Lucky, Lucky Me

OK, yes, I am once again going to bore you with the sweetness that is Steve.   I think, however, that many of the women out there will agree with me that this is just too gosh darn sweet to NOT share.

Yesterday, being payroll day, was, as usual, a very stressful day.  Steve and I  made plans for dinner at his place after work (and he suggested that I could try out the whole soaking in the tub thing that I had been dying to do).  So, after going home to set the cats up for the evening, I grabbed my overnight bag and headed out.  Within twenty minutes I was pulling into the garage and was met by my darling at the door.  He was starting dinner (veggie tacos and Spanish rice – yum!), and had his laptop set up to refer to the recipe he had pulled up on line.  After setting my stuff down he turned to me and suggested that I follow him upstairs.  In his second bathroom was a bouquet of Gerber daisies, an iced bottle of my favorite wine (with a glass), strawberries and whipped cream and chocolate sauce, a waiting iPod dock, a towel, and my robe.  “Your bath awaits.  I just need to know when you want to eat so I know when to start dinner.”

So, I got a lovely, relaxing, bubble bath followed by a tasty dinner and I didn’t have to lift a finger.

And I officially nominate Steve the sweetest guy, ever!

Gushing Praise

This is a long overdue post.  I’m home sick with the stomach flu and decided that there’s no time like the present.  This is going to be a very sappy post, so those who are diametrically opposed to such posts will want to bypass this.

I have found an AMAZING guy, so I’m dedicating this post to list off all the amazingly sweet things he’s done.

1. He opens doors for me (including car doors).
2. He lets me ramble on with my geeky/nerdy thoughts (like launching into a story about Holst’s Planets after seeing a commercial that used Mars as the background).
3. He always makes me feel special.
4. He sat through Fiddler on the Roof.  And didn’t complain.
5. He asked to come see me dance.
6. He volunatarily came to dance class.
7. He makes me dinner.
8. He takes me out to dinner.
9. He brings me flowers.
10. He plans romantic weekends with me…and makes them happen.
11. He got my bizarre Starbucks order (triple tall soy caramel macchiato) right on the first try.
12.  He let’s me read the techno ads first when we’re sharing the Sunday paper.
13.  He brings me fruit cups for Sunday breakfast.
14. He helped me record a flute solo to send to my grandfather (using my new flute), which required downloading and figuring out some software, and then used his email account to send it when it exceeded the memory requirements on mine.
15. He had a toothbrush for me.
16. He gave me free usage of his lovely bathtub.
17. He bought an iPod dock so that I can listen to my iPod while I soak.
18. He moved the second half of his couch in so that the cushions would stop sliding out from under me (thus making me more comfortable).
19.  He did not get annoyed when the above mentioned cushion sliding resulted in knocking over and shattering my water glass.  And a 10 minute broken glass clean up operation.
20. He rearranged his garage so that I can park in it.
21. He gave me a key and a garage door opener.
22. He offered his bonus room as a practice studio.
23. He watches The Food Network with me.
24. He records programs that he thinks I’d like.
25. When my car’s flat got repaired with a non-guaranteed repair (because it was a side-wall puncture) he offered to pick me up and drive me to work if the repair didn’t hold overnight.
26. He writes me love notes.
27.  He’s willing to stop movies and pick them up at another time if they get too long for me.
28. He uncomplainingly works with my insane schedule (since we started dating, I have had something on every weekend that we’ve had to schedule around.)
29. He texts me good night kisses.
30. He takes my movie recommendations for his Netflix queue.
31. He accepts my neuroticism.
32. He wanted to keep the two loaves of banana bread I made (I suggested sharing with friends and family).
33. He likes my bourbon balls.
34.  He’s willing to try my vegetarian cooking (and compliments it).
35.  He doesn’t get annoyed with my three million questions about football; in fact, he answers them.
36. He’s teaching me pool and doesn’t get frustrated with my lack of skill.
37.  He likes cuddling.
38.  Yesterday, we were supposed to eat dinner with his family (this was the “big introduction”).  I walked into their house and almost immediately started throwing up.  I tried to grin and bear it and not let anyone (including him) know that I felt so bad, gracefully excusing myself to the bathroom, but when I realized I couldn’t make it through dinner and told him what was happening, he immediately gave his apologies and took me back to his place (where, again, I walked in the door and went straight to the bathroom). 
39.  He let me curl up on his couch until I felt well enough to go home.
40. He texts me to check up on how I’m feeling.
41. He tells me I’m smart AND pretty.
42. He sits and talks with me.

I’m sure there are easily 42 million other reasons, but I think I’ll save those for another time.

Dancing vs. Dating

Over the past week, I’ve been contemplating my interaction (or lack of) with the opposite sex.  For years, my only method was on the dance floor.  I am comfortable with this; I can flirt, be charming, joke to my heart’s content.  I can confidently look them in the eye without the twinge of anxiety that I normally feel when making eye contact.  Through the dance, I am given a manual of what to do.  Take his hand now, turn under his arm here, advance towards him there.

I have recently started dating again and am longing for the same feeling of comfort…or at least some choreography.  I’m totally lost.  I feel like I’m perpetually stuck in a nasty exercise we teachers sometimes give our students: give only half the dancers the dance and make them get their partners through it without words.  I have not been given the intructions and I’m trying to desperatly to figure out where I’m supposed to go and what I’m supposed to do.  My greatest fear in all of this is that the poor sap will get so frustrated with my inability to follow his lead that he will give up.  Or, that I get so worried that he will get frustrated with me that I move faster than my comfort level (I already have a history with this).

To be fair, there has been no indication that he’s unwilling to follow MY lead, to work within my comfort zone,  but my limited past experience tells me that this lasts only so long.  And, let’s face it-I’m a coward.  It takes a very long time for me to work up the nerve to be the initiator whether it be hand holding or a a kiss.  Part of this is because somewhere it was ingrained in me that the woman shouldn’t make the first move.  I absolutely realize this is ridiculous and can be dangerous, but try as I might I cannot shake this conviction.

So, after a week of analyzing and perhaps realizing the steps I missed, tonight I step back onto the floor for another chance to trip the light fantastic and,maybe, to repair the steps I botched.

Two-to-the-Fifth

My 32nd birthday is in exactly one week.  For the first time in almost a decade, I expect to be spending my birthday alone.  I haven’t quite figured out how I feel about this.  On the one hand, the idea of spending my first major holiday alone is terrifying.  A true testament that yes, I am indeed single and alone.  On the other hand I want to pass this milestone, the last of reclaiming my independence.  I am single and I’m okay.  As grateful as I am to my parents and friends for ensuring that I have somewhere to be for Thanksgiving, Christmas and my natal day, I’m beginning to feel like they’re crutches.  I need to be able to walk on my very own legs.

A solitary birthday is a very odd concept to me, and it brings back some fairly unpleasant childhood memories.  When my parents first divorced, my mom had to work her tail off to make ends meet.  She had two jobs: a teacher and a lab tech (she actually drew blood, and yes, I do know the real term, I ‘m just don’t know how to spell it).  Anyway, she pulled whatever shifts she could, which could often mean that my birthday got celebrated on whatever day she was actually home.  As a child I didn’t understand this, and felt totally abandoned and unloved.  And while I absolutely understand now what was going on, it has left the imprint that a birthday should be celebrated on the proper day with a certain amount of pomp and circumstance.  I’ve been fortunate enough to surround myself with people that are willing to follow through with this.  I went from my father’s house to college.  In the dorms, of course, you’re never alone, even when you want to be.  The three birthdays I had when I lived with CLOeey were all honored - Cathy was an amazing roommate for many reasons, and she always made me breakfast on my birthday, even when I had 8AM lectures.  And I’m not talking cereal – I mean pancakes or crepes or these great little Dutch fritter things whose name I couldn’t begin to spell.

So, really the only birthday I’ve spent alone was the one after I graduated college.  I took the day off work (an impossibility now with my current position due to our payroll cycle) and walked to my favorite cafe for breakfast.  I have absolutely no idea what I did for the rest of the day.

So next Monday, I will go to work as usual.  I will distribute the payroll checks and complete the appropriate paperwork.  I will (perhaps) finish some projects that have been in my in-box.  It will be as any other day.

Except it won’t be.  My self will find its wobbly legs and walk and, perhaps, sprout wings and fly.

I am single, and I’m okay.

7 things…plus what I really meant to write about

So, I’ve been tagged.  Thank you, Yolanda  for forcing me to be extra revealing. 

So, seven things…

1. I opted to not purchase an amazingly priced custom made flute because I was afraid that it would make my playing sound so much better compared to what I can do on my faithful Armstrong (that every single technician has stuck their nose up at),that I would REALLY (rather than only really) regret only minoring in music.

2. I am very good at starting projects.  Finishing them, on the other hand…

3. I was date raped when I was sixteen.  I refused to deal with it until my last couple years at college.  During a group project for an English class, I was the only female in a group of three.  We held one of our meetings in one of the practice rooms in the music department (all the study rooms in the library were full), and I realized that I spent the entire hour trying to wedge myself behind the piano.  I walked into the counseling office that afternoon.

4. I live less than a hundred miles from my mom and probably about 800 from my dad.  I see both parents about the same number of times a year (about 2).

5.  I have a hopelessly romantic view of love/falling in love.  To this day, my greatest fantasy is to have a guy see me dance or hear me play and have to get to know me.  I know, it’s like something out of a cheap romance novel. 

6. I have a BS in Animal Science and Management.  I run the accounting office for a solar contractor, which has no call for the sheep flipping I learned my freshman year.

7.  I was the first child in my class to have divorced parents.

I don’t know seven people with blogs to pass this on to.  Yolanda is my only blogging buddy

Okay, so now that that’s over with…

Go to Yolanda’s blog, and read the essay she linked to  (The Erotic Appeal of Lands’ End), if you haven’t already.

Since I read that post this afternoon, I have not been able to get it out of my brain.  First of all, while I intuitively understand that guys must go through heartbreak just like us gals, I have never been allowed into the inner psyche of a guy to have a good idea of what he goes through.  The author has sort of adopted this love/hate relationship with these catalogs because they remind him of his departed love.  The bizarre, or maybe timely, thing is that I’ve been experiencing something similar with missing items.

Mark and I lived together for almost six years.  Anyone who has lived with a significant other understands that your stuff will get mixed together.  Our situation was somewhat intensified because Mark had SO MUCH stuff that a CD of mine would get mixed in on a road trip, and never see the light of day again.

I am currently living in dread fear of the CD cabinet.  For the last few months I have been discovering lost gems from my collection. Some I can name: Trout Fishing Big Trouble, James Galway’s Christmas album (wtf?? he didn’t even like Christmas music), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat(again, wtf??), Paula Cole’s first album.  Some I have no hope of naming, though I can picture their album covers perfectly.  One of the things Mark was brilliant at was finding albums that I really, really loved, and they were always by these little nobodies.  I couldn’t begin to name names or titles.  They have, like my dictionary, vanished into the great black hole that was my relationship.

So, I discover that an item is missing.  I am peeved.  “He had no right to take that,” I fume.  And then I mourn its loss, and with it the loss of what I had so desperately wanted to be a lifelong love.  Because, just like the CD, it has disappeared, and I must live with a new hole in my life. 

RIP 11/21

November 21 was the date that Mark and I celebrated our anniversary.  It was actually the anniversary of our second date, because it was on this date that we realized we would be together.  Forever.  Or six years as the case may be.

He was the first guy that I connected with, both physically and mentally.  He was smart, well-read, romantic.  I fell hard and fast: within six months we were living together.

I can’t pinpoint when I began to live with a sense of impending doom.  It’s possible that it started after he took a trip to the LA area to visit friends, and essentially disappeared for three weeks, leaving me with no way to get ahold of him and no idea when he would return.  Certainly, the last year we were together was rank with it; it may have been even the last two. 

At some point we stopped working.  And so I was saddened, but not surprised, when he sat down in my office at work and announced he was leaving.   It was the one year anniversary of the death of my first cat, and one month and a day from my thirtieth birthday. 

“Don’t you love me anymore?” I asked, feeling like I’d been hit in the stomach.

“I’m leaving,” was his reply.  He walked out of my office.  I ran to the bathroom and threw up, left bus fare on his desk, and went home.  I cried the entire way home: tears of sadness, tears of shame, tears of anger.

Mark was a hoarder.  By the time he left, we had two storage lockers, and friend’s garage, and our apartment filled with his stuff.  It was a cause, I’m sure, of our demise, though it took the removal of the the labyrinth of boxes before I realized how truly miserable I’d been in that lifestyle.  It took him a month and a half to remove his stuff.

I set out to find myself again.  We had led a fairly isolated existence (his by choice, mine by embarrassment).  I withdrew money from my trust fund and refurnished the apartment.  I reacquainted myself with friends I’d dropped contact with (for which I will forever be sorry).  I learned to crochet and quilt to fill the evenings; I upped my Netflix level to five discs.  I was rather proud that the cat, not me, had to take Prozac.  I have started to think about dating again.  Which leads me to a conundrum.  I cannot, for the life of me, imagine anyone but Mark.  I picture a long conversation over tea in a coffee shop, and his face slips in; a goodnight kiss, and it’s his face.  My heart and my head have reached an impasse, and I don’t know which side to take.  Is it that my heart still wants him, even though he shattered it? Or can my brain not imagine anyone else because there is no one else to replace him?

Someday, I would like November 21 to revert to being just a date sandwiched between November 20 and November 22.  I’d like to awake that morning without a twinge of regret, without the endless “what ifs” that play through my brain.  I’d like to spend the day without a cloud of sadness hanging over my head.

Any day now…