The Best Online Date of My Life

This dog. This energetic, kiss-happy, 38 lb. bundle of magic. Nash is all mine; my second dog. I think Cadence, my first dog, lives on in Nash’s sweet, loyal temperament. This dog shaped package of breathing love, turns 4-years-old today. I adopted him when he was a few days past his first birthday. I really wish I had known him as a puppy. He’s so dang handsome as an adult dog, I can’t imagine how adorable he was as a wee one.

I spend a lot of time worrying about him. He could run away, he could get into a bad fight with another dog, or he could eat something bad for him. I don’t like to take him on playdates with friend’s dogs because there’s always that what if hanging out there. I have a bit of PTSD from a fight he had with a dog I tried to foster at the beginning of the plague lockdown. This too shall pass.

I often say that finding Nash was the best online dating I’ve ever done. I found him on a random Wednesday home from work with a migraine, and sadness. It was about 2 months after Cadence died and I woke up feeling morose with the migraine. I realized I was morose and migrainy because I missed having a dog. So, I hopped on Petfinder.com and it was love at first sight. His profile was gratefully remiss of gratuitous fishing shots, or posing with his sweet ride.  He did have a weird name but it wasn’t Todd, so not a deal breaker.

Nash did try to bounce midway through our first hang, however. He saw his opening while on our get-to-know-you walk through the aisles of Petsmart where we met. Escaping his lead, he made it to the inside of the entrance vestibule. I did my best Rowdy Piper move and landed on top of him so he couldn’t escape. It may have been too early in our relationship for that much physical closeness but I knew I had myself a good one and didn’t want him to ghost on me.

I managed to get the lead back on him and we continued our stroll through the aisles as I tried to stop hyperventilating while also checking out all the cute dog toys I could buy my new love. We strolled back to the maitre d, or the adoption guy, and I asked a few clarifying questions as Nash, or Shieko as he was then known, leaned his little body against me, waiting for me to finish up so he and I could begin our lifetime adventure together.

Maybe moving in together within the first 2 hours of knowing each other is impetuous, but I knew he was a keeper. Nash seemed incredibly happy to be on his way out of the Petsmart and into my sweet ride. Definitely the best online date I’ve ever had.

Happy Birthday, sweet Nasher.

The New York Times Hates Me

Well, maybe hate is too strong a word but still...
Some of you may know that I'm in love with the New York Times' "Modern Love" column. Recently, they had a call out for 500 word stories about living alone during the pandemic. I've wanted to write a "Modern Love" column for like, ever, and so decided to submit my own 500 word story of living alone pandemic-style. Honestly, I'm happy that I submitted it at all, so the fact that they didn't choose my story is totally fine. Really, it's fine.
I'm including my little submission here instead. Would love your feedback, of course.


Maybe I’ve had it right all along. Maybe swearing off dating of any kind somehow weirdly prepared me for lockdown. “Well, I’ll never meet a man now,” I thought to myself after lockdown was imposed in my state. The two-dimensional Zoom meeting, while novel at first, has now gone the way of fear-free grocery shopping, and if this experience has taught me anything, it’s that I enjoy my people, in the flesh.
An only child, and single adult, I’m accustomed to living life solo. I travel solo, work solo, movie solo, shop solo. Most things, I do solo. I do all this soloing by choice, while never thinking about it in the context of not having one. Without giving it a second thought, I’ve always had the option of bringing, or meeting along the way, some of my people. Now that this choice isn’t mine, it makes me feel, well, I’m not quite sure how it makes me feel. I have some shame about not entirely hating this solitary time. Pre-pandemic, I longed for days of unfettered, unscheduled time. Now that I have it, I just feel weird.
Part of me wants to use this time to unshackle myself from the monotonous day-to-day, but then I remember how lucky I am to be employed, housed and fed, and remind myself to be grateful for the monotony. I’m working, hanging with my dog, doing house projects, sewing masks, and thinking about how best I can contribute to society through all of this. Most of all, I’m grateful for my health. At 52, my fear of getting this disease is like a low-level fever in itself.
I’m not overly bothered by the very limited possibility of my snagging a fella anytime soon, and I miss having experiences with my friends and family. While not lonely, I manage the low-grade fever of fear by running, riding my bike, reading, and sleeping. Going to bed is the only time of day that still feels normal. Nothing’s changed about going to bed every night, and I relish that moment when I slip between the sheets. Life feels normal for half a second, until I check my phone and see another story of pain and survival that’s incongruent with the fleeting feeling of normalcy.
Before living in our pandemic reality, I’ve taken seeing people in the flesh for granted, we all have. People that I can touch, smell, and be present with. Things are different now, and for what I believe, years to come. Still, this normally happy solo gal longs for a packed concert, a busy city street, listening to podcasts on my way to work, and jockeying for the aisle seat on flights to the Midwest. I even miss waiting in line. I try to never say never, but I know I’ll never again take the day-to-day for granted, monotonous or not. As long as I have a choice to bring my people with me, I know I’ll never really be alone.

And if you'd like to read the words of much better, published writers, check out the article here: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/style/coronavirus-modern-love-living-alone.html

Coronavision

Well here we are, right in the middle of one of my post-apocalyptic stories I favor so much. I know some of my friends don't quite understand why I love this genre. One of my favorite books is The Stand by Stephen King, which I read as a preteen. Unfamiliar with The Stand? The main character is a plague nicknamed Captain Trips, indiscriminately killing 99% of the population as survivors all gravitate to Las Vegas of all places. I love films like 28 Days Later and Contagion, and really heart the first few seasons of "The Walking Dead." Sans pareil of the genre, is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Don't read that one and expect to feel hopeful afterwards, troubled and hazy drunk perhaps, but not hopeful. The stories of resiliency, perseverance, triumph, love and even boring day-to-day existence, is the pull of the apocalyptic tale for me. It's why I started watching "The Walking Dead" and why I stopped near season 7 when it got too gratuitously violent. I didn't watch for the zombie massacres, I watched for the stories of well drawn characters in which I hoped to see myself.

Over the past week, I find myself strangely getting used to an odd gloom hanging over everything. I stocked up on things a couple of weeks ago, so no dealing with empty store shelves for me. I have plenty of TP, canned goods, batteries, pasta, rice, and coffee of course. While I wasn't a great Girl Scout, I am typically always prepared. I chalk it up to being a Capricorn and an only child more than anything, but being prepared also calms my mind. This odd gloom reminds me of the fires here in Colorado the spring and summer of 2012. That was such a shitty summer in so many ways. I ended up having to cancel a large-scale bike tour due to a county-wide smoke alert. The event was a large fundraiser for the healthcare foundation I worked for at the time. I remember making the decision and bursting into tears at my friend Paul's desk. He looked at me like any man that has a crying woman in their office would, kinda scared, and said, "You know it's not your fault, right?" While I certainly did know that, I still felt a lot of guilt over the decision. Little did I know how much I would learn from that experience, namely that people can be assholes, especially when sitting behind a computer screen. My favorite was an email from a firefighter named Forrest (you can't make this shit up) who lambasted me for canceling. I did end up getting a much calmer email in return after I reminded him, professionally mind you, that he of all people should understand my decision. And I would be remiss to not mention that most people were cool about it, understanding that a healthcare system can't, in good conscience, send 1500 cyclists out to ride 60+ miles during a county-wide smoke alert.

The summer of fire also taught me something a bit more important. I remember talking to my dad on the phone as I watched the Waldo Canyon fire eat people's homes, live on TV. The High Park fire was about 6 miles from my house, as the crow flies. Horsetooth Reservoir, a large body of water, sat between me and the fire, but I was anxious anyway. Dad asked me what I could do to feel better. I told him I was worried that if the fire somehow magically jumped over the reservoir, I would be too far away to grab important things from my house, and that my dog Cadence would be stuck inside. He told me, "You have a Subaru. Put the things you want to save from a fire in crates and drive around with them till the threat goes away." I did just that and immediately felt better. I made arrangements for Cadence too, and felt prepared, my mind at ease.

When this virus started getting a stronghold in Washington, my dad's words came back to me and I casually went to Costco on a Friday after work and then to the grocery store like normal. No hurrying, no panic, just normal shopping to be prepared. Once the cancellations started rolling in, I had nothing but compassion for everyone making these tough decisions. Especially when you have people making light of a truly world-wide public health crisis. Journalist Laurie Garrett @Laurie_Garrett, said on the On the Media podcast, that Americans are epidemic voyeurs. We in the U.S. have had the privilege of watching epidemics from afar, for the most part. She pondered what the mettle of the American public would be once COVID-19 became a pandemic. Did she envision a run on toilet paper and beer? Regardless, my mind was calm and I felt prepared.

When I started in event planning, I would pore over contracts and was always intrigued by the concept of force majeure, French for superior force. Force majeure is common in contracts and basically frees both parties from liability due to an extraordinary event, like a hurricane, or a public health emergency perhaps, causing the event to not take place. When I'd read that part of a contract, after learning what it meant, I felt like my little bike tour, 5K or triathlon was a bigger deal than it actually was somehow. The words force majeure sound important, they have gravitas, appropriately so for what they mean, right? Or maybe anything sounds more important in another language?

Could this be our force majeure? The odd gloomy feeling aside, I feel a strange, unsettling sense of a new beginning. Could this be the end of the absolute worst president and administration in history? An end to people being so fucking awful to each other? An end of what's-in-it-for-me culture? Or does the run on TP and beer indicate otherwise? Will we just continue on as selfishly normal once the smoke clears, only caring about ourselves? I hope not. One thing I am pretty certain of - as this pandemic forces us to work from home, having more Teams meetings and conference calls, we'll be forced to talk on the phone more. You know, instead of seeing people in person. And as someone who has always disliked talking on the phone, I'm choosing to look at this as an opportunity, like when I was allowed a phone in my room when I was a teenager to talk to boys in private. Who knows, maybe in a strange, horribly beautiful way, this will bring people closer together and we can stop hoarding TP, and maybe share that beer.

Stay safe, and remember to do your part to #flattenthecurve.

The Winner Takes It All...

But do they? I've been happily re-watching the 4th season of Better Call Saul in preparation for the 5th, and final season. Truly, Better Call Saul is better than Breaking Bad. Sublime, poignant and just top notch storytelling. Anyway, the last episode in season 4 is titled, Winner, and poor Jimmy McGill is anything but. Saul Goodman on the other hand, is well, a certain kind of winner. A self-made man that when confronted with the many obstacles of his sad, little life, becomes needed, necessary. And dressed in pink, or maybe it's more of a mauve, whatever - he becomes your guy when you run into trouble and consistently makes hay out of any drug-dealing, corrupt, and downright dangerous situation. The prepaid cell phone he sells you is already programmed with his number for god's sake.

All this winning watching got me thinking about my own lot in life, as it were. Lately, the ambiguity of it all allows me time to think about what. the. fuck. is. next. I signed up for voice lessons today, so that's something I suppose. Don't worry, not singing lessons, but I digress. I've talked to several friends about this middle ground I'm on, along with most other women in our age bracket, and here's the thing, or some kind of thing at least; no one is asking me to do anything. Not a damn thing. Other than work related requests, which I mostly enjoy, there's not a dang thing in my inbox. So what about this - because there's nothing in my inbox (and I mean that literally, too) - I could try to be grateful for the unfettered time on my hands, right? Time to think about what I want to do next, instead of, "Holy shit, what am I gonna do next," I get to do whatever I want. I mean literally, I can do whatever the hell I want. I answer to no one (except work, of course). Who gets that? I'm too old to answer to my parents, although I do care what they think of me, and while I may not answer to anyone, I do feel a sense of responsibility to lots of people.  Instead of looking at this as an existential crisis, this is really just one more opportunity I have in my generally unburdened life, to do whatever I want. Really, the only thing we get to control are our thoughts, our next moves, and our choices. I'm going to try to choose fabulous over flummoxed and make some hay of my own, like Jimmy, or maybe Saul.

Could this be what the fabulous 50's are all about?

Get the Ice Cream

What the hell is wrong with us? Why must we feel the need to do more, be more, experience more? And if we don't do these things, we're somehow flawed? What a load of bullshit. I watched a Tom Papa comedy special on Netflix and he got me thinking. The whole hour is basically about how we're all doing just fine despite life's challenges. We're the first generation that doesn't have to fight for survival. Food, and everything we ever need, is within arms reach. Other generations might've been skinnier but their lives were miserable. They worried about growing their own damn food, building their own homes, they fought in wars, and they didn't see past the next day because the day they were living was fucking hard enough. Tom thinks we should just get some ice cream and enjoy the day.

I've been ruminating on the meaning of my life, not sleeping well, and struggling over what my next move should be. It's been well, weird. I do believe they call this a mid-life crisis. I hate that term, like I hate all colloquialisms that reduce our feelings into a catchphrase so we can somehow feel just like everyone else and in effect, not deal with our feelings. All told, I've really got it pretty great. I have an excellent job/career and work for a company I hope to retire from. I have a decent house to live in, a paid off car, many friends that put up with me and I think, actually like me most of the time. I have parents that raised me to do whatever I wanted to do in life and were always in my corner and proud of me, no matter who I voted for. I volunteer as often as I can and even though I have to drive to Greeley to do it, I get to be on the radio every week. I have a sweet, little dog that makes me laugh and keeps me warm as he takes up most of the bed every night. What else? There's a long list of cool stuff I've got going on, so what the heck? Why must I hate on myself for not doing more with my life? And I know I'm not the only one that feels this way. Why are we so hard on ourselves?

I've always felt pretty strongly that since I chose to not have children, I owe something to the world. I feel like I have a responsibility to do more, be more and experience more because I'm not working to raise good people. But do I though? I was talking to a friend this week who's in a new relationship and worried about what people might think. When she mentioned this, I told her that all that matters is how she feels about it. Who gives a rat's ass what others think. What do YOU think? Does it feel right? Are you happy, at least most of the time? Other people don't spend time thinking about our love lives or really, anything we do. Everyone is occupied with their own lives, navel gazing the days away. While I'm thinking about this made-up responsibility and worrying about what others think of me, I'm not actually living my life. It's much more productive to just think about living life instead of worrying over some self-induced pressure I've put on myself, or really, pressure that I'm allowing society to put on me. This malaise, this feeling of weirdness, is why people have affairs, buy silly cars, and generally act out like teenagers. I ain't got time for that nonsense.

All I owe the world is to be kind, truthful, do my best, give generously, and have no expectations. I need to take care of my Nasher, my friends and family, and say fuck all to society's expectations. It's a false flag, fake news, and just plain fucked up. To quote one of my faves, I AM ENOUGH. I also do enough, and so do you. Life is challenging, we all make choices, and most of the time, it's enough to buy the toothpaste that's been on the shopping list for a week.

And just for the record, I've adhered to not buying anything new with one small mishap. I bought a poster and t-shirt at a Yola concert, both brand new of course! I got swept up in the show and how awesome she was - dang it! The t-shirt I'm going to give away as a gift and the poster I feel is sort of okay because I'm supporting the artist, and it's a freakin' cool poster to boot!

Eating the Whole Cow

I've been thinking about how I've resurrected this blog, and well, thinking about how boring it is. I've already run out of things to write about as it pertains to buying or not buying and let's be honest, it's just not that interesting. A decade ago when I decided to not buy anything new, it was sort of a new thing. While there were certainly resale stores and the like, it wasn't hipster like it is now. There are The Minimalists, sparking joy with Marie Kondo, and a new trend where you travel without luggage. Like why? That's like eating head cheese or beef tongue. Haven't we progressed as a society past eating the entire cow? Hey, you do you, but I think we've moved beyond eating food we don't need to in order to survive. And traveling without something to put your toothbrush and magical travel totems into is just silly. For fuck's sake, we have luggage on 360 wheels now! It's a brand new day, people. The movement to use and consume less has spawned a cottage industry of its own. Only in America do we decide to consume less and then monetize it. I mean, really.

After talking to a wise friend, the same friend who wondered why I wanted to deprive myself, I realized that what I really want to do is write, and I think I started up this blog again as an excuse to do so. Like most dedicated, life-long readers, albeit slow in my case, I've  thought of writing a book. Not sure what kind of a book, but a book nonetheless. I started college at Michigan State a declared journalism major and would've graduated with that degree had I not gotten sidetracked by a very mean and petty man trying to teach me a lesson, which is a story for another day. So, I'm going to come clean and declare that I just want to write about stuff, and I'm going to use this blog as an excuse to get into the habit. And because I like a challenge, I will continue to not buy anything new or used and unnecessary, and I might write about that too. I've gone most of January without buying anything new and I've gotta tell ya, it's not that hard.

I'll try to be open and share the odd, and usually funny, things that happen in my world while I practice this writing thing. I've been heartened by friends supporting this endeavor. Like Amy, who sent me a card so I'd get mail without having to buy something to get it - so sweet! And my friend Ann, who offered to let me borrow new books from her so I didn't have to wait for a used paperback. Pure goodness! I'm not going to limit myself and only write about my purchasing habits. They're just not that interesting. I do however, have a pretty interesting life and I'm going to try and share it with you. Believe me, I have no illusions about you continuing to read this blog, but I'd love it if you would. Please share your thoughts with me if so moved, I want to hear about your lives, too.

(Not So) Delayed Gratification

Is delayed gratification meaningful? Is gratification supposed to be meaningful, or merely just gratifying? Before I embarked on my little journey of self-prescribed depravity, I conveniently ordered some stuff online - clothes, tiny earrings, and a very lovely Tiffany ring, therefore delaying gratification. Before anyone gets in a twist about that shiny Tiffany word, I bought it used from Real Real, a great website for used high-end clothes, jewelry, etc. I justified the need part of this purchase by telling myself it was my birthday present to myself, and it was very reasonably priced, I swear!

I conveniently purchased these items knowing they'd be delivered in January and I'd be able to milk my shopping jones a little bit longer. The last delivery of clothes-I-don't-need came last week and as I was putting things away (moving my shit around), I thought about how I'll feel when the only packages I'm getting in the mail are mouthwash, hairspray or my replacement toothbrush head. So flippin' exciting. I love getting the mail, always have. I used to steal it when I was a kid. Sorry, Mom.  Before I unlock my mailbox, I have a flutter of excitement about what's inside. Even if it turns out to be bills and fliers, I still enjoy the potential that a gift of some kind might be included. Knowing that the various and sundry boxes from retail locations far and wide will no longer be sitting on my stoop as I pull into the driveway, well, the thought kinda makes me sad.

One question before me is why is buying new things somehow exciting? What am I not doing while I'm buying some new, and a lot of used, shit? Most of which I really don't need. The next time I get a shopping itch, should I note it and think about something useful I could be doing instead? When I don't see the box of fun sitting on my stoop at the end of the day, should I conjure my bank account in my head and pat myself on the back for saving some cheddar? Where's the gratification in that?

A dear friend brought up something over the weekend that I'm pondering, and that I think has some merit. She's worried about why I feel like I need to deprive myself. Like, when I challenge myself, I have to somehow deprive myself in the process in order for it to really be a challenge. Interesting, huh? Trust me, I've spent some time going without, so I'm not unfamiliar with the sensation, but why am I trying to recreate it? Is this challenge somehow indicative of a larger existential crisis? Maybe crisis is too strong, maybe an existential, thought provoking idea to think about, while I wait at the mailbox.