Recent Dates and NY Resolutions

Recent Dating Highlights

There’s nothing too crazy here, but plenty of awkward to go around:

The Set ups:

One of my favorite stories about a set up came from a work friend. We were all at happy hour after hours and a coworker of mine grabbed my hand as if she had just had some sort of vision.

“Ohmigod, Tedd. Tedd.”

“Yeah?”

“I just realized I have the perfect guy for you.”

Eyebrow raises, “yeah, right” lip smirk creeps across features, “Oh?”

“Yeah, he’s really cute, and he’s sweet and fun and I think you guys would be perfect.”

She takes out her phone and shows me a picture. He’s cute, so I shrug and am like, “Sure. Set us up.”

“Okay, well, he just got out of a really long relationship, lives in Denver, and is kind of emotionally unavailable right now.”

….

Like, what? Why did this set up even seem like a good idea? It must have been the 3 glasses of wine. But I was honored… to be considered?

There was also another set up situation as well. I’m naïve and think that if you have a mutual friend, the baseline is coffee. Maybe this is 1950’s of me, but if you know someone in common, the vetting has been done, so it’s a matter of seeing if there’s chemistry and hanging out a little bit.

I’m not a 21^st century gal, evidently.

So, I tell the girl, I’d definitely meet up sometime with her friend and it was left at that. About a week later she chats me and says, “Okay, Tedd, so John looked at your Twitter and is okay with meeting up. Like, he thinks you could be interesting.”

Um, no.

1.     If your friend tells you someone is interesting and you don’t trust them – NEXT.

2.     If you’re not open to meeting new people just for the interaction – NEXT.

3.     If you use phrases to describe another human like “could be interesting”” – NEXT

4.     Twitter vetting? Like, of all things - NOPE

That date never happened.

He likes having options:

I had met a guy over the summer at a bar one night. We had a fun time, but we never exchanged numbers. It just so happened he was able to find me on Facebook, so we chatted a bit and went on a couple dates.

After about 3 or 4 dates he wanted a strong commitment and I just wasn’t there yet. Great guy, but wasn’t in a place to commit to the connection.

We had the talk, broke it off and that was that.

Well, a week later he was tagged as “in a relationship.” Not only that, but there was the montage of pictures. THE MONTAGE. Like Facebook hunts out all the pics of you and this person and then laces them together so that when you flip the relationship official switch YOU GUYS LOOK LIKE THE CUTEST AND EVERYTHING IS PERFECT! Montage goes up on the newsfeeds. I scanned the comments and there were ones like, “It’s about time!” “I thought this would never happen!”

And I politely closed my computer.

I don’t want to even know how I fit into to all that mess. They currently have date nights like every other day and are traveling the world together. Maybe, I chose poorly…

Hokey-Pokey

I’m used to rejection by now. I’m a writer, I date, I’m a liberal arts major – like people say no to me often and emphatically.

A couple months ago I went on a date with a guy. It was fun, we laughed, drank tea, and then he gave me a hug.

I texted him later that day all like, “Hey! That was fun. If you’re up for it, I’d love to hang out again.”

Didn’t hear back from him until middle of the afternoon the next day with: “Oh! Sure!”

Which, I just took as a blow off. I don’t know how many times I’ve sat down with my girlfriends and we share stories of “he’s just not that into you.” I felt like if a boy was interested he would text back, “Oh! Sure! My week is busy, but let me know a time.”

That, I feel is a normal human reaction to someone you like.

This was better than the other guy I went on a date with: I texted him right after, and then he responded 2.5 weeks later with, “Sorry for the late response. Hey.”

What? I mean, why even bother texting at that point. You got to Frozen “Let It Go” at after a week. His number was deleted off my phone and I had 3 other dates lined up. Also, obviously after 2 weeks you’re like in the B-tier of his possible dating pool and nobody wants that.

Anyway, first blow off guy and I never text again. Then one Friday I’m at a bar in Boystown and he walks up to me:

“How come we never went on another date?”

“You never really texted me…”

It was then discussed and I told him I thought I was blown off.  We laughed about that and set up another date.

Second date happens and he’s thoughtful, texts me after, and tells me we should hang out again. It was during the holiday time and I was gone for a week.

I text him after that week and his response: “Sorry, I met someone else.”

Wait, what? In a week? It took us a week to set up one date, how did this sorcery happen? And also, you obviously had to be talking to this guy when you asked me on the second date after 2 months of not dating?

I didn’t really care, as I was busy and just, like I said rejection is in my BLUHHDDD, but it still gave me a moment of, “Wait…what?”

I’m optimistic, though, as my best friend at work has told me that this is Capricorn’s year. After a 3-year curse, we are now free to live large and things are going to start moving our way.

I actually have gone on a few dates with a new guy and… like… I enjoy it!!!

I messaged my friend at work today:

Things are going well with the guy and I’m scared. Like, I’M SCARED OF GOOD THINGS!

That’s fine, you’re a Capricorn and the universe has been shitting on you, but now it’s not.

You’re right. the universe has on a diaper and it’s stopped shitting and now I keep wondering why everything doesn’t stink.

These are the deep convos I have at work.

NY Resolutioners

I feel like I blog about the gym a lot, but that’s only because it’s where I run into strangers and the most awkward things happen.

So obvs it was just New Year’s and the whole planet decided to get into shape the first week in January.

I’m kind of a gym bitch, like I work out 40 mins a day and that’s it, but it’s my 40 mins, so you better just step off of me.

The first Monday after New Year’s, I get off the elevator and it’s like Soldier Field after a Bears game. There are hordes of people filing into the gym. You can tell none of these people ever come because they are all carrying 400 bags apiece. They haven’t learned how to cut corners and instead carry all the things all at once.

So I get inside and there’s a line to get in. There are only 4 people in line, but no one can figure out how to take a towel, scan the card and then get into the gym. So there’s a lot of people scanning, towel, oops! Second towel – did I scan?, towel, scan, I FORGOT MY TOWEL! Things happening.

Every locker is taken, so I get shoved into the back corner of the locker room.

Once I get out to the floor, the weights are pretty clear. All the new dudes are benching things and all the girls are on ellipticals.

Then comes Star Fish.

Star Fish RUINED my day.

So he’s some sort of freelance personal trainer and has this girl with him who is wearing skin tight clothes with a pronounced beer gut (not pregnant, babies don’t look like this).

So these two basically practice manifest destiny on the gym. They go to a corner AND USE EVERY SINGLE MACHINE, WEIGHT, PULLEY, ETC. All while grunting, of course.

This is all in addition to them doing starfish push ups at the only entry point into the gym. I don’t know if these are even called starfish push ups, but it’s an exercise where you spread out every limb of your body as far as you can and then do pushups. If I were to pick one place in the gym where you shouldn’t do this exercise, it would be at the entrance, where you take up all the space so that NO ONE can get in.

So I try to get a drink of water and have to leap over Star Fish’s limbs. Then I have one exercise left to do in my workout. There are literally 4 machines that I can do this exercise on.

Star Fish is hogging two of them with his cohort Fat Fonda, another is being used by a man who I can’t even watch because he has put on a lot of weight and is crashing this weight down on the machine, while grunting and probably dislocating several of the disks in his back. The other machine is taken by a guy I have seen almost every morning since I started the gym. He gets a pass.

So I sit with my arms crossed in the middle of the room just waiting for one person to finish. I take note when a guy tries to use one of the 15 machines that Star Fish has appropriated and Star Fish ran over to let him know “we got like 2 more sets, bro.”

Finally, I get to use the machine and go to the shower. As I put my clothes away I awkwardly have to run into a man who has his trousers and undershirt on but nothing else. The guy gives me a dirty look, like this is his gym. (It could very well be, he was roughly 400 years old.)

I take a 5 minute shower and come back.

The old man is still there. Now joined by a second old man.

I’m trying to squeeze in the back corner and get my stuff while the two old men talk to each other. The newly arrived geriatric person feels the need to describe his vacation in terms of the movies he has seen over Christmas:

“Yes, we took a voyage to Middle Earth and fought a dragon, then traveled to London and cracked Hitler’s nefarious code…”

This is all while every other person who has a locker on this side of the room stands and waits to get their stuff as Ancient Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum try put on their dress shirts.

I literally showered, changed, did my hair, put on my clothes and left before the first old man had managed to get a dress shirt on.

The next day it was -20 in the morning and the gym was barren.

Thank goodness for weak resolve and human frailty.