We're moving!

I'll probably leave this site up since it doesn't cost anything but the rest of my thoughts are moving over to www.boodoggy.blogspot.com. Boodoggy of course an homage to the beautiful black lab who is also my profile picture. She had has made me laugh in the last two days as people have mistaken her for a boy because she insists on lifting her leg to pee and trying to mark poles like a boy. I don't get it. Can dogs have gender identity issues? Come join us (read: me) at Serendipitous Freelance Writer. It has already proved to be a fortuitous move as I logged in a few hours after creating it to find I had a follower. From the UK no less. She had discovered me by accident as she was logging off. Pretty neat, eh? I was also pleased to 'meet' Lodo and read a bit of his two blogs. Any guy who loves black lab mixes is all right with me. What are the odds? There is magic in happenstance.

Dancing Video

Oh the humanity

I know I'm not perfect but I do tend to be a word snob. I cringe when I read a profile that substitutes the word 'diversity' for 'adversity' as this college educated guy did but he seemed nice so I gave him my number. He had not received the memo instructing men not to tell a girl that you are talking to for the first time that you owe your ex-girlfriend money. It might be a good idea to never mention this unless you are about to be on Judge Judy. It is also a bad idea to talk at length about your ex as it invariably reveals more about you than her. I think that was in the same memo. The first conversation is rarely the right one to go deep, to talk about your abusive father or the death of your mother, to question a person's alcohol consumption and socializing habits, to talk about marriage at all. Too much information out of context is simply overwhelming. He seemed like a nice guy who was well rounded and while he didn't sweep me off my feet, I really thought we might have some stuff in common. This is why people are never hired from a resume. But at the end of the two hours I'll never get back, he said he hoped to hear from me and I didn't have the heart to tell him that I didn't feel the same way. He even told me that if I wasn't interested, I needed to tell him but I just couldn't. Is that bad?

A parting shot. It is also poor form to call a girl twice in the space of 20 minutes. If she's not picking up, it is not a good time. Seriously, were you raised by wolves?

Odds and Ends

I just read this book that spoke my heart on many things. I feel I can't yet do it justice but it made me want to have a long talk with a good friend. But I'm not quite ready for that either. I'm not sure what I would say and I'm not sure what I want her to know.

Match continues to thicken my skin and occasionally heighten my despair. A couple of friends have noted that match might be more of a hook-up place. I'm not so much a hook-up girl and I'm sure that comes across in my profile. Perhaps that's why Batman tried to give me an intimate massage on the front steps of the Art Museum on a busy Sunday afternoon. Another story for another time.

So I decided to try e-harmony again last night. The results of that were near laughable. Before I could even finish my profile, 4 guys had rejected me. I was so confused and kind of amused. I imagined a queue of guys walking up to my profile like it was a window and rapidly making up excuses about leaving the iron plugged in, the stove on, suddenly ill relatives, and ex-girlfriends that they planned to propose to that very evening. Glancing over their profiles, which are a far cry from the exhaustive e-harmony profile I filled out 8+ years ago, I wasn't missing much but still. It was so fast it was like these 4 random guys were buzzing in to answer a Jeopardy question. It was sitcom worthy. Tina Fey, are you there? This would totally happen to Liz.

I felt better tonight when I decided to subscribe and thus could see the pictures of these wouldn't-be suitors. Dodged a bullet. Several bullets. One guy was nice looking but in a frat boy way that didn't surprise me that I wasn't his type. Guys who list exercise as one of their top interests aren't usually falling over themselves to get to me, nor I to them.

Going back to the book, I felt like I needed to be alone for a weekend away from my home, responsibilities, and people I know. Then I would break the book back open, write down every statement that resonated with me and test it, weigh, tug at the thread and see what I unravelled. It's far to much work for a weekend, it is a lifetime of work but it would be interesting and potentially life changing to think about my relationship with God, what I assume about his nature, how that shapes how I move about in this world.

Outside of the book, I'm beginning to see something I never saw before in all of my relationships. I thought I had mastered my father. I understand him better than I ever have, recognize and no longer recoil from being more like him than any of the other kids. What I'm starting to realize is my reluctance to communicate disappointment, preference, or anything of substance with others is directly related to how I dealt with him growing up. My reluctance to depend on anyone or have anyone expect anything of me, my desire to anticipate what people want me to do before they can ask, and my shame when I think I have disappointed them, my inability or reluctance to communicate about that disappointment. My inclination to walk away rather than deal with their unmet expectations, even if I've never bothered to find out what they are.

It's all a bit much.

Just a tiny pity party

One person has visited the site in the last week. Strangely enough, they were from Australia. Not sure how they found me but they didn't stay long. This is my dilemma. I don't think this site is very compelling (and by extension, neither am I). Nothing that makes you want to stay a little longer if you happen to stop by. Something you can stand to miss. Kind of like a store you shop at twice a year. If it went out of business, you would briefly mourn that it wasn't there anymore but there wasn't anything there you couldn't get anywhere else. I kind of feel that way about match too. I'm missing that intangible quality--the best thing about me might be that I'm not as boring as I initially seem. That's not exactly compelling. I have intrinsic value as a living being, as we all do, but that doesn't mean that anyone would want to date me or read anything I write. I think that is a hard but necessary pill to swallow and digest. I want to be special, I think everyone does and everyone is. But I want to be extra-special and not everyone is extra-special. Being designated extra-special is a fickle and often arbitrary thing but to again marvel the phenom of Britney Spears as a "singer" she does have some sort of quality which allows her to stand out among all the other average looking, mediocre-voiced wannabes. That is what makes her extra-special. The more respectable marvel of extra-specialness is Tina Fey. She's worked the salt mines of her craft long before we even knew she existed. She is willfully non-glamorous and I'd like to think she recognizes quite sincerely that she's fortunate. Fortunate to have found her audience, fortunate to have the right combination of people around her to execute her vision, fortunate to have the support and time to build her audience, damn fortunate for the randomness of Sarah Palin's placement on the Republican ticket. I'm happy that opportunity met her preparation because when someone like her succeeds, someone who is quite ordinarily special, it keeps a tiny flame of hope alight for me. Although it is VERY unlikely anything will ever come of this random writing thing, perhaps, perhaps, something will. I've read some pretty crappy things in print. Maybe someday, some of my crap will be printed and bound for posterity. Maybe I should work on being even more crappy so that people will read me simply to be incredulous that someone thought trees should be felled to get my words out to more people. Fame through notoriety. Kind of like the Paris Hilton of writing. The kind of writing that makes you want to put down what you're doing to find someone and show them just how bad it is and how knocked over you are that it made it to press and has the nerve to have a price printed on it. Not fit for wiping bad. Though to be fair, I've never read a book fit for wiping. No matter how bad the prose, the paper is simply unsuitable for any kind of sanitary bathroom use. Not to mention the plumbing problems you invite with trying to flush that kind of paper. Book paper is really only suitable as worst-case, emergency side of the road wiping. Glad we got that cleared up.

So in conclusion, the dog is waiting for me to walk her, I just got invited to dinner with a neighbor, and I'm boring and my writing sucks. Yep, I think I covered all the bases.

What I've learned from Match so far

I've moved quite beyond the 30 contacts I vowed I would make before spitefully ending my membership even though I would get no money back. I've moved beyond another strange encounter with Batman on whom my bluntness is wasted. I have even moved beyond the disappointing results of my first completed determination of 2009 to ask a guy out. I've changed my profile many times, I've written many, many guys. To borrow an analogy from a previous post, I've moved from the shore to the water but I'm still pulling up sneakers, tires, and assorted non-fish material.

When I first started reading profiles and came across a funny, well written, clever profile, my heart would do a mini-swoon, delighted that such men even existed. I reflexively considered them one in a million and that they would naturally see that we were compatible after reading my witty and well composed profile. A couple of months later, I realize that male literacy rates were higher than I first estimated and the lack of interest from clever-turn-of-phrase guy is no longer as disappointing. They are everywhere. They grow their own vegetables and love to cook. They write short stories and do lead vocals in a local band. They are funny writers, they travel, they love to read, they help the disadvantaged. Some of them may be lying, but instead of resigning myself to imagining how many kids Batman and I might have together and figuring the odds against any of them being even remotely normal, I'm taking solace in the abundance of men that I am attracted to and hoping that sometime between now and August, someone I'm interested in will actually feel the same way about me.

What is good from all this, at least today, is that the rejection is starting to lose its sting. I saw CCO tonight while I was out walking and we let the dogs visit, made minor small talk and parted ways. No mention of the e-mail, nothing to suggest that we have even had contact outside of our random chance encounters. Ignoring the elephant, that is a way of addressing it, yes. I could have said something but I'm just not that quick on the take and was simply pleased that I was dressed nicer than the last time he saw me. He didn't say anything either so we parted satisfied that the dogs are at least making progress in their relationship.

The other thing I'm starting to realize is that I'm a very conservative (read: boring) dresser. I don't do cleavage. The few things I have that do show cleavage, I tug at all day and vow never to wear again. I'm fairly well endowed so I've always been consumed with keeping the girls under control, not tossing them around in people's faces. I envy anyone who doesn't have to consider military-grade support in dress decisions. I really didn't think to make sure I had a profile picture that made it clear that boobs were included with the witty banter and wry humor they would get in a date with yours truly. Then I combed through my photos and I only have one photo, which I hate immensely both for the cleavage, which was near obscene, and my horrible hair. It one of the least flattering pictures on file. Anywhere. Worse than mile-high teased middle school bangs. Ick.

I don't disagree with my friends who insist that a good picture with face and cleavage would probably increase the traffic on my profile. I find cleavage distracting and I'm a girl. A guy, even if he claims to be an ass man or legs guy or whatever, can not NOT stare at cleavage. I'm just not sure if I'm ready to hook a fish that way. If the boob factor sways an otherwise disinterested guy my way, is it likely that true love or even true like will follow? We'll see....to be continued.

Hater

Just saw a headline about fans offering Natalie Cole a new kidney. Pissed me off. Where's our f-ing kidney? I don't begrudge her long life and good health but I do begrudge a bunch of random people trying to be relevant to her because she's famous. I'd bet my right arm they can find someone who needs a kidney within a 5 mile radius of their house. I know I'm a hater but I'm just sayin, if you're anxious to unload a kidney on a stranger, our family is open and accepting donations. And for the benefit of the random passerby, which is rare here in the remix, before you wonder how I could be so haterific, and 'hey why don't you donate yours' comments, I did and wish I had another to give. So, about that kidney....