Misadventures in Internet Dating

Single No More

2010-06-26T19:44:00.004-04:00

As I said before, things have changed.

I am no longer the girl that I was when I started this blog. For one thing, I turned thirty. I've left the mistakes and uncertainty of my twenties behind and I feel no need to look back. I'm also no longer confused, no longer looking, no longer wondering about the "why"s and "how"s of love and relationships. The answer is: Because.

Because you suddenly cannot imagine your life in any other way. Because you suddenly find yourself in a world that is gray when he's not beside you. Because you can be absolutely, completely, utterly yourself and he still looks at you like you're his own, personal angel.

Bombshell of bombshells: Joe Montana and I are getting married.

He popped the question on May 21st, with my grandmother's ring. My family was ready to hand it over after Thanksgiving, barely 5 months into our relationship.

Living with Joe Montana (since February, when he came down here from Montana) has been amazing. I cannot believe how easy every day is with him, even when things aren't so easy. He is more than I ever could have imagined. I've never been one to believe in things like Soulmates, or The One. But he is. He is The One.

For months, I've been ruminating on where to go with the writing, on how to carry on. And I've been distracted, jealous of my time with Joe Montana, feeling that every moment is special and important and it's so hard to tear myself away. But I do want to continue writing. I want to continue for me, because it's good for me. But I also want to continue for anyone out there that was where I was before I got together with Joe.

A year ago (tomorrow, actually) I was resolutely single. I was quite, and almost contentedly, sure that I was going to go it alone. I knew that things like marriage and coupledom weren't for me, and I was okay with that. I was almost happy about it. Compared to the catastrophes that I had weathered, being by myself was a refuge. It was safe.

And here I am. I'm planning a wedding that doesn't matter to me nearly as much as the marriage that I get to share with a man that I love more than breathing. I'm trying to reconcile my old, independent self with this new self that hurts when he's gone (as he is now, sent to North Carolina by his job, for two weeks that include the weekend of our anniversary) and can't seem to enjoy things as much with out him as with him. I'm here, thinking of how I want to write about what it's like to be in love. Not just in love, but in love now, here. To be in love in this time when love and relationships are so fleeting and I've found a man who promises me 54 years of love. (Due to his odd refusal to promise to live to be older than 86 is the time limit, and one I'm determined to convince him to reconsider.) So this is going to be my, somewhat hackneyed, focus in my next blogging endeavor. Love. Modern Love. Lasting, lifelong love.

And, despite the odds against it, how it can ultimately triumph over all.

Lyrics of the Day

"Ahh home. Yes, I am home. Home is when I'm alone with you." Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros Home

Lucky

2010-02-01T07:09:00.001-05:00

How can I sum up what is now happening in my life without resorting to tired cliches or sounding like a Nicholas Sparks novel? Well, kids, I'm not entirely sure that I can. But, as usual, I'm going to give it the old college try. (Cliche #1. You can make this into a game. Every time I use a hopeless cliche, take a drink! You can then judge me as a writer by how drunk you are able to get by the end of this post.)

Remember when I talked about selling out? It's done. It's sold. It's been wrapped up, the shop's closed, the lights have been turned out. Whatever idea I had in my head regarding the noble cynicism of remaining single for-e-ver, it no longer applies to me. This is not to say that I'm a full convert to the side of marriage and coupling up. I'm not. I still think that it's beyond stupid to be in a relationship for the sake of not being alone and I can't even imagine the idea of deciding to marry someone that you have even the tiniest of doubts about. But I think I'm managing to defy the odds here. And here is where I go all sorts of sappy on you...

You know all those things that you're supposed to feel about the person that you choose to spend your life with? That they're your best friend, that you would support them in anything, that you would take a bullet for them, that they are the best, most wonderful person ever to walk the earth? Yeah. I feel those things. It's seriously embarrassing to see them laid out on the page like this, but it's all true. These are the feelings that I always thought I should be feeling for other men in my life; these are the feelings that I spent a good deal of time faking or convincing myself would come. Loving someone just for who they are? Check. Not wanting to imagine your life without them? Check. Wanting to become that cute old couple holding hands in the park? Check, checkity check.

(I hope you're drinking! Or throwing up in your mouth. I couldn't blame you.)

Someone commented on my last post, curious as to what is different about Joe Montana. Well, pretty much all of the above. But some of it is also base compatibility. We have a ton in common, but we also compliment each other. Where I'm high-strung, he's laid back. Where he gets stressed, I am calm and confident. There has always been space for one of us to be the cheerleader when the other needs a boost. It's pretty amazing actually. There is also nothing abusive or manipulative in his behavior - something that has been a problem for me in the past. I won't belabor the point, but everything that raised red flags early on in my last relationship has been completely absent here.

So now is the time for steps. The most exciting step is that Joe Montana is about to become Joe Florida. Well, I'm not actually changing his name, but he is changing locations. JM is joining me in Florida and he should be here, fittingly, by Superbowl Sunday. This step, moving in with him, means more than it may seem. After my last disaster, I vowed never again to have a live-in boyfriend. I am now of the mind that moving in together should not be a rung on the relationship ladder that falls between dating exclusively and getting married. I think that, for me at least, moving in together can't be a trial period or something that you do so that you can delay having to make the decision of whether or not you want to marry someone. To me, moving in means that a bigger commitment is already made. And I'm making that commitment. Taking that step.

The next step is a step away. I think that I have outgrown this particular space. There are no longer many misses in my adventures and there certainly isn't any more internet dating. This doesn't mean that I'm abandoning you all or that I'm done indulging my latent narcissism anonymously. It just means that I think I'm going to shift my focus and my location. I haven't done anything definitive yet, and you'll be the first to know when I do, but the move is coming. I hope you'll take this step with me.

Lyrics of the Day

"So if you wanna be with me, with these things there's no telling, we'll just have to wait and see. But I'd rather be working for a paycheck than waiting to win the lottery. Besides maybe this time it's different, I mean I really think you like me." Bright Eyes First Day of My Life

No Angle

2010-01-05T17:49:00.004-05:00

I think about you all a lot. I think about posting. I think about telling you about Joe Montana and everything that happens and everything that I'm thinking. But then I don't. And another day passes.

So I've been wondering what it is that is keeping me away. Then I realized what it is. I have no angle on Joe Montana.

You know how it is. Nobody reads blogs for earnest self-expression and heartfelt words of emotion. People (myself included) read for entertainment. And maybe to identify with the author in some way. But not many people are interested in keeping up with something that resembles a 14-year-old's diary.

That's the problem here. I can't seem to take my relationship with Joe Montana and give it a spin. I can't make it entertaining. I can pretty much only tell you things that will make you want to lose your lunch.

Lyrics of the Day

"While you were sitting in the backseat, smoking a cigarette you thought was gonna be your last, I was falling deep, deeply in love with you. And I never told you til just now." Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros Home

Joe Montana

2009-11-21T11:30:00.002-05:00

I know I've been quiet, but it doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about you!

They don't know why, or where the name came from, but everyone I know is calling my man Joe Montana. Everyone.

Last night I went out with my friends Ghost and Polo. They were asking me what the plans are for a "Meet Joe Montana" function on December 5 - a weekend that Joe will be in FL for a visit. I told them that they need to remember that his name is actually [redacted for privacy purposes], and not Joe Montana. They said, "Yeah, we're probably just going to call him Joe."

Fortunately for me, Joe Montana is a very good sport and doesn't mind if people happen to call him Joe rather than his actual name.

Lyrics of the Day

"Hey Joe, where you gonna run to now? Where you gonna run to now?" Jimi Hendrix Hey Joe

Selling Out

2009-10-27T19:21:00.003-04:00

I was out with some girlfriends the other night (thanks to kickball – I have actual friends!) and my friend Ghost was giving me crap for the complete 180 that I’ve done since we met. She and I had a mildly-intoxicated late night confessional in my car way back at the beginning of the summer and we discussed our mutual issues with men. I was in serious PC/relationship backlash at that moment and I went off (as I was wont to do around that time) about the possibility that I’m not the marrying type and that I don’t think you need a relationship to complete you, and blah blah blah. Ghost brought that up as we were out on the town last weekend and said, “Now look at you!”

So, yes, I’ve sold out. The odd thing about it is that it doesn’t feel like selling out. Once I regained my independence in March and remembered how much happier I was alone, it seemed perfectly reasonable for me to assume all relationships would make me feel smothered, drained and miserable. But Joe Montana doesn’t make me feel that way. Yes, we talk every day (because how else can you sustain a long-distance relationship?), but neither of us is ever upset or resentful if the other is too busy to talk at certain times or can’t talk for very long or puts their own social obligations ahead of spending hours on the phone. I had a little too much to drink when I went out with Ghost and the girls and passed out on a friend’s couch instead of calling Joe Montana. Rather than being upset with me, he was happy for me that I had so much fun.

I keep thinking that I should be more worried about selling my Single Self out – but it doesn’t feel like I’ve had to give anything up to be with Joe Montana. I haven’t had to change my life or how I do things for him, I’ve just been able to add him to everything that was already here that has been working so well for me for the past 6 months. So is it nuts for me to think that maybe I am the marrying kind – as long as it’s Joe Montana that I’m thinking of marrying?

Ghost told me that she’s totally jealous of what I’ve got going on, and if she felt the way I feel she’d be married in about two weeks. I told her people would think I’m insane if I were to rush into marriage that fast (or even this fast). She said, “I wouldn’t think you’re insane. Well, maybe insanely awesome.”

Lyrics of the Day

“…These wrinkles masterfully disguise the youthful boy below, who turned your way and saw something he was not looking for: both a beginning and an end.” Death Cab for Cutie Brothers on a Hotel Bed

PC: Epilogue

2009-10-03T19:41:00.003-04:00

I really try not to get defensive when people give their views and opinions on what I write about, because it would be pointless to write in a public forum and expect all comments to be flattering. But I'm going to address this subject one last time, because I just feel like I should say a thing or two.

I realize that my accounts of my relationship with PC are one-sided. The catch is that I was never 100% honest with how things were between us. Never. From the moment that PC knew about this blog, he constantly brought it up - when things were good or bad. He'd say, "So are you going to write about this in your blog? Are you going to make me look like a jerk? Are you going to tell your friends and your mom and your sister about this?" Because of this constant reminder that he felt what I was writing and saying affected him, I glossed over much of the bad stuff and all of the worst stuff really. Even after he left, I pulled punches.

I never felt that I was a woman who could be abused, in any way, but I've come to believe differently.

No, he did not ever actually hit me.

Would he have? If things had continued on the course that they were on (and they would have had I not ended it once and for all), I think he would have. In the last week that we were together, he scared the hell out of me more than once and one time he grabbed me forcefully enough for it to hurt and enough to send a million red flags and warning signals through my head.

With what I know now, and what I have found out since PC and I broke up, there was a lot more wrong and a lot more going on than I ever knew or probably ever will know. I realize that I sound cold when I talk about my frustrations concerning what I hope will be my final communication with him, but 6 months of half-knowledge and endless speculation have put me in a place where it makes me physically ill to speak to him and sometimes even to think of him. I felt a lot of guilt for a long time (guilt is a lot of what kept me with him for as long as I stayed), but I can't feel guilty any more. He made the choices he made - over and over and over again. He manipulated me every chance that he had, doing his best to ensure that I wouldn't leave him - that I would feel like I couldn't leave him.

He's not the worst guy in the world, there are plenty that are far worse, but he's an extremely troubled and messed up guy and he did everything he could to hide the worst and keep me tied to him. I was miserable with him and I thank my lucky stars every day that I finally had the wherewithal to end it.

By the time that I had been with PC for 3 months (as I've been with Joe Montana now), I had spent probably a week's worth of nights up and crying because of things that PC did or did not do. And those were the good times.

Keeping it To Myself

2009-09-30T18:43:00.001-04:00

So I’ve been busy. Frighteningly busy really. I bought my townhouse and have spent much of the past couple of weeks working on furnishing it and getting my things moved out of the old apartment. I’ve also spent much of the last couple of weeks dealing with the train-wreck of BS that is still my every interaction with PC – but I’m mostly going to leave that alone in this space. Suffice it to say that six months after we broke up, he has still not come back to Florida to pick up his stuff (which truly is almost every one of his earthly possessions) and he is now scrambling to try to get his act together before the end of the lease on the apartment. It’s not been a stress that I’ve needed, but I don’t seem to have any say in that.

I’ve also been trying to analyze why I haven’t been more eager to tell you all what’s been going on with Joe Montana. I think that I’ve come up with a couple of viable reasons:

1. I chronicled a lot of my elation at the beginning of my relationship with PC and I just can’t bear for anyone (including myself) to make comparisons between that and how things are with Joe Montana at this point.

2. Part of me wants to keep this happiness all to myself and not share the intimate details with anyone.

What’s going on here is too good and too special and too realistic to really be described. It’s also hard for me to talk about it publicly because I know that there are people who will think that it’s just me rushing into something again and that I’m destined to get myself into more trouble (people like The Sister, especially). But it’s just not like that, although I don’t know if I’m able to truly articulate why. It just is, and that’s what’s amazing about it.

A brief break-down is that Joe Montana’s Labor Day visit was amazing. There wasn’t a single thing about the weekend that wasn’t fantastic and not a single thing about it that I wish had gone differently - except maybe the part about him getting on a plane and flying 3000 miles away from me afterward. We’ve talked every day since. We’ve been doing this phone thing for three months now and last night we still managed to accidentally stay on the phone for over an hour because we just didn’t get to the end of our conversation.

I’m going to man up and be honest here, because it’s what I usually do, even though it’s something that has always been hard for me – to be honest about my feelings. I’ve fallen completely in love with Joe Montana. It’s serious stuff here kids. Like, someone-may-have-to-move-across-the-country kind of serious. No real decisions have been made at this point, but we both know that eventually we will actually be able to be together. Because we know this, it’s somewhat easier to be patient with the distance now – though it’ll never be a cakewalk. I’m going to Montana for a weekend to see him in October and he’s coming back to Florida to visit for New Years. It’s not often enough, but we’re doing what we can. And as for that whole “we can date other people” stipulation, well that’s just a moot point. I can’t imagine wanting to, and it’s quite possible I’ll never date again.

Lyrics of the Day

“You know I dreamed about you for 29 years before I saw you. You know I dreamed about you. I missed you for 29 years.” The National Slow Show

I Should Be Committed

2009-09-04T16:28:00.000-04:00

Speaking of commitment, Joe Montana and I (rather inadvertently) had The Talk. We were on the phone one night and he just threw out the “boyfriend/girlfriend” words. So I said, “Oh is that what’s going here?” Then we proceeded to have a stammered, halting discussion about the idea of being monogamous from three thousand miles away. I shared my opinion that in a situation like this, if one of us were to meet someone that we truly wanted to go out with, we should be able to do that as long as we’re honest about it. Joe replied with the conviction that he had no intention of meeting anyone else, that he couldn’t think of anyone but me. I had already thought this over from my perspective and had realized that Joe had set the bar pretty high. I couldn’t imagine myself engaging in a random, flip cup-fueled make-out session and it would take quite a lot for a guy to impress me enough to want to give him a chance.

So whether or not Joe Montana and I agreed on my stipulation (and I’m still not sure whether or not we really did), we did agree on the boyfriend/girlfriend words. So, here I am with another long-distance boyfriend: a long distance boyfriend who is on a plane on his way to see me at this very moment.

Although this long-distance business is familiar ground for me, everything about this relationship feels like uncharted territory. I don’t think that anything has gone so easily before (although I’m sure that I have said similar things in the past about relationships that were not going nearly as easily as I was imagining they were) and I’m both excited and nervous about where to go from here. If things go as well this weekend as I am hoping they will (and there is every indication that my hopes are based on reality), I think that this relationship is going to get pretty serious. From my perspective, Joe Montana’s perspective and the perspectives of River (who knows us both very well) and the therapist that I’ve been talking to (that’s a long story, but she’s been listening to the events since the beginning of things with Joe and she’s been behind it the whole time) Joe and I are just about perfect for each other.

The therapist said that a person’s life is like a movie script and when you’re dating someone, you’re letting them audition to fill a role in your movie. So far, Joe Montana seems perfect for the role and I’m thinking he could actually make the final cast. (Though we do disagree on which way to put the toilet paper on the roll; it was almost a deal-breaker for me, but I decided to try to be open-minded.)

When I was younger, I thought that it was perfectly reasonable for people in their 30’s, or thereabouts, to move more quickly in relationships. Obviously with more years of life and dating experience under your belt, you can figure out much more quickly what you like and what you want in a partner. Hopefully you can also figure it out more quickly when it isn’t working at all. Now that I have reached this venerable age group myself, I am feeling like it would be irrational for me to move too quickly with Joe. Or rather, a large part of me thinks that he really could be someone that I could be with long-term; the rest of me feels like I need to justify having this belief a mere couple months into the relationship. But I do believe it.

Lyrics of the Day

"I’m getting lost in your curls, I’m getting rushed back on a whim. Our breaths get wind back to the time when we were green. I know we have changed, but I still grin cause I can’t wait to see you." Animal Collective Bluish

"He's Scared, She's Scared"

2009-09-01T18:02:00.004-04:00

When I decided that I would be doing a little bit of research for posting material, I went to my local Barnes & Noble to browse the love and relationship section. At the time, I was curious about my self-diagnosed commitmentphobia and found the perfect book with which to educate myself. Who better to reference than the very authors who originally coined the term “commitmentphobia”?

Having been published in 1993, the book He's Scared, She's Scared, written by Steven Carter and Julia Sokol, is slightly dated in its references to the changing landscape of modern dating. It refers multiple times to the new, independent, modern woman – the type of woman that I’ve always considered myself to be and a gender role that has become common and familiar to my generation. The book addresses this subject to emphasize the evolution of gender relations and the shift from the perception that men have the monopoly on fear of commitment. Aside from these slightly dated details, I think this book is as useful as any I have ever read in addressing a subject so comprehensively.

Unlike The Man Plan, He’s Scared, She’s Scared uses scores of anecdotes and partial case studies very effectively to illustrate its points. The authors use these stories to put the behaviors they outline into real-life context. I don’t think that anyone could read this book without recognizing a relationship that they’ve been in or witnessed in one or more of the cautionary tales. The Sister’s relationship with her first boyfriend was so classically commitmentphobic that I almost believed she must have been interviewed for the book. (I actually Priority Mailed her the book almost as soon as I was finished reading it. It should be quite useful to her.)

The ideas in He’s Scared, She’s Scared are complex and involved. I won’t outline even the basics here, but if you have any reason to believe that you have issues with commitment or that your partner does, I highly recommend reading this book. It doesn’t treat people with commitment problems like they’re crazy or like there’s no hope for progress – it’s actually quite the opposite. There is even an appendix at the end with tips on how to deal with a commitmentphobic relationship, whichever stage it’s in and whichever role you’re playing in it.

Surprisingly for all of my asserting that I need space and my independence, I don’t seem to be an actual commitmentphobe. I have made mistakes in selecting partners and I have repeated a couple of odd patterns, but I don’t perpetuate the same destructive patterns that are detailed in He’s Scared, She’s Scared. The reason that I didn’t want to stay with PC and didn’t want to marry him wasn’t that I’m afraid to commit: it was that he was just the wrong guy for me. So there is hope for me (and maybe for Joe Montana) after all. If you think you might have issues with commitment, I think this book can show you that there’s hope for you as well.

Lyrics of the Day

"If you'd only seen yourself hating me, when I'd been so much more than fair. But then you'd have to lay those feelings bare. One thing I know has still got you scared." The Shins Turn On Me

Life Goes On

2009-08-25T07:25:00.002-04:00

As happily wrapped up as I have been in all the newness and the fun of my romance with Joe Montana, I’m not allowing it to take over my life. I think that I did that with PC, I dropped my focus off of myself and what I should have been doing at that point and put all my energy into seeing him and talking to him as much as was humanly possible. Obviously, that didn’t turn into a good situation; I’ve been determined not to repeat those mistakes (even if I am crazy enough to repeat the long-distance experiment).

Kickball has started back up for the fall season, so I’m forced to thrust myself back out into the social world. I took a week to cocoon when I got back from Montana and then I had a week with The Mother in town. Now I’m back to my sleepless Thursday night routine and back in weekly contact with the friends that I’ve made down here. I’m also… drum roll please… buying a house, a townhouse to be more specific, and it’s actually a done deal. I’m just waiting for the 15^th of September for my closing date and I will be an honest-to-goodness grown-up homeowner. It has been my life goal to be a property owner of some sort before my 30^th birthday and I’m actually going to achieve that goal. I’m pretty damn excited. The Mother also bought a house in the area to have as an income property, so I’ll be seeing a lot more of her over the fall and winter. I’m back to normal at work and received a favorable six month review. Life is chugging along.

Of course I am still talking to Joe Montana through all of this. The more that I get to know him and know about him, the more I like him. We talk so easily that an hour can pass before I even know it. I find myself wanting to tell him about anything interesting or funny that happens during my days, and share with him first when something good happens. I had a nightmare one night (not a usual occurrence for me) and he was the first person that I wanted to call to make me feel better. Of course, it was four a.m. and the feeling passed before I actually did wake him up in the middle of the night. But it was a comfort to know that he was out there somewhere. Nothing has yet happened (sense my cautious optimism) that raises any red flags. He’s also coming down to Florida to visit me for Labor Day weekend. I’ve been counting down the weeks and days and I’m thrilled at the idea of getting to see him again.

As well as things are going, I can’t bank on it working out. I can’t get so fixated on the idea of being with Joe that I think I need to move back to Montana immediately and start planning a wedding and naming my unborn children. I’ve got a lot going on here in Florida and I’m going to keep working on it all and enjoying myself. If things happen to work out with Joe Montana too, it’ll just be icing on the cake.

Lyrics of the Day

"All I know is I gotta be where my heart says I outta be. It often makes no sense, in fact, I never understand these things I feel. Don't change your plans for me." Ben Folds Five Don't Change Your Plans

Across the Universe

2009-08-18T07:22:00.003-04:00

I’m going to skip ahead a bit here. Long-story-short, Joe Montana and I maximized the rest of the time that I was in Bozeman. I felt so completely comfortable, at ease and able to be myself around him that it just felt natural to see as much of him as I could. When I last saw him on the Saturday that I was leaving town, we hugged goodbye and agreed to keep talking. We didn’t discuss anything further than that, which was perfect. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I did know that there was one road that I definitely did not want to be traveling again so soon and so irrationally.

Since I’ve been back in Florida – over three weeks now – Joe and I have talked every day. We talk at night and exchange text messages semi-regularly throughout each day. Again, I’m feeling like a teenager here. This infatuation, these long phone conversations, the Romeo & Juliet feeling of a romance complicated by outside influences. I really don’t think that I have any clue what I’m getting myself into here, but I can’t help but fall head-long into whatever it will or won’t be.

Joe Montana is extremely open with how he feels about me. And he’s crazy about me. Every so often, his adoration has given me a pang of worry – my brain remembers the disaster that was PC and how frighteningly clingy and suffocating he got. It only takes me a few moments though, to remind myself of the many significant differences between Joe Montana and PC (shared first name aside…).

• Joe Montana has an established job in a career that he loves
• He has his own friends and maintains the relationships
• He is completely presentable in public and is in no way embarrassing
• He is older than me (which I still consider to be a minor miracle, with my track record)
• He’s never had a significant brain injury (I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this other bizarre pattern of mine, but it’s been one)
• He hasn’t done any of the creepy, manipulative, passive-aggressive crap that PC pulled when we were first long-distance dating

The part of all of this that is truly scary and very frustrating is that Joe Montana could just be perfect for me. By perfect for me, I don’t mean perfect in every way, but we just seem to match up really well. The catch is, there is no way that I can leave Florida in the next year and a half, and I have no desire to drag Joe Montana down here (away from all his friends and family and his job) to live with me. So if something is to continue between us, it’s going to be a long, slow road.

I talked to River about what has been going on, because I felt like I needed to really get her blessing. I asked her how she felt about Joe and I talking and she said she’s so excited that she’s really trying not to get her hopes up too high. She told me that she loves us both and couldn’t think of two people she’d rather see together.

I’m prepared for you all to admonish me and tell me that I shouldn’t jump into something crazy when I’m still so newly single; that I’m nuts for trying to have something with a guy that is three thousand miles away and is going to stay that way for a while. But the part of me that harbors general optimism thinks that there is something here and that something would be a shame to rule out before I even get to see what it is. Besides, it could just make a great story someday.

Lyrics of the Day

"Well, hot and heavy, pumpkin pie, chocolate candy, Jesus Christ. Ain't nothing please me more than you. Oh, home, let me come home. Home is wherever I'm with you." Home Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

On Heartbreak and Breaking Hearts

2009-08-07T10:00:00.001-04:00

For as long as I can remember, The Sister has had the worst taste in men. She’s been with neglectors, abusers (emotional, not physical – though I suspect it could have gotten there had it been given the time), charming players. I could be wrong, but suddenly it seems like she may have found a Keeper. We were discussing the timing of the new man in her life and she floated the following theory: that a person needs to experience at least one great broken heart and break at least one heart before she is ready to settle down for good. The Sister has done both in her dating history and I realized, with the end of my relationship with PC, I have too.

I’m not seriously getting insanely ahead of myself here; I just like this theory.

Once The Mother, The Sister and I were finally able to say farewell to the last of the family and friends that were in town for my dad’s memorial, the time started to fly. We spent a good amount of time together, just the 3 of us; my new nuclear family. But I also managed to see quite a lot of Joe Montana.

The Wednesday after the memorial, Joe and I went on an actual date-type-thing. We went to dinner, made a stop at Target to find a birthday card for his youngest sister (For those of you who don’t know me personally, Target is my version of shopping paradise. I can get anything I want there and it’s easy and pretty and it makes me happy. I even have a Target credit card. It’s all red with bull’s-eyes - it’s adorable.), then stopped at my new favorite Bozeman bar for a drink. It was a really great night, and the first real quality solo time that we had spent together. He opened the car door for me. I haven’t had a man open a car door for me since I dated The Ex. In 2005. Joe Montana held my hand and refused to let me pay for drinks and laughed at my witticisms and made me laugh right back. If I had any doubts about our compatibility before, I was able to cast them aside that night.

Did I mention how much I love it when a man opens the car door for me? I should also mention that Joe Montana has the most arresting eyes. I don’t know if it’s that they’re light, or that they’re big or that they’re framed in those lovely long eyelashes that evolution gave only to men – but I’m taken aback every time I see him.

I mean, I have had my heart broken (more than once). And I have broken a heart. I’m just saying.

Lyrics of the Day

“And all I want is your eyes, in the morning as we wake, for a short while.” Bowerbirds Northern Lights

Comfort

2009-08-03T14:50:00.003-04:00

Joe Montana managed to do the impossible over the days surrounding my dad’s memorial gathering. He was somehow one of the very few presences that was able to calm and comfort me without demanding anything additional from me. I was still surprised and baffled at both his kindness and my willingness to accept it and lean on him, but the whole situation felt so natural that there was nothing I could do (or wanted to do) but go with it.

Joe came to my father’s memorial, with River and her husband. Being able to have Joe there and to have his arms around me was almost essential to my sanity. He was just able to let me be. He wasn’t the only one there that I had to lean on: my cousins came from California; My Husband flew in from LA (we had been estranged for months, due to the horrible complication with PC, but MH spent a lot of time with my parents during their various visits to CA and his coming to MT re-formed our friendship), my godmother made it up from the Florida Keys. It was just that Joe Montana was the easiest to be with; he allowed me to breathe.

After an interminable day of family, friends, and way too many tears, Joe and I eventually ended up alone. He drove me back to my parents’ house and we ended up in the back yard. There, beneath a version of the Milky Way that you can’t even imagine outside of Montana, we were teenagers again. We tangled together in the cool grass, fitting length to length and kissing – just… kissing.

It was perfect.

The view from my the back porch at my parents' house.
You'll have to imagine the stars.

Lyrics of the Day

"You told me victory is sweet, even deep in the cheap seats. And you don't judge me, that's not your style. But I won't see you for a little while." Conor Oberst Cape Canaveral

Home and the Heart

2009-07-31T16:00:00.000-04:00

Joe Montana was dead serious about wanting to come for a visit to Florida, and though I was slightly apprehensive, I was pretty excited about the idea. He was looking at flights, I was thinking about available weekends and we were talking almost every day. Then things with my dad started to take a turn for the worse, and I asked Joe to put the FL trip on the backburner. I knew that I’d be seeing him much sooner than I had expected and for the worst possible reason.

The Mother called me on Saturday July 11 and told me that I needed to book a ticket home ASAP, because she didn’t think my dad had a lot of time left. I booked a ticket for the following morning and proceeded to do a combination of tidying my house, running last-minute errands and trying not to panic. A few hours later, The Mother called with the News. It was the last thing I expected to hear. It was the last thing I wanted to hear.

I don’t want to get into the next week too much. There was family, memorial arrangements, obituaries and boundless kindness from friends, neighbors and the community. It was hard. It was more than hard. Every day crept by.

During most of the first week that I was home, I didn’t see Joe Montana. But I was communicating with him often, mostly via text. He wasn’t pushy, he wasn’t insensitive, he wasn’t smothering. He just wanted me to know that he was there if I needed anything. I’m not usually open to support from much of anyone, much less from a man that I don’t know all that well. But as the week wore on, I found myself more and more comforted by his presence and I realized that I really wanted to see him.

That Thursday night, before my dad’s memorial on Saturday, we invited a slew of friends and relatives that had come into town out for a night of drinks and remembrances. I invited River and her husband and of course, I invited Joe Montana. I don’t think that I can adequately describe what it felt like to see Joe when he arrived; he put his arms around me and it felt safer, more comforting, more of a relief than anything else had up to that point.

Lyrics of the Day

"We strangers know each other now, as part of the whole design. Oh, hold me like a baby that will not fall asleep. Curl me up inside you and let me hear you through the heat." Suzanne Vega Gypsy

Guesting Again

2009-07-30T20:51:00.002-04:00

Ryan from Single-ish was kind enough to ask me to write another guest post for him while he's away for his brother's wedding. It's not new material for you faithful readers, but the comments are a lot of fun. Check it out here:

Have You Ever Hooked-Up at a Wedding?

And I promise, more Joe Montana stories and details to come...

Lyrics of the Day

"It's a nice day to start again, it's a nice day for a white wedding. It's a nice day to start again." Billy Idol White Wedding

Out of the Blue

2009-07-28T16:57:00.002-04:00

I didn’t mean to leave everyone in suspense for so long there. My father passed away on July 11 and it’s been a long few weeks. I feel as though I’ve been forced to stare at it and talk about it and be strong in the face of it all for long enough now, that I just can’t bear to write about it here. Instead, I’m going to continue the story of the man from the wedding.

Seeing as though I’ve had ample time to ponder, I really actually like Chris’s suggestion of calling him Joe Montana, so I’m going with it.

Joe Montana was thinking about me. This, just like the kiss at the wedding, was a complete surprise. It was also a surprise when he called me the following evening, bored and hoping to chat. I happened to be asleep at the time; I went to bed early that night (Thursday before July 4th) so that I could be up at the break of dawn to embark on my long-weekend camping trip. Again, I didn’t think all that much about it. Joe also sent me a happy 4th text on the day itself, which I didn’t get until I got back to civilization on the 5th.

When I was home and exhausted, I sent Joe Montana a text telling him that I hoped he had a good 4th and that I was worn out and might just die of sleep deprivation. He responded that he thought it was too bad that he wasn’t there to take care of me. I was seriously taken aback. I just didn’t know where any of this was coming from.

The text messages got flirtier and flirtier for about half an hour and then Joe called me; we proceeded to talk. For two and a half hours. Like a couple of teenagers. I actually think I was a teenager the last time that I spent that long on the phone with someone. I think that we text messaged the following day, but nothing major was said. On Tuesday, Joe Montana sent me a text early in the morning (for him, there’s a 2 hour time difference between FL and MT) to ask which airport he would fly into if he wanted to come for a visit.

Lyrics of the Day

"Everyone's getting off. Ended up in such a, such a familiar fade. When it started it was all so foreign to me. The company I keep." White Rabbits Company I Keep

Something New

2009-07-11T07:25:00.000-04:00

Last month I went home to Montana to be a bridesmaid in the wedding of my best friend from high school, River. When she asked me to be a bridesmaid I was really touched and accepted; the one thing that I requested was that she put me in anything but a strapless dress. I have always looked terrible in strapless things and I avoid them at all costs. So what did River do when she picked out the bridesmaids dresses? Went with the strapless.

The Dress

I knew it was a terrible attitude, but I wasn’t at all excited about the prospect of wearing the dress. It turned out though, that River knew way more than I did (shock of shocks) about what would look good in the wedding. There were 4 of us girls in the wedding party and I have to say that we all looked fantastic. I apparently looked so fantastic that I was nearly irresistible.

There is a man who I have known for a couple of years now, he’s a very close friend of both River and her now-husband. He’s adorable and very sweet and I always enjoyed hanging out with him while I was hanging out with River. He’d always been a little flirty, but it seemed he was that way with most girls, so I never thought a thing of it. I was also with PC when I met this guy and had been in a relationship the whole time we had known each other. As soon as he appeared at the wedding, however, he was suddenly far more flirty and affectionate than he had ever been. I noticed, but took it in stride until he pulled me aside at the reception and said he wanted to talk to me outside. Then he grabbed me and kissed me. Naturally, I kissed him back.

We were both swept back up into the activity of the evening and that was really the last significant interaction that we had. I was surprised as hell that it had happened, but it wasn’t an unpleasant surprise. A few days after the wedding, I got this man’s phone number from River so that I could just send him a quick text to say I was sorry that I got distracted (to be perfectly honest, I got distracted by dancing with this completely adorable guy who was fresh out of both 8 years with the Navy and a broken engagement) and that I hoped he had a good time. He sent a text back saying all was good and I thought that would be the end of it.

Then he sent me a text the next morning to tell me that he was thinking of me…

[Sidebar: before I continue on with this story, I seem to be having a bit of trouble coming up with a name for this one. I was speaking with a friend the other day who suggested that I put it out to committee. I think that’s a brilliant idea and so that’s what I’m about to do. Here are some of the basic facts that I know about this guy and you can tell me what you think I should call him:

He’s a genuinely sweet, good guy (River describes him as the best possible guy)
He’s 5th generation Montanan (a fact that I’m jealous of)
He’s a Surveyor and loves his work
He’s recently become entertained by guns, due to the influence of River's husband
He’s been a bit of a gambler in the past, poker mostly, but kicked the habit
He’s the 3rd of 4 kids and all of his siblings are married with children
He’s a big outdoors lover
He (in a creepy twist of fate) has the same first name as PC

So, I’m going to put all that out there and see if anyone comes up with something brilliant. This came up, partially, because after I had already named Mr. Green, my coworker started calling him Evel Knievel. I was upset because that was such a fantastic name for him and it was too late to use it. So maybe one of you will be that brilliant and come up with something that just didn’t occur to me. If not, I’ll go with one of the ideas that I've had, though I don’t love either one. Once we can find a suitable name for this new man, I’ll bring you up-to-date on the happenings.]

Lyrics of the Day

"Your tongue in my mouth, trying to keep the words from coming out. You didn't care to know who else may have been here before." Bright Eyes Lover I Don't Have to Love

No Fear

2009-07-08T20:37:00.005-04:00

Somewhere along the way there has been a change in me. I’m not sure that I actually felt it happening as it did, or that I even know exactly when it did happen. I do know that getting the hell out of LA had a lot to do with it and recovering from the catastrophe that was my relationship with PC also contributed. Maybe some of it has to do with my current family situation and the sub-conscious realization that there’s a lot more to worry about than how other people are going to perceive me. Or maybe that’s just over-thinking it.

You see, my dear readers, I spent most of my life battling with some form of low self-esteem or another. I was one of those maudlin teenagers wearing black and lighting candles and listening to Tori Amos’s album Little Earthquakes. (Still a great album, I just don’t obsessively identify with it any more.) Some part of me never felt good enough. I have always believed that a person’s confidence means a lot more than their actual level of attractiveness. Feel good about yourself and other people will be drawn to have good feelings about you. Feel bad about yourself and it surrounds you like a dark cloud or a sign reading “Keep Out”. I used to live under that cloud and behind that sign and it showed in the meager number of dates that I went on in high school. Some of that adolescent insecurity carried over into my adult life (though thankfully I retired the black clothing and candles) and it led to many of my struggles with dating and relationships. Some of those struggles have been documented here. Many of them.

But something has shifted. Situations and people that used to give me pause or make me nervous no longer have the power to do so. Since PC left and I decided to go full-force in the pursuit of a new life and social group here in Florida, I’ve felt very little fear or intimidation. It’s difficult to explain what this feels like for someone who wasted as much of her time worrying about self-worth as I did – but it’s a welcome change. I have received more attention (both romantically motivated and platonic) in the past few months than I have ever received. Surprised as I was by the development of the Mr. Green situation so soon after the break-up, it hasn’t been anywhere near the end of it.

Lyrics of the Day

"We're ordinary people, we can't help but to change as we walk and make plans in the dark, or to make haste with the boy who can't help but keep good people out. As you talk to me, too much you're assuming, we don't always want what's right." The Shins Pressed in a Book

Nothing Certain

2009-07-01T08:39:00.007-04:00

At the moment, I cannot bear to use this space as a purely emotional outlet. It is so difficult for me to focus my attention away from what is happening right now, and I need to try to do it as much as possible. So I am just going to state the situation, get it out of the way and go back to frivolous posts about the joy of being single again.

My dad is actually dying. It's past the point where I can fool myself by just saying that he's sick. We've had hospice care come into the house and they think that we'd be lucky if he was around for more than another month.

This is still mostly unimaginable to me, but it's getting to the point that it's undeniable. I was just home in Montana for a bit over a week and the changes that I saw during that time were frightening.

I will be going back home to spend what time I can with him in the next little while - it all depends on how much time he has left. I can't imagine not being there through it all, and I'm going to be there as much as I can.

So that's where I am. That's why I've been silent the last couple of weeks. But I'm not going to dwell on these events here. I can't do it. I need to allow myself to continue to find fun in things and to continue to develop a life here in Florida. I'm not going to wallow when I don't have to and I'm going to distract myself with cute boys and crazy 4th of July weekend camping trips and I'm not going to make myself feel guilty. This will be hard, as my combination Catholic and Jewish heritage makes me predisposed to all sorts of guilt, but I'm going to work on it.

Lyrics of the Day

"And I said, 'Oh Sophia, where'd you get a name like that, living in this dirt road town?' She said, 'I think she was a movie star my father saw before I was born, but I really don't remember now. He left when I was so young.'" Joe Purdy Meteor City

Lost That Lovin' Feeling

2009-06-12T08:20:00.002-04:00

In the middle of all the rest of the turmoil in my life, my dating status changed. As much fun as it was to meet someone new and as good as it was for me to confirm that there would, indeed, be life after PC - things with Mr. Green have fizzled out. Somewhere at the confluence of my new social life, his increased work schedule, my family situation and my petrifying fear of commitment the flames of attraction sputtered and went out. I could feel it happen gradually: the phone conversations became less fluid, the plans to hang out less inventive, the need to touch less pressing.

Although it's a little sad - the ending of a crush, a possibility - I don't think the timing could have been better. I'm good with dating people and the end of dating. I can very easily develop and maintain a friendship with someone that I've dated, as long as things never got too serious. The other side of the coin is that I'm a terrible ex-girlfriend. Once an actual relationship is over, I have no desire to have any interaction with my ex. Ever. (Unless he totally broke my heart. Then he is welcome to come crawling back to me so that I may accept or reject his entreaties as I choose.) I know that it's cold to want to cut off someone who was once such a large part of my life, but that's just how I roll.

I will still see Mr. Green. We're still going to be on the same kickball team. It was one of the things that we talked about early on - that we wouldn't let our personal relationship get in the way of the team - and it won't be a problem. It could be mildly uncomfortable the first time one of us flirts with someone else in front of the other, but that's a bridge that won't have to be crossed for another month or more.

It was a good thing for me, and I'm glad that I hung out with him. But I knew that there wasn't any real potential there to get serious (nor did I want to be getting serious with anyone again) and I'm glad that it ended before anyone got hurt. I only really regret that I didn't get more Clue jokes out of it while I had the chance.

Lyrics of the Day

"What are you holding out for? What's always in the way? Why so damn absent-minded? Why so scared of romance? This modern love breaks me. This modern love wastes me." Bloc Party This Modern Love

Downward Spiral

2009-06-09T14:47:00.000-04:00

I'm supposed to be happy here. I'm supposed to be building a life here. I'm supposed to be getting as much as I can out of what I have around me. But how can I have a clear conscience about doing all of this while my father is dying?

It's been a hard 5 or 6 days. Last week I got a reality check that I don't think I was fully prepared to face: the remaining time I have with my dad is severely limited. Just how limited is still uncertain, but the feeling is that it would be a minor miracle if he were to survive the year.

It is so hard for me to grasp this. Yet, it's even harder to stop from obsessing about it. Obsessing about the fact that my father will never walk me down the aisle. About the fact that everyone I meet from this point forward may never get to know him. About the fact that he may never get to see the first home that I'm going to buy this year or be able wish me a happy 30th birthday.

Part of me feels like I should pack up and go home. Or at the very least, take my 3 month family medical leave and spend as much time as I can with my parents. The Mother assures me that is not what they want me to do. She says that it's more helpful for them to know that my sister and I are living our lives and doing well and being happy. But it's something that I'm now struggling with every day. Until now, there was always some kind of new hope on the horizon: a doctor that hadn't been seen yet, a completely untested new treatment to try, new supplements to add to the diet. Now, there's really nothing left. And I'm left here, wondering what the best thing to do is. For him. For me. For all of us, really.

Lyrics of the Day

"And you can learn to live without it, but your heart's gonna stay torn. And you can try hard not to need it, but you'll want it more and more. It's like the calm before the storm." Wild Sweet Orange Either/Or

"The Man Plan"

2009-06-05T08:40:00.004-04:00

First of all, DO NOT - under any circumstances - buy this book. If your curiosity somehow gets the best of you and you absolutely must read it, either get it from the library or email me your address and I will send you my copy (Seriously. Otherwise it's going to Goodwill). Please don't support this book. It hurts my brain to think that it even got published. At the time, I thought the blurb made it sound like it would actually be useful...

The Man Plan by Whitney Casey

"While it’s great to suggest that a woman shouldn’t have to conform to unreasonable expectations of perfection in order to attract a guy and keep him, the reality in the dating world is somewhat different. Men are tactile, visual, and visceral, and a spectrum of factors—from the way a woman orders wine to the pictures she has next to her bed to how often she shaves—can be enough to turn a guy off…permanently.

With The Man Plan, relationship columnist Whitney Casey shares with women what men really think on a variety of issues, from the way women dress to how they take care of their cars. Including the opinions of a cross section of single men—as well as such notable personalities as Joel Osteen, P. Diddy, and Dr. Laura Berman—The Man Plan helps women identify the little issues that can make a big impression."

Maybe I should have read between the lines. Maybe I should have known what I was in for. But I was less than a week out of a relationship and I was feeling vulnerable and easily sold. So I ordered the book on Amazon (there was no way I would be caught dead buying it in the store) and hoped for some help in re-entering the dating world.

This book nearly rolls back the clock to the days of June Cleaver and Laura Petrie. It begins with the idea that all women are stereotypical Girly-Girls with very little sense or sensibility. The first few chapters are a glorified grooming/decorating guide for the completely clueless. Did you know that men like it when we understand basic hygiene and can actually walk in the outfits we've chosen to wear? Me neither! Case in point:

"So, you've got your body under stink control for the manly stink patrol. But wait - there is one factor you may not have factored in the smell wars. What about all that hot air you are putting out there for him to hear and er...um...uh...smell? Your breath woman! That's another huge and fierce funky factor for him. If your breath speaks louder than your words, you can kiss everyone kissable good-bye."

More gems like this follow in chapters that explain how to pronounce the names of foods (Like Cabernet - not pronounced "cab-er-net", but rather "cab-er-nay". Just in case you were born in a shoe box and never left it.), which car brands you should be aware of to appease a man (Know the difference between a Miata and a BMW - or at least know better than to say something when you don't know.) and how much you should know about the economy and your own finances. This is one of my favorite passages:

"Four New York City guys are out on the town in Los Angeles. They are far away from their high-powered, high-pressured Wall Street jobs and they are ready to start their high-priced, high-partying night on the town. It's not even an hour into their night before Wayne, Tod, Fred, and RJ meet Marci, Carla, Tiffany, and Tracy - four smoking-hot Orange County girls, 'raring to get down on the town.' As Tod explains: "I don't think these girls had ever met a wallet they didn't like. When I told one I was an investment banker, she said 'Oh, like you work in a bank...like a bank teller?"...
... RJ says it best: "These girls were not, but they were so dumb and silly, it was just too annoying." All four of the guys seem bewildered by the absurdity of the previously mentioned dialogue. "I don't get it; women can quote you the exact amount of money they spent last week on that pair of designer shoes, but ask them to quote the exact amount of money Google's stock is selling at, and they look at you like you are speaking in tongues," RJ says. Wayne adds that "women never know about money. They don't know what is happening in the economy, how to save their money, or how to make their money grow. They just know how to spend it."*

Honestly, I'm so worked up by how offended I am by the book (don't even get me started on the chapter that tells you how to behave when your man is watching sports), it's hard for me to want to tell you the one thing, aside from this, that I got out of the book. But it did actually change the way I do things, so I feel that it's worth mentioning.

"'Shave with cold water before your shower or bath.' The hot water of your shower/bath makes your legs well just enough to prevent the closest shave possible. Thus, try shaving your legs sitting on the edge of the bathtub using cold water... as cold as you can stand it. You'll get a much closer shave, and your shave will last longer!"

Somehow in my lifetime of grooming and all my previous research, I never happened across this fact. It really does make a difference to shave in cold water and it's actually a really pleasant experience when you live in Florida where it's warm all the time. For those of you in colder parts of the world - have courage!

Unless you've never interacted with a man before or are a complete moron, most of the information in this book is going to sound condescending to you. I felt like it was written assuming that all women are complete idiots and wouldn't be able to find their way out of a Prada handbag without the help of a big, strong man. Even the "celebrity guests" and the oh-so-topical anecdotes that introduce every chapter are extremely weak. If Whitney Casey was ever actually a serious, legitimate journalist, she has fallen far. (Clink on that link. I'm not kidding.)

Lyrics of the Day

"Show him that you care just for him: do the things that he likes to do, wear your hair just for him. 'Cause you won't get him thinking and a-praying, wishing and a-hoping." Dusty Springfield Wishing and Hoping

*There are so many problems with this anecdote, I don't think I can even get into it all. But seriously, the girls are from Orange County. Also, I don't know a single woman who doesn't know at least a little bit about the economy or how to handle money. And I also don't know anyone (outside of a stock broker or investment banker maybe) who can quote the "exact stock price" of Google at any given moment. Obviously these douche bags hang out with the kind of girls that don't know what an investment banker is all the time. That's not the fault of woman-kind.

Fools Rush In

2009-06-02T13:25:00.000-04:00

The beginning of my research phase seems to be paying off a little bit already. Last night, I finished a truly terrible "get a man" guide. It contained one relevant piece of wisdom, one chapter that was a little bit of a reality check for me, and a whole load of insanely useless information. I will check back in with a full review (including some of my favorite wonderfully stupid quotes, guaranteed to roll back the clock on feminism) a little later this week. Today, it is the reality check I am interested in discussing.

Without going into book-quoting detail, what happened was that I realized I am completely jumping the gun on being worried about how far things have gone and how far they could go with Mr. Green. It is completely normal for people to date for multiple months before anyone starts hinting at full-on Relationship Status. I realized that my view is completely skewed, because it has been about 5 years since I have had a truly normal dating relationship with anyone. Each of my 3 significant relationships have started like a forest fire, burning suddenly and out of control. The last reasonably-paced dating experience I had was when I dated a classmate from school during the summer of 2004. We dated in a completely fun and civilized way for 3 months before deciding that we weren't compatible enough to continue. I had completely forgotten that that is the way that things are supposed to go.

Mr. Green and I have only been dating for about a month and a half. Our schedules are such that we can really only see each other on weekends. Things are at just about the right place for the situation, as far as I can tell. So I'm going to let this realization ease my mind.

At least that book was good for something.

Lyrics of the Day

"Would you always, maybe sometimes, make it easy. Take your time." Grizzly Bear Two Weeks

Treading Water

2009-05-27T19:51:00.006-04:00

I haven't been updating all that much about what's going on with Mr. Green. That's because there's not a whole lot new going on with Mr. Green. It's just sort of, well, holding steady.

This past weekend, my wonderful girlfriends SJP and LAJ came to visit me. Once more, I was able to unleash the maximum dose of Girl Talk upon them. And once again, it was refreshing and a relief. But much of what I had to say was redundant. Things are where they are right now: I like Mr. Green, I like hanging out with Mr. Green, I am deathly afraid of being Mr. Green's (or anyone's) girlfriend. I know that doesn't seem fair, and maybe it does mean that I'm on the rebound a little bit. Because I'm just not there. And however "on" Mr. Green's taxi light is, I can't force myself to commit.

And it's not that Mr. Green is trying to force that. Actually, we don't really talk about that kind of thing at all. It is basically assumed that neither of us is seeing anyone else (because we spend what mutual free time there is with each other), but it's not something that has been discussed. He definitely hasn't said anything about the big, bad G-friend or B-friend words and I'm not going to encourage him to do so.

So, in the meantime, I'm going to do the research that I alluded to before I met Mr. Green and unwittingly got wrapped right back up in the world of romance. I'm going to be doing a lot of reading in the near future. I've decided to take it upon myself to take on as many of the published love / dating guides as I can stand and to report back to you on their varying levels of usefulness. I can already tell you, some of them are going to be completely useless. And some may be helpful... Only time (and I) will tell.

Lyrics of the Day

"You think she's an open book, but you don't know which page to turn to, do you?" Cake Open Book

Single-ish

2009-05-25T07:45:00.000-04:00

Recently, my lovely and wonderful friend Blondie took it upon herself to pimp me out. She developed a relationship with a sweet and adorable dating blogger on Single-ish at Glamor.com and took the liberty of directing him to this modest space. Ryan seemed at least mildly entertained by my ceaseless ramblings and asked if I would be interested in guest blogging for him while he is in Europe next week. Always ready to prostitute myself for the enjoyment of others, I heartily agreed.

So, tomorrow and Thursday, you'll have the opportunity to read a little thing or two that I wrote for Single-ish. Please visit, and while you're there check out the regular posts and the archives. I know that I was mightily entertained and found a lot of food for thought in there.

The fun part of the assignment was that I was to ask questions of the readers and I'm eager for the answers. You all know how usually hopeless I am - maybe there's guidance out there for me yet...

Also, many thanks to Ryan for having me as a guest. It's been fun!

Lyrics of the Day

"I am a writer, writer of fictions. I am the heart that you call home. And I've written pages upon pages..." The Decemberists The Engine Driver

Open the Floodgates

2009-05-18T14:58:00.006-04:00

The weekend before last, I went up to Tampa to see my childhood friends who live up there. They are sisters and bought a house together in the suburbs. In my earliest time here in Florida, they were a welcome oasis in a desert of people that I didn't know. I actually drove straight to their place after dropping PC at the airport when he left. It was a lifesaver to have familiar and loved people to turn to in my worst hours. Even though I hadn't seen Lee or Lo for over 6 years before I moved down here, they welcomed me like family and it has been amazing to regain the friendships.

So, that other weekend, I went up to their place. It was actually my birthday that weekend and I wanted to celebrate it with them. We had a fantastic birthday dinner that Saturday night and I had a ton of fun with them in general. But maybe the best thing (for my sanity) to come out of that weekend was the fact that I got to unload.

It seems to me that many women have a need to share way too much information with people about their love lives. I know I certainly do. After more than a year of living with someone who had very big ears and was terribly nosy, I stopped having "girl talks" with anyone. I was also so far removed from the people that I would usually share this information with that it made it difficult to do so. The only person that I talk to constantly is The Sister, and she won't listen to my TMI talk. She says it's gross, because I'm her sister and she doesn't want to know that stuff. Yet, she tells me all the gory details of her love life. She says it's different, because I don't have a problem hearing it about her.

I had been saving up years worth of details about PC, about previous relationships and about new and interesting developments with Mr. Green. Lee and Lo listened to me for hours. It was cathartic. I hadn't actually realized how long it had been since I'd been able to talk like that until I was in the midst of it and feeling the beginnings of immense relief.

Lyrics of the Day

"And everybody knows the way I walk, and knows the way I talk and knows the way I feel about you." Ryan Adams Wish You Were Here

Evolution

2009-05-12T15:51:00.000-04:00

As much as I am doing to resist analyzing where things are going with Mr. Green, things do seem to be moving forward. Part of me still gets the urge to shift into panic-mode - the part of me that just can't bear the thought of being someone's girlfriend again. But that part of me shuts right up when I'm with Mr. Green; things remain remarkably easy when I'm around him. I'm still not sure that I want to go down the Relationship Road again so fast, but I'm not ruling it out completely.

Things have been progressing. There are little things that you get comfortable with, like holding hands. At first you don't know if you should or not, then you do just a little bit, then it becomes natural when you're walking together. (I am still completely entranced by his hands. They're just big and strong and his knuckles are all scarred. It kills me.) Because of the distance between our places, sleepovers have become assumed. The more I sleep in the same bed with Mr. Green, the less I'm excited about sleeping alone. There's just something that works about sleeping with him. There has been speculation on whether or not I'm seeking out the physical affection just for the sake of it and those are very valid thoughts. But it just doesn't feel that way to me. I wasn't feeling empty or alone or like I was dying to be touched before I started dating Mr. Green. This really all feels like it just happened.

In the public world, Mr. Green and I have been completely busted on our relationship with the kickball crowd.

"But wait - are there some other [Team Name Redacted] who are getting friendly off the field? Looks like [LB] and [Mr. Green] have been spotted leaving Icabod's together... ??? Both were single & looking, neither seems to be anymore... also rumored to have showed up at a party together over the past weekend!"

This is what graced the gossip page of the league newsletter the week of our last regular-season game. Of course they couldn't have stopped there: I scrolled down to find a picture with multiple members of my team in it (that just happened to have Mr. Green and I standing next to each other); the masterminds behind the newsletter photoshopped a heart around our heads and the caption: "[Mr. Green] and [LB]: confirm or deny?!?"

Lyrics of the Day

"I was just bony hands, as cold as a winter pole. You held a warm stone out, new flowing blood to hold. Oh what a contrast you were to the brutes in the halls." The Shins Pink Bullets

Not So Scary

2009-05-06T19:38:00.002-04:00

I have been thinking lately that change can be a really beautiful thing.

In the past weeks, since I've gotten more used to my recovered Single Status, I have been making more changes than just adapting to the loss of a boyfriend and a roommate.

Did I ever mention that somewhere in the past 9 months, I had started smoking a little bit again? I probably didn't. Because I was horribly ashamed of it. It was something that I hid from everyone I could: none of my coworkers ever knew it - here or in Baltimore. I would only smoke at home, on my porch, and not out in public. I tried my very best to keep it to 2 or 3 cigarettes a day at the most, but that wasn't an excuse for such a backslide. I had quit for over 3 years, after smoking for more than 10, and quitting before had been the hardest thing I'd ever done. Yet, somehow, I allowed myself to start again. I made every excuse in the book, but it was really that: I let it happen.

Almost two weeks ago, I quit again. And it's been almost easy. Of course, the $2 hike in cigarette prices in FL definitely helped the motivation. I have also quit fast-food. And sodas. And wallowing in laziness and self-pity on my couch. I've been getting up early and working out, or running after work. I've been cooking myself healthy meals (although sometimes I only get around to a bowl of cereal - still not too bad) and laying off the snacks. I'm keeping my apartment actually clean - dusting and everything. I'm newly and strangely motivated to do all these good things for myself and I'm loving it.

Sure, dating someone new has something to do with this. But it's not everything. I'm doing it for myself and that's what feels best about it.

Lyrics of the Day

"I finally made it. I made a clean getaway." Maria Taylor Clean Getaway

No Clue

2009-05-04T10:50:00.001-04:00

I'm not really sure what I'm getting myself into. I'm also not really sure whether I'm actually worried about that or not. I'd like to think that sometimes it's good not to worry or over analyze a situation; sometimes it's good just to go with something.

I've been spending quite a bit of time with Mr. Green. (Every time I type that, I have the urge to speculate whether he did it in the Ballroom with the Rope or in the Conservatory with the Lead Pipe.) After last Saturday night and the draft party, I saw him again on Wednesday night. Then for kickball on Thursday. Then we spent Saturday at the beach and Saturday night at my house watching the Supercross Finals.

It's moving fast. I know it is. In the moments when I give myself a chance to think about it, I sometimes get a little panicky. Here I am, a girl that has always had a hard time committing, and I'm fresh out of a semi-disastrous relationship. Yet I'm running head-long into something with the very first guy I've dated. Am I crazy or what?

The heart of the matter is that I'm really enjoying the time I'm spending with Mr. Green (in the Library with the Revolver). He's really easy to be around, he's smart, he's ambitious and he's sweet. He hasn't done any of the game-playing crap that I had come to expect in the dating world after all those years in LA.

I don't want to worry about it. I don't want to spend time thinking that I'm rushing into something or that I'm on the rebound. I want to enjoy this without having to answer the questions (Like: Am I on the road to Boyfriend-ville? Do I even want to be?).

Lyrics of the Day

"Squeaky swings and tall grass, the longest shadows ever cast. The water's warm and children swim and we frolicked about in our summer skin. I don't recall a single care, just greenery and humid air." Death Cab for Cutie Summer Skin

Pass the Chapstick

2009-04-29T13:50:00.001-04:00

On Saturday Mr. Green and I went to an NFL Draft party that one of our team members was throwing at his place. It almost felt strange to go together, as it's not like we've been dating for very long or are sharing that information indiscriminately. I know that some people definitely got what was going on by the end of Thursday night, but not everyone was around to see that. But it wasn't that strange. It was easy. It's all been easy.

What wasn't easy was that we got to the party at about 1:30 and the draft didn't start until 4:00. That left almost 3 hours to be filled with Beer Pong and Flip Cup. What wasn't easy was resisting the urge to make out with Mr. Green in public once I'd had a drink or two. What was easy was kicking butt at Flip Cup. I just have a natural talent.

(If it sounds like I'm behaving like a college kid all over again - I totally am. I'm not ashamed of it at all. I felt like this part of my social life has been missing since I left LA and since I was with PC and I'm ecstatic to have it back. I'm not married, I don't have children. I'm gainfully employed and fiscally responsible. If I want to let my hair down and act like I'm 5 or 6 or 8 years younger in my free time, I should do it while I can. And I'm going to.)

So we watched about the first 13 draft picks (as number 13 was the all-important Redskins first round pick) before being a little too intoxicated to pay as much attention as was deserved. Once I had finished off a six-pack of Woodchuck (which I paid for with a raging 6 am headache on Sunday morning), there was no turning back. At some point, Mr. Green and I ended up talking on the porch for long enough that I think the other party-goers thought we had left, and it wasn't long after that we went back to my house.

Some of the rest of the evening is blurry - but the later it got, the more clear it got, because I really had quit drinking pretty early on. What I can tell you is that there was a lot more kissing and not a whole lot of sleeping. It has been so long since I've done this with someone - enjoying getting physical without getting completely physical. I certainly didn't do that with PC. Before that I was spending time with The Kid, and that was nothing but physical. And I'm not even sure my memory can go back much farther than that. Suffice to say that it has been a long time since I have been in this situation. And this situation is a bit intense. I guess I sort of forgot what new attraction is like and I was so miserable at the end of my relationship that it was hard for me to muster much attraction at all. This is fun.

He stayed until about 2pm Sunday afternoon. Once I was irreversibly awake, I subjected him to day 2 of the draft. We stayed in bed and watched a bit, talked a bit, made out a bit. It was a perfect Sunday morning. By the end of it all, my lips were ridiculously chapped and I had some serious beard-burn to show for it. Completely worth it.

Lyrics of the Day

"To wake next to you in the morning, and good morning to you. How do you do? Hey, good morning to you!" Band of Horses Part One

Men Are Like Taxis

2009-04-27T08:28:00.004-04:00

I wish I could remember where I read or heard this: that men are like taxis. The theory is that when a man is ready for, or open to, the possibility of a relationship he turns his taxi light on. If you happen to be the girl that hails the cab (him) while the light is on, you've got a possibility of a decently long ride. But if you grab a cab with the light off, it doesn't really matter what you do, it's just not going to go anywhere. I think I learned this little theory sometime after The Ex dumped me. His light was definitely off, it just took a few months for him to figure that out.

What I have learned in the last week is that Mr. Green's light is on - really on.

After our date on Monday, Mr. Green sent me a text to say that he had a good time. Then he called me on Tuesday, just to talk. And on Wednesday. I wasn't expecting that at all - the lack of game-playing and holding back. It seemed that he wanted to talk to me, so he called. Dating someone definitely didn't go so smoothly back in the LA days where everyone is always on the lookout for something better than what they have. We didn't really talk about when the next date would be, as we knew there would be Thursday night and kickball.

Thursday night we won our game. Well, we really didn't - the other team forfeited - but that counts as a win and we'll take one where we can get one. Mr. Green and I kept it casual at the field and afterward at the bar, but got subtly closer and touchier as the evening progressed. You know how that goes: first you kind of stand near each other, then there's a little brushing of the arms, next a little leaning into each other and eventually it's pretty hard to miss that something is going on there.

We left the bar at the same time and walked out to where our cars were parked. I was thinking of the weekend and if he wanted to go to our teammate's draft party with me on Saturday. I was thinking maybe we would grab a drink or something on Friday night. Around this time, Mr. Green suggests something along the lines of coming home with me - though he said it in a tactful I'm-not-just-trying-to-get-into-your-pants way. The thought hadn't even crossed my mind, to be honest, but once it did it seemed like a pretty good idea. It seemed like a fantastic idea, actually, but I had to address the important stuff first. I told him that I wasn't looking to rush into something too quickly, especially not in the physical sense. But I said that I was really enjoying spending time with him and would be cool with him coming over, as long as things didn't cross certain lines.

So he came over. We had a drink, sat on my porch and just talked for a while. There was very tentative but brief talk of previous situations. He told me that he has dated since he's been in Florida (about a year now), but hasn't had anything serious. I told him that things had been on the way out in my relationship for a while before it actually happened - implying that I'm not just rebounding. (I think I've told you all before that I detest previous relationship talk. I don't want to know and I certainly don't want to tell you much. It only puts bad images and feelings in people's heads and provides ammo to drudge up when fighting.) But it was good to learn the most basic information and know that Mr. Green isn't a creepy serial-monogamist.

(I don't really think all serial-monogamists are creepy, but for me there is just a certain amount of suspicion attached when someone is constantly in a relationship. It generally means that they have some kind of problem being alone and may not be all that discriminating when it comes to who they commit to. You know what - I'm trying not to offend here, but to be honest, I do think serial-monogamy is creepy.)

Then we made-out for half the night like a couple of high school kids. It was fabulous. I think that making-out is a bit of a lost art these days; everyone is always jumping right to the sex of it all. And Mr. Green can kiss. Our styles are near-perfectly compatible and there was some definite heat there. More than some. A lot. Eventually, we had to sleep a little (and judging by how delirious I felt at work on Friday, it definitely wasn't enough) and he put his arms around me. They call it spooning because you lay just like spoons, lengths and curves aligned, and Mr. Green and I were a perfect fit.

Lyrics of the Day

"I know your name, I know your skin, I know the way these things begin. But I don't know what I would give of myself, how I would live with myself if you don't go." Suzanne Vega Caramel

Back on the Horse

2009-04-24T17:43:00.000-04:00

So, after just over a month of my new single status, I went on my first date in nearly two and a half years. Mr. Green (This is based on what my coworkers are calling him. I've gotten a reputation as the office recycling-nazi and his job has to do with converting waste into fertilizer for orange groves and things. My coworkers thought this was a riot, that I would date someone who does work that is environmentally friendly.) and I talked on the phone last weekend a couple of times before figuring out that we would meet up for a drink on Monday evening.

I played it really cool on the phone and on the date itself, but I totally dorked out that evening before I left. I had to call The Sister for advice on clothing and greeting protocol. I even texted her a picture of the shirt I was thinking of wearing, so that I could get Fashion Guru approval. I aimed for something slightly better than casual, but not something that made it seem like I was trying too hard. I had forgotten what a nerve-wracking art the Date Outfit is. So we met at an ale house in a big shopping center down here. Mr. Green lives in Naples, which is about 30 miles south of Fort Myers and the shopping center was somewhere in between.

It went well. It went really well. We talked and talked and had some drinks. I found out that we are way more compatible than I had initially thought. He used to be a professional motocross rider, which is not something I even know anything about. But he's got a Real Job and has his stuff together and we talked really easily. And he's pretty adorable. He's got dark hair and almost shockingly light eyes. The contrast is really cool. He's somewhere around 6', maybe a little taller and has great hands, which is a thing with me.

We had a few drinks at the ale house and then agreed to postpone our mutually early bedtimes a bit longer by stopping over at another bar for one last drink. I broke out the old, "I've got a cat" information - which is something that is actually more of a worry than you would think. Some guys just hate cats. But Mr. Green does not. Mr. Green likes cats and didn't flinch when I mentioned mine. Score one for LB.

After the final drink, we walked to our cars. There was casual, yes-there-is-chemistry touching. And then, there were kisses. Slightly tentative, really nice, no-tongue kisses. Quite a few of them.

Lyrics of the Day

"And let our legs just run, no concept of distance. And all these rules we've learned could make no difference. There's so much to do or say without repeating... so why don't we?" Maria Taylor Lighthouse

I've Got Game

2009-04-22T09:50:00.000-04:00

Of course, there are cute guys that play in the kickball league. Initially, I just appreciated the chance to revert to my old shameless-check-out ways. But as the newness of my single status wore off, I began to realize that I could flirt again. I could bat my eyes and giggle and generally make a fool of myself. It was rather liberating.

From the beginning, there were a couple of guys on my very own team that I took notice of. One of them turned out to be married (I should be getting used to that by now, but it's still a very odd concept for me). The other seemed, as far as I could see, to be unattached. So I began to foster a little crush. I had forgotten how much fun it was to have a crush; I used to be the queen of crushes. But two years in a relationship gets a girl out of practice.

So, week before last, I show up at kickball and expect to continue my crushing. All seemed well through the game (despite the fact that we lost), but at the end of the game I was thrown a curve (ha ha, clever kickball puns). My crush had a girl with him.

I have to say, I was inordinately crestfallen at this discovery. I actually thought to myself at the time that I was way more bummed out than I should have been. But I shook it off and the girl actually ended up being pretty cool and a good sport as she joined us at the Flip Cup table.

Now, our kickball league (and I assume all kickball leagues) puts out a hilariously irreverent weekly newsletter. Previously they had noted that there was not enough hooking up going on at kickball and they intended to change that. So they put out an issue last week with pictures of league singles and a couple of (amusingly fabricated) profiles. After the game, at the bar, my crush commented indignantly that he got left out of the singles issue of the newsletter. He said, "What, just because I bring a girl to a game, everyone assumes I have a girlfriend?" And of course, that's absolutely what we all assumed.

When he set us all straight, saying that she was a nice girl but not the one for him, I realized that the door to my crush had reopened. So I flirted. I flirted blatantly, but not to the extent that I actually looked like an ass (I must be learning in my old age!).

Near the end of the evening, as I worked my way toward the door, my crush suggested that we exchange phone numbers. I agreed that we should and after we had walked out of the bar and discussed getting together sometime the following week, he planted a peck on my lips as we parted.

Lyrics of the Day

"All at once you look across a crowded room to see the way that light attaches to a girl." Counting Crows A Long December

Kickin' It

2009-04-20T11:37:00.003-04:00

For the past six weeks or so, I've actually been involved in social activity down here on the gulf coast and it has been my saving grace in my newly single state. Every Thursday night is kickball night.

I got hooked up with this through a coworker and it has been the perfect thing. It's only partially about playing kickball (yes, that same schoolyard game that most of my generation played), it's really mostly about going to the bar. Much more time is devoted to the sport of Flip Cup than is devoted to the kickball itself - fortunately for me, I seem to have a little bit of talent for both.

The coworker who introduced me to the idea of joining the kickball league ended up bailing on the activity herself, so I was thrown into a crowd of 15 or so people whom I had never met. Many of the players were separated by more than one degree and a couple were randomly assigned to the team by the league. Somehow, it ended up being a fantastic mix of really wonderful people.

Originally, PC had been a member of the team as well, but the break-up went down after the first game and I've been on my own since. My teammates were very sweet and supportive when I broke the news that PC wouldn't be returning to the team, and the social environment is so much more fun and stress-free for me now that I don't have to watch him interact in it.

(*Anyone who wants a taste of what PC was like in public should really go see "I Love You Man". The way that the Paul Rudd character behaves around the friends that he's trying to make was frighteningly reminiscent of how PC would behave. Watching it was like having an acid flashback.)

Kickball has been a great place for me to meet potential friends. I didn't really expect to meet potential dates though...

Lyrics of the Day

"I fell on the playing field, the work of an errant heel. The din of the crowd and the loud commotion went deafening silence and stopped emotion. The season was almost done, we managed it 12 to 1. So far I had known no humiliation in front of my friends and close relations." The Decemberists The Sporting Life

Right Outta My Hair

2009-04-15T14:38:00.004-04:00

This blog is about to become a PC-free space.

I'm tired of talking about it. I'm tired of letting his bullshit affect me (If anyone is a grammatical genius and can explain to me, coherently, how to know when to use affect vs. effect I would be forever grateful.), which is something that should end when a relationship ends. I'm trying to tie up loose ends so that I won't have to associate with him again until he comes to pick up his things. Aside from the self-serving wish to have it all over, I really do believe that is the best thing for both of us.

I could continue to detail the conversations that we've had (PC asking me if I had been accessing his email account and the ensuing revelations that I knew what he had done; the subsequent denials of everything except what he knew I had concrete proof of), the things that I keep finding around the house that he took without asking (like my razor blades, as if we hadn't had that argument about 8 times) or that he left undone (like the dirty coffee pot that I happened to find and clean before actual mold formed). But I'm not going to do that. Well, any more than I just did.

I'm going to do, on the page, what I've been doing in my head since he left. I'm going to move on. I almost feel guilty for disconnecting so quickly and thoroughly, but it's hard not to when I was constantly on the verge of disconnecting for most of the last year. I feel better. I feel lighter without him. I feel slightly panicked about the prospect of dating again and having to impress men again. But even that feels good.

So, next step in the process is: Research.

Lyrics of the Day

"There's one thing I want to say, so I'll be brave. You were what I wanted, I gave what I gave. I'm not sorry I met you; I'm not sorry it's over; I'm not sorry there's nothing to say. I'm not sorry there's nothing to save." Stars Your Ex-Lover Is Dead

Lie To Me

2009-04-07T13:27:00.006-04:00

I've been lied to before. The Speed Freak tried very hard to cheat on me, and he may have actually accomplished it. He never told me the truth about any of that (or much else, really). The Ex lied unintentionally (and probably more to himself than to me) when he rushed me into the semblance of a relationship without the ability to finish what he started. But I'm not sure I've ever been so violated.

I'm losing sleep over this. I really can't believe that it really happened and was happening for so long. Part of me really wishes that I had been told earlier, when everyone else knew but me, so that I wouldn't have made the mistake of those last few months. But the rest of me knows that I needed to make this mistake, learn this lesson, and do it on my own. The people that protected me were doing the right thing, even if it is painful to think about how long it was that I was the only one not in on the joke.

The problem is that now I want to obsess over this information. I was, as a wise friend put it, spied on. I was spied on by a person who swore up and down that he admired my independence and respected my privacy. I let him share my computer, trusted him with my phone, told him about the existence of this space. Because he said I could trust him.

Is there an excuse for that? For being stupid enough to believe someone when they say something to you, even when you've caught them in blatant and bold-faced lies on more than one occasion? Is that the desire to trust or just some pathetic, subconscious attempt to keep from being alone?

The truth is that I can't figure out exactly how this is making me feel. I have flashes of near-livid anger. I have long periods where I can't really conceive of the reality I'm now living in. I have moments of nauseous anxiety and moments where I want to call him and tell him exactly what I think of him and his uber-creepy activities. In the end, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to call My Husband and apologize for putting him in this situation. I'm going to, definitively, move on with my life. I'm going to get everything I possibly can that belongs to him out of my house. I'm going to change my passwords, just in case. I'm going to try to get it through my thick skull that it doesn't matter how much he lied to me anymore, so I don't need to spend my nights thinking of things he could have lied about and analyzing the likelihood that he did.

Because, in all honesty, there are probably more of those things than I will ever know or ever want to know.

Lyrics of the Day

"Why you always making me cry? Why you always making me cry? You look me in the eyes and tell me all your lies. So why you always making me cry?" Joe Purdy Why You

Trust No One

2009-04-06T15:49:00.005-04:00

I don't consider myself an optimist. I really tend toward pessimism and I anxietize about everything. But I guess that I tend to want to see and believe the best in people and it turns out that can be a dangerous game.

I feel that I should give a little background...

Last November, my family went on a trip to the Dominican Republic. A family vacation for a family that may or may not be whole for very much longer. After the vacation we went to California for Thanksgiving and I planned a weekend in LA to catch up with friends and hang some more with The Sister. I ended up spending most of that weekend with My Husband and a good friend of his, The Editor. The Sunday that I was in town, the three of us and my fam spent, literally, a full day drinking. We started at about 9:30 am for the Redskins game at the bar in LA where 'Skins fans are known to congregate and made stops at a couple more bars throughout the course of the day. I had a connection with The Editor which was flattering and surprising. In the end I ended up enjoying the attention too much and flirting with him and I upset My Husband. This is not the first time this kind of thing had happened and he didn't talk to me for a while, which I basically expected. Eventually, after a sincere apology over email, we started talking again casually. But it has gone in fits and starts and now I haven't actually talked to him in a few weeks.

My family is in Florida right now. My parents came to town for 2 weeks and they decided last week to fly The Sister down for the weekend so that we could all be together. My dad seems to be losing ground fairly quickly and we're seeing the need to spend as much time together as we can. More than once this weekend, The Sister or my parents mentioned doing things with MH, talking to him, future plans with him. I was pissed. I thought that it was completely uncool that he was still basically shutting me out but he felt like it was totally fine to still involve himself with my family. This morning, I told The Mother that I was pissed. That it bothered me that he would still insinuate himself into parts of my life but shun me personally.

Then the truth came out.

No one wanted to tell me, because they didn't want to be responsible for breaking up a relationship that I was trying to make work. No one wanted to get involved when they weren't sure that they should. But it was time I knew. I had to know.

PC had called MH. He had called because he suspected something and wanted to know what happened. He called because he had been reading my email and he saw my apology letter to MH. He called after he looked through my phone and got My Husband's number and put MH in the worst position possible. My Husband stopped talking to me to protect me from what he knew about PC. He wanted to protect me from the knowledge that PC checked my phone and my text messages and my emails. All the time. And part of me suspected things like this. Part of me thinks that he found this blog (though I still can't figure out how, if he did) and that he's been using it and everything else that I've typed to keep track of me. But I wanted to believe that he respected my privacy. I wanted to believe that I could have things that were my own. Because I can't honestly conceive of doing that to someone else. Why would you want to be with someone when you trust them so little?

Lyrics of the Day

"If she only knew, then he'd be through. But who knows which parts are true. She hates how it looks, but what can she do? The girls all talk behind her back, they say she's being used." The Good Life Notes in His Pockets

Walking Wounded

2009-03-31T11:01:00.005-04:00

There is no such thing as a good time for a break-up. I know this. But somehow right now seems like it might have been the worst possible time for me to have finally dropped the axe. Don't get me wrong - I'm way too far down this path to think about turning around to look for bread crumbs, but some days right now coming home to an empty house feels worse than coming home to the possibility of a fight.

Everything bad comes in threes, right? So maybe I should have expected all this. Okay, that sounds melodramatic and I do like to avoid melodrama when I can. But it's been a tough week or so and I'm beginning to feel worn down. The worst part is there isn't really anyone to talk to about it. That's one of the most glaring losses in the end of the relationship: the loss of PC as a constant and sympathetic ear. (The irony of this is that it actually drove me crazy that he always wanted to know everything about everything; it would feel like he was constantly grilling me and invading my privacy by asking what I did or what I talked about every minute of every day.) The problem with living across the freaking country from nearly everyone you love and hold dear is that it's impossible to keep them all up to date on daily happenings in your life.

This is the long way of saying that things have suddenly gotten harder. The job that I moved down here to take was a wonderful job when I got here. It was a good environment with entertaining coworkers and challenging professional demands. In the last 2 weeks this has all gone down the toilet. The two Fort Myers locations of my office have just merged and all the charm that existed in the other office has completely disappeared. Now, the coworker who decided to hire me and is my direct superior is actively and aggressively looking for a new job. This would leave me with the possibility of either being thrown to the administrative wolves without her here, or the possibility of having her job (and it's infinite responsibilities) shoved on me. Suddenly instead of relaxed and happy to go to work, I'm getting as close to a panic-attack as I've ever had every morning. I'm just waiting for the next explosion.

Worse, though, than any of the rest of this (worse than the break-up by far, really) is that my parents have come into town to visit. That, in and of itself, is a wonderful thing. The hard thing is that my dad's health has been getting steadily worse, no matter what he and my mom try to do about it. Almost every radical or experimental (and not covered by insurance, of course) treatment that anyone out there has ever done or heard about is being tried. They just spent 3 months with The Sister in LA trying something that was supposed to have an 80% success rate. Yet nothing has made a difference and the way things are going I'm not sure how much longer my dad is going to stay out of a wheelchair. This is what happens to me every time I haven't seem him in a little while and then I see him again - I have to realize how bad things are and re-learn how to cope with it over and over again. Every time a new treatment is started, we are all hopeful and positive, but it gets harder to do each time he continues to lose ground despite all that is tried. He weighs less than I do now and he's got more than six inches on me.

It feels like a lot. It feels like so much that I wish I had someone else to help me carry it all. PC was around for all of it. He was with me when we first figured out that my dad was really sick and my parents flew to Mayo Clinic to find out what was happening. He was there at Christmas to do things that my dad couldn't do. He was here when I started this job and here when I started having misgivings about how it was going to turn out after the two offices actually merged. He's been with me for all of it and now, he's not. Now it's me and my big, empty apartment and my silly cat.

Don't worry. Really. I'm not going to call him. I may have been pretty selfish for most of the end of the relationship, but I'm not selfish or cruel enough to think that my personal problems give me license to hurt him any more than I already have.

Lyrics of the Day

"Wide awake and he shakes in a panic, never woke up alone ever before. Had his woman long as he can remember, tries to forget but he can't, he can't." Pearl Jam Alone

Let Go

2009-03-27T09:42:00.009-04:00

After the drama was over, and tempers were more even, I stood my ground. In my eyes, we had both moved past the point of turning back.

As someone commented on the previous post, I never really conveyed the conflicts in the relationship in this forum. That was not unintentional. As much as I have used this space as a place to vent and to work things out, there are consequences to sharing everything. And that doesn't just apply to writing about it - it applies to talking to friends and family as well. If you tell your mom or your sister every time you have a fight, they're going to be a lot less likely to forgive and forget and think that you're not crazy for staying with someone when the fight is over. So I was trying not to completely poison the well here with stories of the bad times, just in case things were to turn around. But there were a lot of bad times. Too many.

Last Wednesday evening I came home from work and set to the task of convincing PC that I had meant what I said the night before. I told him that it had gotten so far past the point of resembling a healthy relationship that we both needed to walk away. Yes, it was his actions that spurred this particular timing, but it would have happened either way. That's the part that you all know about: the fact that I was unhappy and didn't see that changing. I took maybe slightly more of the blame here than I was truly responsible for, but like I said, I didn't want to talk too much smack about him. After some disbelief and denial and some attempted bargaining, we came to the agreement that he would move out by Saturday and we would do our best to end it like grown-ups.

And we did. And it almost made it harder. Did make it harder. It's so much easier to let go of something when you're angry. Then letting go and moving on feels like revenge and there's a power in that. But letting go of something that wasn't horrible all of the time, with someone who genuinely has so many great things about him: that was (is) hard. Much harder than I thought it would be.

He packed his things. He put them in storage for the time being and bought a plane ticket home to Iowa. He left me the most obvious and useful things: the couch, his TV (which is in the living room), the mattress. We rented a stupid movie and had one last dinner together on Friday night. We slept in the same bed one last time. Then, in the morning, I drove him to the airport.

We said goodbye. My heart broke more than I ever thought that it would, after all that we had been through. It was hard then, at that moment, to remember the bad times. Hard to remember why I was intentionally cutting out a piece of myself and sending it away. But I did it. Still am doing it.

Lyrics of the Day

"The last time that I saw her she was picking through which records were hers. Her clothes were packed in boxes, with some pots and pans and books and a toaster. Just then a mouse scurried across the floor… we started laughing ‘til it didn’t hurt. " The Good Life Album of the Year

Things Fall Apart

2009-03-25T09:52:00.001-04:00

So it turns out that it wasn't just me. And it wasn't just PC. It was both of us. Like baking soda and vinegar. And we homemade-volcano'd ourselves right into the end of our relationship last week.

We had a bad night. It was a bad (Tuesday) night coming on the tail of bad Friday and Saturday nights. So much fighting. A broken cell phone. Middle-of-the-night bike riding. Dwindling hopes of sleep. I may have even said that I wished he was dead, which I'm ashamed of and surprised at myself for.

Long-story-short (and I am going to make it short), things just went to hell and they went there for the last time. I stayed in a hotel room that night. The next day, I told him that it was over.

Lyrics of the Day

"So I thought hell if it's over, well I had better end it quick or I could lose all my nerve." Matchbox Twenty Rest Stop

And She Lived... Ever After

2009-03-23T09:27:00.002-04:00

Prince Charming and his white steed have left the kingdom.

I am alone in the castle now.

Lyrics of the Day

"I love you so much, it's so bizarre, a mystery that goes on and on and on. This is the best thing and the very most hard, oh, we don't get along. After countless appeals we keep spinning our wheels on this mountain of new fallen snow. So I let go of the catch and we are over the edge. You have left me nowhere to go." Shawn Colvin Shotgun Down the Avalanche

Wandering Eyes

2009-03-13T18:01:00.002-04:00

So part of the problem with my quandary over the future of my relationship with PC is becoming more and more apparent to me as I find myself settling in here in Florida. I can't help but wonder if there is someone else out there with whom things could be easier. Or at least someone with whom I could feel more compatible. Then that thought will yo-yo me back to the idea that it's really me and my intolerance for anything outside of my own comfort zone and there will never be anyone anywhere that could do everything Just-Right-Enough to make me happy. But I can't help but wonder...

I've always been a shameless check-out artist. I think it's nice to be checked out, so why shouldn't you stare brashly at the hot guy in the next car - it should flatter him. It flatters me when I'm stared at, so I figure I can return the favor. Of course, this is a habit that I've curbed somewhat since I've been with PC: out of respect and because he's way more of the jealous type than he'll admit to himself. He hates it when I talk about my actor crushes. But as The Mother always says, "Just because you're on a diet, doesn't mean you can't look at the menu". (I'm just realizing now what must be the myriad of grammatical mistakes in that sentence, but that's how she says it.)

It's not that there is a wealth of hot, single, young guys in Southern Florida. Especially not right now, when we're in what's called Season (or The Season) and all the snow-birds (translation: retired folks from northern states escaping winter) are down here clogging up the roads and filling up the Olive Garden parking lot. But my eyes do start to wander a little, mostly when I'm out alone, and sometimes the dissatisfied part of me feels just a little bit excited at the possibility of being single again one day.

Lyrics of the Day

"Untie me, I've said no vows. The train is getting way too loud. I gotta leave here my girl, get on with my lonely life, just leave the ring on the rail for the wheels to nullify." The Shins Gone For Good

My New Look

2009-03-12T15:56:00.002-04:00

I have been dragging my feet on joining Modern Times with my blog template - but today I have done it. So things are essentially the same, but the colors are more pleasing (seriously, I'm not sure how I picked something so pink in the first place). Also, you can now easily follow my blog if you're a blogger yourself.

If you're REALLY bored, you can go visit my other upstart of a blog. I'm using it to ruminate on random happenings in the world, with a bit of a focus on TV and football. If I can use my spare time to build a little sample of how great I am at ranting incoherently, it could just become something I could parlay into a legit sports or entertainment blogging project. The web is somewhat lacking in women who speak semi-intelligently about football and I would love to fill that gap. So I'm going to be working on updating it more regularly, but it probably won't become an every-day thing as I just don't really have time every day. But, like I said, if you're bored you can check it out. There's a lot less whining and sniveling about feelings on that page.

You're Not Listening

Lyrics of the Day

"Smeared black ink, your palms are sweaty, and I'm barely listening." The Postal Service The District Sleeps Alone Tonight

Wandering Mind

2009-03-11T15:59:00.007-04:00

I think that I wrote last time that I've been semi-silent because there really isn't a lot going on now that things have settled down post-move. That is mostly true. But there is another reason that I haven't been writing much and I'm going to suck it up and not be a coward about it.

I started this blog as a whim - nearly three years ago now. I thought it would just be a fun writing exercise and something to help me reflect on my dating experiences. I never really thought that anyone would read it. And I realized that the more people were reading it, the more I wanted people to read it. But then the knowledge of the people reading began to affect the writing. I went through phases of extreme self-consciousness, some misguided attempts at being "edgier", and long periods of silence. Now I am realizing that I am holding back from being completely honest because I know exactly what some people are going to think and to say about what I'm feeling and what I'm doing. But it's a little bit chickenshit of me to let that stop me from doing what I need to do here: vent a little and ruminate out-loud, as it were.

One of my girlfriends (well, not just one - many. It's starting to feel like all of them lately), LAJ, is getting married. She's running off to Scotland with her fiance next month and they'll tie the knot. She's been through her share of bad relationships and has been with guys before that she thought she might marry. So I asked her recently how she knew that this guy was one that she wanted to commit to. I don't know if I really thought there was any other answer, but the one I got was the one I expected: she just knows. She feels happy and secure and loved and accepted by him. She feels they balance each other and the relationship feels right. I mean it's the most basic stuff in the world, but stuff like that seems like such a mystery to anyone outside of it.

Here's the thing: It was easier before. It was easier back in the Ohio Days, when PC was the one causing trouble in the relationship. It was easier then for me to think that things could change and that the relationship might right itself eventually. But PC has really made a huge effort and is really beginning to have his stuff together. And he makes sincere and progressive efforts to respect my requests as far as living together (with our own belongings) goes. Occasionally there is stuff that happens and arguments that are his fault, but it's really just the normal crap.

The one thing that can't seem to change is me. Maybe I've been the problem all along. Maybe I just focused on all the other stuff that was going on to deflect the inner knowledge that I didn't fully have the desire to be in the relationship in the first place. Maybe I'm broken. Or maybe it's just not the right relationship for me. How can I know?

This is where I expect to get jumped on. I know that it seems like I'm leading PC on, or that I'm being unfair to him. The problem is that we've had that very conversation. More than once. More than 3 or 4 times. I tell him exactly all these feelings and doubts and that I can't see this lasting for the long haul and that he's going to hate me so much more if we continue to be together for another 6 or 9 months and then I still break his heart. But nothing that I say seems to change his mind. That can't be healthy, in and of itself. He truly believes that we are going to work out and that now we're here in FL things are just going to improve. He would rather give it what he says (though we've both said this before) is one last chance while we're sharing a lease and settling in. He would rather keep trying than to protect himself. But then again, I'm not sure he has really tried to envision the true end of the relationship anyway - so the idea of us breaking up (completely and finally) doesn't hit home to him.

I don't know. I don't know what to do. I do still love him. But I'm not sure I'm in love with him. That is stupidly cliche and I can't help but hate myself a little bit for typing it. I'm sure I sound like a vapid, self-absorbed, entitled bitch right now too. It's my instinct to care what people think, even if those people only know me as a figment of internet imagination. So I can have the desire to sugar-coat it for all of you, but I'm not going to lie.

Lyrics of the Day

"I don’t believe we need love to succeed, but the least you could do is pretend. Either you love me or you leave me don’t you leave me on this picket fence." The Good Life On the Picket Fence

Me

2009-02-06T19:51:00.003-05:00

There are times when I think that it's all me. All of it. The good things, the bad things, the ambivalent things. How much of the ebbs and flows of my relationship are purely due to my hormonal fluctuations and the fact that I seem unable to either control or mask them?

I haven't written this week, well, because nothing has happened. And I'm not sure that anything will happen in the near future. The excitement and adjustment of the move are over and now we're (I'm) just coasting. Just waiting to see what will happen next, if anything at all. I've thought, more than once in the five weeks that we've been here, that maybe I should go back to chronicling everything like I did in the beginning of this blog. Maybe I should put every nook and cranny out there to exercise my writing muscles and to give you a more complete picture of what every day life is like between PC and I. But then I'm just not sure that I'm ready to expose that much truth - be it ugly or pretty in the end. But what else is actually going on?

The problem is, I'm back to where I usually have been (not counting those initial excitement/lust-fueled months that PC and I were dating), which is back to not knowing a goddamn thing. I don't know if I want to get married. I don't know if I'm really ready to be settled down. I don't know if I want to (or even could bear to) have kids. I don't know if everything that I have in my life right now is enough, or if it's everything that I want.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful (which I'm not) or selfish (which I most certainly am), but there are just so many "ifs" and "buts" in my head all the time. I wrote a friend this week that I still think about all the possibilities that would be involved with meeting another guy. But I also wrote that there are so many things about PC that I don't think I would find again. And isn't the grass always greener until you're on the other side of the fence?

Lyrics of the Day

"Then it started getting dark and I trudged back to where the car was parked, no closer to any kind of truth as I must assume was the case with you." Death Cab For Cutie Bixby Canyon Bridge

Addendum

2009-01-23T22:03:00.004-05:00

I feel like I am not done writing yet.

There is a Danger in my brain. It's not just the half-bottle of wine speaking (that's a normal night for me, wait until I finish the other half), it's a Thing that bubbles in my neurons and I don't feel like I can control it all the time. I hardly ever control it. I think that it mostly It controls me.

Maybe it's just the Loneliness.

I hope so.

Lyrics of the Day

"So why do I get so lonely, when there really ain't nothing wrong. Cause I can sleep just fine when you hold me, can't sleep at all when you're gone. And why do I stay out drinking, when I should just get back home? I guess the company of strangers is better than drinking alone." Joe Purdy Why Do I

Starting Over

2009-01-23T21:25:00.004-05:00

Well, it took almost three weeks exactly, but it's come to this: I've gotten lonely.

I forgot what this was like. I remember, intellectually, that it took me more than two years to really start finding true and valuable friendships in Los Angeles. But emotionally, being here and knowing that I'm not just in and out in three months or so - it's more of a struggle than I was really anticipating.

I've been on my own almost every night this week, with PC working, and mostly I prefer it that way. I can come home and unwind, decompress and do my own thing. But I'm feeling more and more each night that weighty fact that I don't have my own friends here. I don't know anyone really, outside of my new coworkers. And don't get me wrong, my new coworkers are surprisingly cool and I know that we will hang out, but the lack of a friend or core group of friends is becoming apparent.

After all of this, this search for love and companionship, I'm in a relationship and I find myself longing for the thing that I've always had and occasionally took for granted: friends.

Is there some way to internet date for friends?

Lyrics of the Day

"You've got a new friend. Likes to go movies, likes to drink red wine. A film school drunk can be so hard to find." The Good Life A New Friend

Changes

2009-01-08T21:59:00.003-05:00

I've been absent, and during this time, so much has happened.

I've finally done what many of you have been suggesting - you not knowing exactly what I was doing career-wise and why I was doing it. The traveling job gig was good, but in November I saw an online posting for a permanent job that seemed too good to pass up, so I sent my resume in.

Long-story short I interviewed for, and accepted a permanent job in southwest Florida (where it's WARM). Last weekend, after a nearly-3000 mile trek from Montana, PC and I arrived in Fort Myers, Florida to put down some roots and really see how things will be.

Pertaining to my last post: I think that I was displacing feelings. It's very difficult for me to compartmentalize completely and I tend to take just about everything out on whoever is around me at the time. Unluckily for PC, he's always there and is an easy target for my negative emotions. Though I'm still not sure how (or if) things will go for us, I'm now more conscious of where my feelings are coming from and try to check myself when I'm being unnecessarily negative. This is not to say that I'm completely sure about us now, but I'm now being more realistic and I'm willing to see how it plays out from here.

As you know, we have not really had a chance to test the relationship in any normal-life situation. Beyond the usual relationship trials and tribulations, we've had innumerable outside stresses that have made things tougher than they probably would have been had we met when we were both in stable situations. And it is entirely possible that I am off-base and that things will still be just as difficult and as much of a struggle now that we're going to be settled for the foreseeable future. But maybe not. Maybe this stability will show me (and us) that we really do want to be together and that we can do it realistically in a real-life setting.

So now we're in a wait and see situation. We are settling (as of last Saturday) into this beautiful place, with amazing weather (there's a cold-front moving through - it may get down to 50 degrees! And that's COLD for SW FL.), and great people so far. I'm liking my new job, PC has a job or 3 so far and it's ridiculously cheap to live down here. I'm hoping that I like it enough to look into buying a house toward the end of this year (while the market is still tanked) and we're going to take this time to see how the relationship is really going to play out. I can't lie. I can't tell you that I'm sure that it will go either way. But for now, things are pretty good and I'm willing to give it a bit longer to feel sure that I know which way it should go.

Lyrics of the Day

"Well she tapped me on the shoulder, she said, "Lets go inside, 'cause I've been looking all day long for someplace good to hide. We can ride it out, we can ride it downtown." Joe Purdy Cinderella and the A-Train

Of Death and Dying

2008-11-10T19:44:00.004-05:00

Tonight it just occurred to me that I might not be as in-control of my own thoughts and emotions as I think I am. Once again I, horribly ashamed of myself, am watching Grey's Anatomy and crying for little to no reason. And I'm thinking how I've got to find a way to break up with PC and make him understand the reason and then I sort of have a realization.

What if all this stuff that is going on with my dad is changing the way that my brain is trying to process my relationship?

Things have been pretty good. Especially in comparison to how they were in Ohio, things have been quite good. PC is pulling his own weight financially and giving me more space (he's actually out right now, allowing me to cry and watch Grey's and write) and we're hardly ever fighting. And yet, I'm apathetic. I look at him and I know that I have feelings for him and I still feel like being with him is more of a burden than being without him. It's not fair. It's horribly unfair and yet I know that I'm doing it and I keep doing it.

We even talked about it. I told him how I'm feeling and how it's not fair. Somehow he doesn't agree. Somehow he thinks that this will pass and that we will work out.

Inside of me, I know this isn't true.

But what if I'm wrong? My father is dying - however slowly it's happening - and it's almost harder to watch what it's doing to my mom than it is to watch what's happening to him. She has to be strong and be the rock and still know that the man she's spent nearly 35 years with is going to be gone. How can anyone want to commit to that? How could I really want to commit my life to someone when this is how it turns out?

I don't know. I don't know what's behind my feelings. I don't know if they will resolve or change or whether I'll keep coasting until I realize that's all I'm doing.

Lyrics of the Day

"It's all the good that won't come out of me and all the stupid lies I hide behind. It's such a big mistake, lying here in your warm embrace." Rilo Kiley The Good That Won't Come Out

Play It Again, Sam

2008-09-09T19:27:00.003-04:00

So, I know that I may incur some wrath from y'all faithful readers, but I did finally come to a decision where PC is concerned.

I'm just not ready to give up quite yet.

We have been apart, both as a couple and geographically, for a month now. During this time, it does seem that things have started to head in the right direction. PC knows what he needs to do now: make an effort to give me space and turn to other people in his life for some of his emotional needs and pull his own weight financially. He's spent the last month on a ranch in South Dakota, helping some distant cousins prepare the ranch for pheasant season. He's been making money, giving me space and has had a lot of time to think about how things went wrong. And I have done the same.

I've got a new job, back in Baltimore where I was last summer but at a different location. I'm leaving tomorrow to head out there for just a quick 9 week gig. In the last week since learning that I had the job, I thought a ton about what I wanted to do concerning PC; I realized that I do want to give it one more chance. I don't want to put myself in a position to regret not seeing if it could work out under different circumstances. I don't want to wake up one day and think, "Maybe PC really was the guy for me and I let it go too soon."

I don't know. I can't be sure that this is the right decision or that it will work out. But I will say that I'm optimistic, which is a big change from how I was feeling when I broke up with him. If, by chance, it doesn't work out, then I think that I will be able to be satisfied with the fact that we both gave it all we could and it just wasn't what was supposed to be.

Lyrics of the Day

"She swears she hears the phone but she only gets the dial tone, so she imagines what she'd say, 'If you feel like coming home to me, sometime. Yeah if you feel like coming home to me anytime; I'll be waiting at the door, there's nothing to be sorry for." The Good Life You Don't Feel Like Home to Me

Losses

2008-08-30T21:00:00.000-04:00

I've been writing. I've been starting and stopping and erasing what I've written. There is some hole in me that I've tried to fill with rational thought and questions about the right thing to do; the hole swallows these things and grows.

I've been thinking of loss. Of the losses that have been and of those still to come. The losses that I have control over and those that are coming no matter how hard I rage and struggle against them.

How often does one meet another person that really loves them for who they are? How many chances do we get at these things that seem so monumental and so small all at the same time?

Lyrics of the Day

"And I filled the emptiness and the pain inside with a whiskey and a woman's touch, and that's as good as love." Joe Purdy Meteor City

Decisions, Decisions

2008-08-19T23:00:00.001-04:00

I have been practicing avoidance. Avoiding telephone calls, avoiding conversations, avoiding this blog. There is too much that has been happening that I just don’t want to talk about. I’m not even sure that I can really talk here and now.

For the moment, I’m going to skip my family life and go back to what the purpose of this blog was in the first place: My Love Life.

Or lack there-of.

I guess that it’s time that I tell y’all what’s been going on with PC.

*Deep breath*

*Big sigh*

I broke up with PC.

Technically.

But I guess that there’s still a part of me that’s undecided. I don’t know if it’s the part of me that has gotten used to not being alone (how quickly this happens), or if it’s the part of me that loves him, or if it’s the part of me that fears any and all kinds of change. But I’m not sure whether or not that part of me that is hesitant can override that part of me that was just suffocated by his neediness for so long. That’s what finally did it – the suffocation, the neediness.

My family situation at the moment is a lot to handle. Not only am I having to handle it myself, but I have to be here to be strong and to support the rest of my family; having to be the only emotional outlet for PC at the same time just proved to be too much for me to deal with. I had thought, when PC and I decided to spend a week and a half apart after leaving Columbus, that I would have time to think about our relationship and how difficult things had been and whether or not it was worth continuing. Absence really did seem to make the heart grow fonder, as I started to feel myself missing him as it approached a week of being apart. Then he came to meet me in Montana and attend a friend’s wedding and everything that had been plaguing our relationship just rose straight to the surface and bubbled over during the five days that he was here. I was even considering giving it more time (I was having this High Fidelity idea that maybe a break-up would be too much stress for me to deal with in a time already brimming with stress) until he just pushed and pushed and proved to me that being with him is more stressful than being without him. And I broke it off.

Almost the minute PC left, he says, he started to really realize what it is that he needs to do to make the relationship work. Ignoring , of course, the fact that he’s told me almost the exact same thing three or four or five other times. Ignoring, of course, that I’ve given him chance after chance after chance to understand what kind of relationship I wanted – that I thought in the beginning that we both wanted. I am, and always have been, an independent person. Only-child-independent. I need space, I need a man that has his own friends and his own life and won’t begrudge me mine. I just don’t have faith that these are things that PC could ever give me.

But he’s begging. He wants so badly to have a chance to show me that he can do it. I know that it would be best for me to be strong and to stand firm with my decision. But can I?

Lyrics of the Day

"So when you ask 'Is something wrong?' I think 'You're damn right there is but we can't talk about it now. No, we can't talk about it now.' So one last touch and then you'll go, and we'll pretend that it meant something so much more." Death Cab for Cutie Tiny Vessels

Space is Not Just a Place for Stars

2008-07-09T18:45:00.003-04:00

I guess that I've come to a sort of conclusion. Unfortunately, the conclusion is that I cannot come to a conclusion.

As a couple of you commented, maybe space is what I need. I actually know that it's what I need (and something that has been in terrifyingly short supply over the last 6 months or so), and I'm coming to a decision about how to get it.

PC and I are leaving Ohio on Saturday, July 26. There will then be 3 or 4 weeks until I am to start a new job in another city, which I will be spending in Montana with my family. During this time, PC and I are negotiating a way to spend some significant time apart. I'm hoping for two weeks to process and get a chance to get some perspective.

Maybe I sound foolish, but I feel like I can't fully make an informed and rational decision on the future of this relationship (or lack thereof), without getting a chance to truly reflect on my own thoughts and feelings. I just can't get that with PC giving me puppy dog eyes and insisting that we're perfect for each other every moment of every day. He means well, but he just doesn't know how to drop it.

So there's limbo right now. Waiting and seeing.

Lyrics of the Day

"I'm starting to feel we stay together out of fear of dying alone." Death Cab For Cutie You Can Do Better Than Me

* Special thanks to Chris for the link to the Gibbard song - and a Death Cab lyric today as a bit of an ode!

Ugly Update

2008-07-02T20:18:00.003-04:00

I'm not sure that now is the time to write, but I feel the need to reach out and it's getting to a point where it's now or never.

I disappeared because my grandfather died. My grandfather was an amazing man and the ever-present and dearly-loved patriarch of my family. He was 87 years old and we never really believed that anything could beat him, but nature eventually did. This was a much harder thing for me to digest than I really ever wanted to admit that it would be. Even now I'm crying. It's just not something that I will ever be ready for, even though it's over and done. My dad is also sick. He's been tentatively diagnosed with a disease that is progressive and eventually fatal. Only 50% of people diagnosed with this disease survive 3 years after diagnosis. My dad has always been invincible to me (to everyone else and himself as well) and this is something that I still can't truly digest most days. I've been with him recently and I've seen the changes and I know that it's true - but I still can't believe it.

The worst thing is that in the middle of all of this my relationship, and the smoldering rubble that is has become, has been more of a focus of my waking thoughts than my family. That mere fact makes me so angry and has spurred more than one long, middle-of-the-night fight. The money troubles never cleared up. PC tried, sort of, and the money trickled in. Of course, while it was trickling in, I was still paying for the groceries and the nights out and the cell phone bill (not to mention that the rent is part of my compensation). There were things that PC could have done to change the situation that he was in (or that we were in), but he didn't (wouldn't). Instead of addressing the problems and improving the situation, he clung to me. He suffocated me. He depended completely on me.

There were times that it seemed like things were looking up, or like it was going to be okay, but I think that I was just ignoring my own feelings and ignoring the problems as much as PC was. But it gets exhausting to be so miserable all of the time. Last time I posted, I was trying to blame some of it on my job. And some of it was that - but more of it was him. I should have gotten the warning signs earlier when I would leave work feeling alright, but do a 180 after getting into the car with PC. Then, somewhere in the last two weeks, everything went to hell.

Part of me wants to write that I'm sure it was my fault, because I have been picking fights at least once or twice a week, but then I think that I've been picking the fights because I've been so unhappy and because he always swore that things were going to change and still nothing has. And that's the crux of the matter - it's not the situation (the broke-ness, the money struggles) that is the true problem - it's how PC has handled it. He's procrastinated, he's made excuses for himself and for everyone involved in his difficulty making and getting money, he's allowed himself to be walked on - all the while allowing me to pick up the slack but still expecting me to feel that we are on equal footing. The purpose (aside from accommodating my schedule) of staying in Ohio for so long was so that we (he) could catch up and start fresh and try a life together and that purpose has not been fulfilled by any stretch of the imagination. We're almost exactly where we were 4 months ago when I was less than a centimeter from breaking up with him. Truth be told, I would have broken up with him by now if it wasn't for the fact that we're stuck in Ohio with one car and it's almost more difficult to get rid of him than it is to stay with him.

He promised me when we were in Montana that things were going to change. He promised me on the drive out here that things were going to change. He promised me 3 months ago when I was extending my job here that things were going to change. And here I am months later, feeling cheated of my own security and aspirations, being asked to believe him as he promises me that this time things are going to change. What evidence do I have to help me to believe that this is even a possibility?

This is the hard part. This is what I don't want to admit, but I have to if I want to receive any feedback at all that could be helpful to me. I have these feelings now, and they're involuntary. I don't want to kiss him. I don't want to be affectionate. I don't want to have sex. I don't want to be close or intimate or cuddle at night. When he tells me he loves me (as he assures and reminds me twenty times a day, as if that could change the past), I can't say it back. I say, "I know. Have a good night at work." I say, "I know. I'll call you at lunch." I say, "I know. It doesn't change anything." I say, "I know, but it's not enough."

It isn't. In a perfect world, love would be enough. But it's not. You have to live with someone, you have to be able to make a life, and how can you do that when only one person is living and the other is behaving like an emotional parasite.

Part of me thinks about the other kinds of guys that I could be with, the other types of relationships that I could have. Part of me never wants to be in another relationship - ever. Part of me can't really see leaving him. Part of me wants to believe that it could work out, even though most of me can't imagine that it will.

I remember once relating some of the story of The Ex to a co-worker. At the time the wounds were still a little raw (though it may have been a full year after the catastrophe, which is freakin' pathetic), and it was tough for me to talk about how I had felt he had started to back away from me and treat me poorly because he couldn't handle the idea of having real feelings for someone (after having been cheated on by the love of his life). My co-worker asked how he treated me like crap - did he hit me? Did he cheat on me? And at the time I almost felt like my hurt feelings didn't mean much, since he wasn't actually abusive or anything. Even though he did manage to rip my heart out and step on it as he walked away.

No, PC did not cheat on me. No he didn't hit me. No, he didn't actually steal money from me or wreck my car or gamble the rent check away. But I've been so unhappy for so long that I can't just say, "Well this is just part of being in a relationship." Because it shouldn't be. At least not this far in. We haven't even been together for a year and a half. PC abused my trust and my good intentions and my willingness to give him chance after chance to make things right.

So do I give him one more chance? Or do I drop him off on my way back home in three and a half weeks and start over?

Lyrics of the Day

"Some things don't work out like they should. Bang my head against your walls, but it ain't no good. 'Cause I'm screamin' at you, but you're screamin' at me, 'bout what I think you should do or how you wish I could be. 'Bout what I think you should do or how you wish I could be." Joe Purdy Some Things Don't Work Out

Disappearing Act

2008-05-08T18:14:00.004-04:00

I'm afraid that I may disappear again for a short while, but I'm hoping to gain brownie points for my effort in warning you.

There's a lot going on in my private life right now, and I'm going to be dealing with family issues for the next couple of weeks. As wrong as it may be, my relationship and it's minor dramas are not at the top of my list of things to focus on right now.

I will probably be more forthcoming when I reappear, but right now the nerves are too raw. We're all lucky that teardrops don't smear typed words.

Lyrics of the Day

"Regretfully, I guess I've got three simple things to say: why me? Why this now? Why this way?" Ani DiFranco Grey

It Figures

2008-04-25T22:16:00.002-04:00

So I think that I've figured something out. It's not much, but it explains a little bit. This job that I have, here in Columbus, it's unlike the jobs that I usually have. It's a start-up. It's rough and not well organized. The boundaries are ill-defined and I'm the only person that really knows everything that it entails. So at the end of every week, I sort of feel like I want to die. I'm so exhausted and worn out from fighting the adversity and the system that I come home and am barely able to pull myself off of the couch to climb into bed. And every Friday night I seem to find myself in a new pit of despair for some reason or another. Maybe it's the job as much as it's the Relationship.

Can I really do this for 13 more weeks?

Lyrics of the Day

"Dorothy wake up. Dorothy wake up. Dorothy wake up, it's time for work." Cursive Dorothy at Forty

On the Edge

2008-04-21T15:00:00.001-04:00

So, I let things go. I let them simmer. It was a mistake, but a mistake that I didn't really know that I was making. I thought that things were getting better for a little while. And then I started noticing.

Noticing that (although I don't really like my job here) I could be in a perfectly mild mood when leaving work and as soon as I got into the car with PC (the car that we share, since we came here together and it's more cost-effective - please infuse the previous statement with a bit of bitterness since it's just one more way in which I have felt that I have nothing of my own anymore), I'm immediately on edge. I started noticing that I didn't really want to be physically affectionate with PC and that I would sometimes cringe or shiver inwardly when he would touch and hug and kiss me. I found myself becoming ever more short-tempered with small, stupid things. The fact that PC has turned the cup-holders in my car into his personal garbage/pen/change depository, making it nearly impossible for me to put cups into them. The fact that when he cleans he will pick up almost everything in the house, but he won't touch the dishes. In my (admittedly slovenly) world, the dishes are the really important thing - since you know, they rot. I know that these things are nit-picky and they are really just the tip of the iceberg with me - but it's what's behind my short-temper that triggered all of this. It started adding up. And then, The Dream.

Then, The Sister calls and she's seeing a new guy who is "perfect" and "amazing" and she's head-over-heels. And I'm happy for her, but more than that, I'm envious. I start thinking that I could meet someone who would be better for me. I could meet someone that wasn't so much work.

Hate me please, for what I'm saying. I hate myself.

I still don't realize, at that point, how much it's all bothering me. I think it's just a low mood point, because those aren't abnormal for me. And then I talk to SJP the other night. And she asks me when the hell I'm coming to LA to visit. And I realize that that is the only thing in the entire world that I truly want right now. To go to LA. To see my people. And I start looking at flights for Memorial Day weekend and I find one and I realize: I don't want PC to go with me. And it's not just because I don't have the funds to pay for his plane ticket too - it's because I want some time to myself, some time with my friends and The Sister and I want that time without PC.

After this realization, it's all a snowball. I talk to Red about how things are and she says to me, "You haven't been happy for a while now" and I know that she's right. I think very hard about calling my best friend from high school, because she was in a long-term, marriage-destined relationship with a really great guy and she just couldn't go through with it and I start wanting to pick her brain about how she dealt with leaving him. I start thinking about how much easier it would be if I was here alone. Or if I were to be alone on my next job. I start thinking about how all I've ever wanted in my whole life is to have a house and how I'm paying off almost half of a down payment in credit card debt because I've been supporting us both in one way or another for almost a year now.

And through all of this, I know how awful I am. I know that PC deserves so much more, and I've told him this before. I've said it over and over in fights and I said it again when I broke down on Friday and told him how I've been feeling. Red told me, quite correctly, that it wasn't fair to hold it in to the breaking point without letting PC know what was going on in my head. Even if it was risking causing him more heartache than I already have (which is saying something). Sometimes I really, truly believe that he deserves better and more. Sometimes I am convinced that there is someone out there that would really appreciate the emotional side of him that makes my skin crawl when I'm on edge. Sometimes I really think that we would both be happier if we were apart.

But he assures me differently. PC swears that he just hasn't "been being himself" and that he's not this needy, over-bearing person and that he doesn't want to continue that way. He swears that if I give him just a little longer, we will be happy again. And he may be right. And as Anonymous commented on my last post, I do owe it to him to give him that time and that chance.

I have 14 weeks left now on my renewed contract in Columbus. So that's what we have. 14 weeks to assess and adjust and see if it will all work out.

Lyrics of the Day

"I'm sorry if I made you want to cry. You should know, I never meant to hide, I just hate bringing you down." Joe Purdy Can't Get It Right Today

"I know, it seems like I should say oh, oh well, as long as this is love. It's not all that easy." Counting Crows Anna Begins [Live]

The Castle Crumbles

2008-04-19T20:38:00.008-04:00

I think that I've been doing the same thing to you guys that I've been doing to myself and worse, to PC. I've been pretending. I've been coasting. I've been complacent about my own feelings.

I'm beginning to feel that my personality is diametrically opposed to PC's. I got so caught up in all of this - in the thought of having found someone to be with - that I forgot what I wanted and who I was and I allowed so much to happen that I never intended. I, of course, allowed the money thing (which is so insanely out of character). But there's more. I became one of Those People. Maybe not the worst case That Person. I didn't abandon my life and my friends entirely, but I did become a type of That Person. It has been more than 6 months since I have spent any quality time with anyone in my life alone - without PC. It's a way of living and acting that I have never ever wanted and yet, it's something that I've done repeatedly. I let myself get drawn into a completely emotionally co-dependent relationship. Even after talks and appeals and pleas for PC to talk more to his friends and family (even at the risk of having him talk negatively about me), he still almost always bottles anything up that he's not talking to me about.

I'm just not sure, in all of this writing (though I do know that it's been much more abbreviated since I met PC), that I've ever tried to describe how PC is, or how the relationship has been. I could spend an hour reading back over my own self-indulgent rambling right now, but I'm in no mood to deal with myself.

PC is the most giving person that I have ever met. He's genuinely uncomfortable with receiving and is quite happy to cook all the meals, give all the massages and conform to all my quirks. But it's to a degree that has long-since ceased to be endearing. I'm an independent (you can translate to "cold" or "unavailable" at times if you would like) person and I can't actually stand to have someone running behind me making sure that I'm happy and comfortable and relaxed at all times. Sometimes I want to eat potato chips for dinner. Sometimes I want to lay on the couch and let the house be a mess and watch crappy television and not have to think about what might make me happier at any given moment. If this sounds terribly ungrateful, then I'm probably describing it correctly. For every thing that drives me more and more crazy about this relationship, I blame it on myself as much as I want to blame it on PC.

PC has a theory that he is incredibly good at reading people and making them comfortable. And to a degree, he's right. He is very good with people and can generally have a conversation with just about anyone. But the thing is, he gets too familiar too quickly. It's so hard to explain, and it's harder to explain why it makes me so horrifyingly uncomfortable. But he takes liberties. He touches people without invitation. He gives people nicknames (like calling a "Jim" "Jimbo" or calling a "Patrick" "P-Dog") without invitation or permission or even getting to know them first. And I'm not saying that I handle things any better, it's just that I'm generally an over-cautious and overly considerate person and it freaks me out. I do appreciate that he can get along with people and it's a lot of what makes him so good at being in the service industry, but he just goes too far too fast a lot of the time.

The thing that is the hardest, the thing that has brought me to where I am now, which is at a place where I would break up with PC if I hadn't brought him to Ohio and if I didn't feel like I probably owe him a bit more time, is that he is just so needy. I thought that it would end once we moved in together. In San Francisco, he would leave my house on a Monday morning, call me 3 times on his way home, talk to me at my lunchtime, talk to me when I got off of work and then call me 2 or 3 or 4 more times from work in the evening. It got to the point where I was snapping and becoming upset because I just needed a little down-time after a long day at work and a long weekend of togetherness. And he would back off. A little. For a little while. But I really thought that it would change.

But it didn't.

He's been slowly smothering me. Constantly touching and calling and texting me. Always asking me if I'm fine or what's new, like there was anything in the entire universe that he didn't know already. And I know exactly how I sound right now. I sound awful. There are probably a million women that would give anything for a sensitive, communicative, giving man. The problem is that I'm not one of them. I would give anything for someone who would occasionally share his feelings or thoughts; would walk away when I'm angry and let me regroup, instead of insisting on talking and talking until nothing being said makes any sense anymore. I'm exhausted by this relationship.

About a month ago, about the time that I starting writing here again in earnest (just like that friend that disappears in a relationship but comes crawling back when it ends or isn't going well), PC and I had a blow-up. As I said then, it seemed to be mostly about the money. Maybe. Or maybe it was just the simplest thing to focus my frustration on at that moment. And when he promised that things would improve and I lost the initial feelings of utter desperation, I just sort of let things start to slide. I just fell into the routine of life and ignored what was going on inside of me.

Last week, I had a dream. In this dream, The Ex suddenly appeared in a helicopter (having obtained his pilot's license - not altogether insane since he was an Air Force Reservist and last I truly heard of him he was being deployed to the Middle East) and he came for me and told me that he had made a terrible mistake in leaving me and that he would do anything that he could to win me back. In my dream, I actually thought out the process of breaking this to PC and I went with The Ex. I was ecstatically happy.

I woke up and I nearly sobbed.

Lyrics of the Day

"Well I tried to make it Sunday, but I got so damn depressed that I set my sights on Monday and I got myself undressed. I ain't ready for the alter, but I do agree there's times when a woman sure can be a friend of mine." America Sister Golden Hair

"I think I'll go out and embarrass myself by getting drunk and falling down in the street. You say I choose sadness that it never once has chosen me... maybe you're right." Rilo Kiley That Good That Won't Come Out

More Internet Dating?

2008-04-15T19:55:00.001-04:00

I couldn't make this up if I wanted to. Really. I was watching TV tonight and I saw a commercial for this dating website:

Farmers Only

I am seriously considering leaving Prince Charming just to try my luck with some good ol' country boys. Really, because I'm from Montana. And I know:

City folks just don't get it!

P.S. Now we (and I mean myself, Prince Charming and all of you[!!]) get 10 More Weeks!! in Ohio. My employer thankfully (or regretfully, depending on your perspective - or which minute of the day you ask me) agreed to extend my contract for the extra 10 weeks that I was hoping for. That keeps PC and me in Columbus until July 25, allowing us continuity of work to hopefully (finally) catch up on the finances.

And allowing me more time to meet some nice country folks.

Lyrics of the Day

"The mid-west farmers daughters really make you feel alright. And the northern girls with the way they kiss, they keep their boyfriends warm at night." The Beach Boys California Girls

One Year Later

2008-04-09T15:01:00.003-04:00

One year ago, yesterday, Prince Charming and I decided (based on 3 insane days of spending any waking moment together) to begin a relationship. It was at about 5am, in the car from his apartment on the way to meet The Mother so that I could drive to Montana, and I remember being so nervous that I was nearly stuttering. I knew that I wanted to bring up something, that I couldn't just let those last 3 days be the beginning and the end of our interaction, but I had no idea what I was getting into. I had no idea that I would be losing my Single Status, gaining a Boyfriend and changing the direction of my life forever. Also, the direction of this blog...

So here we are, a year later. I'm not sure that the enormity of that length of time really makes sense in my brain. I don't really know where it's going to go from here either. Things have been better, though there have been set-backs and it seems impossible to avoid the occasional squabble. I've been caught between a rock and a hard place here in Ohio: my schedule is such that the best thing would be for us to stay here until the end of July, but I'm not sure that my current employer wants to spend the funds to keep me here (paying for a traveling employee is much more expensive than paying for a permanent one), and in reality, Ohio just really isn't my place. But it seems more likely today, after getting a very kind review from a higher-up, that we will be staying here in Columbus for the summer. So although the finances are still struggling to catch up and things are moving very slowly, it will help both PC and I to stay here and have continuity of jobs and paychecks. He's trying, he really is, it's just hard to predict your income as a server/bartender (which is what he is, if I've never mentioned that before).

So last night we went out for an anniversary dinner and had a nice time. We'll probably do a little more celebrating this weekend, when it's not a school night. Oh yeah, and I'm also for some reason determined that we're going to run a half-marathon (AGAIN) on Saturday. Mostly because it's here, so I feel like I should run it. Does that make sense? Nope. But I'm low on making sense a lot of the time these days.

Lyrics of the Day

"Why, why some people break up then turn around and make up, I just can't see. You'd never do that to me, would you, baby?" Al Green Let's Stay Together

Cutting Slack

2008-03-27T14:02:00.003-04:00

Things are still on the better side of where they were, though the financial stress just isn't abating quickly enough for my obsessive brain. But finally opening up and talking to people about it has really made a world of difference. In all of my panic, I did manage to lose sight of a few things: PC really did intend to eventually become a contributing financial member of the relationship, paying off my bills would be a bit easier now that PC and I are living together because there isn't the expense of commuting for the relationship, and much of what got us into the financial situation that we are in came from Prince Charming prioritizing the relationship over making more money. SJP pointed this out to me in a long-overdue phone conversation last week. She said that she didn't think he ever intended to live off of me (and certainly not for so long) but that he had decided that love was more important than anything else; he was taking that leap of spending time with me instead of working and moving away with me to start over rather than building up savings, making enough money to pay all of his bills, etc. Non-romantic loser that I am, I would never have made that same decision, but I should have cut him more slack for doing so.

So that's where we are. I still have doubts. But to be honest, there wasn't much of a time when I didn't. There was a lot of time when I pretended (even to myself) that I didn't because I wanted so badly to match Prince Charming's enthusiasm and certainty, but I realize now that that is an unrealistic expectation of myself. I need to feel certain (or not to) in my own time. So I'm being patient, which is something very hard for me. But I was tired of fighting and tired of making myself miserable. It's just not worth it. But as I said a bit ago, I also feel like I finally made all of the points that I needed to make so I don't need to be constantly harping on the things that I'm still stressed about.

Lyrics of the Day

"Things are good we should take a Polaroid, a memento, before the moment's destroyed." The Good Life On the Picket Fence

Middle America

2008-03-22T09:48:00.001-04:00

By the way, I'm in Ohio now. And really, I mean no offense if anyone out there who has an undying love of Ohio, but I won't be sad when I leave here. I guess I just had no idea what the mid-west was really like, and how different it is than the coasts.

When it snows more than 2 inches or so here, they close all of the schools. I've been in Columbus for 5 weeks now and I think there have been almost two weeks worth of snow days. If it's foggy, they delay school. If it's rainy, they let school out early. Why aren't I a teacher?? In Montana, it can be 40 degrees below zero and blizzarding and you dang-well better get yourself to school. The difference is that you don't have to stay on the playground until class starts, you can go inside.

I work with a young man who seems very cool and modern and "normal" by the standards of a girl who spent the most significant part of her adult life in LA. Last Monday he came into work and told a story about his weekend that involved taking apart a tractor and putting it back together. Cuz, you know, they just do that in Ohio.

They are so crazy about college football here, I've heard that every Saturday during football season, the town basically shuts down to watch the game. Even now, in the off-season (it is basketball season, but OSU did not make it into the NCAA tournament), you can't walk out your door without seeing whole families dressed in Ohio State shirts, jackets, pants, hats. It's like its own religion.

But here's the biggest travesty about Ohio: Two-Buck Chuck costs more than $3 a bottle.

Lyrics of the Day

"Somewhere in the middle of America, get right to the heart of matters, it's the heart that matters more. I think you'd better turn your ticket in, get your money back at the door." Omaha Counting Crows

Progress

2008-03-21T19:24:00.003-04:00

Today I am feeling slightly less pessimistic and vindictive than I have been recently. I think that I have been typing a lot more with my emotions here lately than with any kind of objective eye. Not to say that it isn't within my right to do that (it's my damn blog after all!), but I think it has definitely made me more on the vague side when it comes to describing the actual events. This is one of the many reasons that I resisted writing for so long - I wasn't sure I should air my dirty laundry and if I did I wasn't sure I would do it in any satisfying way. But I think it is helping to share and it is helping to gain a little perspective, because obviously this is not the end of the world.

Yes, Prince Charming does now have a job. He actually has two, and between the two he is working somewhere in the neighborhood of full-time. Even though I doubted it in many of the darkest times, PC did not intend to live off of me forever. But he did take advantage to a certain point and he did handle the situation very poorly in Montana. I struggle so much with the debate of whether to try to prove myself rational by vilifying PC or whether to just drop it because at this point, things do seem like they have started to change (albeit, slowly) and they are on the way to a place where I can judge the situation from a more objective standpoint.

The bottom line is this: I'm still not happy, but I'm no longer catastrophically upset every other day. I think that things may continue to improve, but I'm still having a hard time feeling normal and feeling the same affection and desire for him that I did before. There were enough white lies told while he was upset and apathetic in Montana that I still have a hard time trusting everything that he says. And I know that is a red flag and I've told him this. I've told him everything so many times. Part of my frustration that I didn't feel like I was being heard, but after another terrible fight last weekend, I think I may finally feel that. So it's been helping...

I want to thank everyone for reading and offering such compassion. Whether things work out or not, and whether you think I'm nuts or not, it's nice to have an ear or two.

Lyrics of the Day

"We trade tit for tat, yeah that for this, and I don't think that there was an insult that was missed. I can see it in your eyes like I taste your lips and I'm very sorry." Little Motel Modest Mouse

Resentment

2008-03-14T22:00:00.004-04:00

So maybe now I am asking for advice. Maybe I do need some help, if I am to truly make a decision that is more than reactionary.

Can resentment be overcome?

Having been shouldering the financial burden of the relationship for so long (and anyone who knows me knows that I am more than slightly uptight when it comes to money), I can hardly feel anything besides resentment when I look at PC now. I just see how hard things are for me (however selfish that viewpoint is), and how long it's going to be before I can dig myself out and all of the other places that I had intended for all this money to go. Paying off student loans. Paying off my car. Saving for a house. Now I'm just paying off credit card debt.

It's partially my fault that it came to this. I allowed it to happen. It started small, but it grew and gained momentum until it was no longer under my control. But he allowed it to happen too. And he has delayed and made promises and never followed through.

I don't know where to blame him and where to blame myself anymore. But here's the really difficult truth: I do not like who I am with him. I have become someone that I barely recognize, and I'm that person far too often now.

Lyrics of the Day

"Still to come, the worst part and you know it. There is a numbness in your heart and it's growing." The Shins A Comet Appears

Owning Up

2008-03-13T18:09:00.002-04:00

I have never been very good at expressing my feelings. I have always jokingly referred to myself as a man or a guy, because there are ways in which I am not the typical girl. But I didn't realize how much that would affect a relationship, or what it would do to the dynamics of a relationship that I would choose.

I may not be the most traditional of girls, but I never meant to find myself completely out of my traditional gender role. I hoped for a relationship on equal footing - for shared feelings and chores and responsibilities. But somehow, I have found myself in a relationship in which I have come to feel like I shoulder all of it.

Somewhere along the way, things that I thought to be temporary snowballed out of control and became a weight that I can no longer lift. I became responsible for being responsible in every situation that PC and I have been in and are in and I wasn't built to live like this.

PC and I got stuck in Montana, where we went for the supposed few weeks that I was taking off from work. A job that I thought was secured fell through and we ended up unemployed and trapped in my parents' basement for nearly two full months. During that time, we had only my savings to live on - the savings that I had accrued with the assumption that I would be unemployed for no longer than 4 weeks. Things devolved. I got depressed (I'm not one to have much self-worth when I'm not being useful) and PC got frustrated and rebellious and apathetic. We fought so much - I'm almost embarrassed to look my parents in the eye again. Night after night, the day's pretenses would fail and everything would break down.

Now, after securing a job (actually, the same job that I was supposed to have taken the first time, but that's a long story and not an important one), I thought that things would have gotten better. We have been in Columbus, Ohio for nearly 4 weeks now. And things only seem to be getting worse for me.

PC has apologized for actions of his that were hurtful and immature. (To assuage any fears: he did not hit me and he did not cheat on me. Both are deal-breakers of the permanent variety.) He has sworn up and down that things are different and that there's nowhere to go but up. But somehow, my mood goes nowhere but down. I can't look at him the same way anymore. Instead of seeing him as this attractive man with whom I have a definite future, I see him as a constant source of stress and uncertainty and I can't see past tomorrow, much less predict if we can make it work in the long run.

It's killing me. I don't think that there is any advice to be given, any words of wisdom that could possibly help. He has asked for two months to try to dig out of the financial mess that I have ended up in and to see what things could be like without my supporting him or the accrued debt hanging between us. I can't really see myself shutting the door completely at this point, so it seems that a little waiting-it-out is really my only option. But many days (like today) things seem worse for me than better, and his constant attempts at optimism just make me want to slam the bathroom door in his face, lock it and never come out.

Lyrics of the Day

"There's no talk of future plans, there's no romance, there's no good reason we should be in love - so I've been making shit up." The Good Life Playing Dumb

Venting?

2008-03-10T19:54:00.003-04:00

I've never really done this before.

My only "true" previous relationship (with the Speed Freak) was filled with strife and pain and was bad and tumultuous a much greater percent of the time than it was good or even tolerable. So even though I ended up enduring about a year of that personally-created-hell, it wasn't actually a year-long relationship.

I've been with Prince Charming for 11 months now. It was 11 months on Saturday, actually. And I'm realizing more and more that most of the last 6 months or so have been far from perfect. My quandary is whether the good is worth all of the bad. Whether much of the bad has been situational (I dare anyone to have a perfect long-distance relationship), or whether there truly are ways in which PC and I are not ideally suited for each other.

I'm afraid to fully delve into it. I haven't been honest with the people closest to me in my life, and I'm not sure I can be honest here. It's not horrifying. There's no abuse and there's no cheating. It's not what many people I've met would consider a Bad Relationship. I'm sure that millions of women have lived through and with so much more, that sometimes I feel self-indulgent for being upset by things that have happened. And yet, at the same time, I'm ashamed of the things that I've allowed to happen and things that I've done. And all of this builds into a wall that I hide behind.

I know that I'm being vague. I know that I'm speaking in metaphors and hyperbole and that it must be more than frustrating to read. But today is an okay day. It's not the complete break-down kind of day that I had on Friday night after a conversation with The Mother and it's not the forget-about-the-complications-and-watch-South-Park kind of day that I had with PC yesterday. It's a middle-of-the-road day. But the turmoil in my brain refuses to quiet itself and I wanted to vent here. Unfortunately, my venting is half-assed.

I'll try to work on that.

Lyrics of the Day

"It’s been hard, we’ve both got our histories that haunt these homes - but I ain’t bathing in our misery. So pour me a drink and don’t pour it too weak and grab it from the top shelf. I ain’t asking for redemption and this ain’t no cry for help." The Good Life On the Picket Fence

Out of the Darkness

2008-03-10T14:49:00.000-04:00

My life (love-related and otherwise) hit some pretty significant bumps in the road over the holiday season... hence the lack of communication in this-here forum. I never seemed to have trouble airing my dirty laundry when I was single; now that I'm not, well, it just seems a hundred times harder to talk about. I've been in pretty dark places for the last few months (just ask any of my friends who thought I was dead when I refused to communicate during the months of January and February) and I'm just now starting to find my way out.

What does this mean for me and Prince Charming?

Well, it depends on when you ask me. If you had asked me on Friday night, or any time at all on Saturday, I would have predicted catastrophe and heartache.

You ask me today: eh... not so much.

I've been contemplating writing for weeks now with no idea how to do it. I'm still not sure, but I thought I'd at least open up the door to my brain and see what would come crawling onto the screen if I allowed it. And I'm not surprised to find that all that comes out is the same vague uncertainty that I've felt living in there for what seems like so long now.

Lyrics of the Day

"Your head will collapse if there's nothing in it and you'll ask yourself: Where is my mind?" The Pixies Where is My Mind?

13.1

2007-12-04T14:41:00.000-05:00

In recent years, The Mother has become more and more of a Runner. Not someone that jogs occasionally for cardiovascular exercise, but the type that will run miles and miles (sometimes over mountains or in the snow or with torn muscles and stress fractures) for the challenge and the rush of it. And this running bug is catching. I've been intermittently impersonating a runner myself for the last 2 years, though I have no insane aspirations of completing something as mind-numbingly long as a marathon (which is 26.2 miles and The Mother has already done TWO of them). I did, however, allow myself and Prince Charming to be talked into running a half-marathon, 13.1 miles, that took place on the Las Vegas strip this past weekend.

Ouch.

The intention The Mother had, when proposing this insane trip to us, was that a December race would keep us training in the typically off winter season. But due to the rigors of my job in San Francisco, the painfully hilly landscape and my lack of a gym membership - I sort of let that whole training idea slide for the last three months. When I left Bozeman in August I was probably in the best shape I've ever been in, but the last three months of a mostly sedentary lifestyle and way too many nights of Chinese delivery have put me quite far out of shape. But did I throw caution to the wind and finish that godawful half-marathon anyway?

Yes, yes I did.

The first 8 miles weren't so bad. Miles 9 and 10 started to hurt and I positively hit a wall at mile 11. But I finished the run, hand in hand with Prince Charming (who could have left me in the dust at any time with his damn natural athleticism). And I guess, in retrospect, it was actually fun. Yesterday, when I felt like an arthritic 95 year old was not so much fun, but I think if I were to actually train for the next half-marathon that I could survive it and maybe even enjoy running across that finish line. I think.

Lyrics of the Day

"We're running just as fast as we can, holding onto one another's hands." Tiffany I Think We're Alone Now

Something Old, Something New

2007-11-20T16:29:00.000-05:00

I promised myself (and you, dear readers) that I would get back up on the horse and post more often - and well, we can all see how that worked out. I was derailed in my efforts at renewed consistency by a job that went from darn-near-relaxing to holy-crap-I-can't-believe-they-expect-me-to-do-this-all-in-one-day-busy almost overnight. But as my last weeks here in San Francisco are beginning to tick down, I have been thinking more and more about all of the writing that I wish I was doing here. So here I am, trying to make good on my previous promises.

This past weekend I flew to Los Angeles to visit Prince Charming and all of my wonderful Angeleno friends. The Sister, who spent her summer in South America is back in LA and so I was there to spend time with a slew of people. When I first got to San Francisco, I had planned and spending more than just one weekend a month in LA, but it turned out to be easier and more relaxing for Prince Charming and I to spend most of our weekends in SF and that' what we've been doing. Anyway, this was my last trip to LA before the end of this California job, so I was trying to pack in as much as humanly possible.

On Sunday, Prince Charming, The Sister and I met My Married Boyfriend at my old favorite football haunt Barney's to watch the Redskins almost not lose to the hated Cowboys. We ended up having a fantastic time hanging out and yelling at oversized tv screens and by the end I was mildly intoxicated and beginning to realize that I really have no idea when I'm going to get back to LA next and then I was just caught up in a landslide of over-sentimentality. You see, I have always really valued the friendship that I have built with My Married Boyfriend and I have also really considered him to be the closest thing to my ideal man that I have meet in as long as I can remember. I've actually maintained a bit of a closet crush on him over all this time. He went pretty out of his way to hang out with us on Sunday and I was touched and enjoying his company and thinking how far from him and all my friends I'll probably be in January. In the midst of all this misty-ness I had a pretty amazing revelation: I think My Married Boyfriend is fantastic, but I wouldn't trade Prince Charming for him even if I could. Prince Charming has succeeded in becoming the only person that I want to be with and the only person I could even imagine myself being with. That's a huge leap for me.

Speaking of huge leaps: Prince Charming and I are moving in together. Or moving out together. However you want to describe it, in 4 weeks I am going to be leaving San Francisco to spend 3 weeks unemployed for the holidays and then will be moving on to a new job in a new city in January. Prince Charming will be doing all of this with me. We went from the horrible trouble of the long-distance relationship to the back and forth of the commuting relationship and through it all, we've only grown to love each other more and to want to spend more and more time together. It's amazing how fast we went from seeing each other once a month to seeing each other every weekend and how easily we became spoiled and realized that even every weekend isn't enough. So he's packing up and getting out of LA with me, and I'm shocked to say that I'm ready for this. I've never lived with a significant other - hell, I've hardly even had a functional relationship before PC, but I'm ready to move in. Plus, he's already received the hearty stamp of approval from almost everyone that matters in my life (even my grandfather, who told PC to call him Grandpa after the end of their first meeting) and will receive some of the final stamps from remaining family members at Thanksgiving this weekend. The Sister refers to him as my fiance when she talks about us and she told me that it would destroy her universe if we ever broke up.

Somehow, I have coupled up and am settling down. As much as I sometimes still can't believe that it's actually happened to me, I can't imagine things being any other way.

Lyrics of the Day

"Unknown quotients, you must be using potions. How else could you tie my head to the sky? This new convection has left me wondering why I can't concern myself with ordinary tripe." The Shins Girl, Inform Me

That Lovin' Feeling

2007-09-27T23:24:00.000-04:00

I feel like I didn't do my relationship justice with my last post. I was so preoccupied with explaining that what we have is for real, but that I haven't had the easiest time in the world allowing myself to be loved and be in a relationship that I downplayed how wonderful it (and He, Prince Charming) is.

The truth of it is, I'm still in a state of disbelief. I have to look at Prince Charming, at least once each time we're together, and tell myself - remind myself that it's real. I have to remind myself that it's not impossible that I met someone that I could see spending the rest of my life with. I have to remind myself that I am, for the first time in my entire life, really and truly loved.

It's the most amazing thing in the entire world.

Lyrics of the Day

"I've been wishing on a star but I could never have imagined that I could land just where you are, after all this lonesome traveling." Teitur One and Only

Getting to Know You

2007-09-26T18:08:00.001-04:00

When I look back on my relationship with Prince Charming thus far, especially the earliest days, I find it amazing that we've gotten to know each other so well. I find it even more amazing that PC hasn't run the other direction screaming yet, and at times I feel like I've given him ample reason to do so.

I always thought, in my oh-so-many days of Singledom, that I would be the coolest girlfriend ever. I'm laid-back, I'm not jealous, I like sports, I don't have any hang-ups about pornography, etcetera, etcetera. And while all of these things are reasons that I could be a very cool girlfriend, it turns out that none of that is really what it's about or what it's supposed to be about. I didn't really realize what I was getting into (though I wouldn't trade it for the world). It seems that I got far too used to being single and being on my own and not having my behavior or moods have much effect on anyone else's life, but being in a committed, heading-towards-forever relationship is a much different situation than I've ever found myself in before.

During the 10 days that PC was with me in Montana, I found that you just can't hide anything anymore when you're working your way toward living with someone. You can't pretend that your body is miraculously hairless every day - if you need to shave, the person that you're spending every waking and sleeping minute with is going to know about it. If you have a runny nose and can't force yourself to get out of bed, you can't hide from your significant other - you've got to allow them to suffer through it with you. If you're in a hopelessly black mood, there's just no hiding that from a man who pays the utmost attention to what you do and say. As a person who has a hard time admitting any type of weakness (even to myself), this is proving to be a difficult, though somewhat liberating, adjustment. And when I did have moments of hysteria in Montana (managing to misplace my wallet when I could have sworn that I should have it with me), I couldn't hide my frighteningly stressy side - PC got to see that along with the rest. But throughout the trip, my Prince Charming was unfailingly loving, understanding and tolerant.

All of these things that we experienced on a small scale in Montana, Prince Charming and I have been experiencing in an even more real way over the past six weeks. When, just before the end of Prince Charming's visit to Montana, I finally got the call finalizing my job in San Francisco I was really excited. Though San Fran is a good 5 to 5 1/2 hours from LA, I knew that PC and I would work out a way to see each other as much as possible. I was also excited about the prospect of spending three months in such an interesting and beautiful city. I knew that PC and I would be able to explore it together. And we have, we have managed to see each other every single weekend since I got to San Fran, which has been ever more eye-opening for me.

There is so much stuff that is wonderful: walking across the Golden Gate Bridge together, sleeping in the same bed on a regular basis, cooking in, eating out, watching football together, walking all over my neighborhood, checking out local dive bars. But there are things that have been tough too: my need to decompress at the end of the day and have a bit of space to myself, getting used to PC's less-than-compulsive tidiness / cleaning habits (not that I'm the tidiest person in the world myself - it's just that when I grab the tub of margarine out of the fridge and get margarine all over my hand, I know that I'm not the last one who used it), dealing with the conflict of wanting to share everything with PC but still needing to have some measure of privacy (including this blog, but that is a post for later), trying not to take any bad moods out on each other. But this is what it is, what it's supposed to be. We're building a relationship - a real, lasting, workable relationship - not some fantasy based on infatuation like everything else that I've ever experienced. And through all of it: the good, the great and the not-so-perfect, I've never begun to doubt that I love him or that he loves me. And that is really the most amazing thing of all.

Lyrics of the Day

"Is your figure less than Greek, is your mouth a little weak? When you open it to speak are you smart? But don't change a hair for me, not if you care for me. Stay little Valentine, stay. Each day is Valentine's Day." My Funny Valentine Frank Sinatra

Meet the Parents

2007-09-21T19:15:00.000-04:00

Although PC had briefly met The Mother at my going away party (those mere three days after we met), TM had been largely unable to form a true opinion about him. But when contemplating PC's imminent arrival in Bozeman in August, The Mother's opinion was not what was eating away at my mind. It was the introduction to The Father.

My father is just a bit scary. Not the Meet-The-Boyfriend-At-The-Front-Door-With-A-Shotgun scary, but he's got a very intimidating presence. He tends to sit back and watch and listen and he doesn't offer up his own voice very often. To a young man courting his daughter, that silence can come off as down-right menacing. I had more than one pre-pubescent suitor quake in his shoes upon visiting my family's house for the first time. In high school I avoided the situation as much as possible and there was no way in HELL that I would have introduced the Speed Freak to my father. I did make the mistake of introducing The Ex to my parents - a mistake because I still believed that I was in a relationship that was going somewhere at that time and The Ex had already decided that it wasn't. It just took me about three more weeks to figure that out. The point is: meeting my dad is a big deal. A HUGE deal really, and I was just a bit nervous of how it would work when Prince Charming finally made it to Montana. I was actually more nervous that PC would be put off by The Father than I was of it being the other way around - PC tends to make an almost universally good first impression.

I never should have worried. Of course, I couldn't have expected it to work out quite so well as it did. Seriously folks, in the end I think if I didn't marry Prince Charming my family would disinherit me.

The Father took to PC like he's never really taken to anyone before. The Father obviously warmed to PC quickly and engaged him in far more conversation than I would have expected. And Prince Charming did the same in return. If I analyze it, I'd have to say that PC's father has always been very hard on him and I think has maintained a largely disapproving attitude toward his son and I think that Prince Charming was nearly overjoyed to have a male presence that was both friendly and accepting. It was touching, really. And I think that The Father began to realize that, although he never had sons of his own, he could gain surrogate sons by marrying off his daughters.

Now that PC is pretty much one of the immediate family, there are very few hurdles left to scale before he's given full and complete approval. This is jumping ahead in the story a bit, but the most important of the final hurdles is about to be jumped this weekend: I'm taking Prince Charming to Bakersfield on Saturday to meet my Grandfather.

Lyrics of the Day

"Everyone can see we're together as we walk on by, and we fly just like birds of a feather - I won't tell no lie. All of the people around us, they say, 'Can they be that close?' Just let me state for the record, we're giving love in a family dose." Sister Sledge We Are Family

All Apologies

2007-09-12T19:17:00.000-04:00

Oh, ever faithful readers (if there are, in fact, any of you left), I have been remiss in my bloggerly duties for far too long. It first started as just a few days during which I didn't have time to write, then grew into weeks and finally into hulking, guilt-inducing months of silence that intimidated me into ever further silence. But a wake-up call from a good friend and secretly-faithful reader reminded me that I have stories to tell that need to be told and should be read and here I am again to share them with you. My most sincere apologies for the disappearing act, I promise never to leave you so in-the-lurch without announcement again. The largest problem that I now face is how in the hell I can catch you all up on the events of the past months. It may be hurried or it may turn into a rambling, incoherent jumble of sentences but somehow, someway I will eventually manage to bring us all up to speed with current events.

Let's start somewhere around where we left off. I had returned from the all-too-brief wedding weekend with Prince Charming to slog through my final two weeks in Baltimore. And slog through I did, finally managing to pack up all of my earthly belongings into two suitcases and a huge box for shipping, boarding a poorly-booked flight home to Montana and landing back on my home turf late Saturday night, July 28. I spent the following days sleeping off my traveling exhaustion, hanging with my folks and doing nothing more than wishing that Prince Charming was already there, in Bozeman, with me. Being with my family again made me acutely aware that I really wanted PC to be with my family, a part of my family, my own chosen family.

There is no way that I can detail the entire ten, blissful days of togetherness. It would be too exhaustive, too repetitive and too difficult to dredge from my memory at this point. But suffice to say that we did everything we could possibly do and we had an amazing time. We did the Sweet Pea Festival with my family and with Red, who was also visiting. We floated the Madison River (basically you sit in an inner tube on a river, drink some beer and float on down it - if I've never described that before), spent a few days at my cabin, met endless numbers of friends and family and got really, really used to being together. Not to say that everything was 100% perfect - there were little bumps (caused mostly by my moods or poor stress-handling skills), but we navigated them fairly easily - especially considering that the anniversary we celebrated (with mimosas in the mountains) was only our four month.

Throughout most of our time in Montana, the future of the geography of our relationship was still in question. I had yet to hear word on any suitable jobs, and I was beginning to despair that I had been too narrow in my demands. But I had decided fairly early on that I needed to be back in California once I was done in Baltimore - not just to be near Prince Charming because I hated being so far away, but also to see if our relationship would weather being together as well as it had weathered being apart. It was the Friday before PC left that I finally heard on a job that sounded good and I accepted. Then I prepared to leave that following Thursday for my new place of residence and employment: San Francisco.

Lyrics of the Day

"Now are you gonna love me? Are you gonna fight for me? Promise that you'll never, ever leave me please." Aaron Espe Settling

The Wedding Weekend

2007-07-22T13:15:00.000-04:00

The wedding was amazing. Although the time was far, far too short - every minute of it was worth it. Even the catastrophic way in which the weekend ended...

Everything went perfectly with my flights to Des Moines. I made it safely onto the hotel shuttle and Prince Charming (with his infinitely useful hotel experience) ensured my early check-in to our room so that I could get myself family/friends/wedding ready. I took my time getting ready, since I had over 2 hours to do it. While I was still in the process, PC was able to sneak away for a few minutes to come see me, which was wonderful. He then had to run back over to where the wedding party was for photos and I kept getting ready. The plan was for him to come back over to the hotel after pictures to meet up with me and his family, make the introductions and walk us over to the church.

Just before noon (the ceremony started at 1), PC called to tell me that his dad, stepmom, and sisters (one step, one half) were outside the hotel and wondering if they could come up to our room to brush teeth and freshen up after their drive over from Dubuque. Not wanting to be rude, but horrifyingly nervous of meeting the fam by myself and with little warning, I asked him to have them give me 10 minutes to finish getting ready and then they were welcome to come use the room. Despite my reservations and nervousness, Prince Charming's family was really great. His stepmom was extremely friendly and welcoming and it made the whole thing much more comfortable than it could have been. We all ended up walking over to the church together and I sat between his dad and stepmom during the ceremony. It was, just like everything else between PC and I, surprisingly easy.

The ceremony was gorgeous, though it was a Catholic ceremony, so it was a little too formal and structured for me. The bride was absolutely gorgeous and Prince Charming was breath-taking in his tux. There was a long gap in between the ceremony and the reception, during which I tried to take a nap and then PC and I got to spend a bit of alone-time together. I hadn't really considered how hard it would be to be the date of the Best Man, but there was a pretty large demand on his time - which of course I was cool with - it was his best friend's wedding after all. But once the reception got swinging, we had the greatest time. I sat with his family at a table, because PC was seated at the wedding party table for the beginning of the festivities. I actually had a lot of fun with them. I won over his stepsister (who is 20 or 21) by complimenting her shoes and we got along really well. I made good conversation with his dad and stepmom and just really enjoyed myself. Once PC's formal duties were over, we were finally able to really spend some time together.

We had a blast. I loved being in his world: meeting his family, his friends, seeing him in his element. And here's the kicker: I caught the bouquet. Yep, that's right. I totally caught the bouquet. Prince Charming and I had actually talked about it a little - he was hoping that I would catch it, but I told him that I was not going to embarrass myself and fight for it. I dragged PC's stepsister up with me and we stood demurely in the back. The bride through the freaking thing right to me. She launched it backward toward the crowd of single girls (it was a huge reception, so there had to have been at least 30 or 40 girls up there) and it just flew right toward me. I reached up and grabbed it and just stared at it - I was so shocked! But I was totally pleased too. As completely dorky as it sounds - I really think that things (actually, we both think this) with Prince Charming were meant to be, and it's things like this that just back-up that belief.

For the rest of the night we socialized and had a little wine and danced (I am a notoriously bad dancer, but somehow magically, I can dance with Prince Charming. It's inexplicable.). We had an amazing time. The night went too fast, as did the following morning, when we slept in and then ordered room service and ate it in bed. We had lunch with his family and then we went to the airport together. My plane was supposed to leave about half an hour before his, and we both cried when we said goodbye. Every time we see each other, it gets more amazing. And every time we have to say goodbye it gets harder. Every day that we're apart gets harder. I never knew that I could love anyone so much.

It was after I boarded my plane that everything went to hell. At the time that we were supposed to take off, we got word from the pilot that there was too much traffic in Chicago, my connection city, and that we were delayed. We ended up sitting on the runway in Des Moines for an hour and a half - long enough for me to miss my connection to Baltimore. They couldn't get me out until 2pm the next day, so I spent the night in a cheesy airport hotel and had to miss work on Monday. I was exhausted and stressed and there was just nothing I could do about it.

I finally got back to Baltimore after 6pm on Monday night. My journey home had put a bit of a tarnish on the sparkle of the wonderful time that I had with Prince Charming, but at least I had made it back in one piece. And I knew that no matter how hard the next two weeks (my final two weeks in Baltimore) were going to be, they would pass and then on August 2 I would be with PC again - in Montana, for 10 whole days.

Lyrics of the Day

"Way down below there's a half a million people, somewhere there's a church with a big tall steeple. Inside the church, there's an altar filled with flowers, wedding bells are ringin' and they should've been ours." Johnny Rivers Mountain of Love

Wedding Bells

2007-07-12T19:57:00.000-04:00

This weekend there will be wedding bells.

Of course I'm not that crazy! They won't be my wedding bells. This weekend I'm meeting Prince Charming in Des Moines, Iowa for his best friend's wedding. PC is the Best Man, and you better believe that I'm salivating at the thought of him in a tux. I'm so antsy and impatient to see PC after this nearly four-week separation that this week has been crawling by. I'm not even sure if it's crawling - it's more like I'm shoving it along as it digs in its heels.

I've never had a date at a wedding before. Someone to dance with at the reception and get teary-eyed with during the vows. It's such a romantic idea, I just can't wait.

Until that moment that I finally see my Prince Charming again, I feel like I'm merely biding my time. The job that brought me to Baltimore has gotten increasingly wearying and although I still have fun with my friends that work here with me, I'm literally counting days and hours until the wedding and then again until I'll be on a plane back to Montana for my vacation. Oh! And did I mention that I'm meeting family this weekend?! Saturday I'll be meeting PC's dad and stepmom, and possibly his half sister (though I'm not sure she'll be there). I'm nervous and excited and all I can hope is that I make a good first impression. Family is of immense importance to me and I couldn't live with his family not approving of me. Of course, PC assures me that everyone he's ever known will absolutely love me. I sure hope that he's right!

Lyrics of the Day

"Going to the chapel and we're gonna get married. Gee I really love you and we're gonna get married. Going to the chapel of love." The Dixie Cups Chapel of Love

Doubting Thomas

2007-07-09T19:20:00.000-04:00

As I said in my previous post, I sometimes feel like I need to justify my relationship because it has been such a short time. And Government Peon drove that point home in her comment on my post. I know that's how these stories usually work out. I do. (And I definitely don't begrudge GP for sharing, it's really the most common outcome of something like this.) I know that I sound naive and starry-eyed and that half (at the least) of my audience has got to be waiting for this to crash and burn. But it won't.

When I was growing up, The Sister and I used to go down the street to visit some neighbors of ours all the time. They were an old couple (in their early 70's at the time I think) and the wife made dolls and they never had any grandchildren so they fed us cookies and doted on us. They had been married for 30-some-odd years and were still wildly in love with each other. The best part of the story was that the husband proposed to his wife within a couple weeks of their meeting and they were married within three months of knowing each other. And they made each other happy for as long as they were together.

If all of this was taking place 50 years ago and Prince Charming asked me to marry him tomorrow, everyone would breathe a collective sigh of relief that I wasn't going to end up the sad, pathetic spinster of the family. But it's just not socially acceptable anymore to marry someone so quickly after meeting them. The standards by which relationships are measured have reached such a strange paradox in our society - it's a wonder that anyone gets married at all anymore. One the one hand: you don't want to settle, so you're always supposed to be looking for the "better" mate (more attractive, more compatible, more intelligent, wealthier). On the other hand, even if you find the "better" mate, if you're not perfectly happy all the time, you can just go ahead and flush the whole thing down the toilet, because why work at anything at all?

That's not how I feel about marriage, and it's not how Prince Charming feels about it either. I think what's important is that you find someone that you can love and that makes you happy and then you just make that decision to be together and to make it work. It won't always be peaches and cream and hearts and teddy bears. It won't always be easy, but there will always be love and there will always be a reason to keep going.

Now I know that I've stepped up on my soapbox, but I guess that it's hard for me to be honest with people about where I'm headed with Prince Charming for this very reason: I feel as if I need to defend what I feel and what I know in my heart. And I will defend it for as long as I need to, because it's worth defending. But years down the road, people will be able to look at Prince Charming and I and tell our story as an example of one of those times when everything that should have gone wrong went right.

Lyrics of the Day

"Give me an answer, fill in a form: mine forever more. Will you still need me? Will you still feed me when I'm sixty-four?" The Beatles When I'm Sixty-Four

The Truth of It All

2007-07-08T19:23:00.000-04:00

Pardon my absence, I just don't know where the time goes these days. Not sitting in front of the computer at work makes it much more difficult to keep up with blogging the way that I should.

When I said that weekend in Los Angeles was monumental, I wasn't just talking about the fact that Prince Charming and I said, "I love you." There was more to it than that. I hinted at it when I mentioned the comment he made to his friend about marrying me. That seemed like an off-hand sort of comment at the time , but the truth of it is...

We really are going to get married. And have babies. Starting tomorrow.

Okay, I'm kidding about the tomorrow part, but only about that. Obviously Prince Charming and I realize that we still have more getting-to-know-you stuff to do, and we do think that we should live together before we get married - but at this point we just know that we want to spend the rest of our lives together.

Does that sound as huge to you guys as it does to me?

Part of me feels like I need to justify the relationship; explain how it is that we can be so sure about a relationship that is still so new and one that has taken place almost exclusively over the phone. But the other part of me just knows, just loves Prince Charming so much that nothing anyone could think or say could ever matter. It seems most crazy to me (well, to both of us really) that today is our three-month anniversary. It feels like we've been together longer, in a good way. At this point, we're talking for hours every day. We wake each other up in the morning and tell each other goodnight as we go to bed. Sometimes I'm going to bed as he's just going to work and he's going to bed as I'm getting ready in the morning, but that won't have to be the case for much longer. In three weeks I'll be leaving Baltimore for a much-needed three week vacation in Montana. And PC is coming to stay with me for 10 days - which is longer than we've ever spent together at one time. But every minute that we have spent together has just made our feelings stronger, has just made us want to spend even more time together. I have no idea how it could have happened like this, but I found The One. As strange as this is to say on what's supposed to be a dating blog - I'll never date again. I've meet the man of my dreams and the man that I'm supposed to marry and I've never been happier. I've never felt this way about anyone in my entire life and I've never been loved like this. It's the most amazing thing in the entire world.

Lyrics of the Day

"You said you found her and you would make her your bride, stand by her till you die. And your tender eyes, they'll glisten with pride and your smile so satisfied." Maria Taylor Hitched!

Those Three Little Words

2007-06-21T19:46:00.000-04:00

I was jittery and impatient all day last Thursday before I left for LA. The hours simply couldn't pass fast enough to make me happy. I slept fitfully on the plane - but at least I did have a little nap before the evening's festivities. Red picked me up at LAX and we arrived at The Sister's party just after 10 pm. It was really sensory overload for me, being back in LA and suddenly being in such a chaotic social situation. And all the while I was counting the minutes, the seconds even, until Prince Charming would be off of work and finally with me again.

It was almost like the kind of magic I felt the first night that we met, seeing him in the flesh again after almost five weeks apart apart. Just being able to kiss him and touch him and feel his arms around me again was like coming home. And almost as heart-warming as this was The Sister's reception of PC - she hugged him and greeted him as if she was as happy to see him as I was. The Sister has never been like that with anyone I've dated. Often she hates them altogether, or is at the most grudgingly accepting. But this is so different, the way she just let PC in, I'm still amazed.

Prince Charming and I ended up DDing people that night and didn't get back to his house until after 4 am. And all night the words just wanted to slip out of my mouth. Earlier in the night when PC related a story to me about talking to a coworker that night, he told me that he said, "I'm going to marry this girl." Instead of freaking out and wanting to run in the face of commitment, like I usually want to, my heart melted. I was so ecstatically happy to hear that, I was floating on air.

When we finally got back to his place and made up for lost time, it almost felt like we had never been apart. Afterward, I lay there looking ar him and I just couldn't do it - I couldn't hold myself back and I said to him, "I am so in love with you." Out-load. I said it. And I meant it in a way that I have never meant it before. And Prince Charming told me that he loved me too and had been wanting to say it for almost two weeks and it was like our own little fairytale right there as the sun was rising and the birds were singing outside the bedroom window.

Lyrics of the Day

" I, I'm so in love with you. Whatever you want to do is all right with me, 'cause you make me feel so brand new and I want to spend my life with you." Al Green Let's Stay Together

Monumental

2007-06-20T19:52:00.000-04:00

I told you all that I thought that this weekend would be monumental.

It was.

I'm still far from recovered from the lack of sleep, so I just can't bring myself to give the full details at the moment, but I promise that details are forthcoming. I should warn you though - you may need to bring your Pepto-Bismol, lest you be too nauseated by what I have to gush about...

The Day After Tomorrow

2007-06-12T19:56:00.000-04:00

In 48 hours, I will be on the plane to Los Angeles. In 52 hours I will be landing at LAX where Red will be waiting to pick me up and take me to The Sister's going away party at Bodega Santa Monica. In 54 to 55 hours, I will be in the arms of Prince Charming, thanking all the powers-that-be that these 5 long weeks are over.

Tomorrow night I'll be packing my bags and hoping that I won't be too excited or impatient to sleep. Then I'll just have to suffer through one more day of work before I am on my way.

I have a feeling that this weekend could be rather monumental. Things may be said and things will be discussed. Lost time will most definitely be made up for. Friends will be introduced and hopefully approvals will be given. (After several relationship follies, I've learned to trust the input of others - not expressly, but it is always a good sign when your friends like your boyfriend.) Good lord I can't wait for these 55 hours to pass.

Lyrics of the Day

"I'm tired of calling you and missing you and dreaming that I've slept with you - don't get me wrong I still desperately love you." Teitur I Was Just Thinking

The Tip of My Tongue

2007-06-10T18:09:00.000-04:00

Much of my (possibly now-former) commitment-phobia has been due to the petrifying fear of having my heart ripped out for the umpteenth time. Because even now some of that commitment-phobia still lingers, I had vowed that I would not be the first person to say "I love you." I know that's mostly childish, but saying those three little words is a risk of such magnitude that many people wait as long as they can to take that risk or they never risk it at all. My mind keeps returning to the episode of Grey's Anatomy (and say what you like, I love a good nighttime soapy drama - especially when there are hot doctors involved) where Callie has told George that she loves him and he blows her off for nearly an entire episode before telling her that he'll say it when he means it. That kind of scenario gives me nightmares. I've said it once before and not had it said back to me and it's not a good feeling.

But here's the thing: I really want to say it. I'm going to break down and tell you that I'm finally admitting to the fact that I am totally, head-over-heels in love with Prince Charming. And I don't think that it's in that damn-you're-so-attractive-and-you-like-me-back-I-can't-believe-it sort of way. That's the way that I was with the Speed Freak and I thought that was love at the time, but I know now that it wasn't. But this feels real. It feels monumental, but so easy all at the same time. It feels right. And almost every time we've talked recently I've wanted to say it; I've felt it on my lips and the edges of my teeth and the tip of my tongue. But at the same time I can't say it. I'm still scared in some underlying way; I'm still waiting for the bubble to burst and for the dream to end. I also don't want to say it over the phone. Anonymous was right in his/her comment on my last post: I do want to look PC in the eyes if and when I do tell him how I feel. Because although this is so scary and so new - I think that he feels the same way. And I know that we haven't been together that long, we haven't even known each other that long, but this feels like something real and something that can grow and deepen and just get better and better with time.

Lyrics of the Day

"What's the problem I don't know, well, maybe I'm in love. Think about it every time I think about it, can't stop thinking 'bout it. How much longer will it take to cure this? Just to cure it 'cause I can't ignore it if it's love." Counting Crows Accidentally in Love

The L-Word

2007-06-08T23:15:00.000-04:00

What do you do when you think that possibly, maybe, sort-of you might have heard your boyfriend of two months (officially, today, if you can believe what a ridiculously short time that it's been) tell you that he loves you?

Admittedly it was mumbled, and he was really tired and it wasn't until it was too late that I realized what I might have heard - but I think that he said "I love you" before saying goodbye to me. I will not stoop to the level of asking him if he said it - that just seems like fishing to me. But he might have said it, I think that he said it, and you know what my reaction is? I want to say it back. How scary is that?

I guess that now I just wait to see if he says it again, right?

Lyrics of the Day

"I think I love you, isn't that what life is made of? Though it worries me to say, I've never felt this way." The Partridge Family I Think I Love You

Another Countdown

2007-06-03T11:12:00.000-04:00

It's now less than two weeks (actually almost about a week and a half now) until I FINALLY see Prince Charming again. I can't tell you what 5 weeks apart feels like, and if I tried it would probably make you all so nauseous that you'd vomit on your keyboards and short-out your computers. And we wouldn't want that, now would we?

Over the past little while, PC has become Super Boyfriend. I'm afraid to get used to it, because I know that these sorts of things end when the "honeymoon phase" of the relationship is over, but it's been really amazing. We're talking so much that I'm pretty sure one of us is going to have to switch wireless carriers, otherwise this relationship could hit the Guinness Book for expense. He actually called me at 6:00 this morning (it being a weekend, he knew that I didn't have to get up for work or anything and he just wanted to talk to me) and we talked for an hour and a half. Half the time he had me laughing so hard that my stomach hurt. It's still so amazing to me to be with someone that makes me feel so completely secure and cared for. I've never experienced anything like this before. I don't sit around agonizing over what he may or may not feel for me, I don't tiptoe around him and watch what I say, I don't have to hide or be dishonest or dress myself up for him. It just works. The only thing about it that's hard is the distance between us, and I'm realizing that even that isn't so bad. As far as long-distance relationships go, I think I've got a damn good one. I just can't wait to see how it could be when we can see each other more often.

So the weekend after next I'll be in Los Angeles. I'm not telling all of my friends that I'm going, because I just can't find the time to see everyone. I'm going to spend a bit of time with The Sister, because she's leaving to tour South America for 2 months on the 18th. Other than that, I'll be spending as much time as possible with Prince Charming. I'm also hoping to introduce him to SJP and LAJ, my two fabulous girls who will both be back in LA after extended absences.

This is going to sound completely insane and overboard and hasty, but I've been really honest on this blog up to this point, and I don't think there's much point in trying to ignore what's really going on in my head. I really think that Prince Charming is someone that I could grow old with. I can see myself with him, in the real long-run. I have feelings and thoughts and desires about him that I've never had about anyone. I want to meet his whole family. I want to see the towns that he grew up in and see where he went to school and where he hung out. I want to wake up next to him every day, come home to him at night. How freaking cheesy is that?

Lyrics of the Day

"I'll get your medicine when your tummy aches, build you a fire if the furnace breaks, oh it could be so nice, growing old with you." Adam Sandler Grow Old With You

The Long-Distance Blues

2007-05-29T18:38:00.000-04:00

I have seriously got the Long-Distance Relationship blues. If I could play the harmonica, I would get up at an open mike and jam on how badly it sucks to be 3000 miles from the person that you might just possibly be falling in love with. Then I'd drink a bottle of whiskey and pass out in an alley.

I can't really write about it. It's too whiny, too annoying and would make for far too boring a blog entry. But I'm PMS-y, tired from my fabulous weekend in NYC and hitting my limit at the 3 week mark since I've gotten any lovin'. Mix said ingredients in a hot and humid alien city and stir and you've got a nice batch of Crazy, fresh out of the oven.

Lyrics of the Day

"I wanted to see you walking backwards, to get the sensation of you coming home. I wanted to see you walking away from me, without the sensation you're leaving me alone." Counting Crows Time and Time Again

Creeping Guilt

2007-05-21T19:38:00.000-04:00

I haven't mentioned The Kid since I met Prince Charming. It's not becauase I immediately forgot he existed the moment that I laid eyes on PC, but my attraction and connection to PC did eclipse my arrangement with The Kid so completely tat I almost wonder why I did it in the first place. On the other hand, I don't have any regrets about hanging out with The Kid - it just can't compare to anything that I have with Prince Charming.

What I do have, concerning The Kid, is some increasing guilt. I've never had The Kid's email address, but we are MySpace friends and that's the way that we've communicated online. Shortly after I got to Baltimore, The Sister posted a comment on my page about the fact that I'm not single anymore. A day or two later, The Kid posted "Miss ya" as a comment on my page. When I realized the timing of that comment, I started to feel a bit guilty. I mean, there's been a bit of guilt all along: I did happen to meet PC the day after the last time that I saw The Kid. But I've been trying to push the feeling down: I could never have known that I was going to meet my Prince Charming in bar, three days before I moved out of LA. There was no reason to think I shouldn't draw out my time with The Kid as much as possible. Then, just last Wednesday night, I uploaded the pics that PC and I took last weekend onto my MySpace page. And while I'm absolutely thrilled and proud to have the pics to show-off, I do get a bad feeling in my stomach when I think about what to do / say regarding The Kid. Because we are friends, but the situation is just so weird.

Even my subconscious knows this. The other night I had a dream that I had promised to sleep with The Kid again, he even blew off someone else because he was sure he was going to be hooking up with me, and I felt like I was absolutely obligated to do it. I felt this even though I was with Prince Charming in the dream. My dream-self was in absolute agony over the situation. Don't worry though: in the end my heart just wouldn't let me do it.

Lyrics of the Day

" On the night you left I came over, and we peeled the freckles from our shoulders. Our brand new coats so flushed and pink, and I knew your heart I couldn't win, 'cause the season's change was a conduit and we'd left our love in our summer skin." Death Cab For Cutie Summer Skin

I Wanna Know What Love Is

2007-05-18T19:45:00.000-04:00

All week, I've been floating. I'm actually rather astounded that my post-Prince Charming euphoria is lasting this long. Is this how it's supposed to be? I swear, most of the people near and dear to me would hardly recognize the optimistic, hearts-and-butterflies cheeseball that I'm becoming. Last night I went out to find a few things for Prince Charming's birthday package and found myself overjoyed at the availability of heart-shaped Post-It Notes.

So here's the question that I pose: how exactly does one know when she's in love / falling in love? I know that this question seems stupid, but I really don't know the answer. The first time that I said those three little (GIGANTIC) words was in high school and I felt pressured to say them after hearing them prematurely declared to me. I said it, but I didn't feel it. The second time that I said it was the only time that I meant it. But it was outside the context of a relationship, said to a close friend and had no real hope of being returned. Also, my realization of the presence of the feeling was a total surprise and so I never had a clue that I was falling. The last time that I said it was to the Speed Freak. We said it two and a half or three months in and at the time I really believed that I meant it. But once the relationship ended, the feelings faded. I saw him about four months afer we broke up and I felt nothing for him. Lust can burn out or fade away like that, but I don't believe that love does.

So, is it possible, after a paltry six weeks of dating Prince Charming, that I could really be falling in love with him? Well, from my extremely inexperienced point of view, I think that it's possible. I won't even admit to the frighteningly girly thoughts that seem to have taken up residence in my brain, but there do seem to be quite a few of them. And does it thrill me to no end that PC has used the words "My Love" more than once in the past week? Yes, yes it does.

Can it really be this easy or is this just a ridiculously exaggerated version of the relationship Honeymoon Phase? I'd like to believe the former. I spent a lot of years being single because I had no intention of settling for any relationship possibility that came along and it feels like this is the reward for my infinite patience. Either way, it's still the most amazing connective experience I've ever had and I'm going to savor the hell out of it.

Lyrics of the Day

"At last, my love has come along. My lonely days are over, and life is like a song." Etta James

Head Over Heels

2007-05-15T19:11:00.000-04:00

In all of my dating and relationship experience, I never truly understood the point of settling down with one person. I've never seen the purpose of giving up your freedom to center your life around one other person, for better or for worse. I mean, theoretically I wanted these things, but I didn't really understand why they were so important. Why would anyone want to compromise all of their personal preferences and goals and dreams just to avoid the not-so-horrible fate of sleeping alone?

But I get it now. And I don't mean the compromising part. What I am just now understanding is that you can want to be with one person, but that it's possible to do this without compromising anything. What lead to this astonishing revelation? Possibly the best weekend EVER.

I didn't mean to leave the blog hanging on my anxiety-ridden Fear-Of-Commitment post last week. I meant to write on my birthday (which was Thursday) about how lucky and loved I ended up feeling, but I ran out of time to do so. Then Prince Charming arrived on Friday night and all my thoughts of writing left my mind.

Even if I were to get as cheesy as I possibly could, I don't think I could fully convey the wonder of this weekend. I have never had this kind of experience - I'm still nearly reeling from the perfection of it all. I was really nervous picking Prince Charming up from the airport on Friday night. I didn't know if things would be awkward or if the initial attraction had been fleeting or if I would be able to make the weekend worth his taking four days off of work and flying all the way across the country. But just as those first three days that we spent together were so magically comfortable and amazing, my initial nervousness was unfounded and soon disappeared.

The initial attraction was not fleeting. I have never been so attracted to anyone in my entire life. And that feeling was just as strong by the end of the weekend as it was when the weekend began - if not stronger. But that wasn't the most amazing thing: it was everything else that was so surprising. Every single thing that we did together all weekend was so much fun and so effortless. We drank champagne and went to IHOP and took the Metro to Baltimore's Inner Harbor. We went for a three mile run, we watched "How I Met Your Mother" and he cooked me dinner (damn good dinner too!). Never once did I feel uncomfortable or like I couldn't be myself or like my personal space was being invaded. It was just incredible.

I don't want to get ahead of myself (well, I do, but I'm trying not to), but I think this one is going to last. I'm not predicting marriage or anything insane like that, but we're both in this for the long term. How do I know this? Because he told me so. He doesn't hide his thoughts or feelings or try to play games. He believes in honesty and full-disclosure and I don't have a doubt in my mind how he feels about me. This relationship will probably get a bit expensive: I'm going to fly him back out here in a few weeks, but it's absolutely worth it. I get it now. I get how couples can be each other's best friend and want to do everything together. I have very little experience with this type of thing, but I think I could be falling in love.

It's funny. Everyone always said that you find someone once you stop looking, that love comes along when you least expect it. I was becoming so cynical and part of me was starting to prepare for the possibility of never finding anyone. Then, as I prepared to radically change my life, I really did stop looking. And that was all it took.

Lyrics of the Day

"Don't know why I'm still afraid, if you weren't real I would make you up now." Joseph Arthur Honey and the Moon

Disconnected

2007-05-06T17:58:00.000-04:00

All through the fairytale that was my first few days with Prince Charming and through the ensuing euphoria there was a small thing at the periphery, hovering just close enough to out-of-sight to be easily ignored. I could pretend that it wasn't there at all, that it had never been there (though it had been, and for far too long). But as the weeks have passed and the lack of any contact beyond the phone conversations has begun to wear on my mind and my heart, that little peripheral thing has been poking its head further and further into the center of my vision.

My fear of commitment.

Remember that little thing? It's haunted me for as long as I can remember. It pushed me into attraction to unavailable man after unavailable man. It caused me to turn away from more than one good man. And now it's crawling its way back into my life and I think that it's starting to get to me.

It's the in-between moments. When we're not talking. When I have too much time on my hands to ponder the "what if's" and "am I sure's". When I think about spending Memorial Day in New York City with Blondie and SJP and that it will be Fleet Week.

You see, I'm good at being single. I'm used to being on my own and being able to do what I want, when I want to do it, with whomever I choose. You all might have noticed that. I like the option of making out with a cute sailor at a bar in Manhattan without it being cheating or making eyes at a cute employee at my workplace without guilt. I'm not good at being in a relationship. The last time that I was in a relationship, it lasted less than three months and I poured my whole heart into it. I'm not sure anymore that I actually remembered to retrieve my heart after the fact.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not giving up on Prince Charming, and the doubts and worries in my brain aren't his fault. Truly, in any realistic estimation, PC has been a nearly perfect long-distance boyfriend. He calls every day, some days more than once. He says all the right things, complements me constantly, tells me that he misses me and can't wait to see me. And still, I sit here on my couch on Sunday night and I worry about whether or not I made the right decision and whether or not I even deserve the praise that he heaps on me.

Blech.

I'm hoping that all of this junk will fly out the window on Friday night when I pick Prince Charming up at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport. I'm hoping that the magic that brought us together in the first place will remind me why I was crazy enough to enter into a relationship with someone that I barely knew - and a long-distance relationship at that. And maybe it'll show me that I wasn't crazy at all. And maybe that little thing around the edges really could be on its way out of the picture altogether.

Lyrics of the Day

"So why you wanna be there, when you could be here? You are slipping away. I awake with your replacement, a bottle in my grasp, in an unfamiliar place." Lagwagon Violins

Homesick

2007-04-30T19:06:00.000-04:00

I've been quiet these past few days because reality finally set in for me here in Baltimore. The first 2 weeks were a honeymoon: figuring out the new job, exploring the new apartment, wrangling my bottles of wine in a county that only allows liquor sales at a liquor store. But on Friday it all started to sink in and I got a bit depressed. I started questioning everything: my decision to leave LA (like I hadn't spent the past 3 years hating most of it), the decision to travel the country ALONE, the relationship that I just jumped headlong into.

Thankfully, the doubts and depression only lasted two days. I had a good talk with Red and possibly a little too much of that wine that I found and woke up early on Sunday morning, ready to put my running shoes on and get my feet back on the ground.

It's been more eye-opening than I had initially anticipated, this sudden and complete change of life. It's been easier and harder and scarier and more fun than I ever thought it would be. Being away from all of the people that I love is strange and hard, but I'm meeting new people and I have a sneaking suspicion that it won't be all that long until I'm back in California again.

As for Prince Charming, as I said, he's still in the picture. We've known each other for OVER THREE WEEKS now, so it's like we've been married for 25 years. Or not - but we are getting to know each other as best we can. It's funny, it's almost like having an internet relationship - I'm getting to know someone solely over the phone and email and yet I'm forming a real relationship with him. The big (HUGE, GIGANTIC, ENORMOUS) advantage I have is that I already know that I find him irresistible. And we've discussed the fact that it's actually not a horrible thing that we have to get to know each other this way, because if we were actually in the same room we wouldn't actually get to know each other at all. We'd be too busy getting to know each other in the biblical sense to care what the other person had to say or was all about. So we're making do with what we have. AND...

He'll be here (in Charm City) in less than two weeks. I'm so excited I can barely keep my pants on.

Lyrics of the Day

"If you could choose anyone, would you place your bet on me to slay all these dragons and cross these uncrossable seas? If given the chance would you come sail away with me?" Aaron Espe Dragons

The Goodbye

2007-04-24T19:47:00.000-04:00

Prince Charming had to work until midnight that second night, which was a Friday. I had dinner plans with The Mother and The Sister and so after dinner I just had time to shave my legs and get pretty before he called and I headed up to his house in North Hollywood. When I arrived there was no moment of doubt, no question about how to act or whether he liked me. I walked up, he kissed me and we went into the house.

Being as sleep deprived as I was, the details of that night, and much of the rest of the weekend, are more blurred than I would like. But I guess that's a price you have to pay for such a strange and wonderful meeting as I had. At the end of the night, it was really sometime in the morning by this point, Prince Charming made good on a forced promise that I communicated from The Mother: he helped me get a few hours of sleep. While I lay with my head in the hollow of his shoulder (a spot that seemed made especially for me, even that early on), PC told me a story until I fell asleep.

* * *

My going away party on Saturday night was a rousing success. I was actually surprised and honored by how many people came and by the wonderful things that they did for me and said to me. I never thought that leaving LA would be so hard, but it really was. I made so many wonderful friends there, met such fantastic people, it made the city home to me in a way that it could never have been on its own. I spent half of the night sobbing my eyes out with my arms around people that I love.

Prince Charming had to work that night as well, but he made his way from Universal City to Santa Monica as soon as he was able to. On the third night he knew me, PC met The Sister and The Mother. I couldn't believe it myself. The Parents had not met a boy of mine since The Ex, which had been almost exactly 2 years earlier. (Actually, The Ex is the only post-high school boyfriend that The Father ever met. The Father is not an easy to approach sort of man and I would never subject my chicken-shit suitors to his imposing countenance.) Though the meeting was brief and The Sister was in the middle of strife with her own man, the first impressions were positive.

I went home with PC one last time that night and we spent the few remaining hours together that we had. I was nearly delirious from emotions and lack of sleep, but those few hours were worth the sleep deprivation.

It was on the drive back to the hotel room that we had rented near the party location that things had to get serious. There was no way that this meeting could have been dismissed as a few days of "fun". There was too much connection, too much exchanged to just leave it at that. Being the commitment-phobe that I am, this was the hard part for me. For the first time, I stammered, I balked, I was nervous. I even had doubts. How could we realistically enter into any sort of relationship after knowing each other for a mere THREE DAYS. But my momentary misgivings weren't enough - not even for this faint heart. In the end, we agreed that there was too much potential, too much connection not to give it a try. We didn't want to look back on this meeting and think, "What if we had?"

And so, at about 6:00 am on Easter Sunday (two years, to the holiday, since The Ex had ripped my heart out and left it lying on his sap-stained sidewalk) I kissed my new boyfriend (oh yes, I really just said that) goodbye, or rather, see you later. We made plans for him to visit me in Baltimore and vice-versa, and to talk later that day. And then I walked up the hotel stairs to pack my things and start the drive to Montana.

Lyrics of the Day

"I met someone at the bar. He had a great smile and a great heart. He felt just like love, except no fear of losing, and it wasn't tough." Maria Taylor Clean Getaway

The Next Day

2007-04-21T18:30:00.000-04:00

Somehow, on no sleep, I made it to the dentist the next day and then I made it to the Uhaul center to pick up my truck and then I made it to help The Sister use the Uhaul to move some of her stuff into storage. The Mother was also in town at this time to help me drive my Uhaul of junk back up to Montana where I was planning to store everything during my stint traveling around the country.

The moment I walked in the door, The Sister caught on to my shit-eating grin. She asked me what I was so happy about and I told her that I had met a boy. "You had sex last night, didn't you?!" This is the standard question from The Sis any time that she thinks I got laid, and she's usually right. I grinned sheepishly and nodded. The Mother entered the room minutes later and that little scene was replayed almost word for word. I had contemplated not spilling the beans so quickly, but obviously there's nothing that I can hide from my family - nor do I really want to hide anything. I've always told The Sis everything, and I've told The Mother everything since I was about 19; they are honest relationships that I wouldn't trade for anything.

I spent the morning and early afternoon in a sleep-deprived, twitterpated haze. The three of us girls loaded up the Uhaul with The Sister's things and made plans for the evening. I parted ways with my fam to run to my now-former workplace to tie up a couple of loose ends. While I was there, I heard the text message sound from my cell phone. Expecting some kind of update or request from The Sis, I open my phone.

(For those of the queasy persuasion, or anyone who is pregnant, may be pregnant or has heart trouble please read the following text message with caution.)

"Hey sweetie, hope youre not too sleepy today and you got those teeth nice and clean. Cant wait to see you tonight. p.s. youre wonderful :)"

Okay, yes, I know that if you're not the love-struck recipient of this text message it's nausea-inducing. But my heart skipped a beat. There was always the thought in the back of my mind that he wouldn't contact me, though we had talked about getting together when he got off of work at midnight the following night. I'm not a Rules kind of girl, but even I know that sleeping with someone on the first date (much less the first night you've met) isn't the best idea. And yet, somehow, it hadn't been the wrong thing to do. Somehow, this guy was excited about me as I was about him and I really was going to see him again that very night...

Lyrics of the Day

"Fix your hair just right, put your jeans on tight, wear a dress so I can get it off real easy, 'cause I've been thinking I'd like to see your eyes open up real wide the minute that you see me." Counting Crows Up All Night (Frankie Miller Goes to Hollywood)

That Night

2007-04-19T18:34:00.000-04:00

So, being the impulsive and rule-resisting person that I am, I went back to Prince Charming's house with him. I promised myself that it would be innocent, that I would only let it go so far - and that's never been a hard promise for me to keep.

Never once that evening had I felt nervous or uncomfortable, and that didn't change once we got to his place. I feel like I'm sounding like I'm romanticizing this, or that I'm overstating what I felt - but I'm not. There was nothing weird about this at all; every word, every kiss (and there were an increasing number of those), every interaction felt so natural. There's usually a self-consciousness or a timidity to first time romantic-type interactions, but there really wasn't any of this here. I didn't know what I was expecting or what I was hoping for, I was just rolling with it.

For awhile, we were mostly talking. I can't even remember now what it was that we were talking about, but it all came effortlessly. Eventually there was less and less talking and more and more kissing. I remember that when I was dating The Ex, I thought that he had to have been close to the top (if not at the top) of my list of great kissers. And you know, there was actually a time in my life where I kept a mental list of the top five, but I've kissed far too many frogs since then to have kept track. But I digress. My point is that Prince Charming wins. He tops whatever hypothetical list I had or will have or could conjure up. It's not just that he's a fantastic kisser, though that's a lot of it, it's that we mesh.

I was talking to The Sister yesterday and she was saying that when you're in a relationship that is Right, there are physical ways in which you and your mate will just 'fit together'. And as much as I give her crap about her new-agey type spirituality, I actually agree with her. The science of attraction has so much to do with varieties of compatibility that I can't help but be convinced that being able to fit another person like a jigsaw puzzle piece is a great indicator of whether or not that person could be right for you in the long run. And that's what kissing Prince Charming is like. It's like completing a puzzle - not one of those easy, 150 piece puzzles though. It's like finishing one of those table-sized 5000 piece puzzles that you just didn't think you would ever be able to put together entirely.

Have I lost you all yet?

I know this is unlike me, but I'm being straight with you. This is really what it all felt like, what it all still feels like, and when I finally caved and slept with Prince Charming that night, I didn't regret it. I didn't regret it during, or after, or at 7 am when I was driving to the dentist's office after not having slept at all. It was an experience that was so perfect that I wouldn't have regretted it even if he had never called me again.

But he did...

Lyrics of the Day

"Kiss me wont you kiss me now, and sleep I would inside your mouth." Dave Matthews Band Lover Lay Down

The Curse

2007-04-16T20:10:00.000-04:00

When Red and I set out on our last official Girls' Night Out on Thursday, April 5, we had no idea where the evening would take us.

We began with a plan to hit a local swanky joint in Red's neighborhood. It was a bar that I had never been to and I was really up for anything. I just wanted one last night out with my favorite girl before I left LA. When we drove by said swanky bar, there was a crazy crowd outside - especially for a mere Thursday night. We immediately decided to search for friendlier waters, and Red said she knew of another place just down the street. I said, "Oh, the Fox & Hound?" She said, "No, that wasn't what I was thinking of, but I love that place let's go there." So there we went...

Somehow, in a town full of beautiful and aggressive women, we found the one bar in LA that was FILLED with men. The moment that we walked into the place, we were bombarded with suitors from every angle. Very early on, Red uttered the words that she never should have uttered - The Curse:

"Wouldn't that be funny if you met the man of your dreams tonight since you're leaving in 3 days?"

That bitch.

She jinxed me.

At some point, as I was talking to a pair of very nice young men, I noticed that Red was talking to some much cuter young men. Being that it was my last real night out, I felt entitled to a little shallowness - so I excused myself from the company I was surrounded by and made my way over to Red and the cute boys. After a few minutes of conversation, a particularly adorable boy sort of approached me from the side and we struck up a bit of conversation.

I'm pretty sure that I didn't talk to anyone else for the rest of the night. From the moment that Prince Charming and I began talking in earnest, we couldn't seem to focus on anyone else. Suddenly the bar was closing and I just couldn't say goodbye to the Prince. The Prince, the two remaining fellows, Red and I decided to go to the house of the other two fellows for a "night cap".

When we arrived at the apartment, the fixation on each other continued. We isolated ourselves in a hallway and continued talking about anything and everything. At some point, we leaned in for the first kiss and it was electric. I think that I was halfway to head-over-heels right then and there. When Red got tired of telling one of the apartment's occupants that she had a boyfriend and that she had no intention of sleeping with him (true to her fabulous form, she had ventured to the apartment with me because she is the best wing-woman in the world), she decided it was time to call it a night.

Again, Prince Charming and I couldn't say goodbye. There was too much chemistry. My mind was reeling. I hadn't felt this kind of connection with someone since I had broken up with The Ex almost exactly two years earlier. This far exceeded the attraction and connection I felt with Irish. I was leaving town in three days and I had just met someone that I desperately wanted to know more about, to know better. Whatever was I to do?

Lyrics of the Day

"I've seen love go by my door, it's never been this close before. Never been so easy or so slow." Bob Dylan You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go

Murphy's Law

2007-04-12T12:05:00.000-04:00

Murphy's Law states, basically, that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. And what could possibly go so horribly wrong for me just three days before I was to move out of Los Angeles for good?

Oh! I know!

I could meet Prince Charming.

In the nearly six years that I lived in Los Angeles, I went to countless bars with countless people and not once did I ever meet a guy with whom I could have a relationship. I never even went home with a guy I met in a bar. There was a random make-out session or two in there, but really that was about it. I really, firmly believed that it was impossible to meet a man in a bar in LA. I actually wrote an entire diatribe about it last year.

So what do I do last Thursday night (the Thursday before I was moving out of LA on Sunday, just to clarify)? I meet possibly the most perfect guy I've ever met in my entire life.

There is so much to tell, so much really dorky, girly, gushy stuff that I want to share with you all - but I'm still in the throes of my crazy cross-country move. I'm in Montana right now, but only until Saturday morning when I fly off to Baltimore. After I get to Baltimore and get just a bit more settled, I'm going to bore the crap out of you with all of the details of how I think I could possibly be on my way to falling head-over-heels for Prince Charming.

"Wait a second," you say. "This does not sound like the LB that we've come to know and only be slightly annoyed by."

Well, you're not wrong. I'm wearing rose-colored glasses. I'm all hearts and butterflies and bunny rabbits right now. I'm actually almost making myself nauseous with all of the cuteness and the optimism. But you know what? I'm also enjoying the hell out of it.

Stay tuned...

Lyrics of the Day

"Yours is the first face that I saw. I think I was blind before I met you. I don't know where I am, I don't know where I've been but I know where I want to go." Bright Eyes First Day of My Life

The End of an Era

2007-04-03T16:59:00.000-04:00

All of this time, I have been constantly reassured in my relationship with The Kid that it is a finite thing, that it couldn't become more than it is because I'm packing up and leaving this month. Though I have had that reassurance, I have often gotten the feeling from The Kid that he would want more from the relationship if he could have it. Being the selfish bastard that I am, I ignored these little signs in favor of continuing the casual nature of our interaction. I rationalized that if it really became an issue, he would say something and I could address it at that time.

As my days dwindle to almost nothing and the time that I have left to spend with The Kid gets shorter and shorter, things become just a little strange. He behaves a bit more like a boyfriend than I'm necessarily comfortable with, but I just go with the flow anyway. We stay up talking after sex more than we ever did before, he cuddles with me just a bit more on the few nights when I stay over. Up until Sunday night, we had just sort of danced around the fact that I was leaving - mentioning it but never really dwelling on it or discussing the fact that it meant that this little arrangement was going to end.

On Sunday night, I agreed to take The Sister to watch The Kid perform with his improv group. I realize that agreeing to do this was almost a breach of our arrangement, but I figured that it was the nice thing to do; a small, kind gesture of farewell. So long and thanks for all the dick, and whatnot. I knew that I was in trouble when he came out and sat next to me after his part of the performance was over. But, as I said before, I was really just going with the flow. The Kid's roommates and a buddy also came to the show and afterwards The Sis and I ended up hanging out with them all night. We went back to The Kid's place and goofed off and drank and actually had a really good time. But as the night wore on and we'd had a few drinks, The Kid got more and more affectionate. At one point he even said to me, "It's not like I'm not going to miss you." I stumbled, not really knowing what to say to that and ended up spitting out a lame, "It has been good." I can't convey tone here, but I was trying to be casually complimentary, yet non-committal. I have no idea if I actually succeeded or not.

I have genuine feelings of affection for The Kid, I really do. He's a sweet person and funny and I've enjoyed the time that I've spent hanging out with him. I don't regret any decision I've made related to our interactions, nor would I change the way that things have happened or turned out. But I do have these creeping feelings of guilt whenever I sense that he's expressing more to me than I feel for him. He knows the score as well as I do, but I still feel sort of bad for not caring more.

The strangest twist of all was that The Sister really liked him. The Sis is rather more judgemental than I am and I was nervous about taking her to the show in the first place because I thought she'd be really critical of The Kid. But in an unexpected turn of events, she thought he was great. He played guitar and sang and she thought he was really talented (I don't disagree, I was just surprised at her reaction). She actually told me that if I were staying she would talk me into really dating him. I was struck dumb.

Either way, it's a moot point. I'm leaving on Sunday and he's leaving for a family vacation on Thursday. Tonight is possibly the last night that I will see him, though I'm not ruling out a later-night booty call tomorrow if he's open to it. I don't think there will be any climactic outpourings of emotion or last-minute revelations - I think that we'll just do things as we usually do and then we'll go on our merry ways. What else is there to do, really?

Lyrics of the Day

"Lookin' towards the future, we were begging for the past. Well we knew we'd had the good things but those never seem to last, oh please just last." Modest Mouse Missed the Boat

Down to the Wire

2007-03-28T16:00:00.000-04:00

Well, here I am. It's my last week of work, and my second-to-last week in Los Angeles. I have a free moment (for once) in front of the computer and I find myself, well...

Speechless.

Or virtually so. There is so much that has been going on these past days and weeks, so much that is leading up to my departure and it's all inching its way ever-so-slowly toward denouement. I've been in a holding pattern in so many ways - no new dating prospects, no home improvements, no desire to find new and interesting crannies of LA to explore. On the other hand I've been running myself ragged completing paperwork and medical check-ups and contracts for my upcoming position that I've had time for little else. At the end of the day I'm lucky I brush my teeth before collapsing into bed. So I've been largely quiet here, and in writing in general. I'm feeling semi-reclusive, but I'm still trying to uphold social obligations and to see my friends as much as I can before I go. It's a strange and paradoxical space to be inhabiting, but I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel.

It's coming. It's still a small point right now, but it's getting closer. It's getting larger and brighter and I may have to break out the shades in a couple of days. But it's not here yet.

Lyrics of the Day

"Couldn't quite seem to escape myself. Far enough, far enough, far from Florida. We were all drowning in cruise control. Far enough, far enough, wasn't far enough" Modest Mouse Florida

Ghosts of Boyfriends Past

2007-03-24T13:45:00.000-04:00

I should have expected it, because it happened just about this time of year last year. Last year I ignored it, because I was still a bit bitter and pissed off and I was still living in LA indefinitely and I didn't want to risk establishing a connection that I wouldn't be able to get rid of. This year, I thought that there couldn't be any harm in responding, because I've let go of most of that anger and I'm leaving, so in some ways I have nothing to lose.

But my subconscious seems to think that I'm wrong.

Last weekend, I got a message from the Speed Freak via an old social networking site called Friendster. Friendster was a predecessor of MySpace but didn't take off in the same way. I've never gotten around to closing my Friendster account, but I never check it or update it anymore. Somehow, I do still get email updates when someone sends me a message on the site and last Monday I logged onto my email to find a message saying that the SF wrote me on the site. He wrote that he's through living in Chicago (where he moved to go to college while we were dating - the last 6 months of our relationship was long-distance) and that he wanted to get in touch with me. As I said above, I really felt like I had nothing to lose, so I wrote him back a brief, non-committal note letting him know that I'm leaving and asking if he was moving back. I honestly believed that I didn't care whether or not he responded or if he wanted to try to meet up or whatnot.

Two nights later I dreamed that he hunted me down (of course the dream location was outlandish and unrelated to real life, but that's beside the point) and was pleading for another chance while wearing a t-shirt that proclaimed his undying love for me. I spent the duration of the dream running and hiding and being completely mortified that I had ever been involved with him at all.

The sad truth is that is exactly how I feel. The power of infatuation and attraction and the attention that he gave me (at a time when my self-esteem wasn't precisely at the top of its game) drew me into a horrifically dramatic and painful relationship. So I guess that my subconscious can admit what I was sort of trying to avoid: that I still want nothing to do with him.

Lyrics of the Day

"You thought somehow you could just pretend, that you could figure it all out; the mathematics of regret. So it takes two beers to remember now, and five to forget." Ani DiFranco So What

I Think I Need a Plane Ride

2007-03-21T17:28:00.000-04:00

It's finally done.

I'm getting out of LA and I know where I'm going and my flight has been booked and I just found out the address where I'll be living.

This is getting more exciting and scarier every day.

I'm going to Baltimore, MD. And yes, for those of you who are near and dear to me on the east coast, this is the appropriate time to jump up and down and clap your hands.

I have a fantastic job opportunity there, not to mention a wonderful proximity to many friends and family members. And maybe, just maybe, the opportunity to date some fabulously non-LA type men...

Lyrics of the Day

"This circus is falling down on its knees, the big top is crumbling down. It's raining in Baltimore, fifty miles east where you should be, no one's around." Counting Crows Raining in Baltimore

Short-Timer's Syndrome

2007-03-09T16:31:00.000-05:00

I know that I've been conspicuously absent lately, and well, I really have no excuse. The truth is that very little has been going on. Mostly, I'm just counting down. Counting down the work days, counting down the weekends to go out and have fun and see my friends, counting down the days that I have to pack up my entire life and get it out of LA (which, of course, I haven't even begun to do yet). What I haven't been doing is dating, or really thinking about guys much at all. Well, I guess that I have, just a little.

After meeting my future husband, Rockclimber, he did send me a message and a friend request on MySpace. It was a sweet and pointedly personal message - one of those that you send on dating sites where you specifically reference something in their profile to prove that you read the profile and are interested in who they are as a person. Not that I'm saying he's definitely interested, but it had that nice kind of feel to it. I asked The Sister if he had messaged her and he had. He wrote something to the effect of, "It was great to run into you the other night and your sister is really cool too." So I thought that was really sweet. On the other hand, what's the point? I'm leaving town and it couldn't go anywhere anyway... but it is sort of nice to have the thought of someone liking me.

Last Saturday night I went out with my football friend Brussell. At one point at the bar, a nice young man who didn't really seem to be my type came up and asked if he could give me his phone number. It was at this point that I realized I have the absolutely most perfect and easiest blow-off line ever: I'm sorry, I'm moving in a month. It doesn't hurt any one's feelings and it's the truth.

Last night I hung out with The Kid for the first time in a couple of weeks. It wasn't intentional that we hadn't seen each other, it was just a run of bad scheduling. I had actually started to feel the lack of male attention / affection early this week, so I was more than happy that we were finally able to coordinate - and we definitely made up for lost time. I was talking to my friend The Figa Master about the situation earlier this week and he told me that he was actually surprised that this thing with The Kid was still working out. I told him I was a bit surprised myself, but that I'm pretty sure I knew why: it's always been a finite arrangement. From the moment we first hooked up, we both knew that I was planning on moving in a number of months. This allowed us both to really be in the moment and just enjoy what has been going on for what it is: a purely physical thing. There never had to be any anxiety over whether or not it could go anywhere else, because that was never a possibility. I am going to be sad to see it end though when I finally leave - it's been such a remarkably enjoyable and, for the most part, simple (excepting this one little hiccup). Although I realized talking to The Figa Master that I could have one of these everywhere I go as I'm travelling, I could rack up a whole harem full of Fuck Buddies all over the nation and always have a warm bed to tumble into wherever I go. Of course, I'm being mostly facetious about this... aren't I?

Again, it all comes down to my leaving. I'm trying not to have too much tunnel vision, trying to enjoy the time I have left here - but part of me is withdrawing. Part of me just wants to hole up in my apartment, on my couch with a bag of potato chips and Grey's Anatomy on DVD. And I have been doing a fair amount of that, but I'm resisting the impulse more and more. I've got to try to enjoy the time I have left while I still have it...

Lyrics of the Day

"The hardest part is yet to come, when you will cross the country alone." Death Cab For Cutie Blacking Out the Friction

My Future Husband

2007-02-28T12:55:00.000-05:00

I've been shunning the computer lately - I'm not really sure why. I just haven't felt up to writing or emailing or reading much of anything this past week. I go in cycles like this a little, sometimes I just need a break from staring at this screen.

I've also been taking a break from my social life lately. This past weekend was my very last weekend being on-call at my current job. I used this weekend as an excuse to do absolutely nothing. I didn't go out, I didn't see friends, I hardly even left my couch. I just didn't feel like it, and it was fairly nice to have a whole slew of Me Time. Included in Things I'm Taking A Break From Lately has been The Sister, much to her chagrin. She told me on Sunday, "I'm going through a 'oh no my sister is leaving me phase' and you're going through a 'I hate my sister phase'." I said that it wasn't her, it was me (ha ha) and that I was just feeling reclusive. I tried to meet her halfway by saying that we could catch a movie on Monday night, if she wanted to.

So Monday night rolls around and though we were greatly tempted to spend the night in the same manner that I spent my weekend, we mustered our energy and went out to a movie. The film ended at a decent hour, so we decided to run over to the bar across the street from my house afterward and grab a quick drink.

The bar by my house is a very strange, very Hollywood kind of bar. It's in this terrible neighborhood, in the bottom level of a hotel that is generally filled with drug-addicts, prostitutes and drug-addicted prostitutes, yet is somehow a ridiculously trendy bar that can charge $10 for a martini. The kicker is that the only sign outside is one of those neon jobs that says "Cocktails" and the bar's actual name is The Bar. That's LA for you.

The Sister and I rarely go to this bar, because of the above reasons (most notably the $10 drinks), but it was quick and easy on Monday night. Strangely enough, in true LA fashion, we ran into a guy that The Sister had met rock-climbing once and then had run into a couple of subsequent times around town. We ended up hanging out with Rockclimber and his buddy for a while and I have to admit, Rockclimber was pretty cute and charming. Aside from the fact that he's blonde (and I usually stick to the brunettes), he had a lot going for him and I was finding myself being vaguely interested. He's Austrian, funny, sweet, a registered nurse, a professional drummer and the owner of 2 dogs. I find it amusing that I was far more impressed by his being an RN than I was by his being a drummer. The Sister and I agreed that we would MySpace Rockclimber and he said he was having a party next month that we should come to. I invited him to my going-away party in turn and we headed on our merry way.

As soon as we left the bar The Sister said, "So he's pretty cool, right?" I agreed and she proceeded to tell me that when she met him she thought he was great, but a little too quirky for her taste, but that he would be perfect for me. It was pure coincidence that I even got the chance to meet him, but she said maybe it was all meant to be and that I was supposed to marry him.

Of course, I've no intention of trying to start something with someone less than two months before I say au revior to LA for good. But wouldn't that just be my luck?

Lyrics of the Day

"You had to know that I was fond of you, fond of y-o-u. So I took your lips at the time and to change like that is just so hard to do, hard to do." The Shins Turn on Me