Tag: insecure attachment

dating, humor, personal writing

the puppy and the squirrel

mycrookedrainbow

I hate to disappoint you but ‘the puppy and the squirrel’ is not going to be a heart-warming tale of interspecies love – nah, I just like the title. And I will be talking about both a squirrel and a puppy here. So things could be worse. (Things, in fact, ARE worse. Far far worse. Out There, in the Real World. But here in Pollyanna Savage la-la land, puppies and squirrels is where we’re at, people).

First, I am 98.9% sure I did not get that out of state job. And you know what? Today, I am relieved. While it was sort of a dream job for me, I am too old and infirm (for reals, but I’ll get to that) to uproot my life and move across not one but two state lines for a job. So, yeah, I feel some relief.

But yesterday. Yesterday was another story. Here’s where the squirrel comes in.

Well, before we get to the squirrel even, you must know that one reason I feel I did not get a job offer is because of my leg. I’ll explain. I’m several months post-op (of my umpteenth major surgery, some congenital issue, blah blah blah) and still struggling with a lot of chronic pain and functional limitations. I was just starting to be able to do things like go grocery shopping (and go to TARGET, y’all!), and after not having been able to do stuff like that for almost a year and a half, I was THRILLED. Consumerism, FTW!

Enter Esmerelda. (Not her real name, but I’m liking it already.)

Esmerelda is – no, not the squirrel, we’re not there in our tale quite yet – a very young (why do all people under 30 look pre-pubescent to me now?!) physical therapist who stood in for my regular (older, more experienced) physical therapist a couple days prior to The Big Interview. She was well-meaning, but my god, she pushed my leg too far – literally. I feel like I heard it. It is not Esmerelda’s fault, really – she was just trying to do her job, pushing down on a knee that hasn’t been able to straighten for a year and a half (you know how it is).

But two days after seeing her, I was at the job interview and the Esmerelda Effect hit its peak. My pain skyrocketed up several notches on the old (ridonculous) pain scale (have you seen that thing – those faces just scream “SCIENCE!”). So much pain I actually had to cut my full-day interview short. I mean, what holy grail of interview faux pas is that!? The experts tell us all the tips – make eye contact with the interviewer, remember their name, say yes to their glass of water offer, be yourself – but not, oh I don’t know, CUT THE INTERVIEW SHORT AND GO HOME.

So on my long drive back across two state lines, I just ruminated – there is no way I will ever get the dream job now. My damn leg gets in the way of my life, again. And Esmerelda.

OK. Here’s where we get to the squirrel.

So I’m all feeling sorry for myself because no word on the job days after the committee met to make their decision. I’m in the midst of a little pity party on my patio when all of a sudden a squirrel drops from the sky (okay, a tree). My cat runs for it, and is stopped short by her leash (I already mentioned to you guys that I walk my cat on a leash?). But the squirrel only looks at my cat lunging at him and squiggles a bit but does not run away.

I go to investigate.

The squirrel does not run away when I approach him either. He tries, but he’s hurt. His back legs. Was he hit by a car or mangled by an animal and managed to just get up that one tree? I don’t know, but he’s not about to get back up that or any tree.

A Real Woman might have been like, OK, we know what we have to do! Get him to a vet – OR – we will put on our Big Girl Pants and somehow put this poor little guy out of his – ACK – I cannot even finish that sentence, let alone contemplate the act, however merciful it might be. A Real Woman might have done the merciful thing. Me? I burst into tears. Like full bore tears. Outside, in public, in the common area of my apartment building. I tell myself I am going to give the poor squirrel space. But I’m the one who needs a little space.

I related to the squirrel. He couldn’t get very far. He was struggling. His poor legs! The flies were already starting to perch on his back, the goddamn vultures. And given I’m too squeamish to do anything useful in this situation, we – the squirrel, the cat, the flies, and I – all of us knew: the squirrel was going to die.

OK, I hear it too. Melodramatic.

Are you ready for the puppy part of the story yet?

Yeah, me too.

Enter Professor Cute Butt. (He’s not the puppy – wait for it!) We had our fourth date the other night, and, you know, I think it’s going pretty well.

But then he texts me saying he had some news he wanted to share but he’d rather do so on the phone, are you around? I could hear my heart in my ears.

He is calling to dump your sorry a$$!, Inner Voice adds, helpfully.

I text back right away. (OMG you guys – I just checked my text history: Prof. CB texted yesterday at 12:17pm. My response? Also 12:17pm.) Okay, maybe I am a bit jumpy, yeah? In any case, I say I’m around now, and he calls.

I answer on the first ring, “What’s up!?”

Prof. CB says, “Oh, so we’re not going to do the small talk thing first?”

I laugh (hehe) and indulge him, heart bracing, mind racing. HE IS GONNA SAY SAYONARA.

“I just wanted to call to tell you by phone rather than text. The boys and I have been on the waitlist for a puppy for a very long time. I feel like it’ll help them to have a puppy. They’ve wanted one since, you know, the divorce. Anyway, we just got off the waitlist. So, um, we are getting a puppy…. next week.”

We both wait to hear what I am going to say.

Still certain this is segue to sayonara, I attempt a gracious, “Oh, okay, congratulations! That’s great! A puppy, wow!”

The Professor: “Well, I told my therapist this puppy was going to ruin my social life, and…. uh, since you’re kind of my social life these days, I wanted to let you know. Cuz it sort of, um, complicates things?”

We discuss. A puppy is not like a cat, you see. The cat poops and pees in a box inside the house. It’s very convenient not being on bathroom duty all the time. Like, I can leave my cat in my apartment overnight. I can go out for long stretches. I can (and do) take her out on a leash, but I DO NOT HAVE TO. That’s what I’m saying. Puppies? Yeah, not so much.

What does this really mean? All I hear in Professor Cute Butt’s call was: words words words BUH-BYE! words words words. So I tell him, ever-accommodating, “We’ll figure it out!”, then added, as an insecurely-attached girl is wont to do, “That is, if you want to figure it out…?”

“I wouldn’t be calling you otherwise, silly!” He doesn’t actually say “silly” but that’s the tone. Like, DUH!

Then he adds, “My therapist was trying to be helpful and said that a puppy doesn’t mean you can’t meet up with people and go for walks. But he doesn’t realize that the person I’m thinking of, well……” He trails off, but he doesn’t need to complete that sentence. We both know: I am not someone who can just “go for walks.” Not with this leg.

We hang up. I am bummed out. The puppy. The squirrel. I’m the squirrel. Enter the puppy. Exit the squirrel, on a quiet little squirrel stretcher. No, not really, but yeah, you can tell I was a little existentially flummoxed.

Waiting for the other shoe* – or squirrel, as the case may be – to drop straight out of the sky. That’s just what I do. (Well, that and delivering on my promise to you of mixed metaphors, jeez.)

Anyway, enter my ever-wise bff. While we’re deconstructing, you know, Everything, she points out – well, he values you enough to consider the impact of a puppy on you guys? And he CALLED you to tell you? After only 4 dates? Um, yeah, I wouldn’t worry about it.

And when I think about it this way, it even starts to make me a little happy. Maybe I’m not the squirrel. Maybe I get the job, maybe I don’t. Maybe the sky isn’t falling, is what I’m getting at.

So here we are, dear Reader: we started with a sad squirrel story. We ended with a happy puppy story.

How do they go together, pray tell?

Uhhh….. LOOK OVER THERE! SQUIRREL!!

See? Done. These two things are totes related.

Now, moving on. Hopefully not to a little squirrel funeral though. Wait, what? You wouldn’t want to accompany me to a little squirrel funeral?

Uhhh…. LOOK OVER THERE! PUPPY!!

*No actual shoes were harmed in the making of this post. (Only your brain as you tried to follow my, um, logic.)

dating, humor, personal writing

heart mouthguards

mycrookedrainbow

Third date with Professor Cute Butt was really nice. He did NOT wear loafers. He DID come straight from work… wearing a BOW TIE. Come on, dude! Not helping. SMH.

No, in all seriousness, he seems like a real prospect. IN SPITE of the LOAFERS and, you’re killing me, Prof. CB, BOW TIES, he seems like a decent guy. I don’t mean “decent” like “meh” – I mean decent, like a Good Person with a Strong Moral Compass.

He also knows all about the job out of state. (Update on job: they can’t decide between me and the other guy, so they’re calling every reference so as to hopefully come to a decision soon. Hmm. Pins & Needles, meet Waiting.) He said, “I looked it up – it’s not actually THAT far.”

Third date saw more talking talking talking, and more laughter. More holding of hands (and not unintentional or non-mutual hand-holding) and – are you ready for this – massaging of my head. He did that, I think mindlessly, while we hung out on a bench in a random lobby (it’s f’n COLD out) before his train came. Did he know that the key to my heart is through my scalp? How did he know this? *I* did not even know this. Till he did it. Then I was like, Whaaa? I’m putty now. Can’t talk. Can’t – nope, not now. Putty. Putty doesn’t talk. Or think. Putty just kinda laps up head massages.

So that’s how that went down.

Here’s the thing. Remember how I told you about my heart having bit the dust so many times in the past it’s missing teeth? And how I therefore need to find little heart mouthguards, just to protect myself even a wee little bit, or at least, to give the illusion my heart has some protections in place? Well, that plus that fact that, in this new era of dating, and much to my own dismay, I’ve suddenly started to Date like a Dude. So what we have here is this:

I have a date tonight with a different guy.

I know what you’re thinking.

SLUT!

WHORE!

MEAN GIRL!

Oh, wait, what? You’re probably not quite as vicious as my inner voice? Inner voice is like YOU LITTLE LYING BITCH. Professor Cute Butt could be starting to have Actual Feelings for you, and you go and have yet another First Date? What’s wrong with you?!?!

I will just tell all of you this: heart mouthguards.

Inner voice, don’t look at me like that. Prof. CB and I are not exclusive (yet). Just gonna slip this one date under the wire. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

dating, humor, personal writing

a perfect date nightmare: loafers

mycrookedrainbow

So I had a second date with Professor Cute Butt, and I will have another today.

That said, he wears Loafers, people.

Ok, a bit of background is in order: I went to a private high school we’ll just call Preppy Prep. All Preppy Prep boys wore loafers. Most with no socks and actual pennies stuffed in for proper prepster props. I absolutely – for lack of a better word – ABHORRED both Preppy Prep school and Preppy Prep boys.

So when Professor Cute Butt got out of his car at our second date and I saw Loafers, I could barely hear him over the alarm bells going off in my head.

RUN. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. HEAD FOR THE NEAREST —

Okay okay, I can hear you, dear Reader. You’re saying, “Oh.My.Gawd!, don’t be so shallow! Especially since it sounds like you’ve had about as much luck dating as Oscar the Grouch had with getting out of that trash can! Who cares about his shoes! It’s a man’s heart, his character, how he treats you that matters, you numb-nut! Don’t screw this up!”

Either that or you are driving our proverbial getaway car – I picture a black Escalade – and are racing up alongside me being all like “HERE! JUMP IN, QUICK!”

In my defense, my hardline anti-loafer platform is not about footwear, per se. (Although, have you seen these things?)

No, it’s about Social Justice.

OK hear me out.

Loafers, to me, represent someone who comes from money, someone who has had a life of privilege, someone who went to schools like Preppy Prep. Loafers might, though not necessarily, indicate a person who is … less than woke. Loafers say, I’d rather be at the yacht club polishing our new sailboat. (Oh wait, do people polish a sailboat, or am I just thinking of silver? If people do polish a sailboat and are at a yacht club, they probably are also people who have other people to do the polishing. Well, you know what I’m getting at.) Loafers don’t *necessarily* say, I’m a racist and I think poor people are just lazy and homeless people should get a damn job and sick people must’ve done something to bring illness and pestilence upon themselves. (Wait, what is pestilence again?) Anyway, Loafers don’t mean all that. But they could. They could. That’s all I’m sayin.

Ok, holy stereotyping, Self! Let’s go easy on the guy. This is all about your past history having gone to Preppy Prep where all the boys drove Beemers and had CEO daddies and told maids what to do. They were budding Brett Kavanaughs, complete with good buddies named Squi and games like the Devil’s Triangle. Just cuz my high school made me forever get the heebie jeebies whenever I see loafers or – god forbid- plaid – no, I’m sorry, madras- shorts, doesn’t predict a single thing about Professor Cute Butt.

Still…. you can imagine my concern.

Our third date is in a matter of hours. My mission, should I choose to accept it: Operation Woke-o-Meter. Do his loafers point to a character flaw that would prohibit any further development of a relationship?! Who knows! Maybe he’s Dope AF.

Second date involved mojitos, tapas sharing, and a lot more snorting. This time, I made him really laugh. He said, wiping at his eyes, “I’m literally crying laughing!” and he’d only had a quarter of his drink so I can’t blame the mojito really. I have never made someone cry-laugh (and admit it) on a second date before, so needless to say, I felt pretty damn good about how this was going.

Also, there was a bit more, ahem, testing out of the chemistry factor. We are not all academics here so I’ll skip past the Methods section and get right to the Conclusion: Yes. Yes, we do have chemistry.

So the second date, even though it was > seven hours, did not allow for ample testing in the WHY LOAFERS category of this experiment.

That is what tonight is for.

Well, in addition to keeping my mind off whether or not I got the job….

Will report back. Get that Escalade running, just.in.case.

dating, humor, personal writing

the green dot blues

mycrookedrainbow

OK. I get it. I’m online dating, you’re online dating, he’s definitely online dating, everybody is online dating. On every possible app. Yep. Got the memo.

But here’s the thing. Dating in this era, especially for an insecurely attached introvert such as myself, is – let’s see, there’s a word for it – oh yes: HELL. It is unmitigated torture. Like a slow drip from a faucet while you’re trying to sleep and wanting to think thoughts of anything other than the slow drip of the damned faucet.

Or like those monks who believe self-flagellation is an integral part of their spiritual practice, flogging the fragile skin of their naked backs with those heavy, prickly ropes, over and over and over and over in a ritual shaming of the flesh, that will leave its mark only UNTIL the END of TIME .

Or like getting all settled into your seat on the plane on an overseas 12 hour flight, only to find the guy next to you wants to spend the entire time alternately snoring into your ear and creeping into your shoulder space, or chewing on some dry pretzels, little bits of which spew this way and that, as he explains to you his ten year plan, while exuding what must be some kind of protest against capitalism via his utter disregard for the hygiene products it peddles.

Or like ordering this amazing dress you’ve been eyeing for a while on Amazon (on sale! great reviews! pics so cute!) only to have it arrive at your door looking nothing like the dress you imagined flitting prettily about in, not even looking – in pure point of fact – like a dress at all, but rather more like the shriveled aftermath of a party of polyester and cardboard left out in the rain, for a few years, then put in the dryer with a hamster. (Not to put too fine a point on it.)

Or like going to the mechanic with your car that’s been making this noise for a while, and then suddenly, now that you’re telling him about it, it’s not making a noise at all, it actually goes ghostly quiet, even though you KNOW something real happened and you’re NOT imagining it – but the mechanic just looks at you, like, Whatever, lady! NEXT!

Or that awful dream you wake up sweating from where you’re at a party where you just can’t quite figure out what the hell people are talking about – is it another language they are speaking? Why can’t I understand what is going on? Wait, I was supposed to bring a gift? Is that why they are looking at me that way? Cue looking down: OH MY GOD I FORGOT MY PANTS.

You get the drift? Yes, I think you do. This, my friends, is online dating in 2019. As a 40 something straight lady. In a city. With lots of dudes. And lots and lots and lots of beautiful young women.

So here’s what I find to be the most excruciating facet of this whole maddening enterprise, for me anyway: that f*cking green dot. ONLINE NOW! Or the green dot equivalent. On Bumble, it’s the mysteriously rapid-changing locations of the person you just had some you-thought-fabulous-dates-and-hot-chemistry with. But there he is 3.6 miles away, now 4.7 miles away, now 8.2 – which means he is SWIPING NOW!, wherever he is, he is MESSAGING SOMEONE NOW…. or so you have heard (or, let’s be real, so you have *read,* after some obsession-fueled googling with a glass of wine to calm your nerves).

But it is OKCupid that is the origin story of my Green Dot Blues. Somehow this is made all the more devastating by the fact that OKC has, no offense, evolved into what feels a graveyard of gray faces, mine included (so I can say it, y’all!). In other words, OKC is like Facebook. Once upon a time it was KOOL. Now it’s where daters go to die. But even there, he’s ONLINE NOW, checking out all the other, better gray faces than yours.

Well, carry on, shall we?

Nah, I’m being harsh. There are nice guys out there. For sure. Really nice. It’s just hard not to feel like we are all the picked-over garments after a massive end-of-summer sale at TJ Maxx. This sweater is good, but bummer, it only comes in xxxl or xxss. This blazer has a stain that’s been there since the 70s. Wait, are these pants wearing a wedding ring? There’ve got to be other clothes stored somewhere in the back? No? So… this is it? Then you look down and realize there’s a hole where there’s not supposed to be a hole in your own damned t-shirt.

Yeah. Here we all are, god help us, we have *that* in common. And that, I guess, is a start.

Also, an update: recall Mr. Cutiepants from the horrific mistaken hand-holding incident post? I remembered just now that that was not the first time my subconscious pulled that stunt with this guy. On our second date, after he kissed me for the first time, and it was raining and we were looking for a little shelter where we could make out on the sidewalk in the rain LIKE TEENAGERS, PEOPLE… And I might have just grabbed his hand and held it, grinning madly. In my mind, I was skipping with him hand in hand down the sidewalk, onlookers turning their wet heads to watch these two new lovebirds go by, love story blooming as they watched. In reality, my reverie evaporated soon as I found myself holding hands with this guy I’d just met, who, for all I know is a PLAYAH. I had said, “Oh My Gosh! I’m holding your hand – is that weird? I think that’s weird! I mean, it’s weird for a second date! Sorry if this is weird! IS it weird?” He said, as gamely as he could, “Only if you make it weird!”

So, that about sums up online dating for me thus far: Only If You Make It Weird (i.e., Yes, You’ve Now Made It Weird, You Weirdo) and, perhaps not unrelatedly, the post-date Green Dot Blues.

I do have one final thing to say on the matter, on this lovely Friday evening, where I am – you may note – NOT out on the town. And that is:

F-U WHEN HARRY MET SALLY.

F-U JOHN CUSACK and YOUR GIANT BOOMBOX.

F-U JUDD NELSON and THE STUD EARRING YOU GIVE MOLLY RINGWALD AT THE END OF MOVIE.

That is all.

dating, humor, personal writing

the hand holding incident

mycrookedrainbow

So the other day I am on a date. Well, can you call it that? It was accompanying someone I find incredibly attractive on some errands. Fourth time meeting. Why did I agree to go on a fourth date like this? Where’s the rolling eyes emoji when you need it?

This is just how things go for me. You will see this, all in due time.

So anyway, aforementioned cutiepants and I are on this, you know, errand-running date. He is squeezing me in, you see. Which, I must admit, makes me feel a little bit unsure of my date’s interest in me.

He and I arrive at the mall where he is to pick up an order he’d placed online. Fair enough. We go in, but they need to find the order in the back. So we are instructed to wait for a couple minutes. It being a furniture store, we sit on a nice little two seater couch. (OK, not bad, we can sit next to each other!)

We take a seat. He seems a little distracted and had been looking for something in his coat. But out of the corner of my eye I see his right hand reach in my direction. My left hand – god help you, left hand – grabs his right. Like a ninja reflex.

But then – where’s that embarrassed face emoji? – I realize, he was not reaching for your hand, you fool of all fools! He was looking for something in his coat.

“Oh,” I say. “Wait, were you reaching for my hand?”

He pauses – and his hesitation is all I need to know, NO YOU DUMBASS HE WAS NOT REACHING FOR YOUR DAMNED HAND!

I pull it away and stare immediately at the very, very interesting things on the walls over there, in the direction facing anywhere but toward him.

This is just a little window into my love life. My so-called love life.

This might be why I am single. Here I am, this 40-something single lady, with a cat, mind you (a cat I walk on a leash, but that is for another day) trying to navigate the online dating world in a sea of millennials. Cutiepants is what I’ll call a late-stage millennial. Their norms are all kinds of different from Gen X-er’s like me.

Thus my confusion.

My mistaken hand-holding incident led me to spiral internally, as I do, and catastrophizing, as I also do, with thoughts like “Oh boy, this is a reflex from my LTR days. This is what someone in a RELATIONSHIP would do. We are just going out. We only just met. He is a late-stage millennial – he wears a SCARF for christsake! Is he going to call me a “Stage 5 Clinger” to his friends when he talks about this later? Holy crap, I’m DOOMED! I will choke on a baby carrot and die a single lady in my studio apartment with five cats who walk over my dead body for days (with that swishy-tailed I’m-Pissed vibe that cats do). OK, we are done here.”

Naturally, in my mind, we were done here. So I curled into myself and muttered nonsensical chatter mirroring the tone of his chatter until he dropped me back home, still mortified at my fatal mistake.

Instinctively assuming someone is reaching to hold your hand on date four, an errand date no less, is the equivalent of saying “I need you to love me, NOW”