Changing my mind set in the dating game

This dating business?

Sucks.

Seriously.  I know why we do this crap when we’re younger.

Because we can.

Because when we’re young, and the guy turns out to be a douchenozzle, or he blows you off, or stands you up, or disappears, or lied on his profile, or the date just sucks we truly believe “Heh, he’s the problem. Not me.”

Now that I’m older, and dating again?

Not so easy to sell myself that same bullshit. Even if it isn’t bullshit.

I haven’t blogged about it, but I’ve made no secret of it on Twitter, that a few weeks (months? really? has it been that long?) I went back to the dating website where I met Brian.  (What? It’s free!)  I’m not looking for my Prince Charming. He won’t be fishing anyway.  But it would be nice to have someone to hang out with so I don’t spend all my weekends at home alone.  Or out on the town alone.  Or drive my friends bat-shit crazy begging them to entertain me.

I made a few quick changes to my profile, added a new picture, and waited without any real expectations.  I didn’t wait long.  Hello?!? New fish in the sea, fresh meat. Everyone’s coming out to check out the new chick.  (Even a couple of girls. WOOt! Everyone wants a piece of me!) A lot of young guys, looking to hook up (ignore), a lot of ain’t-no-way-in-hell guys looking way out of their league (ignore), a few I talked to, but just didn’t feel any real need or want to talk to them on the phone or in person, and a couple I actually talked to on the phone, and a couple I actually met.

One guy in particular had some potential.  His profile had the same sense of humor I have.  I got it. I thought he gets it.  We exchanged a few messages, and then phone numbers.  Our first phone conversation was an hour long.  He’s on Twitter and Facebook (no I never went looking for him).  We exchanged real-life email addresses and emails and a few more phone calls… and then?

Gone.

Radio Silent.

His profile said “I’m taking a break. Good luck to all of you still fishing.”

But nothing to me. No phone call, no email. no text message.

I am not heartbroken over this. I figure this is part of the game.  Maybe he found someone he really connected with.  I wish him the best of luck, truly. But couldn’t he have told me that instead of falling off the face of the earth?

Or maybe he was abducted by aliens.

Or, when he got my real-life email address, he looked at my google profile, which links to my Twitter, Facebook, here, my review blog, and well, from there? It’s just follow the flashing neon lights to find out way more about me than you ever dreamed you wanted to know.

Of course, I figured, *that* had to be it.  That had to be the reason why he fell (or jumped) off the face of the earth.  He read my blog, he found my Facebook page, and my Flickr account, and everything else I have on line…

And ran scared.

Or jumped.

It took a little bit for me to realize how destructive that line of thinking was.  So what if he ran (or jumped) because of what he found?  What he found is a version of me.  Sometimes a cartoon version of me, but still… a version of me.  If he couldn’t handle it, didn’t like it, or was intimidated (yeah, that’s what it was… intimidation) he’s not the right guy.

I was all this on-line with Brian…oh wait, bad example.  That didn’t work out.

Ok, I have a lot of friends who know me in real life, and know the me that is on line and they like both versions of me.  But when push came to shove, when things fizzled, my first thought was “What was wrong with ME?” and it should have been “What the hell is wrong with him?” or “Oh, well, he just doesn’t get me.  Next!”

I had a date this weekend.  With a guy. Saturday night.  And I didn’t drink any alcohol.  (thanks Petron) The date? Almost perfect.  All on my own.  Without my best friend tequila.  And if this one doesn’t work out either?

I’ll be batting about average.

Because nothing screams dating expert like a twice divorced recently dumped single mom of two. Clearly.

I happen to be hanging out on Facebook when I saw Melissa say that yes, it was true, You Won’t Go Blind was looking for new writers if anyone was interested to contact her.

I thought it would be fun, so I fired off a message with links to here, and Buy-Her.com and said I was interested in being considered.  You know because nothing screams relationship expert quite as loudly as a twice divorced, recently dumped, now back in the dating world at the ripe age of 40+, mother of two almost teenage daughters.  I know exactly what I’m talking about. Clearly.

When I happened to mention this new adventure to a couple of my co-workers, after they stopped laughing long enough to take a breath, they asked me “So, has this woman ever met you?”   Well, clearly, no.  If she had?  I’d would have never been given this opportunity.

Of course, now, I can go on dates and consider it research.  As one friend pointed out “You can be St. Louis’s version of Carrie Bradshaw.”  Because that’s exactly what St. Louis needs.  Clearly.

In all seriousness, I can bring to the table knowledge about blending families, single parent dating, dating over the age of 40, on line dating (that’s where/how I met Brian, and regardless of where we are now (Splitsville, barely speaking Splitsville) we dated for 4 years) and unblending families.

I don’t have anything posted there yet, but believe me as soon as I do?  You all will be the first to know about it. I would appreciate it if you all would then spread the word and show me some love because I don’t want Melissa to regret giving me this chance.  I think it will be awesome beyond words and I need some support and love.  PLEASE.  We’ll keep the crazy from her until she realizes just how Awesome I am.

They're always thinking of me

Last night, after picking up the girls from their dad’s early because he wanted to watch the Super Bowl. Meh, what do I care?  I’ll pick them up early.  Not like I was watching the game.

We get home at a fairly decent time, and by decent I mean Oh my god I still have hours before it’s time to go to bed even though I could drop right now and sleep the sleep of the dead.  I decided to have a snack, you know because nothing is better than eating when you really just want to go to bed.

I’ll have some cheese and crackers and finish off that half bottle of wine in the fridge that I started the other night while watching the second season of Sex and the City.

I go to the kitchen, open the cabinet, grab the box of crackers, pop it open, reach in and Hello (hello hello hello) (those are echos for those of you who aren’t hearing this post narrated in your head like I am as I type it)

The girls?  Had helped themselves to some cheese and crackers (but not my wine, thankyouverymuch) while they had been snowed in.  Fine. I’m ok with that.  The cheese and crackers?  For everyone.  The wine?  All. Mine.

I reach in the box, thinking WTF?  There, at the bottom of the box….

2 1/2 crackers.

Not 3.

Two and a half.

I slowly turn to the girls and ask them “Did you seriously put this box away with only two and a half crackers left in it?  Why not just EAT the two and a half crackers?  There’s still plenty of cheese left, so I know you didn’t run out of cheese.”

The best answer they could come up with?

“We wanted to save some for you mom!”

Gee.  Thanks.

Because I just can't keep my opinions to myself. And I found some new drama to write about.

The one thing I did *not* want this blog to become is a political blog.  There are three things ‘proper’ people don’t discuss; money, sex, and politics.  Since I’ve talked about two of the three on here (much to my mother’s embarrassment) I might as well go for the trifecta.

The problem is, when it comes to politics, I don’t claim one true party.  I usually just pick an issue (or one comes to the forefront) and I start shooting off my mouth, spouting opinions, without much thought behind it all. Politics isn’t my strong suit. Never has been.  And usually when I open my mouth, I prove that point time and time again. And I get in trouble.

But not Juan Williams trouble.

When something this big comes across the air waves (and by this big I mean it’s being covered by MSN, CNN, FOX, NPR, The View, Oprah, and God.. you know the regulars) I itch to jump in with both feet and spout off an opinion.  But first… I always go look up words, get definitions just so I make sure there is some validity to my ranting.

For those of you who don’t know (and maybe don’t care?) Juan Williams was just fired from NPR for something he said on The O’Reilly Factor. O’Reilly got himself into a bit of hot water with Barbara Walters and her gang over at The View last week, over something he said regarding Muslims and 9/11 and was looking for validation and support from Juan when Juan said this:

“I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

I am not going to get into the right or wrong of NPR to fire Mr. Williams.  That’s a whole legal issue regarding contracts and termination and breach of contracts and I don’t have time to find and dust off my law degree from Cracker Jack school of law and marketing.  Besides, what’s done is done, and it’s not going to be undone, and Fox News jumped in and offered Mr. Williams a three year multimillion dollar contract for doing what he was already doing by being on Fox News Sunday and voicing his opinion.

Here’s my two cents worth on this whole topic.   First of all, Bigot is defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary as

a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance

and just for good measure, Dictionary.com defines Stereotype as

a set of inaccurate, simplistic generalizations about a group that allows others to categorize them and treat them accordingly

Let me say this.  We all stereotype people.  We profile people.  We all have preconceived notions about groups of people based on characteristics they share, be it color of their skin, color of their hair, size of their boobs, or penis, the clothes they wear, the books they read, the car they drive, the music they listen to.  If we didn’t the advertising world would so be out of business.

He admitted on national television a truth that many of us hold.  And that is, he admitted to feeling nervous when he sees a group of ‘Muslims’ in the airport/on an airplane.  It’s nothing against those people personally.  It’s nothing against Muslims as a whole.  It’s a normal visceral reaction to a group of people who changed our world forever.  When you think of Michael Jackson, (before he died) somewhere in that thought process was ‘child molester’.   When you think of Michael Jackson and young boys… well let’s not go there.

Mr Williams was honest.  In this world of Political Correctness, we are so damned afraid of everything.  Afraid of saying the wrong thing, writing the wrong thing, wearing the wrong thing, because we might, *gasp* offend someone.

Fuck that bullshit.

What would have made Mr. Williams a bigot would be if he had acted on those feelings.  He didn’t run screaming from the airport. He didn’t deplane.  He didn’t cause a scene. He didn’t point at them screaming “TERRORISTS!!!”.  He acknowledged to himself that yes, he has those feelings, he was aware of his surroundings and went on with his day/life business as usual.

Just like most everyone else does.

Would this have been such a big deal if he had said   “I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I go to a strip bar, I got to tell you, if I see women who are very skinny, and have big boobs and skimpy clothes, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as strippers , I get horny. I get excited.”?

What the world doesn't need now. Or in the future. Or ever.

Once again there is internet drama. Once again I am drawn to it. OK, I’m not drawn to it. I made the choice to jump in. And by jump in I mean, I made the choice to read a blog post that referenced the blog post that caused the controversy. So, then, so that I could be informed, (and because I love a good train wreck) I went and read the controversial blog post written by Gretchen over at Jill’s blog Scary Mommy.

I was at work when I started reading it. Two paragraphs into it my head is ready to explode. So, I print it out and sit on it. I go back several times over the course of the afternoon, and each time my head is ready to explode. I wrote notes in the margin. I highlighted sentences. I read paragraphs out loud to co-workers.

And my head exploded.

I sent an email to my sister’s best guy/girlfriend who is my token gay man in my life, just to get his perspective on it. He had seen my link to it on my personal Facebook page, and was leaving a comment for me. He, clearly had a different perspective than I did.

His head didn’t explode. Well, at least it didn’t appear to have exploded, as the comment he left was clear, consice and well thought out, and relavent and well… much better than anything I was spouting off all afternoon. But he works in media.. he’s good at finding the right words.

I’m good at exploding heads.

And shooting off my mouth.

Mostly without thinking.

So, I sat on it a while longer. Like an entire 36 more hours. (mainly because I took the girls to a circus last night and didn’t have time to sit down and re-read it and think about it any more.)

My sister’s guy/girlfriend made a point on my personal Facebook page. “Being gay isn’t a matter of who you have sex with. The conversation needs to get out of the bedroom, and people need to realize that being gay is about who you love.”

I originally thought I’d just copy and paste Gretchen’s blog post here, and write my comments with it. But I know from past experience, when people do that they tend to nit pick to death every. single. detail. And that just sounds childish, catty, and petty. And I want to make a few valid points here. (I know, thought I’d try a change of pace.)

At first glance, it comes across that Gretchen has issues with her son’s fourth grade teacher who is ‘an open lesbian’ (Gretchen’s words). That’s where I started to get catty/petty. (well, actually it was about three paragraphs earlier, but that’s beside the point.) What exactly is “an open lesbian”? One who is out of the closet? (and jumping-elmo-on-a-pogo-stick can’t we find a better phrase than that?) Does she admit to being in love with another woman? The reason she’s concerned “came from a fear that the issue of her sexuality (the teacher’s), if discussed openly, would pull the focus of the class away from education and place it somewhere else.” (My sister’s friend also made the point “If any teacher is talking about sex they dont’ belong in the classroom, however, so long as we continue to equate homosexuality with sex and not love, we will keep missing the point.”)

Um, excuse me. Can I just point out, that if *any* teacher’s sexuality (wether they love a man, a woman, or a bologna sandwich) should be discussed openly in any classroom, the focus of that conversation had better be turned directly to the board of education, because frankly, that topic of discussion is totally and completely inappropriate. Period. Done.

But I read deeper. the very next paragraph she says “I would prefere my son’s teacher be someone who shared my belief system. I would prefer she be a heterosexual. If I had my choice, I’d prefer she be a Christian heterosexual.” Um, ok, Arian race too? (too far? Out of line?) “Not because I am afraid of gay people (I’m not). NOT because I hate gay people (I don’t). I just want my son to be surrounded by adults who support and practice our family’s value system.” And apparently, while she claims to not be afraid of gay people, and she claims she doesn’t hate gay people, it’s implied that she does just sort of wish they would go away. Or keep their ‘dirty little secret’ to themselves.

And just because my mind doesn’t work like the normal person’s mind, and my thoughts tend to go down the dark and twisted path at times, my question is this. What does she know about her friends who do share her family’s value system? What does she know about their sexuality? What if they are furrys? Or like bondage? Or role playing? Or other posititions besides missionary? Or they enjoy the occassional threesome?

The very next paragraph contains the following sentence. “I worry about anytime my children have contact with people outside of our family.” Really? Isn’t that a bit extreme? They have contact with people outside her family everytime they go anywhere. School. The store. Church. (and believe me, growing up as a preacher’s daughter.. I *know* that not everyone in a church shares the same family values.) Are the kids allowed to go to friends’ houses? Are they allowed to have friends over? Are they allowed to have original thoughts? Are they allowed to question the marchal law family values they are being raised under?

One final quote from Gretchen. “It’s my job to shape my child into the person I think he or she should be.” Your job to shape your children into the people *you* think they should be? Not raise them to be the people they are going to become. Not, give them the tools to live happy, productive lives. Not, quide them to be open minded accepting well rounded educated people. No, her children are being raise to be the people she thinks they should be. Let me tell you, there are a whole lot of people out there in the world who are being nothing like the people their parents thought they should be. And they are happy, healthy, well rounded, highly educated productive members of society.

The impression I got from this little blog post by Gretchen, isn’t so much about her son’s teacher’s sexual orientation. This is much more about Gretchen’s need to control her children and the world around them. And while I truly understand the Mother Bear Syndrom, wanting to protect our children for all things evil in the world (evil being firmly tongue in cheek. Save the hate mail). But protecting them? Sufficates them, stunts their growth, emotionally. Welome to the world where uh, diversity reigns. If she wants to surround her children with people who share their family values and are like minded then well, she’s going to have to go start her own colony on her own little island. It’s just impossible to avoid diversity. And not allowing your children to be exposed to different people, different values, different opinions, different cultures, different lifestyles is just creating more close minded bigoted intollerant people which, last time I checked, the world didn’t need. We’ve got plenty thanks.

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