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Takin' Care of Business

I haven’t written a so-called blog post for a while. There are a few reasons for this. One being, that I had several people tell me that my O Christmas Tree story made them cry and I would much prefer to make people laugh and not much has made me laugh lately. The other being that I was pre-occupied enjoying my newly rekindled relation-a-thingy with Mr. Wonderful. As it turned out, Mr. Wonderful and Mr. Houdini have a lot in common. They can both disappear into thin air, leaving their audience with their jaws on the floor and wishing that they hadn’t blinked for they missed the whole thing. I, on the other hand, just wanted my stinking money back for my ticket to the little magic show. What I got back instead was my beloved, lucky ring in the mail. I came home from a long, tiresome business trip and found a padded envelope on my stairs. In it, was my lucky ring with an all too familiar note saying that it was him, not me. Of course I already knew that, but the end result is the same. Here is where you can laugh with me or at me. I had recently sent him my copy of the book, He’s Just Not That Into Me, to share with someone he knew who was missing all the signs. I figured that I didn’t need it anymore, but just to be sure, I read it again and passed it along. I am so glad that when I opened that package it did not accompany the ring. Can you imagine the level of adding insult to injury? She can go ahead and keep it. I think I get it. I’m sure we can all find he humor in that, right? If not, then the irony.

The second reason that I haven’t written for a while, is because I thought I was going to have some really big news to share and I was waiting to write about that.  As it turns out I do not, yet. You see, I don’t make New Year’s resolutions because that is just a great way to set myself up for failure. Besides, on New Year’s Day, I am just lucky to have the wrapping paper picked up and the Barbies out of their packaging. I have no business dieting or training for a marathon. What I did instead is give myself a list of things that, come Hell or high water, I would accomplish in 2011. This would be my year of TCOB. For those you are confused, it stands for takin’ care of business. It isn’t so much a bucket list, because if I thought I was going to kick the bucket in 2011, the list would be different.

In 2011, in no particular order, I will…

1)      Buy a house.

2)      Make my quota every month.

3)      Snag a Keeper.

4)      Have well adjusted, happy children who pick up after themselves.

I don’t feel that those were too lofty of goals. After all, most people in my age bracket have already accomplished this. I am starting over so I get a mulligan.

When I, metaphorically, looked in the mirror and gave myself the “you can do it” pep talk, I thought of all the clichés. The first one that came to mind was-For Every Action There is an
Equal and Opposite Reaction. I needed to be proactive. I realize that for the most part, every situation we are in is a result of choices we have made. I also realize that if we want to be in a different situation, we need to choose to do so and make the appropriate choices. So I began looking at each thing on my list and just simply writing down what action I needed to take to get the desired result. I saved, I raised my credit score, and I got pre-approved for a mortgage, which is an incredible feat given my embarrassing income. I then made an offer on a house. Granted, it was the cheapest house for sale in town and it appears as though 10 to 12 pit bulls may have been living in it unattended for quite some time. Like me, it just needs a chance to start over. We will be good for each other. The first item on my list was about ready to be checked off and I was already picking out paint colors. I have not yet heard anything. This has gotten me down. In the early days, I was driving by the house and peering through the windows and now I am just waiting and my drive-bys are slowing to once a week. I drove by the other day and all the spring bulbs are popping up. I think it’s a sign.

Through it all, I have stayed focused on my job and making sure I was hitting my sales quota . In the fiscal year, I had hit it every month and I was excited. I then got the news that my territory was being extended to include all of Washington as well as Oregon. I now had two quotas, twice the travel, and half the time.

This also was making my goal of catching a keeper impossible. How can a person date with a schedule like that? Most disturbing, it was making my goal of happy, well adjusted children much more difficult. I’m stressed when I’m home and they miss me when I’m gone and I them. The other day, my 5 year old asked  me if I would ask my boss, if it was O.K. if I worked in her classroom or take the day off to snuggle. I told her I was sorry and that she needs to tip toe and whisper because I have a conference call. My heart aches for her and I wish things were different. But just when I am worried that I’m ruining her childhood, she then handed me a little piece of paper and whispered, “Here’s your ticket.”  I muted my phone and asked her what the ticket was for. She told me , “It’s a ticket to the crazy dance show.”  Conference call or not, that was a show that I wanted to go to. I handed her back the ticket and she put it in her pocket. While I listened to the latest and greatest innovations in Equine supplements, my sweet, neglected but resilient daughter did a silly dance for me. I asked her if I could have another ticket and she told me that the first one is free and the second one is going to cost me. Maybe she’s going to be alright after all.

Now, to accomplish the third thing on my list, I discovered that no matter how many times I look out my window there is not a prince on a white horse who’s just been a little lost for the past 35 years. As I have learned, you have to put your house on the market if you want an offer. Sticking with that analogy, I don’t mind buying a foreclosed home previously inhabited by Rabid dogs, but I am going to be a little more selective in this matter. You can paint a house and plant flowers, but men are impossible to change. What you see is what you get and they have the most hair on their head today than they ever will. Even though I previously said that I was done with internet dating, I signed back up again and I realized that there really are other fish in the sea. Maybe I will catch a keeper this time. It’s a good thing that I have my lucky ring back.

So here it is, almost three months into My Year and I have yet to cross one thing of my list. In fact, it feels like my initial progress is regressing. It feels at times that my list is headed for Hell in a hand cart. I try to remember that I have nine more months to make it happen and if I make sure that everything I do is in the best interest of the survival of the list, then it will. I think of the little toy car that you pull back and let go. It must go backwards or it will not go forward. I am in that going backwards part right now. I’m about ready to shoot forward. I can feel it.

Internet Dating- Chapter 3 The Ring

My membership to match.com is going to be ending soon and I don’t think I will be renewing it. It’s not that it wasn’t a fun experience, but it was exhausting and if done correctly can seem like a full-time job and I already have one of those. I suppose I could have just had my profile out there like how a casual, Sunday fisherman drops a line in the water and then takes a nap. Not me, I threw out a wide net and when it came up empty, I moved on to where there were those “other fish in the sea”. Unlike gym memberships that I have bought in the past, I was going to get my money’s worth on this one.

I met a lot of seemingly nice people and went on a lot of really fun dates. Throughout the whole process, I only went on one date that made me wish I had an eject button or some sort of app on my phone that would notify me of an emergency that required my presence, stat. It’s not that I have anything against cauliflower ear, after all, it is a sports injury and who can fault a guy for that? It’s when it’s accompanied by the worst case of little-man’s syndrome I’ve ever seen, that I start to have a problem. The first words out of his mouth were, “Hurry up its freezing out here.” Not, hello or nice to meet you or my oh my you’re stunning. What kind of guy wears shorts when it is 20 degrees out and then complains about being cold? The second words out of his mouth were, “Nice boots”. I do not think it was a compliment and obviously he did not get the memo that boots were huge this fall. Being the optimist that I am, I decided to give him a chance, but as he strutted around like a Banty rooster in a hen house I planned the great escape and I was off. Bye bye now.

I went out with a man nurse with an unhealthy obsession for European motorcycles and a knack for dialysis. We had a nice time, but on our second date he informed me that he was moving to a state with tighter corners on drier roads and more people in renal failure. Now, I’ve got curves and have had some kidney trouble of my own, but I can’t compete with that. So I said goodbye to Ducati_JJ. It was not a tearful goodbye.

I took a good sport, sight unseen, to a Christmas party and had a blast. I felt an instant comfort like I’d known him forever, but I got the feeling that he wasn’t interested in anything serious. The next weekend I took another nice guy to a Winter Solstice party and had a great time. I soon found out that they happened to be very good friends with each other. Whoops! I guess it is a small world after all. No worries. Moving on. What is it that they say about rolling stones and their inability to gather moss?

There were a few other dates with a few others, who were fun and nice but not that notable. That is except for one. He was a dashing English gentleman whose emails sounded like they were written by Shakespeare himself. He was in the special ops of some sort in The British Royal something, but had since gone high-tech and moved to Oregon to make things that I do not understand.  He had jet black hair, a sexy accent, was incredibly attractive, poetic, and sincere. He took my coat, pulled out my chair, and sang something in Italian over a beautiful bottle of red wine. Any girl in her right mind would have been thrilled and flattered, but I was having a bit of a hang up. The trouble was that I was never able to get someone out of my mind.

The first person who I met online, I wanted to be my last. I had met my Mr. Wonderful (see Internet Dating: An Update) and after several lovely dates and countless happy dances, he just disappeared. The phone calls stopped, no more “Good morning beautiful”  or” Sleep sweet” text messages , and no more Mr. Wonderful. I went over everything in my mind. Could he have been put off that I bought him a Crock Pot and filled it with soup? Did it send some sort of desperate for domesticity message? I just noticed that he didn’t have a Crock Pot and I suppose it was a little too much too soon, but a deal breaker? Really? Could it have been that I put winter scarves on his dogs? I guess that’s a little strange, but they seemed to like how they looked in the scarves. I went over every scenario in my mind and wondered what I could have done to make him fall off the face of the earth. I even thought that maybe he did actually fall off the face of the earth. The worst part about it was that I assumed it was me, but all I can be is me. After a couple of weeks of silence I finally got the, its-not-you-its-me email. Well, I would like to say that it made me feel better but I had already, with the help of my friends, determined that it wasn’t me. They told me that I was fabulous and I believed them. I wasn’t mad and I truly did understand his position. None-the-less, I was devastated. It wasn’t that we had this rich past and I was going to miss all the great times we had. What I was mourning was the possibility of what could have been. I was sad that I had to let go of my future, not my past. That was a new one for me. It looks odd to those around you. They don’t understand how you could miss someone who you barely knew. I understood and that’s all that mattered. So, for the next 6 weeks I continued to go forth on all the above dates and in every face on the other side of the table I saw only the lack of him.

Three years ago, when I found out that I was getting divorced, I took my wedding ring off and tossed it in the glove box of my car. It was a beautiful ring and I missed wearing it. A month later, I bought myself a new ring. It was a big, obnoxious turquoise ring that made a statement and it was on sale. It was going to be my lucky ring. I don’t think it brought me too much luck, but maybe it did. I don’t know, maybe without it, I would have been hit by a boulder or a bus or something. I suppose, I will never know what might have happened. The lucky thing is that I never lost it. I lose all my jewelry. I have an amazing collection of single earrings, but I never lost that. I even had a concierge mail it back to me when I left it in my room while on a business trip to Colorado. It was the first pretty thing, besides my horse, that I bought for myself after my divorce and it had seen me through some fun times and some sad times. I wore it on a trembling hand that wiped away tears and I had it on when I cut loose and two-stepped at a rodeo for the first time in 10 years. It was my, everything’s going to be O.K. ring.

The other day, I hadn’t seen my ring for a long time and I dug through my jewelry box and thought and thought about where it could be. I then had visions of wearing it while I chopped vegetables for soup in a Crock Pot. Could it be that I had left it at Mr. Wonderful’s house? I thought about my next move and decided that I needed it back. He couldn’t have my lucky ring…I needed it. I sent him a message and BINGO; he had the ring and was going to mail it to me. A week went by and I went on another date, but I still had nothing in the mail. While on my date, I got a message from Him. He hadn’t had a chance to mail it, but perhaps he could give it to me in person (or something like that). I excused myself from the table, locked myself in the bathroom stall, and replied, yes (or something like that). I rudely cut my date short, went home, and spoke with Mr. Wonderful on the phone for two hours. With great trepidation, an open mind, and a bit of a grudge, I did a happy dance.

The next day I met him for lunch and to, of course, reclaim my ring. It was longer than most lunches. In fact it was three hours and 15 minutes to be exact. My face hurt from smiling and my heart seemed to say, “Oh, come on not him again!” I was confused, angry, happy, hopeful, skeptical, smitten, guarded, and ridiculously thankful for those three hours. I don’t know if it was closure or the ripping open of a wound that was almost healed, but I wouldn’t trade them for anything. It was a reminder that just because we say we’re ready to date and are open to being in a relationship of substance, doesn’t mean that it is going to happen right away and especially within the time frame of a 90-day internet dating membership. Mr. Wonderful isn’t sure that he’s ready to dive into something serious at this point and that’s OK with me. What kind of Utopia would it be if the perfect person, the one who makes your voice crack, your hands go numb, your knees weak, and causes you to speak only in sighs was right there in the same place at the same time and ready for what you’re ready for? It happens for some people, but with such a high divorce rate, it is obvious that for half of us it hasn’t happened. As far as the other half, some are just content, because it works and others demand more and the lucky few find it.

I have no idea if my Mr. Wonderful will be my Mr. Forever. I am not holding my breath. I have learned a few things. One is that things can change in an instant. We can stack up all our cards carefully and with great care, but what we have in the end is a house of cards. It takes but one slight breeze to send it crashing down. The thing about this is, if we are resilient, we still have those cards and we can stack them up again and pray for a less windy tomorrow. I have also learned that all we can do is to be great and to demand greatness and to settle for nothing less. The day I met him, my heart raised the bar. I will not be content with anything that does not exceed the way I feel today. Somebody better might be out there, but I will not take anything less.

Last weekend when we saw each other again, he had my lucky ring in his pocket. When we said goodbye, he didn’t give it back nor did I ask for it. I will get it next time…or the time after that. Maybe it is a lucky ring after all.

Wink.