It never rains, but it pours
The wife and child were in New York these last four days, leaving me all alone. My initial plan was to be hugely productive around the house.
As it turns out, what I did instead was spend time with friends. This may not seem odd to you, the reader, but it's odd to me. My usual mode is to mope around a while, because I have no friends, and then do something solitary but constructive.
ShakeMyBlues is a woman met dancing in Dayton, who has become very important to me over the last few months. She has recently started dating Lynk, a fellow I've known only vaguely but for a long time, and who always seemed to me to be a jerk. This impression was reinforced, because whenever ShakeMyBlues spoke to me of Lynk, it would be about their problems and not their joys. She also said that she didn't want he and I to get to know each other, for reasons which were never clearly elaborated.
I was spending way too much time agonizing over the fact that my dear friend dating this jerk. So I finally made a date with him for this past Monday morning, to spend a few hours walking on a bike trail and talking about stuff. In my mind I referred to it as chemotherapy, in that I really didn't want to do it and it was going to be uncomfortable; but if I didn't the cancer would just keep growing. As it turns out, he's a fine person. Some of the things I thought about him were true a few years ago, but not any longer. Others were just the fevered imaginings of an under-informed mind. My life is much much better now, and the three of us can hang out and do stuff.
There's another woman, talyen, who goes to my church. She and I would talk for maybe two minutes every other Sunday, and so I knew her only slightly. A couple weeks ago, she was one of six guests at a Japanese dinner that Ruth Anne was giving as part of a church fundraiser. As often happens, the subject of dancing came up and, as I usually do, I said "there's cool dancing in Dayton on Fridays -- you should come". The typical response is "yes, that sounds like fun" and then nothing ever happens. She's done very little dancing in her life, so imagine my surprise when she calls and "When? Where? Let's!".
Friday comes and I'm just a little worried:
1) We'll be trapped in a car together for 45 minutes each way -- will there be amiable chatting or awkward silence.
2) They Dayton folk are pretty weird -- Science Fiction / Gaming / Ren Faire folks; you know the type.
3) I'm teaching Joan Walton's "Deep Night" choreography, which is somewhat tricky even for more advanced dancers -- would she have any fun at all?
On each of these points, my worries were delightfully unfounded. We talked easily and about everything. It turns out she's one of those weird Science Fiction / Gaming / Ren Faire folks herself, and she's always ready to throw herself in over her head, if the situation demands it. Add the fact that ShakeMyBlues dances there too, and the evening was an utter delight on every level.
So, if any of you are still reading, here was my whirlwind schedule while living the bachelor life.
Monday: Get up early, drive to Dayton, walk and talk with Lynk. Join up with ShakeMyBlues, eat at Panera, play Bocce Ball, take photos with an old and broken instamatic camera, drop things on the ground while the other two juggle. Play with the hermit crabs and fail to catch the clown fish. Go to the AT&T store so ShakeMyBlues can order an iPhone. Lose the battle with ShakeMyBlues wherein I try to keep her from eating the maple sugar candy that she just gave me.
That night, introduce talyen to contra dancing. Other than her cheeks aching from too much smiling, it was another roaring success. Then hours of chatting, then home for a very short sleep.
Tuesday I made an appointment with the chiropractor, to repair my neck, which I landed on while doing belt flips with ShakeMyBlues. Lynk and ShakeMyBlues appear in the afternoon, since they have business down at UC. We had a late lunch (or perhaps an early dinner) at the cheesecake factory, where we had a wonderful waitress who was willing to stoop to our level of humor. Then off to the Apple Store, to look for accessories for ShakeMyBlues's soon to arrive iPhone and MacBook. They have iPhones in stock, but it's too late to cancel the AT&T order, so ShakeMyBlues is understandably frustrated.
That evening, talyen and I go see some fireworks. It was a great show (we picked a rich neighborhood) and they were going off nearly overhead. The hour-long wait to get out at the end was expected, and so not unpleasant. Then back to my place where we spent several hours pawing through my books and videos. I read her "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex".
Wednesday was a talyen-filled afternoon. I found a game called 'lovers and liars' on her shelf, which contains cards with questions on them of the form 'if you were in X situation would you do Y'. In the real game you do something complicated with 'yes', 'no', and 'depends' cards, but I just took the deck and started asking things, and answering them myself, of course. That night was a small pot-luck dinner with some people from church. They live in a tall (for Cincinnati) apartment building with a lovely terrace on the roof, so after dinner we went up to watch fireworks.
The fireworks were something amazing. There was nothing big happening close by, but we could see maybe fifty different shows going on in the distance, with a few maybe just a mile away. There was also quite a show from someone's back yard just across the street, and to the west there was lightning that added perfectly to the spectacle.
Afterward, back to talyan's place where we watched Top Hat, as she had never seen a Fred and Ginger movie before. She would have happily watched non-stop Fred and Ginger all night long, but neither one of us could stay awake.
Thursday morning means Yoga (since a Yoga school recently opened within a easy walk from our house) and ShakeMyBlues came down and joined me the for the class (her first ever yoga). Bacon and eggs for lunch and a long browse at the Duck Creek Antique Mall and more fighting over maple sugar candy.
I sent her home, and managed to get the house a little bit clean before the family arrived at midnight. When I pulled the sleeping Amelia from her car seat to carry her up to bed, she woke up enough to ask me "Where's dada?". I said "I'm dada" and she went back to sleep.
In and amongst all that, I even managed to get a fair amount of Alexa work done.
Psst. You wanna know a secret? I started this entry just so I could post another quiz result without feeling like one of those losers that never posts anything but quiz results. I didn't quite realize at the time that I had so much to say.
As it turns out, what I did instead was spend time with friends. This may not seem odd to you, the reader, but it's odd to me. My usual mode is to mope around a while, because I have no friends, and then do something solitary but constructive.
ShakeMyBlues is a woman met dancing in Dayton, who has become very important to me over the last few months. She has recently started dating Lynk, a fellow I've known only vaguely but for a long time, and who always seemed to me to be a jerk. This impression was reinforced, because whenever ShakeMyBlues spoke to me of Lynk, it would be about their problems and not their joys. She also said that she didn't want he and I to get to know each other, for reasons which were never clearly elaborated.
I was spending way too much time agonizing over the fact that my dear friend dating this jerk. So I finally made a date with him for this past Monday morning, to spend a few hours walking on a bike trail and talking about stuff. In my mind I referred to it as chemotherapy, in that I really didn't want to do it and it was going to be uncomfortable; but if I didn't the cancer would just keep growing. As it turns out, he's a fine person. Some of the things I thought about him were true a few years ago, but not any longer. Others were just the fevered imaginings of an under-informed mind. My life is much much better now, and the three of us can hang out and do stuff.
There's another woman, talyen, who goes to my church. She and I would talk for maybe two minutes every other Sunday, and so I knew her only slightly. A couple weeks ago, she was one of six guests at a Japanese dinner that Ruth Anne was giving as part of a church fundraiser. As often happens, the subject of dancing came up and, as I usually do, I said "there's cool dancing in Dayton on Fridays -- you should come". The typical response is "yes, that sounds like fun" and then nothing ever happens. She's done very little dancing in her life, so imagine my surprise when she calls and "When? Where? Let's!".
Friday comes and I'm just a little worried:
1) We'll be trapped in a car together for 45 minutes each way -- will there be amiable chatting or awkward silence.
2) They Dayton folk are pretty weird -- Science Fiction / Gaming / Ren Faire folks; you know the type.
3) I'm teaching Joan Walton's "Deep Night" choreography, which is somewhat tricky even for more advanced dancers -- would she have any fun at all?
On each of these points, my worries were delightfully unfounded. We talked easily and about everything. It turns out she's one of those weird Science Fiction / Gaming / Ren Faire folks herself, and she's always ready to throw herself in over her head, if the situation demands it. Add the fact that ShakeMyBlues dances there too, and the evening was an utter delight on every level.
So, if any of you are still reading, here was my whirlwind schedule while living the bachelor life.
Monday: Get up early, drive to Dayton, walk and talk with Lynk. Join up with ShakeMyBlues, eat at Panera, play Bocce Ball, take photos with an old and broken instamatic camera, drop things on the ground while the other two juggle. Play with the hermit crabs and fail to catch the clown fish. Go to the AT&T store so ShakeMyBlues can order an iPhone. Lose the battle with ShakeMyBlues wherein I try to keep her from eating the maple sugar candy that she just gave me.
That night, introduce talyen to contra dancing. Other than her cheeks aching from too much smiling, it was another roaring success. Then hours of chatting, then home for a very short sleep.
Tuesday I made an appointment with the chiropractor, to repair my neck, which I landed on while doing belt flips with ShakeMyBlues. Lynk and ShakeMyBlues appear in the afternoon, since they have business down at UC. We had a late lunch (or perhaps an early dinner) at the cheesecake factory, where we had a wonderful waitress who was willing to stoop to our level of humor. Then off to the Apple Store, to look for accessories for ShakeMyBlues's soon to arrive iPhone and MacBook. They have iPhones in stock, but it's too late to cancel the AT&T order, so ShakeMyBlues is understandably frustrated.
That evening, talyen and I go see some fireworks. It was a great show (we picked a rich neighborhood) and they were going off nearly overhead. The hour-long wait to get out at the end was expected, and so not unpleasant. Then back to my place where we spent several hours pawing through my books and videos. I read her "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex".
Wednesday was a talyen-filled afternoon. I found a game called 'lovers and liars' on her shelf, which contains cards with questions on them of the form 'if you were in X situation would you do Y'. In the real game you do something complicated with 'yes', 'no', and 'depends' cards, but I just took the deck and started asking things, and answering them myself, of course. That night was a small pot-luck dinner with some people from church. They live in a tall (for Cincinnati) apartment building with a lovely terrace on the roof, so after dinner we went up to watch fireworks.
The fireworks were something amazing. There was nothing big happening close by, but we could see maybe fifty different shows going on in the distance, with a few maybe just a mile away. There was also quite a show from someone's back yard just across the street, and to the west there was lightning that added perfectly to the spectacle.
Afterward, back to talyan's place where we watched Top Hat, as she had never seen a Fred and Ginger movie before. She would have happily watched non-stop Fred and Ginger all night long, but neither one of us could stay awake.
Thursday morning means Yoga (since a Yoga school recently opened within a easy walk from our house) and ShakeMyBlues came down and joined me the for the class (her first ever yoga). Bacon and eggs for lunch and a long browse at the Duck Creek Antique Mall and more fighting over maple sugar candy.
I sent her home, and managed to get the house a little bit clean before the family arrived at midnight. When I pulled the sleeping Amelia from her car seat to carry her up to bed, she woke up enough to ask me "Where's dada?". I said "I'm dada" and she went back to sleep.
In and amongst all that, I even managed to get a fair amount of Alexa work done.
Psst. You wanna know a secret? I started this entry just so I could post another quiz result without feeling like one of those losers that never posts anything but quiz results. I didn't quite realize at the time that I had so much to say.