Awards?

I have to admit something. You might not know this, but I am pretty awesome. And from time to time I have received recognition for my awesomeness. Here are all my awards to date:

#1. Spanish 1 Student of the Year- 9th grade. I was awesome. I truly deserved this award. I memorized vocab like a mo-fo. Sadly I used up all my allotted brain space for memorizing the days of the week and fruits and now I can't remember crap about anything. Except this award. I remember it. I don't actually have it. I think my mom does somewhere. It's possible she suspected it would be one of my few great accomplishments in life. She's pretty smart.

#2. Best Halloween Costume- 10th grade Halloween dance. I was dressed as Raggedy Ann. I looked amazing! Patchwork dress, red cheeks, black eyelashes, freckles, red braids. I totally rocked it! Unfortunately I was 1 of only about 20 people that dressed up, so there was some loserish feelings going on. Plus my date was a good 13 inches taller than me and my red cheeks kept rubbing on his shirt. On the plus side, 1st prize was pizza and a limo ride. SCORE!

#3. Angi over at Sleep for Dreaming named me as one of her 8 favorite or recently discovered bloggers. I'm so totally stoked! I'm surprised anyone even reads this thing. I doubt I'm as funny or entertaining to anyone else as I am to myself. Anyway, I really appreciate this award. I'd like to thank Angi for always leaving such great comments.

Proximidade Award - thanks Angi!

“This blog invests and believes in PROXIMITY–nearness in space, time, and relationships! These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who will choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.”

Wow! I even get to pass it on to others? I love this! Here are 8 of my favorite blogs:

16 paws at Life Uncensored

Amber at The Grundmans

Gabrielle at The Red Room

Julie at Living in the Desert

Nicalyse at Accidental Ambivalence

The Dating Guru at Best Dates Now

Life on Edge at Life on Edge

Mauleigh at Single and Ready to Jingle

Love's Grand Gesture

I spent the weekend absorbed in all things Christmas. Shopping, wrapping, and watching movies. Yesterday I popped in one of my favorite Christmas movies, Love Actually, and soaked up all the warm goodness it gave me. As I was watching it for the second time (I just didn't want it to end), I realized the characters who are happiest at the end are the ones who made some grand gesture to show their love.

Hugh Grant realizes Natalie is more than just an employee and must immediately see her. He jumps in the car and drives to her street only to realize that he doesn't know her address. So he knocks on every door until he finds her. Love and happiness ensue.

Colin Firth realizes that he's in love with Aurelia (a woman who cannot understand a word he says) so he learns Portuguese, dumps his family and must immediately see her. He flies to another country, follows her father all over town to find her, and proposes to her in the middle of a crowded restaurant. Love and happiness ensue.

Even 11 year old Sam cannot contain his love for Joanna. Desperate to gain her attention, he learns the drums and dodges airport security to profess his love for her. Love and happiness ensue.

These three end up blissfully happy. Poor Alan Rickman and his wife are miserable, perhaps because he failed to see the significance a grand gesture would have on his life and his relationship.

And then I started thinking. Does this happen in real life? Are there men who make grand gestures? Or is this only a bit of Hollywood magic? Do these movies hurt me by thinking that if a man truly cares he will be willing to make this surprising display of true love? That if he loves me and I walk away, he will fight for me?

I guess none of this matters anyway since I don't seem to get to a second date with anyone lately.

Good Advice?

I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I decided to take Kev's advice and not contact coffee guy. Kev said to wait him out and so I did. Or rather I still am. I'm not sure if I'm just horrible at reading the situation or men are liars. Might be a little of both. Either way, I'm focusing all my attention on the holidays.

Cat-Man-Don't

As much as I enjoyed my emails with Cat Daddy, I just couldn't think of him without laughing. At him, not with him. Any man that calls himself Daddy when talking to his cats needs to keep that shit under wraps until he finds a woman who is so completely in love with him that she thinks its cute. I am not one of these women. At least not with him.

So knowing that I had to end things and that I honestly did think he was a nice guy and I wanted to be kind, I sent him a message that would hopefully let him down easy. I basically said that while I enjoyed getting to know him, I didn't think we were a good match. I was polite, sensitive and tried to make it painless. No one likes being rejected, but at least I'm letting him know instead of ignoring his calls. And I wanted to give him the opportunity to say whatever he wanted to say before I closed him out.

Here are some choice bits of his response:

• "What specifically didn't work for you?" Are you freakin kidding me? You want a detailed account of all the ways you turned me off? Is that really what men want to hear? In my response to him I said "I'd rather just say that I didn't feel a connection over the phone because that's thetruth, but if you want me to be specific I can." I then gave him a few reasons why it didn't work for me. #1 We had agreed it would be a short conversation and it was very long. #2 He spent the majority of the time talking about his cats. #3 I felt like he wasn't interested in getting to know me because he didn't ask me any questions, just talked on and on. I also said it wasn't any one's fault, there just wasn't chemistry.
  

• "I'm feeling a bit discounted at the moment. I mean, here I spent all this time writing you thoughtful emails, trying to get to know you... It troubles me that you're willing to throw that all away because of a phone call." I'm not sure what he thinks the point of an online dating service is. Or maybe I have it wrong. I thought you get matched up with people with similar interests, get to know them and then decide if you want to take it to the next level (phone, meeting, sex, whatever). Do I have to have long intimate relationships with every person I email on eHarm? Because if that's the case I'm doing it all wrong. At any point I should be able to evaluate my feelings and decide whether I want to continue with him or not. I responded to him with "I know you spent time getting to know me and I'm sorry you feel it was wasted. I spent time getting to know you too, but choose to see it as a fun time where I got to know more about someone. It's not wasted, it just is what it is."

• "I was tired and I didn't much feel like talking." You could have fooled me. You rambled on for 75 minutes without taking a breath. And no one forced you to call me. I realize this is his attempt to save face because in his eyes I just dumped him. It's still crap!
  

• "I hope you'll reconsider, but if you don't, well, you can step in line with all the superficial people who've given me the same lack of consideration." Whoa! Back up the train of tears here buddy. Why am I superficial? Because I got to know you and didn't feel the chemistry? That's completely unfair. I responded with "I didn't feel the chemistry on the phone. I don't think it's any one's fault, but you can blame me if it makes you feel better. You can hate me if it makes you feel better. I just don't feel we are a good match." And if he really wanted me to reconsider, this might not have been his best tactic.
  

I thought I might have been a little tough in my response, but I had tried the nice approach and he wasn't accepting it. So I amped it up just a bit in my comeback. That might have been a mistake. Who knows.

Here are some snippets from his response to me:

• "I didn't want to do most of the talking or talk about my cats, but you weren't giving me anything to work with. If I wanted to do all of the talking, I would just talk to myself into a tape recorder. I had to fill the space with a bunch of junk that didn't interest me just so there wouldn't be dead silence." I honestly couldn't get a word in. I spent the last 50 minutes of the conversation waiting for him to take a breath so I could say I needed to go, but it never came. And if it was so horrible talking to me, why did he stay on the phone for so long? Is this more of him trying to save face? If he was controlling the conversation couldn't he talk about something that interested him? Why would you talk about something that didn't interest you if you were carrying the whole conversation? When I talk to myself I'm very entertaining.

• "It is not a man's job to entertain you." I think he's wrong. It's not every man's job, but the man who is trying to have a relationship with me? Yup it's his job to entertain me. And it's my job to entertain him. Not all the time, but for short intervals. We should be entertaining to each other. Clearly we were not.
  

I guess I can understand why he's angry and lashing out at me. Even though I didn't want to hurt him, he's hurt. But if he really felt about me the way he claims, he should have closed me out long ago. He did close me out right after he sent he last message. And that's OK with me. He can think whatever he wants about me. I'll always remember him as the Cat Daddy and giggle just a little.

Hello Daddy

First let me say that I have no problem dating men with children. I like kids and hope to have them some day. A man that takes care of his kids and loves them is incredibly attractive to me.

This is not one of those stories.

Let me back up a bit. I am getting used to talking to multiple guys at one time, thanks to eHarm. They are all at different levels in my mind. For the past week I've been exchanging lengthy emails with eDad. His responses are always witty and insightful and they make me laugh. I looked forward to reading every one. And my responses back were long and personal and I felt comfortable sharing things with him. Yesterday he asked if I wanted to meet. I declined. I told him the truth. All of it. I told him that I really prefer talking to someone on the phone at least once before a meeting takes place. #1 it's good to see if the good email conversation can translate to good phone conversation and if he's got a strange or high voice I really don't like to be surprised by that on a first date. He agreed and said he'd call me that night.

And he did.

And I'm so glad I insisted on a phone call.

His voice was OK. It was a little strange, but I couldn't figure out what made it strange. It wasn't high pitched. It wasn't too deep. It just had a different quality to it. I can't explain it.

His voice ended up being the best part of the call.

We had previously agreed to keep the first conversation short at about 15 - 20 minutes. That didn't happen. He talked and talked and talked and didn't let me get a word in and talked and talked for an hour. And what did he talk about the majority of the time? His cats. I now know everything and more about his 2 cats. I know that the boy cat likes to sit in the shower and just stare at the wall. I know that the cats aren't allowed to sleep with him anymore because they make too much noise and don't let him sleep. I know that the girl cat hates his mom and hides on top of the fridge when she comes to visit. I know that his house smells like cats (why would a man actually admit this because, ew gross!). I had already told him that I'm not really a cat person, but he didn't seem to mind that. Finally after an hour and 15 minutes, I was desperate. I didn't want to hurt his feelings because he really is a nice guy, but I just couldn't take any more. He was launching into what I feared would be a decade long lecture on everything pokemon and I couldn't take it. So I used my home phone and called my friend and hung up twice, hoping she'd get the hint and call me. She did and now I felt I could interrupt him and get him off the phone. He said he had a really great time talking with me (I think "at me" is more accurate) and he would call tomorrow.

I hope he doesn't. I'd rather he just forget I exist, but I think I'm going to have to be honest with him and tell him that I don't see this going anywhere. Can I do this over email? Please say yes. I don't think I can listen to him drone on about the cats for another hour. I'm sure they did all kinds of cute things today. I just don't care.

Oh and he doesn't have any children. He calls himself "Daddy" when he's talking to the cats.

Coffee Take 2

Even though the last experience wasn't so good, I decided to give coffee another try. Another try with another guy from eHarm that is. I had been talking to him for a couple weeks online. We seemed to have some things in common so that's always nice. Then we talked on the phone last week and really seemed to hit it off. We were both astounded by how much we have in common. We had 4 great conversations and I found him extremely easy to talk to. Finally we decided to meet for coffee.

Here's the rundown.

1. He arrived on time and spotted me right away. This means he's punctual and that my photos online are truly reflective of what I really look like.
2. He paid for my drink and did it in a sweet way. Like it was no big deal. Which it shouldn't be.
   
3. He stood close to me as we waited for his coffee. I'm going to interpret this as he was comfortable with me and not repulsed by me.
4. We couldn't find a table inside and the place was really crowded so we sat outside. It was only 45 degrees out and I was freezing.
5. We spent the next hour talking easily about a variety of topics. We seem to have similar conversation styles because we flew off on tangents and couldn't remember what we were originally talking about. He was engaging and didn't force me to do all the talking and didn't monopolize the conversation either.
6. When we were so cold we were turning blue, we decided to part ways. He asked if I would be interested in getting dinner some time. I said I would love to and we started walking in the direction of the parking lot.
7. He gave me a nice hug and we said goodbye.

OK. Sounds like a nice time, right? And it was. But I haven't heard from him yet. Am I going to? I thought the dinner invitation was the signal that he was actually interested. Or did I read that wrong? Was he just being polite? Should I contact him and thank him for the coffee? Or do I wait for him to contact me? I'm so bad at this!

Would you like some coffee?

I went out with another guy from eHarm last night. We've been talking on the site for a while and talked on the phone Sunday night. He asked me out for coffee and I accepted. He seemed like a nice, sincere, gentlemanly guy so I was happy to meet him.

Until I met him.

Not that he wasn't nice, because he was. I get to the coffee place about 1 minute after he did and he's already ordered his drink. And he doesn't even offer to buy mine. Why does this bother me so much? Do I think men should always pay for everything? No. Do I think the person who asked should at least pretend to offer to pay? Maybe. Do I think he's cheap? YES! My coffee was $1.87. Am I way off base here? Am I overreacting? Probably. I guess I should be happy he didn't wait until he saw me to make me pay for my own drink. At least now I know it wasn't because I'm so hideous he couldn't stand to look at me. He just lacks a few social graces.

Speaking of social graces... This guy was nervous. OK so that's not really a social grace, but he was so over the top nervous that his voice shook and his hands shook and he was doing that weird rapid blinking thing. He had moments where he would relax a bit after I asked him some questions that must have hit on things he has a genuine interest in. Although I had to completely carry the conversation. That is not a role I like to be forced into. I can't seem to come up with clever topics to discuss when I'm in a pressure situation like a first meeting.

Ugh. It was uncomfortable. His nervousness stressed me out.

When I was about 1/2 done with my coffee, he said he should probably go. Which was totally fine with me because he wasn't really saying much and I had run out of questions to ask him to try to engage him in conversation. As we were walking out to the car, the said "We should talk on the phone soon." HUH? I'm going to assume that means "Don't call me, I'll call you (no I won't)."