Dude Review

A nice hung-over bowl of coffee and a pastry at Prairie Thunder to start my day. Bought a fresh loaf of oat/date bread, too. Man, I think I had more wine than was good for me last night. Jin and I had dinner and it seems I just poured red wine down my throat all night. I crashed on Jin's couch.

So last night I met a new Match guy. Bob. He's a professor in the OU art department. I was actually scheduled to go out with him the week after I met Biff, but I cancelled it after I got Biffed.

We met at Othello's after work for an hour. He had an opening to go to, so we kept it short. He's handsome. Beautiful dark brown eyes. And obviously finds me attractive. He told me I was "even better than my pictures." Which is nice. And he was very flirtatious.

Talks a mile a minute though. Holy Cow! Maybe he was nervous or something, but I could barely keep up, he was all over the place. I think he's probably pretty smart and entertaining, but I hardly had time to react before he was off onto something else. And he seems to think of himself as sort of a rebel, a dissident. That might get old.

I don't know. He's been texting me this morning with little flirtatious messages. I enjoy the attention, I'll admit. So I'll probably see him again. It's challenging because we both have kid schedules and work schedules, so I'm not sure when we'll even be able to work it out again, but I'll give it a shot. Bob's also a guitar player, and willing to teach me, so at the very least, I'll get some free guitar lessons out of the deal. :)

In the meantime, looks like I have a date tonight with another Match guy, Roddy. He's a career National Guard guy. British, grew up in Jamaica. Go figure. He's been fun to correspond with, and asked me today if I wanted to meet this weekend. I want to meet him just to hear him talk. Plus he says there's a real Jamaican restaurant in OKC, and I want him to introduce me to it. He says it's in the hood, so I'll need an escort. And if you're not safe with the National Guard... well, when are you safe?

Black Water

I have been trying to find a way to shape an entry to cover the past week, and each time I begin I end up trashing it because, frankly, I don't want to hear about it again. I'll try once more.

I learned, on Monday, through a bizarre set of coincidences, that Biff has been dating someone else nearly the entire time I've known him. I was, perhaps naively, under the impression that we were exclusive. He had not actually told me that, however, and now in retrospect I realize that he was simply keeping quiet about the other woman and letting me believe whatever I wanted.

Here's the bizarre set of circumstances:
Gray, who is also on Match.com, has recently started dating Bethany. Last weekend, while out with her, he casually mentioned that I was also on Match and had been dating Biff for a couple of months. Bethany then equally casually mentioned that she too had been dating Biff, but broke it off with him the week before to focus exclusively on Gray.

Gray knew that I was unaware of this, and sensed that I believed Biff and I were exclusive. I'm proud of him for having the courage to tell me what he had learned, because it couldn't have been very nice for him.

I came, quite frankly, unglued at the news. I called Biff and raked him viciously over the coals. Called him every name in the book, told him to fuck off and die, among other choice things. I cried myself to sleep. All the black water that I had been pushing away so successfully by focusing on Biff came rushing in over my head and I just sank.

He had never felt the way about me that I thought I did about him. He'd been lying to me the whole time. Nothing was what it had seemed and I'd been made a fool of.

I was absolutely crushed. I think everyone was afraid I would jump off the roof. Myself included. All the old wounds about my own self worth that had been inflicted by the divorce were ripped open.

It has been, in short, a shitty week.

I have come to my senses on some level, made my peace with Biff, though I am not seeing him anymore. I cried on the phone to my mother and my best friend. Even Gray has been concerned for me, calling and emailing to check in on me, telling me he's sorry he had to be the bearer of bad news, and he's sorry I got shit on so badly.

The lesson is that I must guard my heart more carefully. I cannot believe everything these guys tell me, and I must not want to love so much, must not be so willing to overlook the signs and believe in what I want to believe in.

What Biff did was heinous. But I set myself up for it in a way. I should have known, should have recognized the signs that he did not feel as strongly as I did. I should have known that I was only hungry for affection and wanting so badly to love someone that I was willing to push aside any obstacles to make it true. I should have listened to the little voice in my heart that said "he's just not that into you." I should have. But I didn't. I just tumbled headlong, taking whatever scraps were thrown my way like a starved puppy.

I suppose I am wiser. I suppose I will be stronger at the broken places. I suppose I'll be more careful, more canny, next time. I suppose so.

Meanwhile now I'm getting long rambling emails from Gray full of dating advice I neither need nor want, peppered with tales from his own recent experiences that definitely fall into the category of "Too Much Information." I don't know why he feels compelled to share his dating stories with me. Though I no longer want to be with him, I am still treating the scars left by the last year of our marriage and the more open wounds of the divorce. I do not want to hear about his frank pre-sex discussions about STDs with his Match girlfriend of three days. And while I appreciate his kindness to me during the Biff Debacle, I don't really need him to give me advice on navigating the emotional waters of my possible future liaisons, or his accounts of how he and his WOW girl in North Carolina have now gotten past their awkwardness over their Fling Week to get back to being online friends. He can discuss his sexual conquests with her. I don't need to know. My heart is broken. Again. And I don't want to hear how he's taken his Match profile down to focus exclusively on Bethany.

It gets better, a bit at a time. And I'm trolling Match again, looking for my next victim, my next ex. But my heart isn't in it. My heart is curled up tight in its shell, cringing, hoping noone will get in, praying that someone will.

Pine Wood Derby Day

Yesterday was a big day: pine wood derby, followed by Chuckie Cheese's with his best friend John and a sleepover at our place.

Troop 469 met at Wilson school for the derby. There were 44 cars entered. I've never been to one of these things, so I didn't know what to expect. But I had to laugh at the near-total lack of organization. You can sure tell that the event was put together by men. We hung around waiting for everyone to get there. Then they started a long slow process of checking the boys in, then another long chaotic process of allowing each group of boys to go up and cast their vote for best design, and then a long period of futzing around before the meet actually started.

Then there were 88 races to get through... yup. Do the math. 44 cars, two cars at a time. Each car has to race 4 times. It was a two hour ordeal, and then there were the final elimination rounds for the top 8. I sat next to John Tolbert's mom, Molly, and we both just gritted our teeth and got through it. Molly said "I just keep thinking, 'if the Junior League had organized this...'"

I'm no Junior Leaguer, but I had to agree.

Grayson's car did not win any of its races, but it actually didn't do too badly, coming in at just over 3 seconds for each race. He didn't have too much invested in it, so he didn't cry like some of the boys did. And when he did get a bit of a long face after the third race, Gray went over to encourage him and reminded him I was taking them to Chuckie Cheese, and that made everything okay.

FINALLY after all the races were done, they called out the winners for best design. Third place, second place, first place: Grayson Coldwell! Yes! G's shark design took top honors by popular vote. Grayson was thrilled, and Gray was massively relieved. He had put many hours into making Grayson's vision for the car become a reality: carving the shape down by hand and painstakingly painting it silver and white. It really does look very cool.

Grayson has never won a trophy before. He was beside himself. I was very happy for both boys. Gray said he was glad we could come to events like that and sit side by side and still be friends. It was a tiny bit awkward, but mainly because we're so used to being together we don't know how to not be together, if you know what I mean. Gray was talking to one of the grandparents of another scout when I arrived and introduced me as "Grayson's mom." It was the first time he'd introduced me as something other than his wife, and it was accurate, but odd at the same time.

Gray had a date after the meet (second one this week, same girl), and I loaded up the boys and went by the house to pick up the dogs. I am dogsitting this weekend. Not because I needed to, but just because I miss my girls so much. It was good to have them here again last night, even with the hassle of walkies at 7 this morning. I especially miss having Kobi snuggling me at bedtime. Cats are okay, but I miss my dogs.

We dropped the dogs off at the apartment and then took the boys to Chuck E Cheese. Thank god that place still serves beer. I brought a book and just parked in a booth with a beer while the boys ran around. Went through $60 in two hours, but it was a special payday treat and celebration of Grayson's big first-place win.

Today is Linda's Superbowl Sunday Big Cooking Extravaganza. I'm making a ginormous pot of Simon Juan and Garfunkle chicken soup (parsley sage rosemary jalapeno and thyme); and another pot of vegetarian chili. Biff is coming by this evening for Superbowl dinner.

It's interesting to have Gray dating now, too. I have no one clear feeling about it. It's funny, the main thing I sense, in the jumbled soup of feelings, is some sort of jealousy that he is able to spend so much time with her. I get only every other weekend with Biff, and have to compete with his cycling training schedule on those weekends, as well, plus the inconvenience factor of Biff living in Edmond. Gray, being responsible for Grayson only on alternate weekends, can pop out for drinks after work almost any day of the week. Funny that that's what bugs me, not that he's seeing someone else. I guess our relationship really had been dead for a long time before the end. We were just living together. It's enough to make you doubt the permanence of love.

Biff made a funny last weekend. I was laughing about some joke I'd heard about how blase married men are, and said something like "one more reason not to get married." Biff said "you divorced women, always so anti-marriage. According to you, we shouldn't have a president now."

Huh?

"If you had a bad one, you never need another one."

I had to laugh. Yeah. He had me there. Touche.