Starfish Envy

Time For A Change

Okay.  I don't mean to be a bitch (which pretty much means I'm about to be a bitch), but I'm in a bit of a WTF situation at the moment, and let's face it, I'm feeling a little bitchy.

So here's the deal.

Remember Tall, Normal Guy?

Yeah.  Well, I'm starting to think he's not so normal.

Here's a timeline:  In early November, he follows me down the street and asks for my number.  I give it to him. THREE WEEKS LATER, he calls.  I miss the call, but text back.  We trade texts, I ask him to lunch that coming Sunday.  HE DOESN'T RESPOND.  I write him off.  THREE WEEKS LATER, he texts that he's still looking forward to seeing me.  I ignore him.

Because, seriously, I have better things to do than go on a date with a guy who can't be bothered to respond to a lunch invitation.

So I figure that's that.  

Until he texts me Christmas Eve.  And again a few days later.  Now, I'm IN SPAIN at this point, so these texts are eating into my valuable international plan text allowance.  I don't respond.  Because what am I going to say?  Remember when you got my number, then didn't call, then did, but then didn't respond when I asked you to lunch?  No?  WELL, I DO, PAL.

And yes, I did just write PAL.  And I'll do it again.  

PAL.

There's something so charmingly aggressive about the word PAL.  It's derisive and hostile... yet still cute.

But I digress.  

So then he texts on Valentine's Day.  At 1 a.m.  As in, ONE HOUR INTO THE DAY.  

Am I supposed to be touched by this?  Because I'm not.  I'm creeped out.  As in, Big Yucky Grossness.   All I can think is, what, did he stay up late and at the stroke of midnight start texting all the girls he's followed down the street in the last year?  How long does this go on?  I haven't responded to a text or a phone call (Did I mention he's also called a couple times?  Most recently tonight.  Thus the rant.) since early December.  As in, more than two months ago.

I mean, I know I'm awesome, but COME ON.  We met for five seconds.  It was a great five seconds.  

Now it's over.

Kaput.

Anyway.  Tonight I am officially changing Tall, Normal Guy's moniker to Tall, Creepy Guy.

Sad.  But at this point, I'd say he's earned it.

The Tall, Normal Guy Dilemma

So, believe it or not, he called.

Last night.  

I didn't see the message until I was getting ready for bed, so I didn't call back.  And I'm in no mood to call back tonight.  I'll probably wait until I don't feel perpetually on the verge of tears.  A day or two?  

We'll see.

That's not the dilemma.

The dilemma is this:  Google.

The first thing that comes up when you Google me is this blog.  (Yes, I checked.)  

So as soon as he knows my last name, he knows all about... everything.  Which makes things kinda complicated.  

I mean, even if this blog didn't exist, he could find out a lot.  What various bloggers and critics think of our books.  My television credits.  A variety of interviews and articles. How much I donated to Hilary Clinton's presidential campaign...  

But I wouldn't normally bring up the fact that I'm trying to get pregnant on a first date.   (Although, I did once-- before a first date, actually.  We went out anyway.  It was fine, but no more than fine.  That was that.)

It's not like I expect anything to come of this, so it's not that big a deal, I guess.

But still.  

He left his full name in the message, so I Googled him... and found a dentist from Cleveland and a Jamaican poet.  

It just doesn't seem fair.

A Crazy Thing Happened On The Way To The Doggy Daycare

So, I've been working late the last couple nights, which means that when I go to pick up Moose from doggy daycare, the spaces in front are taken by patrons of the restaurant next door.  

Tonight, I parked a block down and walked back.  

When I went into the store, I heard someone behind me saying "Excuse me," but I didn't really think anything of it.  I mean, people say "excuse me" in stores all the time. Usually not to me.  

But then he said it again, and it seemed to be coming from behind me, so I turned around.

And here's what the guy said.

"I'm sorry, but you are gorgeous.  I saw you walk by, and I just had to come and talk to you."

Seriously.

This is A REAL THING THAT HAPPENED.

To me.

Just now.

And he seemed normal.  And tall.  

And normal.

I mean, aside from the following me down the street.

And the poor vision.

So... I gave him my number.

I mean, why the hell not?  (Okay, one why the hell not would be that I've been trying to get pregnant for eight months.  And there are probably a million others, but I didn't have time to think of them.)

And now I cannot stop laughing.  Because, really.

What?

WHAT?

In Which I Perhaps Say More Than I Should

Stephanie has thrown down the gauntlet.  

She probably didn't mean to.  She probably thought she was just leaving a comment like any other.  But oh, gauntlet-- unwittingly or not --thrown have you been!  

Here's what Stephanie did.  In the comments on yesterday's post she wrote this:

"What I’m interested to hear about—because, lately, it’s something I’m noticing and exploring in myself and certainly why I’m dwelling on these posts of yours—is how your thinking about relationships, partnership, marriage, attraction, etc. has changed over time, as you have changed, and in different phases of your life."

Oh, my.

The answer to THAT is a six volume saga that starts when I was knee-high to a Midwestern grasshopper.  It's convoluted, and complicated, and not a little sad. And since I've promised my mother not to write about her until she's dead-- at which point, boy, will I have some writing to do-- most of those early years, which so formed my feelings about relationships/partnerships/marriage/attraction, are out of bounds.

Suffice it to say: Despite everything, I always believed I would meet the perfect man (for me), fall in love, get married, and have babies.  That's how it works, right? That's what everybody does, right?  

It took a long time for it to occur to me that I would be the exception to that rule. Through many, many long years of either being single or dating guys who were glaringly not right for me, I continued to believe that The Right Guy would show up.  

Then, when he didn't, I started to believe that I was both unlovable and, frankly, defective.  Or maybe I'd always believed that, and those beliefs were just, finally, confirmed.

I spent a lot of years in that space.  They were not pleasant years.  

Part of it was the emotional drain of just feeling shitty about myself all the time.  And part of it was a general sense of hopelessness-- not about being single, really, but about all the things I was missing out on, all the things I felt I couldn't do because I was alone. Things like traveling.  Buying a house.  Getting married.  Having kids.  

Okay, and also about being single.

And then, at some point, I decided to embrace the life I have rather than mourn the life I don't have.  It wasn't easy, and it took a lot of time.  I bought a house.  I took trips by myself.  I decided to have a baby on my own.

I also-- and this is recent-- stopped buying into the bullshit notion that married= sane, whole, happy.

For a long time, I really felt like I was so screwed up I could never possibly be in a relationship.  And then one day I took a good look at my friends who are married, and the truth is, they're just as screwed up as I am.  Everybody's screwed up in one way or another.  Most of us are screwed up in fifty ways or another.  

Being married just means that, screwed up as you are, you were still lucky enough to find some other screwed up person to be married to.  Somehow those ways of being screwed up work together.  Or they don't, and people get divorced.  

In other words, I stopped idealizing marriage and idealizing married people.  (Now if only they would do the same.)

Not that there aren't great things about being married.  But there are also great things about being single.  And there are really crappy things about being married, just as there are really crappy things about being single.

I'm just not keeping score anymore.   Most of the time, anyway.

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Stephanie, I hope that sort of begins to answer your question.   Everybody else, weigh in!  How have your feelings about relationships, etc., changed over time?

Lights On, But Nobody's Home

I'm a little annoyed with Lori Gottlieb's new book, "Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough."  

Why?

Because I had every intention of hating it, and then writing about how much I hated it.   I mean, that seems to be the thing to do these days.  All the cool kids are hating it. 

So I bought it, and read it... and, dash it all, I rather enjoyed it.    

In fact, I found it to be an honest, practical look at dating in the twenty-first century. While its do-as-I-say-not-as-I've-done message is aimed at younger women, as a thirty-eight-year-old single woman myself, I must admit I found it rather vindicating.  

About a year ago, when I finally gave up on meeting someone the normal way (i.e., at work, through friends, at the grocery store/bank/gas station/wherever) and started internet dating, WP insisted that it was possible to meet someone great online.  As proof, she offered up that she had, in fact, just met a terrific couple who found each other online.  The woman was 34!  And the husband was a doctor!  

Yeah.  That's nice.  

Except, as I explained to WP, there's a BIG difference in the online dating world between 34 and 37.  (I was 37 then.  Ah, those were the days.) 

I'd be willing to bet my opposable thumbs that the pool of men available to  WP's 34-year-old and the pool of men available to me were completely different pools.  If, in fact, our pools were shoved together to form a Venn diagram, I'm pretty confident there would be absolutely no touching.  None.  Just two circles, hanging out.  

WP didn't believe me.  (She nodded like she believed me, but she really didn't.  I could tell.)

Well.  She should read Lori Gottlieb's book.  That'll show her.

This is not to say that there aren't flaws with the book and with Gottlieb's reasoning. Essentially, her argument is that women shouldn't hold out for The One, because The One is a fantasy; that we shouldn't have long, inflexible lists of qualities we're looking for in a perfect partner; and that we should be realistic (especially as we get older) about the kind of partner we're going to attract.  

Fair enough.  

But nowhere does Gottlieb address some of the basic requirements for finding and being successful in a relationship.  Things like readiness, and rightness, and timing.   And luck. 

To be in a successful relationship, you have to be ready for one.  Do people sometimes (often?) get married before they're really ready?  Oh, yes, they do.  And I suppose it's possible that in some cases people really do "grow together," as you so often hear, but I've never seen it myself.  More often, when people get married before they're really ready, they end up getting divorced.  

Would I rather be single at thirty-eight than divorcing at thirty-eight?  It's hard to say, but I think so.

I'd also rather be single than married to someone who's not Right For Me.  Right For Me is, of course, hard to define, but it has nothing to do with being finicky about the things that Gottlieb seems to think women are concerned about, like height, full heads of hair, and the ability to banter.  (Okay, I have to say it.  What IS it about banter?  Everyone wants to have great banter.  You know what I want?  Great conversation.  Seriously, people.) Rightness is a feeling, and when that feeling happens, all the lists go out the window.  Or so I hear. 

Readiness and rightness are related to another factor that Gottlieb barely addresses: timing.  Which is why the Sex and the City "light on" thing struck such a chord with me and my friends.  For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, in one episode of SATC, the women discussed how men are like taxis.  A man could be dating the most amazing woman in the world, but if his light's not on, he's not marrying her. And then, as soon as his light goes on, he pretty much marries the next woman who gets in the cab.  In short: timing.

While I don't think it's quite that simple, I do think that more often than not the man is The Decider when it comes to marriage.  It's true among my friends, and it's true anecdotally throughout Gottilieb's book.  When a man decides he's met the woman he wants to marry, he sticks to her like glue until she decides she wants to marry him too.

And let's be honest: there's more than a little luck involved.  

Me, I have a lot of lucky professionally.  But personally?  

Yeah.  Well.  You can't have everything.

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How are you lucky?

Caring for Your Introvert - The Atlantic (March 2003)

From Atlantic Unbound:Interviews: "Introverts of the World, Unite!" (February 14, 2006) A conversation with Jonathan Rauch, the author who—thanks to an astonishingly popular essay in the March 2003 Atlantic—may have unwittingly touched off an Introverts' Rights revolution. Follow-up: The Introversy Continues Jonathan Rauch comments on reader feedback about introvert dating—and poses a new question

via www.theatlantic.com

Wow. I've always suspected I'm an introvert, but now I know it for sure. I suspect I'm not as purely introverted as the author of this piece-- let's say, I'm 80% introvert, 20% extrovert. Good to know...

And, apparently, yet another reason that I'm single.  Terrific.

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What about you--  introvert or an extrovert?

Things To Do Before I Die (A Long, Long Time From Now)

Several years ago, I made a list of 111 Things To Do Before I Die. 

Then I shoved it into a box and promptly forgot about it.  But y'know how, sometimes, you find things you haven't seen in years, and you're like, OH MY GOD, WHERE HAS THIS BEEN!?!!  

Well, my list has been in a white, metal box in my kitchen, and yesterday I unearthed it, only to discover that HOT DAMN! I've ACCOMPLISHED some stuff!

Here's what I've done:

6. Create a television show and run it.

7. Run a television show. (Apparently, I really wanted to cover my bases on that one.)

14. Own a house.

17. Exercise four times per week for one year.

18. Eat no fast food for one year.

22. Sing in a performance for friends.  (I've done a couple weddings.  I figure that counts.)

30. Quit smoking. (Did that one a few times.  Last one finally stuck.)

31. Write a song and sing it for people.  (I wrote one song.  I sang it for my mom.  Which was harder than singing for "people.")

36. Stay at the Bellagio. (I put 35 other things before this one.  My values are in excellent order, thank you.)

43. Make and donate knitted blankets. 

49. Write Jim Shepard a thank you note.  (My college writing professor.  Great writer. Great teacher.  And I sent him an email, which is not exactly a note, but I'm giving myself this one.)

55. Go to therapy.  (Did this one A LOT.)

57. Read War & Peace.

63. Buy a DVD player.  (Seriously.  It's on the list.)

64. Get a desktop computer. 

65. Get a cell phone.  (When did I make this list?  1983?)

66. Get a nice filofax.  (Okay, this is starting to be humiliating.)

67. Buy my mom a Foremost Dairies collectible.  (Her dad worked there.  It's a thing.)

68. Go to Sky Bar. (Emmy party.  Saw Colin Firth.  Sigh.  Where is my Mark Darcy?)

73. Hire a business manager.  

74. Pay off my credit cards.

75. Get a credit card.  (I'm confused by this one.  If I wanted to pay off my credit cards, why did I need a credit card???)

80. Have a music room in my house. (When I moved into my house, I made this little nook into a music room.  Didn't last long, but I think it's enough.)

82. Read a book in Swedish. 

86. Have a personal assistant.  (For context, I was a personal assistant when I wrote this list.)

91. Plant and take care of some flowers.

92. Buy a sewing machine.  (If only I'd added "Learn to use sewing machine.")

101. Get rid of A LOT of my stuff.  (Not that I couldn't get rid of more...)

104. Ask a man out on a date.

108. Volunteer for a politician I believe in. 

109. Write a novel.

110. Get novel published.  

Pretty good, right?  Then there are some things that just don't make sense anymore, like "Hire K as an actress on a t.v. show."  

My friend K was a struggling actress when I made this list (which also includes "Treat B and N to a great vacation," only now B is married to the aforementioned K, and N is married to S, so I'm gonna say this one's out of the question...), and now K's a successful television writer.    

Still to do?

Well, there's number 12 (get married) and number 13 (have at least one child), which it looks like I will be doing out of order, at best.  And there's 28 (fall in love).  And 45 (learn to dye yarn).  And 58 (read Anna Karenina-- it's on my Kindle).  There are lots of places to travel, and lots of good works to accomplish, from small (83: Serve Thanksgiving dinner to the homeless.) to large (38: Give $10,000 to Teach for America. It's in my will.  They may have to wait 'til I die...)

And today it looks like I'll be adding another item to the list:

112: Remodel house.  

Because I think I'm staying put.  Every piece of advice in every comment was terrific, but I loved the coin flipping notion.  Only, when I read it, I realized that I didn't need to flip a coin.  Because from the moment I realized I wanted to remodel and stay... I've pretty much just been excited.

Which is a feeling I'm going to work hard to hang onto... because everyone knows that remodeling is hell.

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What's on your list?  What have you crossed off that you're most proud of?

Believe It Or Not, This Is The LESS Self-Pitying Version of This Post

I just spent three solid hours writing a staggeringly self-pitying post about being single.  And now that I’ve worked myself into a tizzy and cried my mascara off, I must admit I feel… slightly better.

Slightly.

Said self-pitying post centered on my friend WB’s bridal shower, which was this afternoon.  Seven married and soon-to-be married women brunching under umbrellas around the roof-pool of an L.A. apartment building, happily sharing relationship/wedding dress shopping/wedding stories.  And me.  SO.  FUN.

It actually was a lovely shower.  And I had a very nice time. 

It’s just not easy.

And today was the second my-life-sucks moment I’ve had this week.  The first one was Tuesday, when a guy I know asked if I was dating anyone.  Uh, no.  And then he asked if I was “open to dating.”  (Now, lest you think he was asking because he was interested in dating me himself, I assure you he wasn’t.  He’s dating someone, and has no interest in me.)  I was so thrown by the question that WP had to answer for me.  (She said yes.)

Now, on the one hand, it was nice to be acknowledged as a normal human being who might possibly date.  It’s been awhile.  On the other hand, it made me realize that WP’s wrong.  

I’m not open to dating.  I just don’t see the point.

If I had been asked that question at any time during the last, say, DECADE, the answer would have been yes-- but no one was asking.  That’s not exactly true.  Two friends did set me up once.  In ten years.  Clearly my friends don’t think very highly of me.  (There’s that self-pity popping out!)  And a few months ago, my cousin tried to set me up, but the guy never got in touch.  

Here’s the thing: dating, lately, has been grueling, unpleasant, time-consuming, and depressing.  It accomplishes one thing: making me feel lonelier and shittier about myself.  Sure, it sounds like a good idea, but in practice?  Not so much.  In practice, it's just one of those things that promises a lot and delivers nothing.   

Well, enough already.

I’m taking myself out of the dating pool I was barely in to begin with.

This is me, drying off.  And throwing in the towel.

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What do you do because you feel like you should, even if it's not the best thing for you?

One Wedding and a Meltdown.

Two things. 

One: Today I talked to my gynecologist’s assistant about talking to my gynecologist about getting information on donor insemination.  Woo hoo!  (This doesn’t mean I’m doing donor insemination.  Just having the conversation.)

Two: I’m gonna break Rule 2.  Pretty sure I made these stupid rules, so I can break ‘em in an emergency.

EMERGENCY!  Remember all that stuff I said yesterday about women with Starfish Envy “taking action, making hard decisions, and creating the lives we want”?  Yeah, well, that’s true.  But we also reserve the right to occasionally FEEL LIKE CRAP about our singledom.  And one of those times is when we make plane reservations to go to our four hundred and seventy-third wedding alone.  (Not really four hundred and seventy-third.  I counted up to seven, but then I got too depressed to keep counting.)

I mean, seriously, would the world fall apart if I had a one measly boyfriend to take to one fracking wedding?  Would the cosmos explode?

Maybe.  Maybe my singledom is the glue that holds the universe together.  If that’s the case, then fan-fucking-tastic, I hope I die alone.  

Or maybe I'm just as much of a reject as I feel like I am at this moment.  Which will pass.  I know it will pass.  But first I do have to say that one guy, I swear to god, asked me on a second date because he forgot to mention on the first date that he’d taken an acting class.  By the way, did I have any advice?  Yeah: BITE ME.  And not in the good way.  (I really want to change that to: "BITE ME.  I hope your face burns off."  But that's just too not nice, and I am, in general, a fairly nice person... except to men who date me in the hopes of landing a Lie to Me guest spot, which makes me ANNOYED.)

Whatever.  I'm doomed.  And, clearly, utterly unlovable.  Shit.  I am SO wallowing.

And the thing about this particular wedding is that it’s going to be The Wedding To End All Weddings.  Down to the last detail it will be perfect and beautiful and emotional and gorgeous and unique.  And I will have a great time.  I really will.  And I probably won’t be the only single person there—this is an LA crowd, so there will probably be lots of single, thirty-ish women just like me, but not one single man, no never any of those, and if there are any of those, they will be interested in every other single woman there, and a few of the married ones, before me—and I’ll drink a LOT of wine and get the most expensive hotel room I can find, and the bed will be really soft and luscious and comfortable and GREAT to sleep in.  And, really, what could be better than a few great nights of TERRIFIC SLEEP in romantic Napa Valley?  Yippee!

I want to cry.  Meaning I already did, most of the way home from work.

Okay.  Deep breath.  

Meltdown complete.  Rule 2 is back in effect.

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Do you have any good wedding stories (alone or otherwise)?  What’s the best wedding you’ve ever been to?   

All About Sperm (Donation)

Every day is a winding road.  So says my fellow Missourian (and single mom) Sheryl Crow, and I gotta say, when I got up this morning I did not expect to be sitting here tonight writing about sperm.  But I’ve gotten quite an education on the subject today, and here I am.

Right.  Okay, then.  Sperm.

Turns out, it’s really easy to get.  And I don’t just mean from the random pervert on the street.  I mean from legitimate cryobanks.  And by easy, I mean it kinda seems like— and this is from a couple hours of internet research, so take it for what it’s worth, but it kinda seems like I could have a couple squirts of the stuff delivered in freeze-dried vials by sometime next week.  And—get this!— there are DIY impregnating directions right online. 

Talk about romantic.  Not.

Still, it does make a girl think.

Especially given the other juicy tidbit I learned today, which is what sent me down this particular winding road.  This morning I was perusing a newsletter from a great organization called Single Mothers by Choice, and one piece mentioned “identity release” sperm donors, which I’d never heard of before.  So I looked it up. 

And it’s BRILLIANT. 

Basically an identity release sperm donor agrees that a child can have access to the donor’s identity once the child is 18.  How cool is that?  Now everyone is different, and I’m sure some people are thinking—yeah, not cool at all.  But I think it’s pretty fantastic.  So fantastic, in fact, that it removes one of my greatest hesitations about using a sperm donor, which is that it just doesn’t seem fair to keep that kind of information from a kid.  Wanting to know who you are and where you come from is such a basic thing, so fundamental to who we are and how we perceive ourselves—for better or worse, I think it’s important for a child to have access to that information.

Since I was already looking into the identity-release issue, I also checked on the general requirements for donating sperm.  Turns out, Mr. Random Pervert On The Street need not apply.  Donors have to be between 18 and 35-38, and healthy.  They have to complete medical, genetic, and psychological testing.  And they have to have attended or be attending college (or be able to show a certain level of success in their chosen career).  Each cryobank has its own specifications, but if that’s the low bar, that’s not bad.

And when you’re shopping for sperm (which I did tonight, solely in a browsing capacity), you can get a pretty decent amount of information on these guys. I’m not just talking age, height, and weight.  I’m talking career, heritage, hobbies, hair color, eye color, blood type, a detailed medical history, as well as their written answers to a series of questions like “what are your goals and ambitions?” and “what are your special interests and talents?”  And someone from the cryobank interviews the guys and writes up an assessment.  Sometimes, you can even get photos.

Is it the same as meeting someone face to face?  No, certainly not.  But I would not have seriously considered sperm donation before today.  And now that I’m at the end of today’s weird and winding road, I can honestly say that internet sperm browsing could be significantly more promising than internet dating. 

Is it weird that I have a little bit of a crush on donor 36514?