Crackerjacks and Insulin

Last week, my father spent five nights in the hospital.

It was not the first time this year he was there, and I have no doubt it will not be the last.  He is 84.  He is diabetic.  He has had colon cancer removed.  He has a heart issue that can best be described as failure from an unknown cause.  He has severe back pain from years and years of climbing in and out of a dump truck and using the heavy foot-operated pedals to do his job.

He was a heavy smoker for almost 60 years, quitting only after his heart doctor could not hear his heart with a stethoscope through the congestion in his lungs. I think that might have something to do with all the shortness of breath, but no one wants to say that because he quit 13 years ago, and no one wants to admit that crappy choices for decades could have anything to do with right now.

And right now, well, that is all we are concerned with.  Comfort, prolonging, and more comfort.

Our conversations while I visited him in the hospital usually revolved around his medical condition, his medications, and his daily routine.  And baseball.  Always baseball.  So while looking up the scores for the day before’s games, we talked about the nose bleeds.  While comparing pitching stats, we talked about sugar levels.  While watching the play from third for out number two, we discussed how to get in and out of the shower, and if we need to install grab bars, or ramps for the outside stairs.

He did not want to have any of these conversations. I don’t blame him, I didn’t want to have them, either.  We will need to have more because my mom is exhausted, and worried, and couldn’t possible lift him to help him get to the bathroom if it comes down to that.  Right now he is home, and stable.  But he is tired, so tired.

In the midst of all this conversation about health and baseball, the one thing my dad did want to talk about was me, my kids, and what, in his opinion, I am not doing right.

It took all my effort not to yell at him, or walk out. Instead, I listened to him say that my house repairs are behind, my yard work and fence needed to be taken care of and made presentable, and how he had not, in his entire life, ever taken more than a two-week a year vacation.

All those things are true.  I probably should finish putting in my baseboards, and replacing the sink and toilet in the Master bath.  I probably should pull out the dead plants in my front yard, and take the ugly watering hoses to the dump.  I probably should care that I don’t have a lawn, nor will I be winning any Yard-of-the-Month awards from my city. I actually feel blessed that they have not ticketed me for leaving my garbage cans on the street for days after the regular pick up.  What is not true is that I have any regrets that I take my kids on vacation to wherever we can go at every opportunity I have.

I knew, as my dad was complaining about my yard, and my garage, and about my vacation choices, that he was not really looking for me to say anything back.  He wasn’t even really mad at me about what I was doing, and why.  I don’t think he was really expecting me to suddenly like yard work (I haven’t in 48 years, so not like I will be starting that up any time soon), or for me to put a priority on painting my hallway. I will get to it, eventually.  I always do.

 And while I know that he thinks I should probably not be taking my kids to Kansas City in July (our next road trip) in favor of spending the money on a weed-whacker and a good handyman, I don’t think it was about me at all.  I think the entire conversation was about him.  About his decisions.  And about him being scared that I was judging his choices, for a perfect yard and no vacation, as something missing in my life, and maybe, in the long run, something he missed in his, by doing something different.

I will admit, I made that choice a long time ago, to not be him.  Not because of any judgment I have that his choices were wrong, but just that I wanted something different with my children.  I am grateful for the home and the security of my parent’s house.  I never wanted for anything, all  of the basic needs taken care of, though we were not rich.  I had clothes and food. I had a bike.  I always had gifts and parties for birthdays and Christmas.  I also have zero memory of a movie with my parents, or a museum with them, or a trip to a national monument or place of interest.

Every year we went on vacation.  Two weeks of camping, and either fishing or hunting.  The camping involved a trailer and cooking every meal.  The fishing was trout, either stream-fishing or fly-fishing.  The hunting was deer or boar, but since I never went out with my dad, I don’t actually know what that was about.  My experience of it (contrary to the memories my brother is sure to have) is that I sat around a lot, bored because I never brought enough books or paper or art supplies, in the dust and heat of whatever remote campsite near a lake that we were at.  I should sound more grateful that I was allowed nature, and any form of recreation, but I feel like I missed something.

The memories I have of vacations with my dad is of him, as I watched from the bank, as he fly-fished.  I have one intense memory of a wasp nest swarming because we parked our trailer a little too close. I remember the rifle shot that echoed from the hillside as my father and brother went after a deer that was illegally shot by someone else, and was now suffering and dying because of it.  They never fired a shot, but the sound is still in my ears, and I am still a slight bit frightened by the memory some 35 years later.

I have never been anywhere else with my parents.  No skiing trips.  No drive-ins.  No city cafes.  We never took a ferry.  We never went on a train.  We never took a trolley, or a gondola, or a horse.  We did the same thing, every year, once a year, for as long as I can remember.  There is no judgment about if this is right or wrong.  It is just is.  I wondered why the memory I have of losing a fish from the line one year is so strong , when it struck me that it is just because there were no other memories to hold on to that could make this small one less significant.

I picked something different for how I spend my time with my kids.  We have been to Yosemite, and Washington DC.  We have taken a train to Denver and a plane to Seattle.  We have visited monuments and historical places, and taken ferries to offbeat islands with weird little artist’s colonies.  We have gone to plays and movies and festivals and concerts.  We have road-tripped, and accidentally met potters who gave us pieces of clay to play with, and poets who wrote haiku for us about the color of our shirts, and musicians who sang us songs they just made up, and laughed at all the silliness of the moments as we let ice cream melt on our chins from homemade stands on the side of the road.

So back to my dad.  I did not point out to him that I was making specific different choices based almost solely on the lack of choices I had as a child.  That would have been cruel. And I am not cruel, I love my dad.  So I sat there, and listened as he planned how I was going to have to buckle down and get my lawn planted, and how I should not be driving my kids half way across the country in the heat of summer.  I knew he was not judging me with his words.  He was, in fact still taking care of me, like he did when I was little, knowing maybe that his time to do this is getting short.  He didn’t want compliance.  He wanted validation that his choices would be remembered.

I get that, dad, don’t worry.  If there is nothing else we can ever say to each other amidst all the talk of medicine and home safety, we will always have baseball.  As a matter of fact, on that road trip you don’t want me to take to Kansas City this summer we will be going to a Royals game.  Stay out of the hospital long enough for me to tell you all about it when we get back, so we can have some more memories together, with baseball at the center. I'll bring the Crackerjacks.

In the reality of the world

I am about to have something new in my life.

No, not anything daring or drastic, like regular sex or a pet.  I am about to have Sundays, twice a month, to myself.  My children are about to start having overnights with their dad, with him dropping them off at school on Monday mornings.

In the reality of the world, this does not change much.  When I picked them up at 7pm on Sunday nights, we drove home, I fed them something (they were always hungry, but that is a different issue), we would read and go over some homework, and before I knew it, we were brushing teeth and it was bedtime.  Nice, quiet little Sunday ritual that lasted about an hour, including drive time.

I have to admit, I really liked this bit of time with my kids. But again, in the reality of the world, it was only an hour, and the Sunday overnights will only happen 13 times in the next year, once you factor in all the vacations and holidays.  13. Only 13.  Less than two weeks.  Doesn’t seem like much.

It had me devastated last week, for a few hours that I did not hide from my children.  Not because I can’t do math.  I had already figured out the 13 day thing, so that was not the issue.  What had me freaked was that my kids had asked it not to happen, had appropriately told that to two different counselors and directly to their father, and none of them, not one, listened one little bit.  I could do nothing about it, because no matter how much I want to be able to write the story of the relationship my kids get to endure enjoy, I don’t get to.

So no matter how this turns out, I get no say, and the loss of control has me freaked out.  It is the codependent in me, I know, but freaking out just the same.

In the midst of all this, my ten year old had a total meltdown of his own. One that almost got him kicked out of a planned event at his care center.  While playing some kind of basketball related game, something happened that seemed unfair, and my son’s reaction was to block the kid and then try to trip him.  If that wasn’t enough, when the adult leader caught him, the other kid shut up, and my son got verbally mean to the leader, and more than a little mouthy.

Sigh.

It took two days for he and I to be able to talk before he could tell me the whole story without one of us being defensive and more than a little pissed.  When we worked it all out, he knew that reacting the way he did was not a smart idea, but wanted to know why some people can do things and get away with them, and when he does them, he is punished.  And more, why no one bothered to listen to him in the process to find the truth out before the punishment was handed down.

This is big, and without even having to have a light bulb moment, he knew that he was angry because adults around him weren’t listening to him, and that even when he told the truth, nothing really mattered because he was being forced to comply.  He flat-out said he was sure that talking to adults was a waste of time because his dad and counselors didn’t listen, and that the one adult who was listening (me) was unable to make anything happen.

Ouch.

He was right.

So instead, I had to admit to him that I am scared and angry about all of it, too, and that I feel just as helpless.  And together (with the help of his 12-year old sister), we came up with what we can do to make US better even if we have to suck it up for now that other people get to make out choices and we have to comply.

I said I was going to write on Sundays.

I said I was going to miss them like crazy and write something I could share with them on Monday nights. 

I said I was going to come up with a plan to spend the extra money I was not going to be using on gas to come pick them up and hour each way.  Did they want to help? I was still listening, even if no one else was.  What were they going to do?

This will be new.

I will miss the drive, to tell the truth.  I will miss my kids terribly.  I will miss the Sunday night ritual and the bonding.  I am putting my faith in the Universe that we all will survive it, and that, in the reality of the world, it is only 13 days.

I can only hope that while I am in my reality, theirs will be okay, too.  Maybe I will write about that on my first Sunday out.

Taking it to the streets.

Do you all know I write a blog?

I guess if you are reading it here, you might have been here before.  I write about my life, as I see it (my blog, duh) and I don’t make any apologies for it.  Okay, to be fair, I apologized once for calling this one guy a pussy whipped pathetic loser.  I didn’t actually apologize for what I said about him, but for not having warned him that I was calling him a said pussy whipped pathetic loser in a public blog that as high as a dozen people (not any of his friends) might read.  That, and that although I did not actually use his name, I would not feel bad in divulging his name if someone asked (mostly so they could avoid him, I am sure).  He called me a whore right after that (awesome!) when he read a few of my other uncensored blog posts and thought we couldn’t be friends then because of the sexual nature of them (again, awesome!).  My regret was that I hadn’t come up with anything more colorful to call him than a pussy whipped pathetic loser, but I can learn from my mistakes.

So back to writing this blog.  You still reading?  Good, because I need readership.  Yes, perfectly self serving and possibly a little desperate, but today I would really like people to read this stuff. And what does that have to do with you, you ask?  Here goes:

1) Read this blog.  You are already here, so thank you!  I get a little obsessed about my numbers sometimes. Yes, there is a way to track this, and every blogger (okay, most bloggers) out there knows how many hits they got on a particular post at any given time.  I want this number to be higher.  So while you are reading it right now, I want you to also log on and read it from your hand-held device, your smart phone, your work computer, your boyfriend’s computer, your second cousin’s pet tarantula’s computer, and anywhere else you so desire.  See, each time you read it from a different device, I get a hit.  Hits are good in this case, and more (in this case) is what I am shooting for.

2) Follow this blog.  You already read it, so now click the little button in the right hand side that says “JOIN THIS SITE” and you get to be one of my fans.  I don’t know what actually happens after that, like if there is some “Follower Genie” that will send you emails telling you when I have once again posted something amazing for you to read, but you might as well have your little icon picture right there on my page.  Oh, and let me know if you have a blog.  I like to follow blogs.

3) Tell your friends.  You are enjoying reading and following the blog, so share the wealth.  You can have book club meetings about it even, all of you reading the blog, sharing with people what you gleaned from the amazing value it brought into you life, and how inspired you are to continue to read and grow.  I suggest you do this over a few (I suggest a half dozen) glasses of wine or pints of beers,  in a smoky dive bar, in a part of town you are not likely to be seen.  It is more fun that way.

4) Give me feedback.  No, I don’t really want you to point out spelling errors.  Or grammar errors.  Or suggest that I use too many non-sentences.  I know all that.  It is a style thing.  I am good with that part.  But, what do you want to read?  I have a gazillion stories about the woes of being a single mom with amazing kids and an idiot for an ex.  I could talk endlessly about surviving my mother. I could brag on my kids forever.  I can save you a little trouble here and say that I don’t post pictures because: a) selfies as a fad needs to go away, b) I want my kids to have a little tiny bit of privacy (I will use the pictures against them later at my discretion), c) If there are no pictures of me I have deniability in court, and d) you do not really need me up in your face with scary pics of myself in a too tight tank top, or some silly graphic that I pulled off bing.  But other than that, tell me what you DO want, and I will listen (as much as my creativity will allow).  And since you are now a fan (remember you are now FOLLOWING my blog, right?), you might as well have some semblance of ownership, no matter how false it actually is, and read what you like.

Feel free to go back and read older blogs.  I never actually read them myself, because honestly I was a huge mess back then.  If you do like to read expose-type blogs, reading from the first blog forward in time will give you the best picture of who I was, who I am, and where I am going.   It will also give me tons of hit-counts to my page views.  Win Win.

Are you still reading here?   Awesome, Thanks! Now go tell someone else, and feel free to share the link anywhere you want.  I won’t mind.

 

 

 

 

Willie Nelson meets Coco Channel

I am in the middle of planning my next road trip.

My auntie from Switzerland is here for a visit.  She is in her 60’s, and is my mother’s youngest sister.  She is everything I hope to be in my 60’s.  She wears outrageous jewelry. She paints her nails in amazing bright colors, usually with glitter. She dyes her hair blond with highlights. She wears blue mascara.  She carries these great big designer purses, and tends to buy new ones every few weeks out of boredom and true love.  She is single, doesn’t answer to anyone, and is sexy as hell.

So while hanging out with her and my mom (her sister, remember) we started talking about things we are doing with our lives.  My auntie is vacationing.  She is retried and vacationing all the time.  She is in the USA now, staying here is California, for the next few months.  Her return date to Switzerland is unclear at the moment because 1) She doesn’t have to be anywhere, so what’s the rush, 2) She might want to stop in Italy on the way home, because June would be a great time to lay out and work her tan and Italy has great beaches, and 3) The men in Switzerland are “so boring” in her opinion, that a fun American man might just make her rethink the length of her trip. 

When I told her about our recent DC trip, she wanted to go.  Like pack her bags, and go, as in “see you in a week or so, bye.” And she laughed about how I could do that, and that I was lucky to be doing it so young (I don’t think of 47 as young, but whatever) so I should.  My mom had stayed silent for most of this time, and my usual skepticism about my mom’s motives started to rear its ugly head.  In my head, she was angry that we would be so frivolous with our money.  In my head, she was worried that we were not focusing our lives in the proper fashion towards knowledge and stability.  In my head, she had judged my (and my auntie’s) choices as not as noble as the ones she made in her conservative, frill-free life.

She surprised both of us by telling me that I should go everywhere while I can.  She said don’t worry about money, because no one dies regretting that they are not debt free, but they do regret not doing more when they could.  She said she wished she had followed through with HER plans to travel and see things, and regretted that she no longer felt like she had the choice to go places.  She seemed sad that she had missed out.

This real bonding moment did not escape me.  I knew, immediately, that my mom was vulnerable, and that I had the choice to make it worse with blame and rhetoric, or I could embrace the time and empathize by acknowledging and understanding, and by asking her what she would wish for me to do differently. 

The answer was amazing.  She told me about the 6 times (yes, 6) she and my dad drove across the southwest desert, and how they never stopped at the Grand Canyon.  She always wanted to see the Grand Canyon, but she said there was never time, and they were always in a rush to get from one military duty station to the next.  My dad, it seems, is not a very good sightseer (I knew this), and was impatient to get to places (I knew this, too) and she loved him, and understood giving in to his comfort more than her desire to explore. 

We went on to talk about the details of the last few trips I had taken with my kids, and about how something clicked in my head that I missed this as a kid, and would have loved to have shared that with her.  How I wanted my kids to know that I was taking all my time to be with them, and that money, in the end, was not as important as standing in the edge of something bigger that you, and marveling in the awesomeness of seeing it and touching it.  I told her about the things I DID love growing up on the few adventures we took together.  The mini mugs of hot chocolate.  The red wagon.  The silver dollar pancakes and the milk through the swirly straws. The rocks we painted one summer that she still uses as a door stop. 

In that short conversation, I absolved her of the guilt she felt, and let her know that I had zero regrets about my childhood, or any expectation for her to have done it differently.  I had food and clean clothes, a nice bed and a roof over my head.  I don’t remember going places, but home was always there.  I wasn’t hoping for her to be different, I just wanted ME to be different.  I wanted to see things, and be places, and meet people, and accidentally have amazing adventures and stories because I was not afraid to go. I was not judging her as fearful, just fighting my own demons, trying always to have what I was doing be enough. 

Did it mean I was running away from traditional 1950’s stability? Did it mean I was rejecting my mother’s choices and ideals? No, I don’t think so.  I think it means somewhere along the way, maybe because of some things she taught me, I learned (actually, re-learned) that nothing lasts and you better find things you love NOW because you may never have the time to do them again.  Debt and time? Oh well.  Those things will take care of themselves whether or not I worry about them.

I told my mom and my auntie what our next road trip plan was. And then I asked my mom if she wanted to come to the Grand Canyon with us.  My auntie, in her perfect-little-hipster-sister way, tried to convince my mom that she should go, and love it.  Heck, forget that, they should go right now, and screw me and my kids, we were still young and could go anytime.  Oh my god we laughed.  My mom still said no, but was really happy to pull out a map and tell me where she HAD been on the cross county drives, and how she remembered the roads, and all about the places to avoid because of heat and scorpions. (Scorpions? Yeah, I wrote that shit down).  She said it took her a while when my kids and I first started doing these road trip to understand why they were important, and even longer to understand her own emotions about what she missed, and to forgive herself for not doing it, and not hold it against me for going now.  It was a good evening.

My auntie, being ever the sexy travel goddess, decided to make it her mission to bring me and my kids to Switzerland and started making plans.  Seems I am going the summer of 2016, and staying in her summer house.  My mom says it’s nice and we will enjoy it, but I needed to promise to take my kids to Vienna as well.  She said there is a train that I will love, and that the kids shouldn’t miss.  She said, given the right set of circumstances, she might come with us, assuming, she said, she was not at the Grand Canyon. All I could do was smile.

 

Chasing snakes.

I flat out lied to my ex today.

I know. I have been complaining about him forever. Trying to move past all the dislike and creepiness I feel in his presence. Put my best foot forward and remember I love my children. But today, that high road wasn’t anywhere with in my reach. No map to get there. No GPS to even locate it.

So, I lied.

The lie might seem small, in the reality of the world. No one will die. No one will be disappointed or have their life ruined by a terrible secret. It is completely on me. Complete avoidance because I can’t believe him capable of any request being anything but manipulation.

The lie? That I was already in town, did not want my children brought to my house by a third party because I was already on my way, and that no, I did not want to have dinner with him (and presumably his wife, and his mother since they will be there) because I already had plans, thanks anyway.

The truth? I didn’t want to be in his presence for any amount of time that would require more conversation than “Where are the backpacks?” and “Baseball is at 2pm.” I didn’t want it with him. I didn’t want it from his mother. I definitely didn’t want it from his wife. I was completely okay with it meaning I did not have an extra hour with my kids if it meant I did not have to endure that. I am just not that strong.

For the record, today, in my past life, would have been Corned Beef and Cabbage Dinner Day. I don’t particularly like corned beef and cabbage. Actually, unless the corned beef is cold served on rye with horseradish, I don’t like it at all. Boiled potatoes and soggy cabbage rate even lower.

But each year, for the 11 years of the days before St Patrick’s Day that my ex and I were together, this day was special. It was the day he cooked. It was the day the pot boiled all day. It was the day family and friends came over and ate the crap boiled tradition with us. It was as day he stayed sober until right before everyone arrived, and then got drunk fast, on Irish-type coffee in mock ethnic participation of some sort. There is not a drop of Irish in either one of us, so it is actually pretty funny.

I know from his first ex wife that the boiled dinner at this time of year was a tradition for them, too. I don’t know if their tradition turned into the same melancholy drunkfest mine always did with him after everyone went home, but for me, it was just one more on the list on the many evenings spent like that.

Until the invitation arrived, I hadn’t remembered it at all. I have not had that dinner in four years, and I don’t remember ever missing it. So as the invite via text message dinged my phone, the entire history of the ritual came flooding back. It hit me in the back of the head like a two-by-four. Why would he invite me? What was the game? Was there even a chance this invite was legit, and not some way to throw me? Could he not have remembered any of the terrible stuff? And just be having crap boiled dinner? And thought, since I was picking up the kids anyway, to throw me an invite to be polite?

So I lied.

I don’t have any desire to be in the middle of my old world. I left it. I don’t want to go back. I don’t like boiled cabbage and potatoes, and I hated each and every one of those dinners and did them over and over again anyway. I think I was insane. I am not insane anymore. I don’t ever want to be again.

So this lie was for me. So that I could write this all down in the time I could have been eating corned beef. This lie, to do something for myself, and not give any other explanation, is so much better than the lie I told myself for so long that everything was fine in that smelly, boiling pot I called home. I am good with it, because maybe it wasn’t a lie after all. I mean, I did have plans after all. I just didn’t know it when I said no.

Stairs

I have been writing, “working” on short stories, works of fiction that buzz through my head, full of really cool characters and great back stories. I know these guys intimately. They live in my dreams, haunt my days, talk to me like schizophrenic voices in my head, and manage to stay ever so slightly out of reach as I try to put on paper their very nature, as if taunting me to define them. Defining is the problem. There is a small part of me that doesn’t want them defined. What would happen if I managed to capture their essence in words, and let it flow across the paper in beautifully structured sentences that reach the muses’ ears with delight ? What if with that , the characters had voices and bodies and realities of their own to live, defying the logic of fiction at all? Becoming real for everyone, and not just for me.

So instead, I have been tackling the stair right in from of me, ignoring the voices, letting them stew in their own reluctance to show themselves, and just moving forward with what I can.

Always moving forward. Tiny little steps at a time.

My son has me worried, because he is an amazingly bright kid who is simply shutting down when it comes to language arts and social studies. It is not because he can’t do it; he is still testing way above level in all the things they test you on. He just doesn’t care. I can’t even find fault in his logic behind the not caring, because, in a weird way, I totally agree with him. He says that understanding what happened in the past hasn’t really helped the present much. We keep making the same mistakes, even though we know the outcome of having made the mistakes before. He thinks if we never learned that lesson from our forefathers, maybe would should just stop listening to them. And writing about them? Um. Why? The history doesn’t change, and in his world, the present is hard enough to deal with without having to pay for other people’s crap that they got wrong. He should not have to have someone else decide what is important to him. This is a constant theme, about if things already aren’t fair in life, why bother caring about a bunch of dead people and how they were an influence. In his head, the entire history of California fits in one 370-page book, and, if he were to count actual individuals, there are only maybe 100 listed. One hundred. That’s it. One hundred important people in a 1000 years of history. What the hell chance does a ten year old who can’t even get his dad’s attention have of making any difference? So, he avoids it, and does math instead. Math doesn’t change. Math is a constant. Math solves problems. Math makes no judgments. Math explains the Universe. And his universe is spinning, math is his stationary point to focus on.

This confounds me, and saddens me at the same time. Here I am trying to eliminate absolutes and think in terms of freedom and creativity, and all my son wants is structure and routine. Something tangible and real. That ever elusive quality of something just outside of your grasp. We want what we want to be real. We want what we want when we want it. We want our worlds to show up solidly and keep us from floating away. We want the same thing. Just to tackle the stair in front of us, move forward with what we can.

So I am stepping back and trying to understand my own personal history, and history in general, and trying to understand why the recording of it on paper is important. I am also slowing down enough to help my son understand that stability does not mean things never change. That learning how to be in the world does not mean you never move forward, but that it might just mean you choose a different path. And moving forward means the step right in front of us. Me, maybe it means letting the characters just be there for a while until they tell me their stories. Him, maybe it means telling his own story while still knowing he has a rock that is stationary. Maybe it means I write his story and let us both enjoy that facets of creativity that may bring. Maybe it means I need to embrace his never-changing chaos so he can understand my fluid stability. Both are overwhelming if you feel like you are spinning all alone.

The stair right in front of me. It’s not that big if I only look right here. And it has some really amazing characters already willing to talk.

Are you done with that fantasy? Because I have a casserole to bake.

I have been thinking about two articles I read yesterday. Combined, they make a whole lot of sense.

The first, one about potential in a partner, came from match.com (yes, I read this shit, sue me). Partner potential, is just that, potential. It is not fact. It is not even real hope. It is just what humans do when trying to see the good in people they somehow became attracted to. That cute guy who may made eye contact while getting his change at the grocery store? Potential. The guy in the office with the bad haircut, but thoughtful blue eyes? Potential. The hot dad with the wedding ring tan line and obnoxious daughter in your son’s class? Potential.

Since I spend way too much time reading into things, my first thought was “I never do this!” Who am I kidding? I do this all the time. I spend much of the time in my own head inventing the future I want to have with men I have never even talked to, much less dated. (Creativity is sometimes a burden I have to carry. The same thing that makes it so I can write this blog is also what makes it so I have complex fantasies about the FedEx guy. It has its perks.) But it also makes me more susceptible to having real life people that have zero potential become fixations. I ignore red flags. I confuse lust with love. I ascribe positive characteristics that just aren’t there. I read texts and emails as if they are personal love notes full of desire. There is no way a guy can win at this, and be a real person. But that’s okay. Each of these things can be contributed to the potential I see in the object of my attraction to be the man of my dreams..

Well, dream on, because here is the topic of the second article (the one I think I wanna start living by): Unless you can close the deal, potential is shit.

It was harsh. It said that being nice, seeing people as nice, acting nice in all situations is bullshit. It gets you nothing. Potential means that you *may* get good results, but unless you *are* getting good results, you have done NOTHING. Wow, what a kick in the head. I mean, I am a nice person (when I am not acting like a bitch). I do nice things. I keep a nice house and have nice kids. I am also fucking delusional, but I like my happy little world. People know me here.

So the two articles related because I tend to think of men I am attracted to as “nice” but since they are not “closing the deal”, nice means jack. I think of myself as nice, but unless I am nice AND can help a guy with yard work, balance his checkbook, play nice with his former in-laws, and can deal with football play-offs without losing my shit, nice just got me nothing. Yeah, beautiful girls will get a guy to take her home, but if she can’t stand his socks on the floor when he is tired, that might be an issue later on down the road.

As for nice men? Flirt with me in the grocery store? Okay, that was fun, but since you didn’t ask how to contact me to flirt again your “potential” meter was high, but your “close” meter was broken. Guy that danced with me and bought me drinks, but left with someone else? Same thing. It doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy myself. Getting a cute guy to buy you drinks while out dancing is awesome. What it does mean is that right there is where it needs to stop, at least in my head. Accepting that is hard, me being a single woman who actually enjoys sex, and wants monogamy. But the flip side of that is that if I only see potential, and I waste tons of my time, and maybe some of theirs, creating a universe in which no one could possibly live happily.

Wanna live happily? Good, me too. That is a damn nice thought, but what do you bring to the table that makes that happen? I am not saying I need to have a bikini ready body and an ever ready sex drive, while always having good beverages and baseball stats memorized. But I should be offering something more than “nice”. It also means that I need to stop believing that just because a guy has a penis and I have a vagina, we are a perfect match. Long term, more than that is necessary. Close the deal, be the guy I want to be with so I can be the girl you want to be with. Putting it into practice will be harder, but starting with making my own potential into someone I would want to date is a good step. Letting go of the fantasies might take some work. Except for the ones about Peirce Brosnan and Liam Hemsworth, I am keeping those. They have potential, right?