a PhD, married and divorced twice and who lives ... outside of Boston. She's in her 70s, I'm in my 30s, we're both internet dating, we're having similar experiences.

"She met a mathematician who lived in Amsterdam, and flew over to meet him but discovered within minutes that he suffered from full-blown O.C.D. She drove up to New Hampshire in the rain for lunch with a man with whom she’d been carrying on a promising e-mail and telephone correspondence for a few days, but he told her that he found her unattractive. She met a financier on Yahoo’s dating site. They got together for coffee at Café Pamplona, in Cambridge. (K: Just down the street from the Algiers, of course!) He was handsome, charming, and bright. He was also, as a friend’s follow-up Google search revealed, a felon, and had served time in prison in a RICO case. “I did see him again,” she said. “And then I realized how crazy he was. He wasn’t nice, either.” For two years, she has had an off-and-on affair with a forty-seven-year-old man she met on Yahoo, and she recently met a man on Match.com who showed up for their first date wearing a woman’s sun hat, slippers, and three purses. He invited her to accompany him to Norway to meet the Queen.

“You have to learn the rules,” she said. “But there are no rules.” More often than not, she initiates contact. “At my age, I have to.” She also feels that, in her profile, she has to shave a few years from her age and leave out the fact that she has a doctoral degree, having concluded that men are often scared off by it. She has gone online as a man, just to survey the terrain, and estimates that in her age range women outnumber men ten to one. “Men my age are grabbed up immediately by friends,” she said. “Or else they believe that younger women are more interested in sex.

“I’ve learned, forget about writing,” she said. “Meet a person as soon as you can. Anyway, the profiles you read, they’re like bathtubs. There’s no variation.”

Visitor (maybe)

So as improbable as it may seem to both you and me, Piano Man is scheduled to visit Boston this weekend -- arriving tomorrow afternoon not to stay with me, but ostensibly to spend time with me -- although since his work (suddenly) got crazy this week we haven't been able to confirm the schedule or activities or, really, talk much at all, and I'm on edge for the inevitable last-minute "Oops, It Won't Work After All" notification but am also happy to anticipate a dinner companion, at least for one meal before we decide how well we do or don't get along. 

I'm wondering how we will.

Sauté

This castigation of Sunday-night Man was, really, my last great verbal purge towards a guy I dated.

(Give me credit for being a less vitriolic single woman than I was almost 5 months ago. Or, rate this accomplishment considering almost 5 months ago was my last real date? Word.)

Sunday-night Man had just finished culinary school when we met. He also didn't lack ego or self-regard for his talents. Not surprising then, the night I hosted him at my apartment, that he took over the stove with his improved ideas for the chicken dish I had planned. "Hijacked" is a better word for it: he went on to do the whole meal. Me, dewy-eyed and forgiving because a man was cooking my groceries.  Didn't mind his critique of how ineffectively I sauteed vegetables in olive oil, followed by a play-by-play of his own wrist technique.

(You might recall I thought he was an ass about it.)

Last night I was working together a pan of squash, mushrooms and onions to add to my store-bought spaghetti sauce, and found myself quite without thinking, effectively sauteeing in the style Sunday-night Man showed me: jerk the pan back towards you to flip the goods, not push forward. Something I rarely remember to do.

Seriously. The result was tasty and evenly browned.

Nice to know that even men who unceremoniously dump people can be good for something...

Randomness

Cause it's a dreary Sunday evening and I'm on 3 hours of sleep and am trying to keep myself occupied enough to avoid napping before bedtime ....

1) This here blogging platform went into glitchorama on Thursday and into Friday, and it wasn't even related to the 13th. Error messages everywhere. The powers-that-be behind Blogger ended up removing every post made everywhere (everywhere! on every site!), including mine, in those 30 hours to perform the necessary back-office maintenance. After which they ostensibly restored all the content they removed. This firstly meant I couldn't post or edit that day, and it affected this post by deleting a long comment from Student Driver about how it's probably best if Piano Man just stay a mysterious sex-based chat buddy, and that the reason things are funny between us is probably because I just don't really want to be with him. Which does seem kinda right. It secondly means I am WEIRDED OUT that random Google code geniuses can just remove and return my thoughts like that.

2) Speaking of Piano Man, on Friday I caved and checked in.

Karin: So now who's being quiet?! How are you?

Piano Man: I know, I know, sorry. Just been a tense week. How's yours going? (etc. etc. etc.) When the dust settles would be nice to talk. Cheers,

K: Tense? Why? What's wrong?

PM: My (name-omitted income-producing) project seems to be idling, which is rly bad for me.

The project he speaks of has been idling both before and since we met. During which he talked to me all the time and at all hours. So he's either now otherwise engaged. Disinterested, perhaps. Or waiting for my musical to end. Or else the whole situation just ran its course. Or not. Because he just texted me.

3) Very early this morning at the closing party for The Secret Garden, I sucked myself into a game of "how old do you think I look?" with a couple cast members. Drinking a second homemade cosmopolitan at 3:15 a.m. is the perfect occasion and time to claim to be the oldest person in a room full of extremely attractive people. One girl said she was sure she was older. Gasping with jaw hanging down, I asked her to lean over and whisper her age. "I'm 30!" she exclaimed. I gasped again ... but with some delight.

4) Speaking of the age issue, spring is the season on OKC when shirtless wonders point cameras into bathroom mirrors and send the headless results to women 15 years their senior. Between yesterday and today, 3 of 'em. Some ones wearing shirts (and backwards baseball caps), maybe not ready to bare anything, otherwise entranced me with their poetry (a sample):

(23, Roselle, IN): "damn your a sexy woman....like younger men?"

(22, Portland ME) "I know I'm a little younger then your baseline, but hear me out. Why would a beautiful women such as youself, wanna put up with all the BS on this site? I don't believe for a second you can't get dates off the internet."

5) Because I have seen that last phrase or a variation of it so many times, I Googled it in its entirety to see if it was part of a collection of online-dating pick-up cliches. No dice. But it did randomly connect me to the site Thought Catalog and an essay by Charles Warnke (21, Berkeley, CA) titled "You Should Date An Illiterate Girl." Which is totally literate. I just can't discern if I'm reading rant or ironic tongue-twister in his premise that it is better to date a woman who doesn't read because

"A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

"Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived."

What a relief Charles isn't sending me shirtless photos, eh? I might not be able to hold myself back.

Day 13 of 31: 2.20 miles

Day 14 of 31: 4.25

May Total:  27.93

2011 Total: 240.13

Too deep

It was after 12:15 and 2 beers that I spoke with Piano Man last night, at his request, our first conversation since Holy Thursday.  We went through the litany of our respective weekends and the day just ended, after which I branched into a tale about a former love interest.  (One of those times that, when I'm buzzed on high-test stout, it seems essential to spare no detail.)  Piano Man, to his credit, murmured assents, commented, urged me to continue.  After which I felt sheepish for launching into Karin's Greatest Story Ever mode.  And thusly declared, "OK!  Your turn!  Tell me a story of a love lost!"  To which he hemmed and hawed (even clearing his throat) and suggested he did not feel like sharing at present and pointedly returned to subjects we have already worn well -- purchase of a keyboard,  rehearsal schedule for the show, his addiction to his local wine bar, and if I've recovered from my cold.  AKA, we headed back to the surface.  Fair enough -- I had brandished my past lover without him asking, but as a way to share an experience that has made me me.  I thought.  Which I figured if he likes me as he says he likes me, he would want to know.  I similarily want to know more about him.  Is this not how it works?  The deflation was so acute it pinged in my stomach.  His sudden discomfort, equally so.  Perhaps he and I are at that point where avoiding the depths is stagnating. 

Day 26 of 30:  3.0 miles

Day 27 of 30:  4.8 miles

April Total:  58.21

2011 Total:  212.2

Great Cosmo Challenge

Q:  How do you know you must really be appearing tapped-out and desperate to the the masses?

A:  When your cousin's fiancé mails you a torn-out clipping from the March issue of Cosmo titled

 "Where to Meet Your Future Boyfriend:  Is your dude selection seriously lacking? Think of our suggestions as your guy GPS--they'll direct you straight to an eligible cutie."

To be fair, his accompanying note stated that my cousin is the one who thought I might want to see this ....

And to be more fair, Cousin J down in Nicaragua did e-mail me last week to say she was asking him to forward it to me -- in particular because he himself had given a "real man's stamp of approval" to this list new suggestions for meeting guys he thought were "good and valid."

Not surprisingly, I have to agree that many are indeed that -- from going to coffee tastings to visiting a guitar shop to hanging at the iPad displays at Apple stores to joining a fitness bootcamp.

Other than going to wine tastings, I haven't given many of them a thought before.  (And as I sat on the bus this morning perusing the list, I caught the man next to me innocently reading over my shoulder and quickly looking away as I caught him ...  which seems a good omen.)

So it is the 22nd of Feburary. 

There are 22 ideas.

My birthday is on the 22nd of March.

A month seems adequate time to see how many of these I can tick off, eh?

On your marks, get set.....

Day 22 of 28: 2.00 miles
February Total: 43.01

2011 Total: 93.01

Ok with it

Sunday Night Man and I had our date Saturday.

It had all the hallmarks of a date I'd want to have.  Cold, snowy night.  My date taking charge in the kitchen while I find a jazz station on the radio, light candles, pour wine.  Conversation and making out on the couch.  Sleeping in the next morning, waking up hip-to-hip and making out some more.  He tossing scrambled eggs with spinach and feta as I prepare notes for my rehearsal, before driving me to the train station so I can go to rehearsal, kissing me goodbye.  Promising me that he'll show me his egg-scrambling technique the next time we're together.

Totally OK, really, that it'll probably be another month before we have another date.  

Realized that it was enough to have a good date, go on our respective ways, and then reconnect when we feel like having another one.  Shocked myself, really, with how OK I am.  As in I'm not in any way faking this OK-ness.

(And it's so convenient, because that's all he wants, too.)

Not sure if it is because I realized this is the level that Sunday Night Man and I are meant to be at and don't desire more.  Or if I don't desire more from a date than this, period.

Surely, I must?

Or maybe my latent cynicism doth render me numb to higher expectations.

(Thanks for the) cleaning help

So after great delay #3, Sunday Night Man and I have Date #4. 

As in a real, live date on a Saturday night.

In light of our respective economies, we'll stay in.  I'll cook a chicken dinner to which he will contribute a vegetable.  We'll assemble at my place, after 2 dates at his.

Can I mention again that I'm cooking?  Can I also mention that he graduated from culinary school this summer and now works as a cook for a living?  And that he's the 28th boy I've dated who is allergic to cats, requiring an Allegra intervention?

So.  Last night while making my own dinner and otherwise puttering about, with this knowledge in hand, I had a dual revelation similar to when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Life and their eyes were opened to their nakedness:

1) The kitchen I'm inviting an opinionated culinary guru into is a grimy, crumby, greasy, disorganized clutterfest with dull knives and an empty salad spinner in the fridge only because I can't find the cupboard space for it.

2) Cat hair and tracked-out litter is on the couch, the windowsills, the rug, the floor and the tops of picture frames.  It's (bleeping) everywhere.

And I was not necessarily ashamed.   But I was spurred to stay up until 2:45 a.m. in a first swipe at restoring order.

Which reminded me of one of life's greatest unassailable truths:  the desire to not gross out a date has and probably always will be my most powerful incentive to clean.

(Whatever it takes, eh?)

Mixed motives

Love Letters caught my eye today: 

"I'm a 30-something woman who has been dating a few men casually for the past several weeks. I've been honest about the fact that I'm not looking to get serious.

"One of the guys I've been seeing is a real standout, and in the past week or so I was starting to feel as though he could be a great boyfriend. We have a great time talking, have marvelous pajama parties, and seem to want the same things from life. At the same time, he's moving to another state in the late spring, so I wasn't sure if trying to make things more serious would be worth it. Some serious mental debate over the past several days.

"This past weekend, he tried to invite me over, and got VERY angry when I told him I was with someone else. His primary objection was that I'd choose someone else over him. I told him what I was thinking, including that I had debated us becoming exclusive, and he got even angrier. He stormed off and I'm not sure what to do at this point. Can I fix things?"

This letter epitomizes a common dilemma about, for lack of a better word, motive.  Do I have to have one? 

Like, what is the definition of being "serious"?  Do I have the time and/or money?  Am I beholden to tell a date if he's not the only one I'm seeing?  And if I do, does he have the right to be upset?  Why so uncouth to change one's mind about level of seriousness or commitment in the early stages?   Why so elusive to find the right time -- not too soon and yet soon enough -- to display cajones and say "I like you"? Why so impossible to discuss each other's motives without scaring each other off?  Why the fear?

I'm a bit there right now with Sunday-night Man.  After the great Sick-Off of 2010, he emerged last Friday to ask me over for takeout. I went and we had a great time on levels big and small  (date #3, y'all!), after which he said he'd talk to me soon. And on Sunday night I wrote him a follow-up thanks for the great time. And 2 days later, I'm still waiting for him to respond ... even though it isn't required, I'm finding I want him to ... in fact, I find myself wanting to propose another date .... while at the same time, fearful of coming on too strong if he doesn' t feel likewise ... while at the same time wondering what would happen if I just stayed chill ... but find I'm not really wanting to be chill .... because the clock is tick tick ticking away ...

Hooray for the endless dance.

Sunday-night and I have only briefly discussed motives and strategy either about ourselves or with each other.  But since he and I first went out in early November, other than moping over C-2 I've not pursued dating anyone else.  Partially cause I've been kinda in the dumps.  Mostly because I like him enough to want to see where it goes.  

Hell if I think I should say that to him, though.

(Should I?  Say that while I'm not exactly running through the Alps and singing like Maria von Trapp in love with the Captain, I like him enough to see him more?  To see if the running and singing might follow?)

The Love Letters Letter Writer took it on the chin for finding a guy she likes in the middle of trying to find out what she wants ... and then mucking it up without really trying to.  It's an unforgiving position to be in and somewhat impossible to navigate cleanly.

Where's the damn instruction manual for this dating thing?

I stand corrected

In the interest of full disclosure, I must amend a previously asserted inaccuracy in regards to my outing a few weeks ago with Student Driver:

"I cannot top her with the sheer number of different men I've dated in the last year."

This morning I did some calculating and got back to her with concrete numbers, and she got back to me with some too.

Me: 15 (for a total of 29 outings. Thirteen containing quality-and-more make-out sessions. And one or more dates pending with Sunday-night Man, whose schedule might just be freeing up.)

Her: 34 (and, she's ending the year with the one she's been seeing regularly since July.)

She wasn't lying when she suggested I might be off in my estimation of victory. Snaps, my friend. Thirty-four men in 7 months is full-press dating.

Is less than 3 dates per month a lame average? Perhaps. Regardless, it wasn't unenjoyable to scroll back through the many hots and colds that have brought me to my current state of lukewarm:

-- The months of July and August .... where I was entirely dateless but super-social, including dozens of fruitless nights fantasizing on chat with HBI and doing the Rooftop Thursdays thing that produced dozens of new friends, mostly from the great state of Michigan.

--Valentine's Day Weekend .... when I didn't have a date but found myself first consoling a good friend who had just gotten dumped, only to end up in a hot embrace with another friend who didn't deserve it because he was part of the reason for friend #1's dumping and the hot embrace developed while he was apologizing to me for his role in said dumping, only to then end up more-or-less dumped by the man I was actually kind-of seeing and for no reasons related to my hot embrace with friend #2. Oy.

-- March / April / June/ October .... whose make-out sessions with C-2 must still be deemed the wickedest and most dramatic (Spy Pond grass or handprints on the windshield, anyone?) and, despite his flake-out at the finish, still the most visceral. I'm still working out why, and why I'm still attracted to him in spite of him.

-- My general failure to have dated any men this year because of politics. Or work. Or church. Or musical endeavors. Or bikini-wearing.  Or running (when allowed to spend 2 days bonding in New Hampshire with a vanload of talented runner-engineers, discovering only one would be single and he would not be interested). Which are the activities I spent the most time doing. Evaluation of my activities may be in order.

In any case, please swing over to Student Driver's blog entry summing up her year of Learning to Drive Stick.  Do congratulate her. After trying on 34 men, would you agree she might be able to shed her training-permit status in the new year?

(And, SD, please take that as a compliment.)

Solution

Last night, after some delay, I had a second date with Sunday-night Man.

He was again a good date.  He had the patience to hang in a loud room with a girl who had no speaking voice.  (Yes. Lost on Sunday night. Still gone.)  He requested the bartender make me a lemon and brandy hot toddy to soothe my throat, then insisted I have a refill.  He recommended dinner choices, then paid for them.  He kissed me standing outside my car.  He kissed me more sitting inside my car. He was a good kisser.

This all helped me forget for a few hours that, despite multiple exhortations to the contrary, C-2 and I never did see each other this weekend.  After 2 days of radio silence, he wrote yesterday to say he had been swamped, was sick, and was sorry.  Today, ostensibly, he leaves town for a long time.

This is good, I think.  Maybe I'll get on with my life after 9 months of unreliable dithering and frustration.  Like how, sometimes, I need to bury the Reeses Pieces at the bottom of the trash to keep from eating the entire bag.  Out of reach means out of mind.

(One would hope.)