No, the television
show isn’t being cancelled. I also
thought of titling this post “Elvis Has Left the Building” or “I Give Up.” For those of you who remember back 100 years
ago when I first discussed the “Dog Whisperer” aka DW, you may we wondering
what happened there. I know some friends
were torn as while they wanted things to work out for me, they also wanted to
hear more exciting extreme dating stories.
I hadn’t provided any updates in a while as I didn’t want to jinx it,
but from the title you can pretty much see that was all for naught.
For the full
story on him, check out Stalking the DogWhisperer and Dorks Anonymous. But basically, I developed a crazy crush
on my neighbor. Not just any neighbor
but a neighbor whose house I can see from my own and so now I can torture
myself by knowing if he’s home or not home or if someone is visiting him. But yes, I developed this crush on DW, so
named by my friend when we decided that I needed to ensnare him with my
feminine wiles and that this would be known as “Mission: Dog Whisperer.”
First on the
agenda was training my dog not to hate his dog.
This took a little bit of work on my part as for some reason my faithful
canine couldn’t stand the other dog. It
was insane – I gave mine treats and talked all sweet with him whenever we saw
that damn dog and now, my dog thinks this dog is awesome and DW is like a
paragon of men.
Then I started
walking and talking with DW. Nothing too
exciting at first, despite the intrepid maneuvers of my friend who tried to
assist me in my quest. We would just
walk around the block together and chat.
And it was great – we talked about everything. Sometimes when we’d finished our walk we
would just chat outside for a while, the dogs eventually laying down they were
so tired or whining to go get fed.
Wait, before the
walks, there was the winter. Yes, now I’m
remembering correctly. So in the fall
and early winter we’d only chatted a few times but hadn’t really walked
together. Then we had one pretty crazy
snow and DW helped me dig out my car and my neighbors. I decided to thank him by delivering some
home-baked chocolate chip cookies to his casa.
He was a little weird when I dropped them off but he later said he had
fallen asleep on his couch and was a little out of it then.
Then we started
walking together. It was really…what’s
the word? It was nice. It was really
nice to walk and chat with him. And I
started to like him even more. He was in
a band and played on a few different sports teams and he was close with his
family. I eventually determined that he didn’t
seem to be dating anyone seriously and he talked about a few
ex-girlfriends. Around that point it was
spring and I plucked up the courage to ask him if he wanted to sometime check
out this restaurant we had been discussing and he said yes. I was way too over-excited by this. Especially because I was heading out of town
pretty soon after our walk and we didn’t see each other again for a while.
When we did see
each other again on another walk, it came up that it had recently been my
birthday. We had been talking about work
and I said I had been in training and while it was annoying, at least I got to
see some of my old coworkers and friends and have dinner and drinks with them
on my birthday. He wished me a belated
happy birthday and said we would have to figure out a time to go out. Then a few days later, he showed up at my
door with brownies. Home-made crème de
menthe brownies. That he made. For MY BIRTHDAY!!! I was sooooooo
excited. And they were really good
brownies. He came in and we talked for
like two hours. It was awesome. I was so
super sure that he was into me. Does
that seem like a reasonable assumption? I
thought so then but now I don’t think it does.
Sigh. Anyway, we talked for a
long time and then he had to go as he was supposed to have dinner with his
parents. But we decided we would go out
for dinner together the following Sunday.
And he even asked for my phone number in case we didn’t run into each
other, so that we could figure out our plans.
As that Sunday
approached, I have to say I became incredibly and insanely nervous. I honestly don’t remember being as nervous
for a date before – if it was a date.
When I hadn’t seen him by that Saturday, I texted him to see if we were
still on and we made plans for dinner at 6pm.
I became even more anxious. I must
have tried on a dozen different outfits.
I called a friend and I was nearly hyperventilating I couldn’t figure
out what to wear or how to act or anything.
This was highly odd as I have been on way too many dates to behave in
this manner. Usually I have a hard time
working up any enthusiasm or sentiment other than certain dread.
I managed to somehow
dress myself and be ready by the time he knocked on my door. That was when I realized I hadn’t warned him
that in addition to my regular dog, I was dog-sitting – so he was a little
ill-prepared for the sound of my dog and another very large dog hurtling
themselves at the door and barking furiously at him. I managed to pry them away from the door and
fling myself out of it.
He drove and the
ride to the restaurant was a little awkward.
Normally we didn’t have a hard time talking but it was a little
quiet. When we got to the restaurant
though, that all changed and it was more like it had been before. The conversation just felt really easy and
fun. We talked for a while, had some
drinks, and dinner and before I knew it, almost three hours had passed. The bill came and when I reached for it, he
brushed me aside and said he would take care of it. We both said that we had fun and that we should
go out again when we were both in town – he was going out of town the following
weekend, and I was going on a mini-vacation with my sister and nephews after
that. Then he drove me back home and
walked me to my door.
Here’s where I became
less certain that we were actually on a date.
If you’ve seen my house you know that I have this really weird Charlie
Brown type Christmas tree in my front yard, leaning out onto the sidewalk from
my terraced garden. When he walked me to
my door he stood away from me with a tree limb in between us, such that if I
were to attempt to make a move I would end up jamming a tree branch into my eye
socket. So we just said we had fun and
said good night. I saw him a few minutes
later as I took the two beasts out for their last evening stroll and DW was out
with his canine. We chatted again
briefly and then called it a night.
The next week we
walked together again but no mention of the dinner or going out again. It was a
pretty short walk though so I tried not to read too much into it. That weekend he was out of town for most of
the weekend and then I left for my vacation.
When I got back, I didn’t really see DW around. I waited a week and then I decided I would
text him to ask him out for that Friday.
He texted back something like “Got plans but thanks for offer” and then
he pretty much fell into a black hole.
That was a month ago and I’ve only seen him a handful of times. I’ve seen him at the gym (of course we go to
the same gym – it’s not enough torture to just be able to see his house
multiple times a day) and I’m pretty sure that he’s avoiding me. When I said hi to him yesterday and asked him
how he was he kind of brusquely said “good” and strode away.
The result being
that now I am torturing myself trying to figure out what the hell happened, or
in darker moments asking myself what did I do wrong? That and contemplating knocking him down and
asking him/shouting at him “WHAT THE HELL?!!?!?” or egging his house or letting
the air out of his tires. Don’t worry, I’m not actually going to do any of
those things. Mainly because I’m scared
of what the answer would be if I did manage to force an answer out of him. I’m mostly ok about it now except when I see
him and it’s all strange and awful. But it felt horrible the first couple of weeks
– I really had allowed myself to hope and believe that this time was going to
work out and to have that crushed out of me by my crush feels something akin to
heartbreak. No, I wasn’t in love with
him – I recognize that I didn’t really know him all that well. But I was desperately in love with the idea
of just getting to be with someone who was actually nice and attractive and fun
and a good, employed, dog-loving guy and who unbelievably seemed to dig
me. And this other thing, the reality of
what has happened, just totally sucks.
Thankfully when
I was in the depths, I contacted my partner-in-crime in Mission DW and she came
to the rescue with intense verbal barrages of his douchebaggery, alcoholic
beverages, and sushi. Plus we replayed
the highlights/lowlights for her husband and he confirmed that DW had seemed to
lead me on and he was in fact probably an evil bastard. That helped arrest the spiral of misery
before it got too melancholic to survive with any vestiges of dignity or
self-respect.
Now the problem –other
than the fact that DW’s house has not mysteriously been moved to another
dimension—is that I don’t think I can bear to get back on those hideous dating
sites and put myself out there again.
How much disappointment and insanity can one singleton take before she
is put out of her misery? Besides I’ve
been on pretty much all of them at this point and none of them were so awesome
as to make me want to run back to them.
For now I have to call it a night as I have to actually get in a real
run tomorrow morning. The dating
decision dilemma will have to wait until another day.
