Adrift

I feel out there. I’m adrift on a current, and I don’t know if land is just over the horizon, or if I paddle, if I’ll just move in the wrong direction even faster.

Another promising candidate evaporates!

I met and went out a couple of times with a nice guy I was thinking I’d like to see more of. He’s cute, and smart, and funny, and I could probably spend hours kissing him. I have had the absolute good fortune of hooking up with some rockin’ smoochers.

(Just an aside, remember making out as a teenager? Remember how good it was? Just kissing–it can be so exciting. I must be going through a phase where I’m rediscovering the pleasures of kissing.)

I’m not looking for problems, and I look at every situation as a “you never know” kind of deal. For example, on paper, my ex was a safe bet. No complicated exes, no kids, blah blah blah. After a year, I had a ring! But then things went south, so you never know. So this guy shows up kinda complicated (kids, ex-wife, etc.), but I think I ought to go with the flow, give it a shot.

Turns out my sweet, funny Irish-Catholic guy has some sexual oats to sow, and several kinks to exercise, along with no interest in relating. He can offer, and I quote, laughs and some booty.

I raise my glass to honesty–because I genuinely appreciate honestly knowing where someone is coming from–and the search continues!

Things that make you go, hmmmmmm

So I signed up on match.com again, although my previous experience wasn’t much of an experience. I signed up, and then promptly met and paired up with my now-ex. So this is a little like my first real go-round on match.com.

I want to say that I’m not a strict age-ist. You just never really know, so I’m using age as a gentle parameter. But I’m getting a lot of responses in general from guys in their early 20s. I’m a little baffled, but I think the whole cougar personae thing isn’t really doing us ladies any favors. I’m figuring out that these guys don’t want to date me, but, they sure would like to come over to my place, if you get my drift.

The latest applicant for my affections wrote to me in suggesting a date, something about the 10-year age difference between us probably meaning that nothing would really happen, but (and I am almost quoting verbatim here) “we might have that physical spark.”

I didn’t read that really closely to start with. I thought it was an offhand way of saying, hey, let’s go out and see what happens.

But for some reason, it’s stuck with me all day, and I’m thinking what he’s really saying is that he already knows that this isn’t going to be anything, but since I’m cute (his descriptor), maybe I will want to be physically involved with him.

This is, unfortunately for him, most unlikely. His photos are that of a late 20s, pasty-faced dough-y bodied fellow. He looks exactly like a guy whose post-collegiate metabolism caught up to him.

I am also unimpressed by his date suggestion. I thought we should pick something fun to do, and he immediately countered with a “drinks-and-get-to-know-each-other-conversation” at a bar nearish to his West Loop condo. There is a lot to be said for dates with opportunities for talking and getting to know each other, of course! I just don’t think that those things and fun are mutually exclusive. And, I’ve honestly had it about up to here with drinks dates.

I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure this clown thinks he’s going to lube me up, take me home, hit it, and that’s that.

I’m also half willing to bet he doesn’t pay for my “drinks.” Love those guys!

If something more promising comes along, I’ll cancel, but my inclination is to show up for our drinks date like the 38-year-old can-be-sophisticate I am and rock his world just a little bit, then down my ginger ale and return home, his fancy-new-condo sight unseen.  

Relented.

I talked a lot of big talk yesterday about cutting loose the man-child who was driving me crazy.

I gave in.

There are just too many things that haven’t worked out for me lately, and there are a few more looming on the horizon, and I just can’t quit him right now. I decided to reframe the situation. This isn’t a long-term situation. But he’s great for right now. He sends me little texts all day long. He can be kind of mushy, sweet and affectionate. He is funny and smart. He is the single best kisser, ever. These are wonderful things, and I make myself crazy when I try to make this something that it’s not. It’s hard for me to be casual and easy about these things. But, again, I need to lighten up.

I took my first run in a couple weeks today. The recent spate of bitter cold has abated somewhat; right now it is a balmy 25 degrees. I’m only partially joking. It does feel balmy after sub-zero wind chill, and 25 degrees is wonderful running weather. It felt great.

Still no word on the job I felt I had surely nailed. I could still be in the running, as it did take them three weeks to get me in for an interview, but that was due to holiday schedules. I’m trying not to get too bummed out about it and keep moving forward.

Needs to be said: it’s still cold

I’m spending my day in my jammies, resting, mulling, thinking, and trying to rid myself of this pernicious cold.

I’m feeling a lot of love for Paperbackbook Swap these days. http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php 

It’s very gratifying to me to be able to effectively recycle books, and get books in return. I’ve been going through my library again and again and again for candidates to swap. In an older box of books, I found a book about growing roses organically. This was cool when I had a house with a yard in Indiana. Not going to be used here in Chicago. In exchange for that, I got another volume for my Russian Reading Challenge. Actually, yesterday alone I posted 4 books that were immediately ordered up, which allowed me to order a total of 4 more books.

Other than actually acquiring books, I haven’t made a lot of headway on actually reading the books. I’ve really let myself get distracted by dating. One guy, anyway. He was driving me nuts. Sometimes, there are those people. Something about him was making me crazy, almost literally. I can’t explain it. The entire problem could literally be just me. But I know I didn’t like the way I felt when I talked to him, even, and it just needed to be done. Isn’t it weird, how . . . addictive? . . . someone can be. I didn’t know him well, and it’s not like he had Brad Pitt looks, and this was not a relationship that had any future, but there was something about his charisma. There was an unquestionable spark. That doesn’t happen every day, and it was hard to tell him to leave me alone, but it was just wrong. No good was going to come of it.

It’s hard to put the dating thing on a side burner. I like being in a relationship. I’ve spent most of my adult life very single already. I want to co-exist with someone. Share a hall closet. Want someone to care what time I come home. That kind of thing.

At the same time, I feel I’m at a crossroads of sorts. I’ve felt very much at the crossroads for the past six months or so. I feel as if one smallish choice will reverberate and trip a bigger consequence down the line. It’s difficult to explain. But I feel like if I can buckle down and focus a bit on a couple of key projects, something good and big will happen further down the line. And no one will ever know but me whether I pull the trigger on this. I don’t want to be alone, but I am, alone with my big weird thoughts.

When it’s this cold, we have to talk about it

The little weather widget on my desktop says it’s -2 degrees outside. That might seem like an odd distinction, that outside note, but Chicago apartments are not renowned for their abundant warmth.

Soon I will need to make the obligatory phone call to my mother to discuss in greater detail the cold and how we are managing in the cold. Next, we will discuss how the dogs seem to be taking to the cold. My parents have custody of my sister’s basset hound, an animal positively devoted to the creature comforts: things like roaring fires in the fireplace, and the company of my father at 2am, for no reason other than just spending time together. We will talk–again, at some length–how the bassett seems to be taking to the cold.

For Christmas, my mother gave me a space heater, and during the course of this conversation, I will reassure her that it was an excellent gift that it–and by extension, she–has saved my life. I think that once you birth someone, you never stop being their mother. There is a part of her that needs to care for me and my siblings just as when we were small and utterly dependent on her.

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I did not hear about that job yesterday, unfortunately. On the plus side, I think I’m still in the running. Although they said they hoped to get back to me by the end of the week, I suppose that was a little optimistic. On the plus side, I’ve channeled my job anxiety into a rare burst of housekeeping, and I’m feeling kind of pleased. It’s easy to drop stuff in the garbage, but I hate the idea of filling yet another landfill with perfectly useable stuff. So I’ve had to take extra steps of finding places to recycle some of my stuff. Like, I’m a freak for magazines. God, I love magazines. I love coming home at night and finding a nice magazine in the mailbox. I sit in the bubble bath and read, and it’s worth every dollar spent, in my opinion. But I can’t just ditch these things. I found two solutions: I actually found a library in a woman’s prison that wanted my extensive catalogue of Runners World magazines, as well as some other women’s interest mags (Oprah!). For the others that didn’t seem women’s prison appropriate (Vogue, Elle), I took those down to the Aveda Institute where I get my hairs cut. Magazines get a nice workout down there.

I also found a nonprofit that wants my grad school textbooks. This will be box #2 to them: Bridges to Asia.

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned in a previous post that Ruby-the-German-Shepherd’s coat blow-out seems to be over. We’ve resumed our regular level of shedding, so I can get away with vacuuming once a day. I feel like hours of my day have been opened up, now that we don’t have to brush and vacuum with such ferocity.

For whatever it’s worth, she seems completely at peace with the radical drop in temperature. The wind is harsh out there and I thought my eyeballs might get frostbite, but she’s good so far. She is useful on days like this when I can coax her onto the bed, and then wedge my feet beneath her warm body. She lets me do it, and seems to like touching. Ben woulda grumped. He was not into feet.  

Still sick, but improving

It’s very, very cold here in Chicago. The coldest weather we’ve had in 11 months is en route. I just took the dog out for a sample of what’s to come. I’m fervently hoping that the marathon training scheduled for tomorrow morning is cancelled. Which makes me wonder what I was thinking about when I signed up.

Walking the dog isn’t much help. She doesn’t exactly walk. I passed a park the other day where a woman was standing, drinking a cup of coffee, and a few feet away, a large white fluffy dog (American Eskimo?) stood at the base of a tree gazing upwards longingly. I instantly recognized the squirrel hunt in progress.

I signed up with match.com to get back out of the house and do a little dating. So far I’ve gotten some nice emails from nice guys, but today I got a “wink” from a guy whose profile is full of platitudes from the bible and who describes himself as “ultra conservative.” I am mildly irritated by his laziness. I know women who do this, too, so this isn’t a slam on men, but I know he just scrolled through the pictures and winked at whoever looked cute. (Another guy recently contacted me, and when I wrote back and told him that we seemed to have some things in common, he confessed that he hadn’t actually read my profile before sending me a “she’s cute” wink.) So, now the onus is on me to read the profile carefully and decide whether we are well-suited.

Actually, only one of the guys who’ve written to me seems like a very good match, but it’s so hard to tell from what we write alone. There’s that very important in-person interaction, which isn’t about someone being “cute” but more that indefinable physical energy.

I’m working very hard at just chilling out and taking a far more relaxed attitude towards meeting men. I think–I know–that in the past I’ve just smothered opportunities with my expectations. I was not open to letting things happening organically. So, the goal now is to just go out, enjoy the conversation, relax. Learn to flirt, actually. How bizarre to be 38 and learning to flirt. It’s like learning to ride a bike, it feels that awkward and scary. I am going to fall and look stupid.

Total change of subject: I am very hopeful that today I get a job offer. I had a second interview this week for a job I really think I’d like. I am going to be pretty bummed if I don’t get it, but there it is. I’ll mope, pick myself back up, and continue to apply for jobs.

Another tangent: I am strangely, oddly, deeply touched by the people who’ve written to me that they read my blog. This fall has been a definite ebb in the flow of my life, and every time I read a little note from someone I don’t know, who has no obligation to read my stuff, it’s a little injection of hope. Thank you so much.

To  my friends who write me little notes: thank you, too, but no, Jason, I did not invite Taxi Mike in for some lovin’ on a cold winter night. I realize now that would have been the thoughtful thing to do. He gave me a free ride, I shoulda given him a free ride. I see that now. Next time!

Sick.

Despite the fact that I’m not employed right now, I get remarkably little done around this small apartment. And to cap it all off, I am now sick, which only further impedes my productivity. I feel a vague sense of guilt about all the stuff I really ought to be doing.

A part of my problem is that I spend an undue amount of mental energy on dating. I’m 38 years old, but I’m trying to find my sealegs. I just never really enjoyed dating, and I think I need to develop a higher comfort level with it. I need to lighten up.

Towards that end, I went out last night, hauling along my friend for a kind of internet-inspired double blind date. And we actually had a lot of fun. The men were funny, talkative, witty. My face actually hurt from all the laughing.

We said good-night shortly after 11pm, and I walked out to Clark St. to catch my favorite of the Chicago buses, the #22 north bound. Unfortunately, I was freezing to death while waiting, and finally broke down and hailed a cab. Now, I have money, but I only had $5 in cash on me, so I was trying to guesstimate how close to home that was going to get me. He misinterpreted me a bit, and decided I was a charity case. Now, a bit of human kindness is hardly a crime. But, he hit on me. That’s right, Taxi Guy was lookin’ for love!

Weather update for Chicago area

It is astonishingly cold here today. It’s noon, and although the sun is shining, the temperature is a meager 13 degrees. It’s not soooooo bad for the humans who have the sense to wear down–my full-length down coat is ever at the ready, but my poor dog–her paws need some balm to protect the pads from the salt and whatnot. I’m not sure how this is going to work. I envision coating her pads with balm, which she proceeds to lick off. Adventures in dog ownership!

I’ve listened to the unabridged version of Ulysses, just the first part, and so far, I’m enchanted.

The Chicago Public Library is now offering on-line downloads of audio books. This is remarkably handy. I borrow the audio cds on occasion, but those are a little unruly for loading onto ones ipod or computer because keeping track of the discs in order with their generically labeled tracks is challenging. I want to mention how much I love public libraries. There are some extraordinary resources there, despite the fact that they have also became a haven for people who like to use the library computers to look at porn. I fail to see how a person’s civil liberties are infringed upon by not having access to pornography in public on the public dime. But that’s just me.

Ulysses subbed in for January

I’m going to start Ulysses today, instead of Europe Central. I’m just in the mood for Ulysses!