Dating newly divorced dads is a bad idea, and this is why....

So after 2 years of self imposed celibacy/non dating, I decided to put my toe in slowly...and accepted a date with a parent of my child's classmate...he had been interested in me for a bit, apparently, and reached out on a social networking site.  Pretty innocuous start, some light messages, texts, etc.  Met for drinks a few weeks ago.  I made it clear going in that I only had a certain window of time (1 hr) due to work conflict...he managed to guilt me into staying for over 2 hrs...(first sign).

It was fine, no vibes felt on this side of the bar stool, though.  I figured, hey, he's nice and we are friends.  Bonus.  Apparently the vibes were one sided, though...cause he went in for the post date kiss, which led to about 10 minutes of uncomfortable small talk as I tried to explain that I *really had to go home...NOW*.

Drove home, though nothing of it.  He's a friend.  Awesome.

Apparently, in his mind, we were destined to be not only lovers, but married and have kids and live forever and ever in a big house with kids, a white picket fence and 2 dogs.  He sent many texts, first nice, then prodding, then progressively needier.  I felt awful.   He was smothering me after 1 semi-half, non-date date.

I tried to put him off, said I was *really busy* with work and stuff.  Delayed in getting back to him for a day or two.  It didn't help at all.  In fact, it made him want me more.  WTF.  I do not play games.  If I do not respond to you, it is because I am not interested.  Plain and simple.

Apparently, he didn't get the hint.  Kept pushing to see me.

Finally, last weekend, I responded that I was out running errands and we should get coffee.  My plan was to let him down gently.  He did not see it that way.  Said he was out with his kids and could we hang out, see a movie.  Um, no.  I said we could get coffee another date.  Cause coffee is pretty clearly NOT a date, right??? 

Well, he hunted my down (with his kids in tow) at a big box store.  AWKWARD.  So I ran my errands with him and his kids following me.  His youngest kid actually said "you know, everyone thinks you are my mommy now!"

*shudder*

Ok, fine.  I left.  They went on their way.  I got a flurry of texts asking to see me, etc.  Well, I was busy.  ALL WEEK.  And I said so.  Many phone calls later, pleading texts, etc.  I had to end it.

12 days after our first (and only) date, I had to let him down and call it a day.  He had sent like 10 texts in a 3 hr window...I responded that I just didn't have time, sorry.  I am not trying to date anyone.  But we can be friends.

That didn't go over well.  4 more texts and a LONG ASS email later...begging me to call. 

Fine, I waited until the next day and called.  From the parking lot of a store as I was running errands.  what should have been a 5 minute call turned into 30 minutes of me explaining 10 different ways WHY I WAS NOT GOING TO DATE YOU.

No, you cannot change my mind.

No, I will not reconsider.

No, begging won't help.

No, we do not have a connection.

Yes, this is different than my other boyfriends, in that I WANTED to date them.

Yes, you will find love again.

No, I am not sorry we hung out...but

Yes, we can only be friends.

No, we will never be more than friends.

Yes, I am sure.

No, asking me to give it a try won't help.

No, it isn't you.  It REALLY is me.  As in, I do not want to date you.

Thank you. 

As we were hanging up he asked me to call him later so we could talk *more*.

No, we will not.  I hung up and feel that I adequately explained why our 1 drink date will not turn into the next "great love story" and I do not want to rehash it again.

Why?   Let's think this out:

I do not know your middle name.  Or even how to spell your first name.  I do not know where you live.  I do not know what you do for a job.  You do not know what I do or where I live.  I do not know (or care to know) your favorite music, movies, color, any allergies you may have.  I do not know (or care) if you like cats, dogs, lizards, sheep, etc.  I do not know how old you are.  I do not care if you want more kids or a wife or if you hope to move to Alaska one day.  I do not care who you sleep with or what you do with your free time.

Do you know why?  Because I do not want to date you.  You scared me with your intensity and the way in which you thought, in your mind, that we had some insane connection.

I am gun shy as it is.  I do not date well.  I get scared easily, like a foal being put in in the ring for the first time with a saddle on her back.  I shudder and run when people come at me professing love like a crazy stalker after spending 2 hrs with me.

Yes, I am flattered.  Sure, being told I am beautiful is nice.   Hearing that I am funny and smart is great.  But dude, chill the eff out.

No more dates until 2013...

Foodtarded

So a general rule of thumb I have is pretty simple- no cooking.  I don't like it, I suck at it, I avoid it.  I can DO it...but I have to want to and even then I don't really have any specialties.  I make a mean grilled cheese.  I don't think that counts.  But I have 3 variations- plain cheese, cheese and avocado, and ham and cheese.  That is as creatively culinary as I get.  If I do decide to fix something more complicated (Easter brunch comes to mind, I attempted pancakes, sausage, and scrambled eggs) I'm usually so done with cooking at the end that I've lost my appetite and don't want to eat whatever it is that I slaved over a hot stove to make.

Tonight, though, I decided vegetarianism might not be a bad thing.  Because I attempted to...make tacos.  It was a disaster, I am sitting here eating dinner as I type, and it isn't tacos.  It is peanut butter and honey toast and a nice crisp apple.  I don't mind the effort of cooking.  I do mind cooking RAW MEAT.  I don't know how people do it.  It is pink.  Red is not dead.  It is fragrant.  It is fatty drippy GROSS.

Me at the start- This looks easy.  Skillet?  Got it.  Ground turkey?  Got it.  Open turkey package.  Dump turkey in skillet.  Turn on stove.  Wait for sizzling.  Break up with utensil.  More sizzling.  More breaking up with utensil. 

Me in the middle-  This neither looks or smells good.  Well, you like tacos. Not just like tacos, love tacos! They will be delicious.  You will put seasoning and think of your childhood and it will be worth it.

Me towards the end-  Oh my I think I am going to pass out.  Boyfriend walks in.  Asks if I am OK.  Notices my pallor and says he will take over.  NO NO NO.  I CAN DO THIS.  GO AWAY.

2 minutes later- Boyfriend, come here, I can't do this anymore, SAVE ME, GET IN HERE NOW.  NOW! 

Ah food and cooking.  Something so simple, so elemental, something that most people don't think about....I wish it was easier for me...

~J

Mother's Day Guilt, Table of 1

Motther's Day.  The ONE friggin' day of the year when mothers are supposed to be cherished, revered, spoiled, pampered and all around given the day off from "mom duty."  But for Single Mom's, like me and J, it is just a regular day on the job.  We don't have husbands to take over so we can go to the Red Door Spa and get the "works" of a massage, facial, mani/pedi.  Hell, we don't even get to rest.  We get ANOTHER day off custody to spend with our screaming kid by ourselves.

Yes, we get the requisite card and gift.  But at the end of the day, our kids don't get that it is supposed to be a special day.  They need to be fed.  Their butts need to get wiped.  They demand toys.  They throw tantrums.  They need to be bathed.  They NEED NEED NEED. 

Does it make me a bad mom to have dropped my kid off at his dads at 6pm so I could get some quiet time?  Some alone time?  So I could find 15 minutes to change my sheets on my bed and polish my nails?  Cause I feel guilty.  Like the worst kind of guilt.

Every year before this I have dutifully kept my son on Mother's Day while quietly stewing inside.  Wishing my stupid ex husband hadn't left.  I have always been alone with my son on Mother's Day.  We go out and I feel like other mom's look at me and think "aw, that poor single mom...no man to love her" and I feel  like a pariah. 

This year my ex boyfriend was kind enough to spend the day with us, and that was awesome.  He didn't do much other than chase the kid around a museum, but he did take tons of pictures of me with the kid.  That is a first.  On previous years there have been no photos taken of us together.  No photographic evidence that I celebrated Mother's Day.  So that was nice.  But I still made lunch, did nap time, etc.  No help there.  The ex is great - good looking, kind, funny, my kid thinks he is a superhero, etc.  But not much in the "fathering" department comes to mind.  I guess vomit doesn't scare him, so that is a bonus....

So yeah, I did the "Mom" thing all day.  It is 7:45pm.  I am in pjs.  Laundry is in.  I ate a pb sandwich for dinner cause I am too lazy to go to the grocery store.  I am going to do my nails and hopefully crawl into bed by 9pm. Probably won't happen...but I will shoot for it.

Does this make me a bad mother?

Die PMS, die!!!

Watch out.  I'm going to go off.  I'd bust a cap in someone's ass if I had a cap for busting or even an ass handy. (I'm home alone, fortunately, you are welcome, world).  I can feel it bubbling up to the surface like an overboiling pot of water or even more accurately, like a dam that is about to burst at the seams and send an entire lake full of water rushing down towards a small unsuspecting town.  Run for your lives, people.  Run for your lives.

It's that time of month.

I am on edge.  I am pissed off.  I even know why I am pissed off, yet I am helpless to change it.  Damn PMS just needs to run it's damn course so I can feel human again.  It's bad enough that my uterus feels like it is twisting into balloon animals.  I can deal with that. They even make pills for that. Cramps are minor compared to this frickin MONSTER I have become. I don't want to talk to you, I don't want to do anything, if you are in my way, get OUT of it, because I am not moving, even if I technically wasn't I will be operating on the following principles for the next 3-7 days:

1.  I was here first.
2.  I am always right

I love Mexican food and I bought a tamale.  It tasted like ass.  I am pissed.  It is a one day sale at Macy's so I went.  They didn't have any good shoes.  I am pissed.  I went to DSW to salvage the shoe situation.  Still no good shoes.  I am pissed.  I went to Costco so my daughter could snack on samples (a favorite pastime of hers) and we waited for 10 minutes at the ham station, and it could have been done faster, but the sample lady was gabbing instead of doing her job, so we had to wait.  I am pissed.  The weekend is almost over, I have nothing to show for it, I have to go back to work tomorrow.  I AM PISSED.

Consider yourself warned...

~J

The "I miss my baby girl" ramble

So I keep trying to type a blog, and I keep erasing what I wrote.  I was going to write the West Coast version of "how do you know when you shop too much" and didn't get anywhere.  I was going to write "I hate minivans with the passion of nine million burning suns" and didn't get anywhere.

I was supposed to have my daughter tonight but I switched with my ex, and I miss her.

I DID shop tonight...I got her the cutest little pair of bright pink, orange, and green sandals with flowers on them.  My daughter isn't a girly girl, she is more of a tomboy, but she loves bright colors.  These are just her style.  I didn't buy anything for myself...although I did look (I passed up a Splendid cowl neck sweater on sale at Anthropologie).  Side note, even if I don't buy anything at Anthro, that store just has the most calming vibe.  They have such cool visual displays.  I wish my house looked like that...

Back on track.  Whatever track that is!

Sharing sucks.  I mean, a few hours a week of a break is enough for me.  I would much rather have my daughter than not.  I don't care if she whines, I don't care if she resists bedtime, I don't care if I can't get her to eat a vegetable even if it was coated in chocolate and baked into a cookie.  Everything that is hard about being a mom goes away when that little person climbs into your lap, puts their arms around you, and says "I love you mommy."

She comes home tomorrow.  I can't wait!

~J

How do you know you shop too much???

Answer: when you walk through the mall and imaginary price tag bubbles pop up on people's clothes...because you can look at at least 90% of stuff women are wearing and know (a) where they got it, (b) what season it came from, (c) how much it cost - originally AND on sale and (d) what mall it was from. 

See, I shop alot.  I don't really buy much...seeing as single mom's who work for the govenment and owe more in student loans then I will ever make in a 5 year period rarely BUY many things.  But I look.  And I try things on.  And I IMAGINE what I would buy if I miraculously came upon a money tree (the one my parents swore didn't grow in our backyard, but I secretly thought did until I was, oh, 19)...

So the other night I was walking around the mall, per the usual "kid free night activity"...and I saw lots of people.  Teen girls, moms, old ladies...and I started to notice a pattern.  I could tell where the clothes was from.  And this is not "labeled" clothes, ala Seven jeans or polo shirts.  No, this was sweaters from Kohls, a tee shirt with ruching from Gap (spring 2010) and Nine West nude heels (holiday 2010)...I could IDENTIFY random stranger's clothes.  And I knew (roughly) what they paid...either full price or sale.   Because a good shopanista always knows the sale price of things they covet.

And I started to feel guilty.  Like I was peering into these women's closets and wallets and could identify how much money they had.  Were they frugal buyers who only splurged on a few nice things or shopaholics who waited and stalked clothes and bought tons of sale at the end of the season...

Style Snaps Suck

There isn't much to add other than the title...

You know the premise- a way to hem pants (and they have other handy uses!  Tame that unruly shirt collar!  Stick down that annoying belt overage!) that doesn't involve a trip to the tailor.

Well.  I imagine they might work on straight leg styles, and if you are trying to shorten pants longer than an inch. I am tall...I only need half an inch, maybe an inch shorter.  I followed the instructions.  Turn pants inside out.  Carefully affix 4 style snaps near the hem.  Get out ruler and measure.  Carefully affix the 2nd side of the style snap to the folded hem.  Turn pants outside in.  Put pants on.  

They are the correct length, I will give them that...for about 5 minutes and then the sticky unstuck.

I will be making a trip to the tailor.

~J