What's your Sign?

I was at the cupcake shop this week with some friends (of course now that I’ve typed this up I just want more cupcakes…hmmm…) and one of them spotted a reasonably attractive guy at the front of the line.  At this point both of them started gesturing emphatically for me to approach said guy in some capacity and kept reiterating in not-so-indoor voices, “Go get him!”  The other maneuvered around to determine that the guy was not wearing a wedding ring, and once that was confirmed they became even more determined in their commands.  I almost started inching towards him, but I couldn’t think what the hell I would say to him.  This was definitely not an optimal situation in which to strike up a casual conversation.  First of all, the people between us in line would surely think I was trying to hop the queue and given the deliciousness of these particular cupcakes, would possibly beat me to death with their purses.  But let’s brush that aside and say I momentarily took leave of my senses.  What in the hell would I say to him when I got up there: “nice cupcakes!”, “what flavor did you get?”, “can I buy those for you or reimburse you as you have already paid?”  Or if I was feeling more brazen, “what kind of cupcakes did you buy me?” or even “those will taste really delicious after you take me out for a drink.”

Those all kinda fell flat but it made me think about the lack of general pick-up lines in my repertoire.  I haven’t been on the dating scene in a few months now and even when I was, it was mostly online and the guys tended to make all the cheesy moves.  I’ve never been really sure about how to approach a guy in real life.  Some people say women don’t need lines, that all they need to do is make it clear that they are interested and guys will be tripping over their feet to lavish them with attention.  I’ve found that line of reasoning to be a pile of crap so I think I need to develop some go to lines in case I find myself in a situation where there is a prospective gentleman that I want to woo. 

Years and years ago, I came up with lines for me and a few other friends but for the life of me now I can’t remember them.  Well, that’s not entirely true, I do remember the line I came up with for a friend that is blessed in the ta-ta department.  I said she should just sidle up to a guy, look him directly in the eyes and say, “So (dramatic pause), do you want to see the goods?” Strangely enough, we could never get those words out of our mouths without bursting into fits of hysterical laughter.  My line was one that I thought up applied only if I ever met a jockey, and although I really can’t remember it now, that is probably for the best as I think it was more than a little off-color. 

Earlier in the month, the same friend from the cupcake shop wanted to take a road trip to some town on the Eastern shore that contained the hot fisherman featured in a photograph in the newspaper.  We decided that as I approached said fisherman, I should try something like “I don’t know what type of bait you’re using, but you caught me!” But again, the likelihood that I could deliver that line without my ears turning bright red and basically sputtering in laughter are pretty slim.

So for realsies, I need some lines for actual situations that I could find myself in.  Like at the gym – what would I say to the cute guy on the treadmill next to me?  “Wow, you’re really sweaty!” or “Don’t worry, I’m not actually going to pass out.  It just looks like that when I run.” And what about the grocery store, if I see a guy I want to introduce myself to, what would be a good line to open up with?  Should I pretend I need something from a high shelf and ask him to help me reach it?  Should I pretend I don’t know how to cook and ask him what I should do with those parsnips? Or on the rare times when I actually go to a bar and see a guy who appears single and with whom I’d like to mingle, should I really use the old standby, “Come here often?” or  should I try to buy him a drink?  Help me out, people.  Who knows what the hell I’ll come up with on my own since I once went up to a guy I liked (granted this was in elementary school) and told him that for someone who was that short, he really had big feet.  Save me from myself, dear readers and help me come up with some viable lines that would have a guy actually interested in talking to me rather than running away at high speeds.

Love Hurts

Tuesday night I drove to Arlington to meet some friends as we said goodbye to a friend and his wife who were getting ready to move out of the country for a few years.  I had thought his wife, originally from Germany with most of her family still living there, would be excited to return to her homeland, but she really wasn’t that stoked.  She’s leaving the home she had built in that island paradise of Hawaii, a career that she enjoyed, and moving without knowing where or even if she was going to find a job, a place to live, or a plan for what happens next all because her husband had a great opportunity and really wanted to go.

With an intro like that, you’re probably thinking that this blog is going to be all about the things that people are willing to give up for love.  But since this is my blog, it’s actually about what happened before I made it to that dinner.  I have said in previous posts that I was so over DW it wasn’t funny.  Well, sadly I have proven that untrue as the mere mention of his name and wonderfulness by a neighbor riled me up so much that I twisted my ankle and busted my knee. 

Rewind to Tuesday post work.  I hauled butt home to walk my faithful canine before driving across town to say goodbye.  Just a block from my home I see a neighbor with a new dog.  I didn’t know her too well – she lives on the other side of DW and she and I had never really talked too much.  But she was nervous about her new dog, and seemed anxious to chat.  So we let our dogs meet each other and they got along really well, so well in fact that she felt she had to comment about how embarrassed she was as her dog had not liked DW’s dog and had in fact snapped at him, and wasn’t that horrible as DW is just the nicest guy ever, don’t I agree? GAH!!! She literally went on and on about what a great guy he is, and how fantastic his dog is, yadda yadda.  And I found myself agreeing with her and then getting a little melancholy about why he has now decided to seemingly ignore me and pretend that we never hung out or went on our was-it-a-date-or-was-it-not-a-date.

After leaving her, I was muttering somewhat angrily and not paying attention to where I was walking and I tripped on the curb, twisted my left ankle, heard a disturbing snap, and busted open my right knee.  Really not ideal for someone who was attempting to train for a half-marathon and had just found out that she probably has plantar fasciitis in her right foot.  So I hobbled around for the rest of the walk, trying not to bloody up my new dress, hurrying home to ice my ankle, and get out the door before I totally missed the going away dinner. 

But the dinner itself was pretty great.  A little bittersweet as the few of us that gathered together have known each other for a long while but haven’t really spent time with one another for many years and to get together to say goodbye when you’re not sure when you’ll see each other next, is a little sad.  The stories and times we share are wonderful, but in the past.  The memories caramelize and you start thinking of them as the “good ol’ days,” which is totally oversimplifying what happened and the decisions we made.  But it’s nice to stroll down memory lane, even if you’re hobbling a little from all your multiple foot injuries.

I drove home thinking about how our lives had diverged and how everyone had seemed to keep growing and changing, while I felt a little like I was stuck in a repeat episode of some of the less fun times of the Diary of Bridget Jones.   That all changed when I got home to the ecstatic waggingness of my four-legged soulmate.  He was ecstatic to see me even though I had been gone most of the day and was definitely not as mobile as he would have preferred.  When I bent down to hug him, he did that doggy sigh thing, like he was saying, “you are the bestest person ever and I couldn’t be happier.”  So yes, love hurts and crushes bruise, but love also heals and makes you happy to be you, realizing how lucky you are with the love and the life that you have, even if it’s different than what you had planned.

Adrienne, Unplugged

I have not been on a dating website for almost five months.  The signs of withdrawal are slowly subsiding.  No longer do I nervously check my inbox with hope/fear at what awaits.  Almost 150 days have gone by since I last went on an awkward first date with someone I had not seen in real life before that day (see Deal with the Devil for my last online date).  I feel like most of the emotional and mental scars from those horrible dates have started to heal.  Although DW still seems to have fallen into that single guy black hole in his near total avoidance of my gaze, when I occasionally see his car or house out of the corner of my eye, I’m no longer torn by the need to know why he stopped talking to me and the urge to hurl eggs, rocks, or bags of dog poo at him.

To further celebrate my unplugged nature, I recently took my own advice from Lonely Planet and decided to combine my love of travel with my love of family, dogs, hiking, and beverages by totally unplugging and joining my uncle and cousins in West Virginia for a long weekend.  Of course, it would turn out to be the hottest weekend of all time and I would be heading to the land of no central air.  But if you’re not going to go big, you might as well go home so I dove into the experience.

First of all, you know it’s a good time if you get to stand outside wearing a headlamp and drinking a beer while dogs run around you, gleeful in their abandon and lack of leash-wearing.  According to the book of Adrienne, it is nearly impossible to wear a headlamp and not have fun.  If you have found yourself in such a situation, you obviously were not with me for the mere act of putting on a headlamp makes me giddy.  Couple that with a slightly humid night with no noise other than the sounds of crickets and my cousins laughing, a few stars poking through the clouds, and a very cold beer and I think you have something close to perfection. 

Secondly, I got to swim with my dog.  Now normally when we go to the cabin, the dogs get to do all the swimming.  But as it was hotter than the hammered down hinges of hell, I broke my rule of letting no human eyes see me in a bathing suit and we all swam with the dogs.  Watching my dog swim is the best.  He loves it.  “Love” is not a strong enough word.  If you looked up the definition of “ecstatic,” it would be a picture of my dog in the water fetching a stick and wagging his soggy tail.  Swimming with him was even better.  I swam out to get the sticks that had gone beyond his reach and he looked almost like he would laugh to see me fetch.  It was also great as my cousin’s dog got to practice saving us whenever any of the humans made the mistake of putting our shoulders below the water.  Note to self, remember that waving your arms and saying “I’m fine, really, fine!” only spurs him on to greater acts of heroism.

Third, I get to be as goofy as I want around these people.  They’re family, so they’re a little nutty themselves and appreciate my special brand of lunacy.  I get to practice my loon calls, make up and sing songs at the top of my lungs about the cooking show I want my uncle to start so that I can meet and marry Paula Deen’s single son (trust me – there’s a well-developed plan there…ok probably not well-developed, but there is a plan), drink well before 5pm, geocache in the mountains and on the side of country roads, sing along to John Denver outside of the 7^th Inning Stretch, wear my hair in pigtails, get entirely too dirty and not care, see my dog chase his friends all throughout the woods, attempt to run myself (nowhere near as fun or pretty but I did it!), eat homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream my cousin made especially for me (even better when served for breakfast), and make blueberry pancakes the size of my face for all my family. 

Unfortunately it’s not the most restful of va-cays as every time the dogs hear something outside, they all start barking.  Plus they love to get up well before 6am.  But most days, it is totally relaxing just to chill.  Not to text or wait for a text.  To let all the news just happen without knowing how each pundit will sell their story.  Cell phones don’t work there.  The TV is mainly used for my cousin to watch John Wayne movies.  There’s even an outhouse from the days when the only running water was the pump outside.  Particularly helpful on the nights when the power goes out and you’ve made good friends with Mr. Daniels or Mr. Walker.

And when it rained, we all took naps.  Even the dogs managed to sleep a bit without getting amped up at all the sounds outside.  I’m pretty sure that the cabin is my dog’s favorite place on earth.  Although there is sometimes more family drama than I’d like, I wouldn’t trade those times for anything.  For there is something to be said about sitting on a porch with your family, laughing so hard about some silly joke that you’re almost afraid you’ll pee, hearing the thwap-thwap sound of your dog’s tail.  While it’s sometimes unbearably sad there as we miss my aunt and remember where she’d sit with her coffee and binoculars to watch the birds, and how she’d roll her eyes and say that my loon impression sounded more like the mating call of the bull moose, and how she is to this day the most organized woman I’ve ever known, being there together, even when there are tears and drama, I can hear her laugh and feel her love.

I’m going to try to make it back up there at least one more time this summer.  Again it will probably be the hottest weekend of all time and I doubt I’ll get much sleep.  But as long as I have my Charlie, the fam, plenty of beverages, and of course my trusty headlamp, the heat and the sleeplessness won’t be all that bad.  Air conditioning and restful nights are overrated when there’s the option of laughing yourself silly, praying for a breeze to come, and pressing a can of Bud Lite with Lime against your forehead.