Bugging Out

  I'm a person who believes in being prepared. I make lists. And then I make lists of my lists. On index cards. You will always find an index card on my desk with various things to do. And I edit my list - if an item is only  partially-done, I make notes under the item. Sometimes I put items like "go to the bathroom" or "take a deep breath" on the list just so I have something to cross off. Or I'll add items I already did and cross them off to give myself a mental high-five. There is no greater pleasure in my life than the feeling of crossing the last item off of the list. Because then I get to tear it up and throw it in the recycling bin, thus completing the cycle. I know it sounds a little OCD, but we all have our thing. Or a couple of things. I also count stairs when I walk up them. Just up. Not down. I have no idea what that's all about. I tend to get flustered when I go "off list". The online dating system is all about having a list. When assessing a potential suitor, one tends to check the boxes on the mental list when deciding if it's worth taking the time to communicate. And as the process goes forward, more boxes are checked or the name gets scratched-off the list of potential candidates. And sometimes it feels great to tear up the list and toss it in the recycling bin.

  In a former life, aka my 20's, I spent a lot of time outdoors. I had a group of friends that went camping and hiking at least a few times each year. My organizational skills came in very handy - packing lists were vital when you were carrying on your back everything you needed for several days. You do not want to be stuck in the woods with no toilet paper. Trust me. And I never bought into the tulip-poplar-leaf-as-TP philosophy. Even when I had my packing routine down to a science, I still made and double-checked the list. As my outdoorsy friends will attest, it's easy to acquire a bunch of gear. Knowing what you will need and what to take becomes an art form. The really good ones don't take anything extra. I once led a group of teenagers on a short trek along the Appalachian Trail. The co-leader cut all of the tags out of his clothes to make room and lighten his pack. When you are walking 100's of miles, every ounce counts!

  I was contacted by a guy a few years ago who called himself "outdoorsy". This is actually a box in the positive column for me, since I have positive memories of my outdoor adventures over the years, and would like an excuse to venture out again from time-to-time. We messaged the standard pleasantries back and forth a few times. And then I get the message that made me grab my cross-off pen. He asked how I feel about "survivalist/doomsday prepping". Sigh. I know I'm a little biased from watching the doomsday-prep shows on cable, and I know it's not right to judge, but most of those people are what I like to call "whack-a-doos". I should have cut the line, but I decided to let it out to see where this fish was going. I got some amazing information before deciding to just throw the pole into the water. Things like the shelf-life of different kinds of ammunition. Or that if you coat eggs in mineral oil they will stay good for years. Years. Did you know a can of Crisco will burn for up to a week as a candle? Some friends and I actually tried it, and it does work. I had the idea to get the Crisco sticks and make tapers out of them - you know, for a romantic evening. It turns out I said the wrong thing and pushed one of his buttons by insinuating he might be a conspiracy-theorist. Oopsie. He responded by telling me that I was brainwashed by "the man" and that he would be laughing at me when he survived the impending apocalypse. He ended by stating that he gained his greatest satisfaction from knowing that he could survive ANYTHING. I feel the same way about online dating.

I can just hear it now, "I'm sorry, children. You can't color any more. Mommy didn't buy enough cans of Crisco for the end of the world."

Shades Of Gray

I'm the type of person who sees things as black and white. Something is either acceptable or not, right or wrong, good or bad - you get the idea. The first lines of A Tale Of Two Cities could be my biography. This also seems to relate to the people in my life. I have a strong, polarizing personality. People either tend to really like me, or want nothing to do with me. And the feeling is usually mutual. There are very few people who say, "Eh, she's ok" when my name is brought up in polite conversation. And this is not hearsay. When you're exceedingly blunt, people tend to talk to you the same way. It's not that I don't have a filter, it just has very large holes. A basketball could probably pass through with ease. I actually do blame this on my Catholic upbringing. We were told that the mysterious man-in-the-sky was always watching. Every action either earned you a white dot, or a black dot in the magic book. So as a child, I was constantly counting the dots I had earned throughout the day, judging everything I had done as either black-dot-worthy or white-dot-worthy. Like a spiritual balance sheet. And St. Peter was the accountant that tallied them up at the end of your life upon arriving at the pearly gates. One black dot too many, and Poof! Off to the fiery depths. I was convinced my future was red-hot.

I started looking for the gray in my 20's. Literally. I was 23-years old and found a gray hair while checking the rearview mirror in my car. While I was driving. I almost had a wreck. I've heard that gray hair runs in the family, and I don't remember a time when my mother did not have gray hair. She informed me, while I was breathing into a paper bag, that she also started finding gray hair when she was my age. Another score in the genetic jackpot. I also starting finding the figurative gray. My first few years of teaching, I was a bit of a battle-axe. The rules were the rules. Black and white. I have learned that exceptions are sometimes necessary. Knowing when to make one is an art form, and I set the goal to become the exception Picasso. My filter eventually started catching a bit more, only letting through golf-ball sized oopsies. I'm pretty sure that's about as good as it's going to get. Having to be a professional has also taught me how to work with people whom I normally wouldn't want to deal with. It's often not easy, but is always worth it. Especially when you are up-chucking at 5 am and they agree to photocopy some lesson plans for you. I guess we all grow up eventually. Although my psyche still feels acne-laden and hormonal from time-to-time.

The other day I found myself ensconced in one of those seriously in-depth conversations you can only have with a friend who knows you better than you know yourself. I was bemoaning the state of my current dating situation. Specifically wondering why the guys who you are most interested in never seem to be all that interested in you. I got the cock-eyed eyebrow look that I hate, because you know the next thing they say is going to shake you to your soul like a magnitude 8.5 earthquake. I was then informed that I tend to try to make things out to be something other than they are, instead of going with the flow. After a fair bit of denial and requests to explain it again, I finally realized it's another manifestation of the black-or-white situation. I'm either all-in or all-out. And if he's not there, I just pretend he is. And then get mad when it's not working. Totally fair, right? So I've now decided I need to start searching for the gray in relationships. Wish me luck.

I have made my peace with my gray hair. But the gray eyebrows I've been finding are another thing entirely.

Gentlemen, Start Your Engines

   My experience with cars got off to a very rocky start. Luckily, the kid I was paired with in driver training was never at school, so I got to drive the entire time. I needed it. And my Driver's Ed teacher was a saint. The one thing I could do flawlessly was navigate a drive-thru. He always seemed to need a cup of coffee when I was in the car. My mom would never let me practice when she was in the car, which turned out to be for the best. It mostly consisted of her cringing and writhing in her seat, which only served to make me an even more nervous driver. I actually earned a blue slip, and only went and got my license because it was about to expire. Most of my other friends had cars, and never seemed to mind picking me up. My favorite was my friend Melanie's green VW mini-bus, which was dubbed the Pickle-mobile. The radio was broken, so we had a boom box we used. But then the antenna broke, so the passenger would have to hold it and stick their hand out the window to get reception. It became problematic when it was raining. My friend Amy had an old truck with a leaky gas tank. We always had to estimate how much gas it would take to get somewhere, because if we overestimated, it would just leak out while we were wherever it was we were going. Those were the days.

   My family's cars were never in much better shape. My oldest brother fixed up an old Chevy Nova and got it repainted. A few weeks later, my mom hit a post and scratched it pretty well. And then my other brother smashed it into a highway barrier. Oopsie. My middle brother bought his first car for $65 and it had to be started with a screwdriver. The floorboards were all rusted out too, so you had to be careful where you stepped. I learned to drive manual transmission in that car. It was great - it ran like a go-cart. The first time I asked to borrow my mom's car was to meet my friends at a movie about a year after I got my license. Everything went great until it was time to pull back into the garage. I cut it too short and got hung up on the door frame. I didn't know what to do, so I gunned it and crunched in the entire driver side of the car from the driver's side door to the gas tank. I didn't ask to borrow the car for another year. I never bought a car in high school or college. Since everyone else had one, it freed up my dad's truck for me to use. It was a Dodge Ram Charger and I loved it. I have no idea when my dad actually got to use it, but it always seemed to be filled with his treasures - things like squirrel pelts and buckets of tools.

I purchased my first car after I graduated from college and promptly landed my first teaching gig. It was a Chevy Cavalier. I drove it for 9 years, and only got a new one because I got into an accident. I rounded a blind curve and smashed into someone who had put their car in park on a very busy street in my home town. It totaled my car, and I got a very expensive ride to the hospital. Airbags are brutal, but I hear windshields are worse. The police were as flummoxed as I was about why she was parked in the middle of the street, and I didn't get a ticket. The officer informed me it was the first time he had not issued a citation for a rear-ending. I felt special. My current car was purchased soon thereafter.

I got a message the other day from a guy and we started texting. The texting was good - he appreciated my snarky humor, and came back with some funny stuff himself. He called me, and the conversation was easy and nice. We talked about the things we like to do on a date, and what we were looking for in a significant other. They lists jibed pretty well. Then he asked if I wanted to go out later in the week. I said I would love to. Then he asked me if I could pick him up. Seriously. I asked if he had a car and his reply was "not yet." I have no idea what that means. Friends have suggested a suspended license. My good friend suggested maybe his mom won't let him borrow the minivan until he cleans his part of the basement. I still tease some good friends who invited me over for dinner one night and then had me cook dinner. He now trumps that story. Luckily some "friends" came into town and I'm going to be busy for the rest of the week.

My current car is a Honda Element. My students have dubbed it "The Toaster". They don't make them anymore because they didn't sell to the demographic they were designed for. Which pretty much sums up why I've ended up in the clearance aisle.

Squeezing The Charmin

   I've been spending a bit of time on some of the dating sites and apps out there, and a couple of things have struck me about this experience. After years of spectacular failure on two of the popular paid sites, I was shocked at how many people I've made contact with on the free sites. And of all of those, there have been about 10 or so with potential. I find it interesting that single 40-somethings are not willing to shell out any of their hard-earned cash to meet Mr. or Mrs. Right. At our age, everyone has had some sort of heartbreak or major relationship failure. I don't blame people for not wanting to pay for it to happen again. There are a few guys I've dated that I would pay to forget, if the service were available. I've always heard you never love your second true love the way you loved your first. This obviously includes finances as well as emotions. The moral of this story - save your cash. You don't necessarily get what you pay for. That being said, I was also struck by the amount of truly desperate guys out there. And how open people are about what they are actually looking for. I never knew my little town was such a swinging place - and I'm not talking trapeze, people.
 
   I had no idea that each dating site has their niche. It becomes fairly obvious after you get a few fish on the line what the general kind of connection they are looking for. There are sites where people are very serious-relationship minded. It's more of an interview process and you have to be in serious contention of donning a poofy white dress to merit a first date. There are others where guys don't even want to know your real name and you can feel them breathing down your neck from the first message. For better or worse, sites get reputations as having more of one of the other of these polar-opposite people. And those reputations are fairly accurate. So it's out there - whatever you are looking for. I didn't realize how important it was to really know what I was looking for. I had no shopping list, and was simply browsing. And I've had some pretty awful products land in my cart. Thankfully, most of them got shoved back on the shelf next to the M&M's in the checkout lane. My friends have been seriously entertained with some of the racier stories that don't merit publication. It's rough out there, folks. And I've got pretty thick skin.

   These experiences have only reinforced my belief in the clearance-aisle mentality of dating at my age. I've been trolling a lot of aisles, checking the specs on a lot of products, and yes, even squeezing the Charmin. Not a ton, but it happens - I have a feeling my mother just closed her browser. And it's been an interesting process.  I'm most amazed how people are genuinely craving a connection with someone else. There are the romantic types who want to make you happy so they can be happy. And the hedonistic types who just want to feel something to reinforce that they are human. There are even the hopelessly wounded types who need somebody to understand that they are broken. The current squeeze is a decent combination of all of these things. I'll keep you posted...

I've always known that good things don't have to be expensive. My favorite potato chips were the Rodeo Bill brand my grandma bought from Aldi.

Save The Date

I was going through my mail the other day, when I came across a postcard that was accidentally delivered to my house. It was an RSVP card for a couple who are getting married in October. The card had two options for people to check off. They were "We wouldn't miss it for the world" and "We'll be celebrating elsewhere." A couple of things popped into my mind immediately. Firstly, that I wouldn't have been able to fill out that card without committing perjury. Not only would I miss it for the world, I would miss it for considerably less. Like a root canal, or bunion surgery, for instance. Second, if I miss the wedding, I would most assuredly not be celebrating elsewhere. Unless "celebrating" means sitting on the couch in my yoga fat pants while eating a package of Twizzlers and watching Netflix. I do not for the life of me understand why engaged people need everyone around them to propagate the myth that their upcoming wedding is the bright center to the universe. I realize that it can be the most important day of their life, and that their family is probably ecstatic for them. But that's about it. Most people I know consider weddings to be an obligation to their friends and family. They are boring, time-consuming, and can be quite pricey to attend. And everybody has "that uncle" that gets a little inappropriate when fueled by the offerings at the open bar. The only part of a wedding that I really like is the cake, and I can Betty Crocker in my yoga fat pants at home.

I recently got to hang out with a friend who now lives far away. We were discussing relationships and she is going through that first wave of friends getting married just to be married, regardless of whether it's a good idea or not. We've all been to those weddings. Hell, some of us have been IN those weddings. Leo Kottke has said he wrote the song "Rings" to sing at the wedding of two friends who he states, "Had no business knitting their souls together." Well my friend told me the big rage in Save The Date items was sending a magnet to hang on the refrigerator. She said that she and her boyfriend have started throwing the magnets in the trash when the couple gets divorced. They are down to two lowly magnets,  and "one of the couples isn't doing so great, so we moved them to the side of the fridge closest to the trash can." Hilarious. The part that cracks me up the most is you know they spent 2 weeks and had 3 arguments about which picture and font to put on the magnet that now symbolizes their disastrous pairing.

I recently found myself meeting an online set-up for a cup of coffee at my favorite local haunt. I knew it wasn't going to be good from the minute I said hello. He literally had the bug-eyed, cartoon-eye-with-the-old-car-horn-sound-effect look that everyone dreads. We chatted, had a glass of iced tea, and he told me he had a bad headache and needed to get home. Right. I absolutely knew that there was no saving of that date. The bitter part of me wishes I had snapped a picture so I could turn it into a magnet to send to all of my friends and family.

There is nothing worse than waiting for a follow-up text that never arrives. C'mon guys. Man up and let us down easy. It's not that hard.

You're Too Much!

I've always been a bit too much. I'm too loud, too brash, too emotional, too outspoken, and too sensitive. People will remind me of these things from time to time, and I usually reply that I am very aware. My voice was often the one that was heard above the rest, and I took the fall for the group more than once. The old Catholic guilt usually prevented me from informing the disciplinarian that it wasn't just me, because deep-down I knew that I deserved it. I don't think people understand that I know how much and how often I run my mouth. And I have dug more than one hole for myself that has swallowed me up like a Florida sinkhole. I understand I have to live with the consequences, and some of the pills I've had to swallow have been more bitter and chalky than baby aspirin.  I've tried to reign myself in over the years, but at some point you realize you are who you are. And for every person I've PO'd with my too-muchiness, there are people who tell me that I've made their day. My goal is to break even, but have a sinking suspicion there's a karmic tsunami heading for my coastline.

My current reality-TV obsession is the TLC show "Who Do You Think You Are?" It features mostly B-list celebrities digging into their past to reconstruct their family tree and answer some sort of questions they may have about their ancestors. It's basically an hour-long commercial for Ancestry.com, but they got me. I'm all-in. So far, they have found that one of Kelly Clarkson's ancestors was a teetotaling state senator, that Zooey Deschanel's ancestor's house was a stop on the Underground Railroad, and that Chris O'Donnell's ancestor was at Fort McHenry for the defining battle of the War of 1812, when they raised the Star Spangled Banner that inspired our national anthem. I have always loved history, and it's the personal stories that get me. I've blubbered like a baby at the end of more than one episode, I'm sorry to admit. And it was during last week's episode that I finally figured out what it is that makes me so emotional. Something that all childless people have to come to terms with is that our story is not one for the ages. Anything I have accomplished or done goes with me. And it's effect will not linger long after I'm gone. But the thing that chokes me up is that nobody is ever going to come looking for me. At no time in the future is somebody going to be digging around in a dusty archive searching for the details of my life.  I will forever be one of the nameless relatives in the group shot of some other persons great-great grandparent's wedding. In an ugly green dress.

Now, there are two groups of people out there in the clearance aisle. There are the people who are childless by choice, and those that are by circumstance. At my age most people fall into the first category. I am a member of the minority second group. It becomes difficult to find people who actually like kids, but don't have them. Or who do have them and don't mind taking a chance on someone who doesn't. I never could have imagined it was this difficult to find a hidden gem in the clearance aisle. Nor would I have imagined that someone wouldn't have recognized my potential. So, I'm still out there. Wading through the sale items. You can find me pretty easily - I'll be the one laughing and talking way too loud.

I've recently decided that maybe the reason I'm a bit too much is that I only have my mortal years. Posterity won't remember anything about me, so my footprint has to be just a little bit bigger while I'm actually up and walking.

Crossing The Pick-Up Line

I don't have much of a problem talking to strangers, and can strike up a conversation with just about anyone. I understand it can be a bit annoying. An ex once grumbled that we couldn't go anywhere without me either making a new friend or running into someone I know and jibber-jabbering with them for an eternity. Having been a teacher for as long as I have, the chances that I will run into a former student who wants to catch up are extremely high. The strangest and probably best example is from a family vacation a few years ago. We had decided to take a cruise together instead of buying each other Christmas gifts. The last day on the boat was a Sunday, and I was sporting a St. Louis Ram's t-shirt. They're my team. I can't help it. I was in the elevator on my way to the sports lounge to catch the game when a guy asked if I was from St. Louis. I told him the name of my hometown on the Illinois side of the river. He told me he was from a town about 20 minutes south.We both laughed when I told him that I had taught at the high school in his hometown a few years prior. He then asked if I knew his favorite teacher. His jaw hit the floor when I informed him that not only did I know her, but she was my brother's mother-in-law. And when I told them my brother and sister-in-law were on the boat, he just about lost it. We both shook our heads and mumbled, "Small world" at the same time.

That being said, I find it extremely difficult to craft a message to someone I find interesting online. You don't want to write the great American novel, but one-liners are so tacky. And trying not to sound needy, clingy, stalker-ish, or insane is tougher than you can imagine. If you point out things you have in common, it often reads clingy. Mentioning qualities they seem to have that you are looking for comes across as needy. And a witty one-liner often reads as completely insane. I used to try commenting on something they had written in their profile, but you'd be surprised how many people don't remember what they typed in those boxes. I don't send very many unsolicited messages anymore. I figure if someone is interested, they will contact me.

My latest venture online has supplied me with an entire arsenal of cheesy, ridiculous one-liners. Which sets one to wonder if guys actually think they work. I've picked out a few of my favorites. First we have, "Is your name Internet? Because you have everything I've ever searched for." Really? You can tell all of that from a 4-sentence self-description and my list of favorite books? Get some self-esteem and maybe we'll talk. Then we have, "What does it feel like to be the best-looking person in the room?" Which room are we talking about exactly? We're online, moron. I did reply that it was extremely difficult and thanked him for understanding. Another favorite was, "I lost my phone number. Can I borrow yours?" Nope. If you're so dumb that you can't remember your own phone number, then I'm not interested. How about "Do you know CPR? Because you take my breath away." Um, no. And you should probably carry an inhaler if you have that much trouble breathing, Mr. Smooth. And the gold medal goes to "I wish I were DNA helicase, so I could unzip your genes." I guarantee that guy couldn't spell DNA correctly, much less tell me what it is for. Guys, I really want you to pay attention here. Don't use these. It doesn't work. Ever. And you don't want to catch the girls that would fall for that crap. You're welcome.

I once messaged a guy who listed "To Kill A Mockingbird" as one of his favorite books. I told him it's my favorite too, and asked who his favorite character was. He replied that he had never read it.