How to Lose a Guy in... Ten Minutes.

As I try to figure out a new direction to take my writing in, it occurred to me, why not write about all of the stuff I couldn't write about before?  Of course I'll need to tailor it to the new PG audience.   The stuff I'm talking about is all of my dating adventures over the past 10 years while I was divorced and dating, ya' know pre-relationship. I couldn't really tell all, since some of the people involved were reading me, and that would have been awkward.   However, the twist is, it won't all be making fun of all the psych ward escapees I encountered, it will be a lot of revelations of things that I did wrong.

Oh yes, Madge was wrong.  Hey, I admit it.  A lot of you that read my blogs on Myspace back in the day, will probably say "We coulda' told ya' you were wrong!".  Yea, yea ok, sometimes it takes some of us a while.  Sometimes people never learn.  I'd rather be wrong and have figured it out than still be convinced I'm right and still be alone and miserable.  Once I became generally unmiserable, my whole life, not just dating changed.  I got back on a career track, and the kids and I started to thrive.

Wait, let me clarify, I wasn't miserable because I was alone, I was just miserable, period.  Now, I could be alone and be happy.  Make sense?  Moving right along...

I used to think I knew it all.  I was convinced that brow beating a man into honesty and forcing his hand was somehow a sure-fire way to attract them to my womanly wiles and fall madly in love with me.

Bah hahahahahaha!!!!

I was so obsessed with honesty after my lie-filled marriage, I became "Date-zilla".  It was all about laying all the cards out at once, and if a man followed-up on our date I would go into interrogation mode about his intentions.  And if they weren't what I wanted, I pouted, and was passive-aggressive, and did the guilt thing.  Oh, I was convinced that I didn't do that... but I did.  At some point I think we should all be videotaped in our lives, because sometimes what we perceive we do, and what others see are two vastly different things.

Oy, I hate to admit it, but it's true.  Of course, it wasn't with everyone, a good number of guys I was trying to ditch because I just wasn't attracted.  I would say 90% of the men I met just weren't interesting to me.  I was very picky.  But there were ones that could have had a chance, had I not blown it.  However, I do think things happen for a reason.

Once I started to learn to be confident, act like I didn't care, and set up boundaries and walk away when the boundaries didn't suite me... things started to go my way.  That was the tough one, walking away after the boundaries were set.  Sometimes you want something so bad, you make a bad decision and say, ok screw it I'll go meet him just this once.  As they used to say on Family Feud, "X".  Wrong answer.  The fact is the guy I'm dating now, my boyfriend (oh that word still seems so silly at my age), didn't start really respecting me until I said no to the nonsensical situation he wanted to have with me. I thought I was being cool saying I was ok with a casual dating thing, but yet being passive-aggressive to him about wanting a relationship and then really being hurt when he went out with someone else. 

Truth be told, I wanted a relationship with him and it was ok to admit it and walk away if he didn't.  I was raised by a pack of angry feminists to believe relationships weren't important (yet the twist was, once you were in it, it was for life).  Yet I finally was shown that it's ok to want love, especially after 10+ years without it.  It's not ok to be addicted to it and be a Liz Taylor.  But I had to accept it was ok to want love, and stop fighting it internally.  That was a lot of what made me angry inside.  However once I accepted it, I needed to keep my standards and boundaries and hold out for the right relationship.  I had to learn patience.  That was like teaching Sid Vicious to "just say no" to heroin.

All right, this is getting long-winded, this could be a book, so I'll cut it short for now.  I'll turn it into a mini-series.  This will be "Roots" for our generation.  Wait, "Roots" was already in our generation.  So it will be the "Roots" of the dating lessons genre.  Nevermind, I'm  going to turn into Star Jones here with all the self-promotion.  Anyway, stay tuned, more dating revelations to come...

Do They Still Make Geritol?

I really hate it when people make aging jokes.  I just think it's stupid.  I groan standing up and somebody says "Easy Grandma!"... I want to say "How about I give you a Grandma
Foot right in the ass?".  Oh wait, keep this clean, right...  Well, that's what I feel like, ok, so sue me!

But there is a time when reality hits.  Or as my eye doctor calls it "natural progress".  I don't feel all old and stuff but I'm just having a hard time accepting that it is "about that time" for certain things.  I hit 46 and it's like the day after the warranty expires, everything goes.  Like getting fat.  My metabolism has just come to a screeching halt.  I've gained 20 lbs in the last year, gradually.  I don't eat any more than I did; I've just stopped processing stuff apparently.  I did have some tests done and my doctor found I was taking to much thyroid medicine so that may have an effect.  She reduced my dosage, so that will take care of it.  But either way, fat or thyroid, I've got old people problems!

I just got bifocals a few weeks ago.  Shut it!

I color my hair to cover the grey.  Meh, ok, who doesn't color their hair these days?

I had to go to the colorectal surgeon today because I've been having issues.  See?!  See?!  Ya' see what I mean?  Guess who all the people in the waiting room were?  That's right, old people!  I was the only person under 70 in there!  And talk about humiliating, oy!  Have you ever been to one of these doctors?  They make you bend over a table!  Everything is ok (minor issue) so far, subject to further probing next month, but damnit...  I'm not ready for this stuff yet!

By the way, who in God's name would choose that specialty?  It's bad enough you have to go spelunking in the waste factory all day, it's usually on decrepit old people or morbidly obese people.  I wonder if when the doctor's working on huge people that nurses have to stand on either side and hold the tent flaps up?  Too much?  Yea, sorry...

Anyway, it's just... in my brain I'm still, um I don't know, about 28.  Ok, a lot of times I feel like that carefree 14 year old I was or even that 6 year old with separation anxiety.  Sometimes I need to look in the mirror for a reality check.  Yea, I know it's "you're only as old as your feel" and all that hype, but no Virgnia, there isn't a Santa Claus and my knees do have an expiration date! 

Yes, yes I will keep up that youthful spirit, as I try to keep the invasive scopes to a minimum, but I am human.  I will get a little teary eyed as I realize I am not invincible.  Hell, my Mother is still trying to remind herself of that at almost 85 as she takes care of a whole house and my barely mobile 89 year old Father.  I hope I can still lug my husband in and out of the shower at 85.  Ok, well I hope he can still lug himself in and out, but if I have to, I hope I can (provided I have a husband then, I don't want to lug strange naked men around).  I guess age really is a state of mind.  Damnit...

Becoming a Functioning Human Being 101

So, I just had  a birthday.  Back in the olden days when TV only had 3 channels, they would have called me "middle aged".  No one uses that term anymore, it's become somewhat of a leper of age classification terminology.

I haven't written a blog in this particular space in a year and a half.  I've written maybe 2 or 3 blogs in that same time frame on another site that nobody gives a rat's tukus about anymore.  None of those blogs were anything interesting anyway, they basically relayed the message that I was still alive.  As I also inform you today, I am still, in fact, alive.

You may (or may not) ask what my birthday and the last blog I've written have in common?  A lot.  My physical life has been in "manager trainee" mode and my writing life has been "closed for remodelling".  The fact of the matter is, I've changed.  I'm not the same person I was 1.5 years ago.  I picked myself up by my bootstraps and became a productive member of society (not that I really wasn't before), and decided to embark on a career and not just a job.  Another factor is that I've gotten into a serious relationship with a man over a year ago.  So, you see I've gone from a cynical, man hating, down on her luck, small child rearing, job hopping broad, to a positve, man loving, working her way up, college bound teen rearing, career minded woman.  ...what the hell am I supposed to do with all that?

Therein lies the problem.  Who am I?  Written words flowed out of me like blood from a jugular when I was miserable.  Words also flow when I'm feeling raunchy and funny, but that's not condusive to being professional.  Oy.  So, how do I write for who I am now and what I want to be?  My rather lame answer to that at the moment is... stay tuned and find out.

Ok, ok, I'm sorry!  Rome wasn't built in a day, neither was Janice Dickinson's face, so we have a bit of a row to hoe (speaking of Janice).  I hope to keep this blog going regularly from here on out with loads of Madge witicisms and tons of my mistakes and triumphs so that my life may serve as an example of how to narrowly avoid ending up like Andy Dick.  Oh yes, stay tuned...