good stuffs

Things that were good this week:

1. Nobody is sick. I’m almost scared to say that out loud for fear of jinxing it and bringing the Germ Fairy back to our house. But for the moment, nobody has The Crud. So that’s awesome.

2. I’ve hit the point in my diet/exercise plan where I can now see the difference myself. I’ve lost around 10 pounds, my clothes fit better, and I caught myself checking out my own butt in the mirror. Like, more than once. Not so much being vain, more “hey, look at that!”

3. Lucy seems to have figured out this whole “standing up” thing.

Ok, who taught the baby to stand up? Because it sure wasn't me!

Now I need to hurry up and figure out the whole “baby proofing” thing, because man, she is into EVERYTHING. And unlike Catie, Lucy wants to put EVERYTHING in her mouth. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve had to stick my fingers in her mouth to fish out something she shouldn’t have gotten. Neither of us are happy when this happens, and yet, she keeps doing it. Babies really don’t catch on quickly, do they?

4. I’ve been having late night Skype dates with Matt after the kids are in bed. I think my crush on that guy is bigger than it was back in 1999. He makes me giddy.

5. I’m going out with a girlfriend tonight while my parents watch the kids. I can’t wait. I need to get dressed up and get out of Mommy Mode for a while.

So yeah. Pretty good week here overall.

on Valentine's Day

I was in a little bit of a funk yesterday.

This is the first Valentine’s Day that I’ve been single since 2004. Eight years is a pretty long time.

Also, exactly one year ago (on Valentine’s Day eve) was when Dave first announced that he wanted to split up. I was pregnant with Lucy at the time. So I guess you could say that I now have sort of a sour taste in my mouth about Valentine’s Day. It was never a huge deal to me to begin with, really, but that’s a pretty bad association to have with this particular holiday.

I completely forgot about the Valentine’s Day party at daycare today, so I ended up filling out Catie’s Valentine’s Day cards for her at 10 p.m., after both girls were in bed. Those kids are getting the most slapdash, thrown-together Valentine’s Day treats ever. Seriously, I used Ziploc sandwich bags filled with candy and stickers with the kids’ names on them. I figured that when you’re 4 or 5 years old, you only really care about the candy, not the card, right?

Still, that seems like the lamest Valentine’s Day goodie bag ever. It felt like a huge “mom FAIL” moment, even though I know Catie doesn’t care.

So, yeah, I was bumming pretty hard yesterday.

Then I got some messages from Guy #3. I need to call him something else because the other two guys are really out of the picture now. Oh screw it, his name is Matt. I’m not posting his last name, and there are enough Matts and Matthews in the world that I doubt anyone searching for him is going to stumble upon this blog post by accident.

So, yeah, emails from Matt. He managed to steam up my inbox pretty well. (Note: that is not a euphemism. He’s still in another time zone.) My day was brightened up considerably, as pathetic as that may sound.

And then, this morning, Catie brought me a flower for Valentine’s Day. Sure, it was a fake flower that we already had in the house, but still. I thought that was really sweet.

So, you know, maybe it’s not so bad after all.

Still…

someecards.com - My Valentine runs on batteries.

Sigh. Yeah. Sad but true.

finding my flirt

So.

Ok.

This is kind of a weird topic for me to bring up, but I use my blog as a place to kind of vent whatever is on my mind, and this seems to be taking up an awful lot of my brainspace lately, so I thought maybe writing through it might help me figure some things out.

(Also, Dad? If by chance you’re looking at my blog today, stop reading now. Really. I don’t want to hear it.)

So, lately I’ve been doing a little… um… flirting.

This all started innocently enough. I have a guy friend from college who I always had a crush on, but for one reason or another, we never dated. We’ve stayed in touch off and on through the years, but in the last month or so, our texts have suddenly taken a turn for the steamy. (As in, “Damn, you text your mama with those fingers?”) Funny, considering I’ve never even kissed the guy outside of a peck on New Year’s Eve.

But, you know, he lives in another state, so it’s not like anything is ever going to happen.

Then there was another guy who I dated (very) briefly, who dropped me an email just to say he heard I was getting divorced, he’s divorced too, he’s been thinking about me… which, ok. It was a random, but totally G-rated exchange. Still, the “I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately” was flattering and nice, and it didn’t come off as creepy, which I appreciate.

Then, there’s Guy #3, who, man, where do I start? We were never really a couple. I knew him when I lived in Wisconsin. I hung out with a bunch of girls there and we all had a crush on this one guy at some point. He was gorgeous, and had absolutely no clue how cute he was. (Which, seriously, is an awesome trait to have if you’re a good-looking guy. Guys who know they’re hot? Tend to be a bit on the douche-y side.)

There is no possible way to explain this and sound like anything less than a total slut, but basically: we never dated, we just fooled around a lot. Like, I don’t think we ever had dinner or saw a movie together or anything. It was just casual and fun.

What can I say? I enjoyed my 20s.

So, Guy #3 (as I’ll call him because I probably shouldn’t be posting his name on the Internet) found me on Facebook a couple of weeks ago and messaged me. Turns out he’s also in the middle of a divorce. We had some friendly “what have you been up to for the past decade?” emails. Then he started emailing me with stuff like, “Hey, remember the time we [fill in the blank with something completely X-rated that I am not about to write here]?” And the emails are… well, they’re pretty hot, I have to say.

The thing is, none of these three guys even live in the same time zone as me, nor are any of them really suitable long-term matches for me. And besides that, I absolutely do not want a relationship right now at all. I have way too much on my plate to deal with. It wouldn’t be fair to drag some innocent bystander into the chaos vortex that is my life at the moment. And it would be absolutely unfair to my girls.

Oh, and let’s not forget that thanks to ridiculously stupid North Carolina divorce laws, I can’t even file for divorce until August, so I’m still technically married for the time being.

So, nothing is gonna happen. I mean, outside of harmless flirting with guys who are all at least 1,000 miles away in one direction or another.

But, what’s interesting (to me) about all of this, is that fairly recently, I would’ve sworn on a stack of Bibles that I never wanted to have sex again. And something about these exchanges lately has reignited some little spark in me that I didn’t think I had anymore.

Obviously, I’m not going to act on anything anytime soon, but it’s got me thinking about the idea of “Someday.” I’ve been so caught up in trying to get through my day-to-day life, that I hadn’t really thought about the future at all. And I don’t just mean sex (although yes, that would be lovely, please and thank you). I mean the whole relationship thing. The idea that I might be willing to give men another chance is a pretty new concept for me.

So, yeah. That’s kind of weird, huh?