Tales from the Trenches Tuesday

I was trying all this morning to think of which funny tale I could share with you all today. Sadly, I wasn’t able to come up with much because my mind has not really been on the losers, creeps and weirdos that I have dated. It’s been occupied with so many other things lately…things so unfun they make me LONG for occupying my mind with thinking of loser, creep and weirdo stories. Which is why I knew it was still important for me to take a break from my unfun thoughts and come here to at least post something today. I’m just sayin’…the bar is set a little low today, my apologies folks.

R and I had been dating for a few weeks and I think we were at the point that it was becoming clear to both of us that we were heading towards being exclusive. I honestly remember that time really fondly because we really were “dating” – we both put efforts into planning fun things to do, made plans with each other in advance, emailed each other articles or other funny things that made us think of the other, called one another on the phone, etc. We didn't play games or act too casual or aloof. There were no 10pm texts on a Friday night asking what each other were up to. No late night plans to meet up at someone's house afterhours. Sigh…the good old days of dating and people actually courting one another.

So this particular night, R had made plans for us to see a comedian we both liked at the Improv. I met him at his apartment first and we had a cozy dinner before heading over to the show. I can’t remember now if we went out for drinks after the show or not, but I do remember that we had wine with dinner, and then drinks at the show and then got back to his apt pretty late.

For the ladies reading this, some of you may be of the camp that pre-determines which night will be “the night” – and I don’t think I need to spell out for anyone what I mean by “the night.” And while I am generally a planner by nature, that particular decision is sometimes sort of up in the air to me. So I can’t say that I had made a decision one way or the other before the date started, but I had later that evening when we got back to his place.

And as an obligatory side note, isn’t that always a little exciting when you make that decison? Maybe it’s because it is one of the few times you feel kind of in control of a new relationship since 99.99% of the time it is the girl who gets to make thatparticular decision.

Anyway, decision was made. Game on .

But the game was not on…it was delayed at best. Things were clearly not , shall we say working as they should be. I don’t know if R had had one too many drinks, or if that really had “never happened before” but he looked at me and in all seriousness said:

“Sorry about this…can I get a Raincheck?”

A what now? My only rememberance of rainchecks was when I was little and we would go to Kmart and they would be out of some super cheap sale item, and you got a raincheck for when more stock came in. Now I was supposed to be giving out rainchecks for people who were (for whatever reasons) unable to perform when the situation arose?

Ugh, raincheck. To this day, the word still makes me shudder.

Let's just BE old. We don't even have to grow.

For some reason lately, I feel like quite a few people have been having conversations with me, or at me, or just near me about their finding someone to grow old with. People who have found their people, others who think that *maybe* they may have found their people, some others that are still looking for their people, and a few who might be getting a little ticked because they feel like their people are LATE in showing up!

And then there’s me. Someone who more or less has never pictured myself growing old with anybody. I wasn’t a girl who thought incessantly about my wedding one day or obsessed about starting a family. I didn’t even place a high amount of importance on dating and relationships (and I know there are going to be critics of that game plan – hell even I have questioned it myself from time to time.) I have some different thoughts and perspectives from a lot of other girls when it comes to all that stuff and I know not everyone can understand them, but I think I am fortunate enough to have a couple people in my life who “get” that part of me more so than others. You know, so I can rest easy knowing I am not a total weirdo.

I also feel like I have always just been older or more mature. It wasn't some destination to grow towards or get to -- I was already there! And seriously, I don’t mean that in some snotty way or something. For those that know me IRL, now is NOT the time to start posting comments reminding me of all the dumb/stupid/childish shenanigans I may have gotten myself into over the years. Why don’t you go ahead and save them for the next time we all get together, mkay? What I mean is that ever since I was really little, I have always acted older, projected myself to be older, felt a little older. Maybe because I was too much of a thinker and worrier as a child (and to some extent, still am.) And maybe at times I have had to deal with too much on my own at points in my life already. I can’t really say. But to me, truth was spoken when someone said “I never thought I’d feel so tired at 22.” (now who will be the first to ring in with the correct info on that quote?!?)

Maybe I do want someone to grow old with. Or maybe I will eventually. But right now I would really like someone to just BE old with. That’s what I have been thinking about lately. Screw this “growing old together” talk. The future is going to happen and growing old is going to be a part of that, no matter what/who/when. But I can’t get too involved in thinking about the future that I stop being present in my present. Because “Life moves pretty fast, If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” (C’mon folks…that’s an easy one…)

So for right now, I would be super happy and feel very fortunate to find someone to just relax, spend some time together, enjoy each other's company and just be old with right now. What sorts of things does being old entail? Well for me, I have been thinking about:
• Cooking a fantastic meal on some random weekday and maybe opening a really nice bottle of wine.
• Getting excited when you remember you have some DVR shows to catch up on and are stoked to stay in on a Friday night and watch them.
• A drive up to Gettysburg to enjoy a day trip in the car with some fall foliage.
• Swapping funny youtube clips to get through a workday.
• Sleeping in on a Sunday morning in a bed with a great down comforter and high thread count sheets.
• Going to see something at the Kennedy center and maybe getting a little dressed up. Not because you have to but because you want to.
• Going out on a limb and trying an ICED Pumpkin latte at SBux.
• Caring about the food you are going to bring to the tailgate.

What are things that are NOT old? Like things I think I have no interest in doing. Like, ever again.
• Meticulously planning meals or the ability to even talk to someone around a particular team’s schedule (Seriously I am a big fan of a few teams myself, but some people take it to unhealthy extremes. And I have been just so lucky as to date some of those people.)
• Getting excited when you remember you have a co-worker's going away Happy Hour, followed by post HH drinks with the people you *really* like from work, then off to drinks with a different group of friends, then meeting up with other people at some party, then out to try a new bar nearby that just opened up, then to some bar that someone heard is “open really late” followed by a Jumbo Slice for dinner on a Friday night. I think I got tired and queasy just typing that.
• A drive up to anywhere that may involve stopping at a fraternity house.
• Swapping absurd postings from Texts from Last Night because they sound eerily like your own lives.
• Passing out early Sunday morning on a bed with no fitted sheet, a threadbare flat sheet and a comforter that is in desperate need of a wash.
• Just going to see something at the Movies. Not because you want to but because you just don’t have anything to talk about with the other person.
• Going out on a limb and trying a Bear Fight.
• Stressing about running out of liquor and then having to drink beer at the tailgate.

I think it also goes without saying that I feel very much past the point in my life where I am okay with people who get naked and eat hotpockets in my kitchen, need to pass a breathalyzer to start their car, or who are actually married already.

What about you? What's an "old" activity that you enjoy doing with your person or look forward to doing with a potential person?

Tales from the Trenches Tuesday

I have been getting quite good at posting more often on here (and my thanks to the 3 of you that noticed!) So I figure it's time I kick it up a notch and add an actual, honest-to-goodness, recurring weekly post.

So Tales from the Trenches -- what is it and what can you expect? Well basically, just a place for me to recount for your reading pleasure all of the weirdos, creeps, and *ssholes I have had the pleasure of getting to meet over the course of my dating career. And no, they won't all be bad, but I will try and keep everything on the funny side. Sort of an "I date them so you don't have to" kind of thing.


I thought this could be fun for a few reasons:
1. I know there are other single girls out there going through similar experiences, and if my anecdotes can somehow make them feel better about their own, then that's a sacrifice I am willing to make.

2. I have a lot of married friends who think that being single and dating is like one big fun episode of Sex in the City. No, it isn't and you need to get out more often, that show has been off the air for a long time now. Sadly, I think dating looks more like a casting session for an episode of Dateline's "To Catch a Predator."

3. I have a lot of married friends who think that being single and dating sounds scary as all get out and they have no clue if they would be able to do it. You are right, sometimes it is scary as hell and no, there are many of you that I would not want to see give this a try. So please just go stay married and next time the husband does something truly repulsive, ponder what he actually may have saved you from.

A long, long time ago, I was considering going on a date with this one guy. Back and forth, I was nervous that I shouldn't go and maybe I should cancel. But a good friend who was just about to hang up her single girl hat after getting engaged told me this (paraphrasing...after all that was a long, long time ago), "Just please go on the date. Because he might turn out to be someone wonderful. And if not, I know you will turn it into a really funny story."

So here I am, too many funny stories later, with nothing to do but post them for your amusement. So starting NEXT TUESDAY, that will be the promise I try to make good on every week. My pain will be your gain. You're welcome.

You can take a Mulligan in golf. Not so much in relationships.

I am a huge fan of 30 Rock – smart, funny, and I respect their use of inside jokes. For those that don’t follow the show, they recently had a plotline where one of the lead characters was going back and re-evaluating her previous romantic relationships. Longer story of why she was doing this but it basically comes down to someone telling her that there are not really all that many “types” out there and by that point in her life, and it’s likely she had already met the one for her. Now, I don’t know if I would agree or disagree with that but it did get me to thinking. Lately I have become way too aware that this phenomenon of going back and seeing if maybe you overlooked something in a previous relationship, or maybe the timing or something else was off before and could be better now, re-visiting people from your past to see if maybe there was something still there worth considering. Well I can tell you that this phenomenon is real. And it is most definitely NOT just the ladies who set out digging through their ex files.

I don’t know what the F it is, but people have been coming back around in my life like some sort of weird boomerang that I could have thrown out years ago that somehow eventually returns to smack me in the back of the head. Hey, I am all for being green but Reduce-Reuse-Recycle should not generally be applied to people and relationships, know what I mean?

People who left my life at various points in time. Ranging in levels of seriousness of involvement. Varying lengths of time we were together. None of these things give any clear indication of if or when someone decides to make a return appearance. I wish I could say as I got older, I understood guys more. I actually think the reverse is true. I am more confused today then ever before.

These weird occurrences started a couple years ago. I was just coming out of a serious relationship and the break was one of those bad ones. Longer and more drawn out then it needed to be and a lot of hurt and anger on both sides. About a month later I was contacted by an ex who was going to be driving through my neck of the woods on a drive home to see family and we should get together for a drink. Since he and I had broken up years before, we honestly and truly had been able to salvage a friendship after our romantic relationship ended. That definitely did not happen instantaneously and was aided by him living far away. And I honestly and naively thought it really was just having a drink with a friend. Please keep your mind out of the gutter, it was all very PG rated, but it was more than a drink. He was also coming out of what sounded like a pretty painful breakup so it was probably that we were both in bad places and it felt comforting. We have still kept in touch over the years that followed, even me flying down to visit him a few times. Those are times when your head tells you that you should know better than to do something that ridiculous. But your heart just wants to feel that sense of being totally comfortable with someone, even if it is for a weekend. And sometimes you let your heart win.

The following year I was leaving an old job and getting ready to start a new one. I was sad about leaving the friends I had made at the old job but really looking forward to starting something new that I thought would be really challenging, a position which I could work hard at and do well in (this became my start of law firm hell – good to know there was a time that I was looking forward to it!) From out of nowhere, another ex got in touch with me. We had remained friendly – our relationship ended nicely enough, the timing was just bad and he moved away shortly after things ended between us. I guess a recurring theme here is you can remain friends or stay friendly if you live a sizable distance apart! We had always kept in touch here and there after he moved away. Then out of nowhere he gets in touch with me and says such nice things, things that sound like he’s reading a movie script. He had been thinking about me so much and wonders about what could have been. All those sorts of things that I don’t care how cynical you may be or how hard your edge is – you melt a little. Or as I remember doing at the time, you melt a lot. I was getting talked into canceling my plans for the weekend and taking a last minute trip down to see him. We spent time emailing; we spent hours talking on the phone. And when the time come to really make a decision, to see if I thought we could make something like this work, I said no. I got scared that there might be a catch, scared of taking such a huge risk. I felt like I was having that same conversation with myself – my head vs. my heart. And my head made the better argument this time. I thought being a grown up meant making tough decisions so that’s what I did.

Things have stayed quiet for a while. Then all of the sudden, people start showing up again. Maybe it’s a Facebook effect – some friends and I often joke about guys we had gone out with or been otherwise involved with “kicking around” on our facebook pages. Commenting on photos, writing on our walls. But the people who have come back around lately are not the result of Facebook. I wish that were the case so I could easily explain this recent outbreak and be done with it.

One is someone I dated about two years ago. It was a fun, non-serious little fling of a couple months. Something I knew was going nowhere, but it was happening at a time where I needed the distraction and wanted something cheap, fun and easy. Like knowing you should go home and fix a healthy dinner and then saying “screw it” and going through the drive-thru instead. Anyway, this guy has actually had a few nicknames bestowed upon him, but the best one would be MDIYL. That stands for “My d*ck is your loss” – that’s the text message he sent when things between us were ending. Clearly no one can ever accuse me of not being able to pick classy winners! He was someone who was I think 32 at the time and acted like he was going on 22, so it didn’t surprise me – I actually laughed pretty hard and enjoy telling that story just to see people’s reactions. He came around out of nowhere a couple months ago, writing me to apologize about how horribly he had treated me and how he had always felt so badly about it and was really ashamed of it. Wow, okay. I just figured maybe he was on whichever of the twelve steps it was where you make amends. Okay, that's nice enough, hope he feels better getting that off his chest. But then he emails me again recently – out of nowhere – about driving past my old neighborhood and how am I and what am I up to this weekend and maybe we should get together and grab dinner sometime. Huh? I think girls get a bad rap for being a little looney tunes sometimes, but clearly crazy goes both ways. I haven’t talked to you in years. You actually texted me that your d*ck was going to be my loss. It wasn’t. Do we really need to discuss that over dinner? Yeah….I’m thinking no.

And that brings us to the present. Things with the most recent guy, well they did not exactly work out. I feel badly about that and am obviously disappointed, but it’s all okay . But then about a week after, he emails me. Chatting, bullsh*tting like nothing happened. I get the whole “I hope we can still be friends” business, but let’s be real. Nine times out of ten that’s something we all just say and don’t truly mean. It’s like asking someone how their day is going and you probably could care less. But you ask because it’s the socially acceptable thing to do. So, ok….I guess I should know from my past that yes, you can actually be friends. But it doesn’t happen a week later. And if my previous track record is any indication, this guy is clearly going to have to move far away! To be fair, I think he's a great guy and you shouldn't NOT be friends because it didn't work out. But I think you need to give it more than a freaking week, no matter how short or long lived the relationship was.

So I am not even going to try and say that this long rambling post had a point or offered any insight. Sorry about that, folks. I have just been scratching my head about all this lately. So I will send it out there into the universe and maybe somehow I will get some answer giving me insight as to why this happens. Here’s to hoping the Universe’s sign of choice is not having one of these fellows drunk texting me over this long holiday weekend because that would be not cool. You hear me, Universe? Not cool.

Is it crowded in here or is it just me?

I am getting into a place I don't think I have been in for awhile and it's becoming increasingly clear to me, I wasn't remotely prepared to be here. Guys and dating and all of that....well, personally I haven't ever taken a shine to it. For the most part I have always felt I was better on my own and often feel more comfortable alone than I do with another person. It's a bit weird and the total opposite of lots of people that I know. Yet another thing that makes me different...shocking. But after I switched jobs, I had more free time. I wasn't living in my office or consumed by work anymore. I had time in my life for this. Truthfully, I think if our apartment complex allowed us to have pets, I would have gotten a puppy to fill my free time and that would have been the end of it. Sadly, we can't have any "walking pets" and I think if I spent all my free time talking to a goldfish it would be a cause for concern.

But no puppies, and no goldfish. And I did meet someone that I actually got excited about -- wanted to get to know better and spend some time with. And that's when everything started to get a little screwy for me. I haven't cared much for the people I have dated the past couple years. That's sounds horrible, I know, I sort of cringed a bit as I typed that. I guess to clarify it a little bit and not make me sound totally horrible, I dated people who were fun/convenient at the time but were pretty much throwaways that I didn't care if they stuck around. Sometimes we are all just out to have a bit of fun and have someone to go to dinner with and have a laugh. But we wouldn't be asking them to go to a concert the following month cause we don't really think they'll still be around then, if you know what I mean.

So here I am, allowing myself to pursue things with this person when everything in my better judgement says no. The rational and practical part of me is really holding back and digging my heels in. I was trying to ignore it for a bit...allowing myself to think I was just being overly sensitive or analytical or something like that. But it really felt like some spaces started filling up. There were numerous off-handed references to previous girlfriends and relationships that I thought should be saved for a leter conversation. I brushed that off -- I didn't want to, but I am trying here. But then memories of some of my exes that I had really shoved to the back of the closet came tumbling out and many of them were not good. I will (try to) keep this all on the up and up because that's the classy thing to do, but I don't honestly think any of them know this little blog exists let alone would read it, so I think I am pretty safe. By and large, I have been pretty fortunate when it comes to exes. Some are still my friends. Most I know (god bless hindsight!) that it was for the best. But there are a bunch of them. And some mean more than others. One I cared about more than anything and I didn't treat him as well as I should have. One I think I made a mistake. One I will always wonder about. And one will always make me feel horrible - about him and about myself for being with him. That's the mixed bag I am walking around with. But there they were showing up, and it felt like they were there in the room and all of a sudden I couldn't breathe. And I honestly don't know how to handle it. I think I am having a lot more trouble dealing with things from my past because I never took the time to deal with it when it was happening. And now that is coming back to bite me in the ass. The larger part of it is that the last person, the last one that I was actually serious about, was just horrible. The time between then and now has allowed me to see even more clearly what a total idiot I was for not just allowing someone to treat me like an afterthought, but not realizing it was happening and walking away. Even when friends in my life at the time pointed it out to me, I guess I just didn't want to see it for myself or admit it. Lesson learned that you can't ever have someone be your priority who only sees you as their option.

Now I just don't know -- don't know where I am, where my head is at, what I want to do. Don't know how to kick out all my unwelcome guests. Don't know how not to let my unfortunate previous experiences cloud not only my view of this guy now but how to not let it affect how I act towards him.