What Would You Do?

Howdy. I am crowd-sourcing advice for a friend who doesn't feel totally comfortable posting the problem to her personal Facebook page. The vastness of the internet offers a sense of anonymity, though, so I offered to put it out there to the world. Please weigh in. 

This story is going to be much easier to write with names, so let's start with the aliases: 

• My friend, Candy, a mom
• Candy's son, Andy, a smart, loving 8 year old
• Andy's friend, Mandy, presumably 8 years old too
• Mandy's mom, Brandy. 

Andy and Mandy were playing together at Candy's house after school one day last year. When Brandy came over to pick Mandy up, she decided to tell Candy that she (Brandy) was a white supremacist. Who does that? Candy was horrified, but glad that at least she knew. Armed with that knowledge, she didn't feel comfortable having Brandy come to her house, and was certain that she didn't want to send Andy over to Mandy's house to play. How do you explain that to a first grader? Candy went to the school and spoke with the kids' teacher about it the next day. The teacher was just as shocked as Candy, but likewise perplexed about how to proceed. For the rest of the year, Candy just avoided arranging play-dates for Andy and Mandy.

Last night, Candy and Andy ran into Mandy and Brandy at the store. Andy and Mandy played together so sweetly, pretending to be an old married couple with giant candy canes, and asked if they could play together another time. All day today, Andy has been begging to have Mandy come over. 

After a lot of internal debate and conversation with me, Candy is resolute that she doesn't feel safe having the kids play together outside of school. You can't just say that to an eight year old, though. You want to just be able to tell him: "We are accepting and loving of all types of people and belief systems in our family. We don't hate. We don't discriminate. Your friend's parents have a violent belief system built around hate and feeling superior to people who don't look like them or think like them. You can't play with your friend because I don't want you to be exposed to that belief system." Is it hypocritical to say "we don't discriminate except against people who hate"?

Candy has decided that she might try to have a conversation with Andy and help him understand why Mandy can't come over to play. Perhaps he is old enough to understand. So, we're looking for the correct words to tell him. What would you do?

Online Dating Advice

According to this article I just read, men on dating sites apparently feel exactly the same way about women on dating sites that I feel about men on dating sites. You should totally read it if you are dating: http://www.xojane.com/sex/online-dating-advice. In addition to advice on setting up an effective profile, there are also good tips for initial contact and first dates.

Mostly, though, I like the article because it shows that my refusal to "swipe right" for anyone whose pictures are too professional or filtered or Photoshopped or full of other people or blurry does not necessarily mean that I am a horrible person. Like the article says, "Life is short so stop wasting time." Here's the deal: my time is way too precious to be wasted clicking through multiple photos to decide if you're cute. I may be a tad bit shallow and narcissistic, but I am not a horrible person - I'm just busy. Right? Right? Hello? Is this thing on?

Las Lessons Learned

I just realized that this week marks the first anniversary of "Confessions of A Middle-Aged Divorcee." So much has happened in this past year; I should probably commemorate my dating/self-discovery blog's first birthday by doing something epic and fun and potentially scandalous like...well, an almost spontaneous trip to Las Vegas for Halloween weekend. I just did that! Perfect. 

Clearly, I can't violate the "what happens in Vegas..." code, because I'm pretty sure that the first rule of Vegas Club is: you do not talk about Vegas Club, but I can at least impart some lessons learned by a middle-aged Vegas virgin. Here, then, is what I learned on my first ever Las Vegas trip.

Lesson #1: Choose your travel companions well. This is not specifically a Vegas lesson, but it's important enough to be my first rule of travel. The ideal companions don't like to bitch, do like to laugh, and are up for anything. Lucky for me, my inner circle is full of just this sort of people. I have taken incredible trips with my family and friends in the past year, and I have come out of each adventure loving my travel mates even more. Vegas was absolutely no exception. There was no drama, no one got lost or arrested, and we had a ton of fun. 

Lesson #2: Bring sensible shoes and plenty of cab fare. Trying to walk across the street on The Strip is nearly impossible. As it turns out, the shortest pedestrian distance between two points there is a crazy labyrinth of resort casinos and staircases and malls filled with handbags that cost a year's salary. The first time we left our hotel room in costume on Halloween night, we looked amazing from head to toe. The first time (of many) that we ended up back at our hotel room on Halloween night, we had one costume change and two shoe changes. Unfortunately, the blistery damage had already been done. We already have plans to return next Halloween dressed as old people on rented Rascal scooters. Important takeaway: Just pay the $8 fare for a five minute cab ride that will ultimately save you 30 minutes of walking and hours of bitching about how much your feet hurt. Or rent a Rascal scooter.

Lesson #3: Vegas ain't cheap. This was the first time that I have ever traveled like upper crusty folks do. I have to admit - I could get used to it. We stayed in a lovely room in the Bellagio, ordered room service, had our concierge get us amazing seats for the Cirque du Soleil show, "O", and just generally had a grand time. Happily, the past year has been good to me, so I was able to afford a carefree vacation without worrying about rent or the electric bill. Any other time of my life, the first round of cocktails at $20 a piece might have broken me. Here's a tip: an entire bottle of Stoli from the liquor store is the same price as a single cocktail and there is no open container law in Las Vegas, so you should buy a bottle and mix your own drinks in the hotel room whenever possible.

Lesson #4: Hit the strip club. Wait. Hear me out. When your male traveling companion who had the glorious idea to go to Vegas for the weekend wants to go to a titty bar, you go to a titty bar. So, yeah, I got my first lap dance. From a girl. Twice. It just would have been rude to refuse the poor girl standing right in front of me after the travel companion has already paid her. If nothing else, the $20 lap dance is the same price as that $20 cocktail on The Strip, and the drinks at the Spearmint Rhino Gentlemen's Club only cost, like, $10, so a lap dance might actually be the best deal in Vegas. Also, you can get a table and just sit and listen to music and talk to your friends without walking anywhere. Priceless. Oh, and here's a tidbit: the Bellagio concierge adamantly insists that he is not allowed to refer guests to strip clubs, but he might discreetly put an x next to one in his entertainment guide if you tease him enough.

Lesson #5: Call your credit union. Knowing how my credit union watches out for me, I probably should have done this before I left town. It would have just been a simple phone call to say "Hey guys, I'm going to Las Vegas. You might see some atypical spending activity, but no need to worry. I have not been abducted or robbed." As soon as I returned home, I got to have a fun phone call with Visa Fraud Services authorizing a bunch of charges, including the Spearmint Rhino. The robotic voice on the other end tried to remain cool and detached, but I'm sure I detected a hint of disappointment as it thanked me and told me that my card would remain active.

Lesson #6: Ditch the Strip. Unfortunately, we didn't get this piece of advice from a hostess until Saturday night, when we already had "O" tickets and the strip club on our agenda. She told us that downtown Las Vegas is much more chill than the Strip, there are no ridiculous lines, more of an indy scene than a tourist scene, live music...exactly what we were really seeking. We'll just save the discovery of downtown for Vegas trip number two. I can't wait. 

Being There

This is one of those posts that you might want to skip if you just look for levity from MathMercy. It that's the case, stay tuned-I have a Halloween weekend trip to Vegas which is sure to result in some fun blog fodder. If you are still with me, though, I just need to process this out loud.

I had a "date" tonight with someone from Tinder. The reason for the quotes-he is a teacher at Marysville-Pilchuck H.S. who was, I think, looking more for a sense of normalcy and human contact than a date tonight. I don't know how much people outside of our area know about Marysville-Pilchuck and I don't want to rehash it, so I will just say this: last Friday, I sobbed as I watched the most horrific events that a teacher can imagine unfold on live t.v., and those events happened at M-P H.S. Google it if you need to know more.

So, I met this man tonight and wasn't sure what to expect. Would he want to talk about it or do anything but? I think that he needed to tell his story to a stranger. I sat with him and listened as he related the events that led up to that day, the thoughts that went through his head as the lock-down started, the perspective from 3.5 hours inside his classroom and when they finally got bussed to the church, how the staff has gone about coming back together this week, and his fears about bringing the students back next week.

It was a lot to hear. My heart broke all over again for him, his colleagues, his students, for his community. Certainly not what one expects for a date, but I am glad that's how it worked out. In an odd way, it felt like I was able to do something by just being there to listen. He mentioned donating to a fund for the students as a way that the rest of us can help; I will update this post with information on the best way to do that when I find out.

That's it for now. No punchline, no funny witticism, just a plea to pay attention to the children around you -- hug them a little tighter, be there for them when they are hurting. Also, please take a moment to thank the adults who work every day to keep our children safe. As teachers, we drill for scenarios like this all the time, but hope that we will never have to use those lock-down protocols for real.The staff at this school did an incredible job of protecting students and keeping them calm for nightmarish hours on Friday, and I hope they know how heroic they are. The hardest part is still to come for the Marysville-Pilchuck staff and students. Please hold them in your hearts in the coming weeks.

Online Dating, Take 2.

Labor Day weekend has been lovely in an "I'm not doing anything" sort of way. However, as much as I relish early bedtimes and sleeping in for up to two hours past my alarm time, it occurs to me that I'm slipping back into my hermit shell a bit. With a new school year starting this week, I'm about to be super busy with work and the tendency to hide from the world will only get stronger as the days get shorter. I need to shake things up and force myself to (ugh) meet people. So this morning I woke up and said, "Hey, MathMercy, things are pretty mellow right now. Why not try to complicate your life? Shouldn't you be dating?" 

A quick peek at Plenty of Fish showed me what I've been missing in my absence: I already saw all the lonely fish in the Seattle sea months ago, and I'm still not trying to catch any of them. Time for something new, right? So, partly to challenge myself to be more social, but mostly to provide entertainment for this blog, I joined a new dating site. A little online research led me to - wait for it - Tinder.

I have been reluctant to try Tinder because the name is so close to Grindr and I have no use for a hookup app for gay men. However, one of my girlfriends has been using the app fairly successfully for a while and I was intrigued by the model. Basically, no one can contact you unless you both "swipe right" to indicate interest in the other party. No creepy stalkers and no hurt feelings is pretty appealing. The other thing that's different is that you don't really build a profile with Tinder. Instead, it accesses your Facebook profile photos and "likes" to build your profile.

That last bit took me a while to accept. The app tells you it won't ever post to Facebook, but how do I know that some creepy guy can't start contacting my friends? Luckily, I ran across a real life friend on Tinder (and made sure to mark the little swipe right heart instead of the x so we could joke about the dating experience together - as long as he swipes right too...) and saw that the only things I see from his Facebook profile are our mutual friends and mutual likes. Okay. So far so good. None of my friends needs to know that I'm on Tinder...Unless, of course, I blog about it.

My first observation of note is that somehow this feels more organic than scrolling through carefully crafted (or not so much) dating profiles. As superficial as it seems, judging somebody purely by the photos and common interests that they share with their friends feels a bit more like seeing somebody across a crowded room and venturing over to find out more about them.

My second observation is that when I know that the other person will never know that I clicked "Nope", I am much more judgmental than I might be otherwise. Of course, there is a lot less to judge, so maybe I'm not a terrible person. If I can't run through my typical checklist (car, job, height, sentence construction, etc) the only thing left to judge is the photo, right? The shirtless torso pic at the gym or in front of the bathroom mirror is suddenly elevated to super douchebag status when you realize it was either a Facebook profile photo (can you imagine?) or deliberately added to the Tinder app. Either way, eww.

I have actually marked a few "likes" and been rewarded with "matches" today, which is a boost to my confidence. In fact, I am about an hour and a half away from my first date in months.

The fun game-like aspect of swiping left or right has made way for reality. Suddenly, I am wracked with jitters. I don't know anything about this guy except that he has a couple cute pictures and he's in the Coast Guard. What if he hates kittens? Or cheese? Or sunshine? Worst of all, what if he's as short as I am? I'll just take a deep breath and remind myself I'm doing it for the blog. It's all about attitude, right? Right. I can do this! Maybe it will even be fun. I'm not shaving my legs though; that's more like second or third date territory. Wish me luck!

Wildness

The mystique of the Wild Woman has been somewhat of a running theme in my life. When I was a little girl, my father used to joke at the dinner table that he was about to go "chase wild women." When I was really young, I actually believed him, and I was horrified that a) MY daddy knew how to chase wild women and b) that he would say so right in front of my mom. As I grew older, I learned that my dad is the truest, bluest man on the planet and the mere thought of him chasing wild women was totally ridiculous. Not that he isn't totally adorable...just that he's too much of a gentleman to know what to do with one if he caught her. I'm pretty sure my mom is enough a handful for him anyway.

My mom is not a Wild Woman, but she is definitely a kick-ass woman in her own right. I've always felt that if I could be half the woman she is, I will be a better woman than most. When my mom gets a hair up her ass about something...well, let's just say it's best to stand back and let her do it until she finishes, fizzles out, or finds something else to tickle her fancy. When she gets in this mode, my dad lovingly refers to her as a "force of nature." Think 'tornado' and you're in the ballpark. One of my favorite examples would be the time she stayed up all night piping little frosting violets onto every single sugar cube for my brother's first wedding. Bear in mind, this brother is a proud member of AA, so the wedding reception had no booze, but lots of coffee, along with probably 500 or so lovingly hand-flowered sugar cubes. I digress.

My mom is a passionate music lover; mostly gospel, blues, and reggae. When I was in junior high, we attended St. Paul's Southern Baptist Church (probably the only black, southern Baptist church in the state of Idaho) just so my mom could hear live gospel music. The city is much more diverse now, but in 1987ish, the only other place in Boise where you might expect to see a non-white, non-hispanic person was on the Boise State football team, and even that was pretty pale. See?

http://varsityb.com/photo-galleries/?album=all&gallery=53&nggpage=3

So anyway, my mom really loves gospel music. When she isn't listening to gospel music, though, she listens to some of the nastiest, raunchiest blues you've ever heard. The nastiest of the bunch has to be Saffire - The Uppity Blues Women. These are middle-aged ladies with no time for innuendo, as evidenced by song titles like Bitch with a Bad Attitude, There's Lightning in These Thunder Thighs, and Silver Beaver (yes, that kind of beaver). It's basically middle-aged divorcee theme music.

Saffire didn't write this song, but they do a bang-up job with it, and it fits my theme nicely, so take a moment and listen to the Wild Woman theme song, Wild Women Don't Have the Blues.  

So, I have made a sincere attempt at being a Wild Woman this summer, but it turns out that I'm not so much a Wild Woman as a Wing Woman. No matter, I've been having a ball. Here are some highlights.

Wild Washington Women's Weekend
My girlfriends and I kicked off the summer with a trip to Chelan. It was a wild weekend at a lovely resort on the lake. The only rules: no kids, no pets, no husbands/boyfriends, and no responsibility. We spent a delicious day tanning on the dock and drinking "yards" of fruity cocktails. I think their "yard" glass was only about 2 feet long, but after drinking 3 of them, I think we can legitimately claim that we drank yards of booze.

 After dinner and a failed attempt at dancing at Chelan's only night club (so gross), we ended up partying back at the hotel with a group of late 20-somethings who were in Chelan for their annual guys' weekend. Correction. Half of the group partied up in the room with the 20-somethings, while I joined an expedition with a mission of accessing the resort's hot tub/pool area. Night-time security guards can be bought, but not necessarily for money. My girlfriend tried to bribe the security guard for pool access with $100, then with $200, and finally with a promise of boob. Guess which one brought him down from the parking garage with key card in hand? I blame the alcohol for this, but somehow my boob ended up being the one offered up. So I let the security guard touch a breast for three seconds and he let us in the pool area. Just to prove how much of a Wild Woman I am not...I swam in my sundress.

 Not long after the security guard let us in, a gaggle of girls (21-ish) scaled the fence on the other side of the pool and started swimming, topless. Guess what the security guard who likes boobs more than money did? Did he kick them out? Of course not. He pulled up a chair and tried pretty ineffectively to keep them quiet while one of them kept yelling "I have teeny tiny titties!" (I'm pretty sure I know why resort security dude chooses to work weekend nights. He probably does this every weekend, right?) We avoided the chaos and silently patted ourselves on the backs for being old and mature enough to keep our tops on.

If being a Wing Woman is about facilitating hookups, then I believe I attained epic Wing Woman status that weekend. Granted, only one of these hookups was intimate, but I think the others totally count as hookups.

• Hookup #1: The hot tub.
• Hookup #2: Towards the end of our day of afternoon drinking, the toilet flooded in our reduced rate hotel room with a view of the parking lot. I called down to the lobby and they sent someone over to jiggle the handle and start mopping. Normally that would have been fine, but I was drunk enough to march down to the lobby and tell the 20 year old behind the counter that there was no way that we should be paying $200 to stay in a toilet-water room. We got moved to a condo with a kitchen and a balcony overlooking the lake. Hooked up!
• Hookup #3: After finally climbing into bed at 4am, one friend and I put our shoes back on and headed out to the beach chairs on the dock so that another friend could invite a 20-something hottie back over to our room for some action. Out on the dock, we wrapped ourselves up in the little hand towels that were laid out on the beach chairs, laughed hysterically about how it was kind of like camping, and waited for the sun to rise over the lake. 
• Hookup #4: Due to different schedules, we had all arrived in Chelan at different times, in different vehicles. I was the first to leave for home on Sunday and was about half an hour out of town when my hot tub friend called me. She was scheduled to stay one more night, but was feeling so hungover that all she wanted to do was go home. I was feeling pretty groggy myself and was grateful to have company for the drive, so I turned around and picked her up. I hooked her up with her own bed that night. What's better than that?

Wilderness

I spent the first week of August in upstate New York for my brother's wedding. It was the most joyous wedding I've ever attended. A few years ago, this particular brother decided to get in touch with our Jewish cultural heritage and started attending a temple. Since his bride is Puerto Rican, their wedding was a glorious mix of both cultures. My mother was employed to bake cakes and she, in turn, employed my cousin and me as her baking assistants, and my sister-in-law's mother as a froster. Remember the frosted sugar cubes? Imagine two days of cake baking mania. She even monogrammed aprons for her crew. Here are the results:

One of the Jewish traditions that they adapted for their own purposes was a tisch. Traditionally, all the men gather with the groom, and all the women with the bride, to tell stories, tease, give advice, and just generally celebrate the honoree. Our tisch was not divided by gender, but along family/friend lines. It started with a passage from the Torah and a discussion of my brother's journey through the wilderness of bachelorhood (and Wild Women!), punctuated with lots of toasts of L'Chaim! By the way, I learned at the tisch that my uncle was the first to bring the concept of chasing wild women into our lives, so Dad is off the hook.

The tisch got me thinking a lot about tradition and community and stuff. I don't quite know how to say this and I think it's funny that this is the first real confession that I feel like I've put on this blog, but I've been thinking about exploring my own Jewish heritage a little deeper than my love of animal print. I've even gone so far as to look up different Reform (obviously, because bacon) congregations in my area. I doubt I'll go any further with it, but it's out there now and, if you know me at all, you know that's just weird. Weird, wacky, wild stuff. It strikes me that going to Temple could be something like a standing date for Friday nights. Who knows - maybe I could even meet a nice Jewish boy who can be corrupted with bacon!

Wild Wild West

Here's one final piece of wildness. I got a chance to chase - well, watch - wild men a few weeks ago. One of my friends and I went to see a western-themed, tongue-firmly-planted-in-cheek, male burlesque show. It was SO MUCH FUN! Ladies - you need to go to an all male revue/burlesque. Sure, most of the dancers are gay, but they were delicious and scantily clad and came out into the audience to collect "Buckaroo Bucks" (sold in rolls of 60 for $20 and totally worth it) in their g-strings. Unfortunately, I didn't buy my Buckaroo Bucks until intermission and the second half was short, so now I have a bunch left over. I guess I'll just have to go again the next time they have a show. Yee-haw! 

Another Day

I am currently working on a post about how much crazy fun I've been having in the first month of being forty, but I have to insert this one first because it just threw me a bit off-guard.

So weird. One of the approximately 972 calendars on my phone saw fit to remind me that today is my ex-husband's anniversary. Immediate thoughts:

1. If the calendar knows it's no longer my anniversary, why doesn't it know it's no longer his? 
2. Why can't I locate and edit that calendar?
3. I can tell you exactly what I was doing on this date a year ago, but I would have let today pass unnoticed if the phone hadn't reminded me. How odd that today is just another day.

All the Good Ones...and the Bad Ones Too

You know that saying that all the good guys are gay or married? Well, a recent string of poor judgement calls has me declaring that all the good ones are gay or married, and all the bad ones are unavailable and finding (or being found by) me.

Ladies: Do you have a boyfriend? He might not be cheating on you, but there is an extremely high probability that he is at least thinking about it and/or trying to. Sorry to be so blunt, but you deserve to know. We should stick together. Sisters before misters. Chicks before...you get the point. Ba-dum-bump.

Fellas: When a clueless lady finally realizes that you are coming on to her but she doesn't want to get in yet another awkward situation so she asks you if you have a girlfriend before the petting gets any heavier...um, a fiancee definitely qualifies. This might be your opportunity to save your future marriage, if not your immortal soul. Take it.

I can't claim credit for this, but I totally own it: I am not a Jew. I am Jew-ISH. In a nutshell, I love animal print and shiny things, and I find that the language of my father's people (eastern European Jews) can be particularly descriptive sometimes. Here's your Yiddish lesson. What the fuck, schmuck?!? If you want to commit to being in a relationship with another person, make that commitment. Mazel tov! May you both live happily ever after. If you want to shtup other people, though...just be single. It's not that hard. Nothing pisses me off more than cheating - be it in school, life, or a relationship. And involving me in it?! Feh. The chutzpah! MathMercy's moral compass doesn't swing that way, putz. Oy vey. 

I feel like the poor schnook that is engaged to the putz deserves to know what she's getting into before she says her vows. On the other hand, MathMercy's basic m.o. is to avoid drama in all forms, and it seems like major drama would ensue if I were to track this poor creature down and tell her. What would you do? Would you find a way to warn someone that they are about to marry an unfaithful shmendrik, or would you just let it go and assume that she'll find out on her own?

There are other dating options if I care to pursue them. It seems that when I go out lately, I attract the attention of bouncers. I have a couple calling me for dates but I'm just not interested. So why give them my number at all? Good question, smarty pants. I guess because I'm always flattered when anyone asks, I don't really believe they'll call, and mostly because with cell phones instead of matchbooks it's a lot harder to get away with transposing a couple digits and I'm a terrible liar. So I just put them off for a while, then schedule totally harmless lunch dates, put in a couple hours, and scurry on home.

Another option is to take my dog to a street carnival and have my pick of the ladies. Here is a picture that represents only a fraction of the love that my girl got from random women at last weekend's Georgetown Carnival.

People were actually tracking me down: "Is this Lola? My friend/daughter/sister was telling me about her!" The men who stopped to pet her were from two camps: gay or Schipperke owner (probably married). All the ladies, though, were all over her. Total chick magnet. Lesbian friends: let me know if you need to borrow her for an afternoon. In the meantime, I'm just going to stay home and work on perfecting my meshuggeneh cat lady shtick. Shalom.

My Time

Are you freakin' kidding me? I've only been 40 for a day. Give a gal a minute to settle in.

Screwed, Blued, and Tattooed

The other day, a friend relayed a message to me from her friend, "Pat". Sadly, Pat is an addict who fell off the wagon and will now be serving time for crimes related to her relapse. Although she probably won't be able to read it in prison, she wanted me to know that my blog had kept her going during some of her dark times recently. It's weird to think that my self-indulgent little pastime has any sort of impact on another person, but it makes blogging feel a bit less selfish. If I can bring a smile to someone's face I kind of have to, right? With no further ado, then, here's a post that's all about me, but not in a self-centered way. :)

Kill Blog #5

Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh. Sweet baby girl kitty is inside the house with a rat right now. I hate to say it, but I ran outside, shut the door, and am just waiting for her to put it out of its misery. I saw her in the bathroom next to what I thought was a corpse, but as I grabbed a grocery bag and moved in to pick it up, it dragged itself into an empty t.p. roll (PepPurr's previous toy), which made her all kinds of excited. Now I have a quandary. I'm pretty sure the thing is critically injured but there's no way I can bring myself to finish the job, either deliberately or by slow suffocation in a grocery bag at the bottom of a garbage can. I may be a country girl who has held her share of chickens on the chopping block, but that was a long time ago. Hell, even my dad takes his chickens to a professional "renderer" these days.

As I stood in my tiny bathroom and pondered what to do, PepPurr worked the poor creature out of its hiding place and started to fling it dangerously close to my face, causing me to squeal a little girl and go running out of the house, chasing my dog in front of me.

She just came out the window without the rat. Wish me luck on a quick, clean find. I'm going in.

Update: after a frustrating search with a very excited dog trying to prove the ratter in her bloodline, I finally discovered it on the back of the couch right where I sit. At least it looks like it ended without much trauma. Sigh.

Kill Blog #4 - Survivors

Last night was a long, sleepless night. Difficult as it was for me, it was tougher for the little family that met my monster menagerie. I think I was able to save each one, though. Here's how it went down:

PepPurr. The dog wakes me up at 3:30am. I can hear the bell on my little black kitty's collar tinkling enthusiastically, along with an occasional thud that can only mean one gruesome thing. I let the dog down off the bed, put on shoes and pants, grab a bag from under the kitchen sink, and head to the bathroom to investigate. The dog is losing her little mind trying to see what's happening in the bathtub. PepPurr is sitting in the tub staring at a tiny little bunny rabbit hopping around. I pause for a moment to admire PepPurr's ingenuity at preventing the rabbit from hopping away in the darkness, then swoop in and grab the bunny. I walk across a soaking wet field, deposit it through a hole in the giant fence separating our property from the elementary school and ball field next door, and watch it hop away. Well done, MathMercy. Now back to bed.

Savvy. The dog wakes me up at 4:30am. This is getting old. I have to be up in three hours. A quick inspection fails to turn up cats or any other critters in the house, but the dog is unconvinced. I let her out the back door and start making some tea. A plaintive cry calls me outside, where I discover my big gray cat teasing a little bunny in the grass. Oh yeah, bunnies cry. When I try to grab the rabbit, the cat picks it up and starts hissing and growling. He is often my sweet lover kitty, but Savvy is sixteen pounds of muscle, fang, and claw, and in this moment he is pure hunter. I try unsuccessfully to make him release the bunny and end up watching him carry it over the fence. We repeat this little sequence four or five times over the next 30 minutes. At 5:00 I finally succeed in getting both cats shut inside the house and head back to pick up the rabbit. My dog beats me there and trots off with the bunny. She is much less experienced than the cat, so I have no trouble prying her jaw apart and rescuing the bunny, who is miraculously still alive. I snap a photo, slip it through the fence onto the ball field, and congratulate myself on the second rescue of the night.

Lola. Holy fuck. Are you kidding me? It's 5:30am. It sounds like PepPurr has a bunny in the living room. I put on my shoes and head out, but I find the cat eating cat food and the dog watching me calmly from the couch. Huh. That's weird. I start looking for an abandoned bunny. It takes me a few minutes to realize that Lola is watching me calmly from the couch with a bunny in her mouth. A minute later, Bunny #3 joins Bunny #2 on the ball field. I hope their mama finds them. If she doesn't, though, I am counting on the elementary school kids to take them in.

Losing all that sleep was a pain, but it was nice to be able to rescue something this week. Last week, I realized that I know the sound of Savvy crunching bones, as he dissected and consumed a rodent in the hallway at 7:30am every day Tuesday through Friday. Worst alarm clock ever. I took photos every day, but Thursday and Friday are pretty gross and I prefer the live bunny. No death pictures today!

Spring Blossoms

I was briefly inspired to start converting my room-sized junk drawer back into a reading/sewing/guest room today. I say "briefly" because after about 20 minutes, I opened a box that contained all the journals from back before I decided that, for me, writing journals is little more than emotional self-indulgence.

After spending some time on memory lane, I am happy to report that the journals of my teens and twenties aren't all negative. Don't get me wrong: there is plenty of gloom and angst, but there is also a lot of joy. There is even poetry. That's right. MathMercy used to write poetry, and she is about to share some of it with you.

This poem was inspired by irises, and mine just bloomed yesterday. Finding it today was probably kismet.

The Faintest Scent

Spring is just moments away, 
Waiting. 
Breathless and giddy like a first date, 
Not yet late but hesitating 
So as not to seem too eager. 

Never one to give Them exactly 
What They Want, 
She hints at just enough 
To keep Them clamoring for more. 
Spring waits outside the door. 

A sigh heard faintly through the willow, 
Spring whispers.  
(Don't weep, my dear. I'm here.) 
She leaves just the faintest scent on pillows, 
Enough to open windows 
To invite her in. 

Springtime is my sin. 

I had put this poem on Poetry.com back in 2000 or 2001, so I was mildly surprised and amused to find that not only does Poetry.com still exist, but so does my poem. Let that be a lesson to you, kiddos. The internet is your permanent record. No matter how well you think you've hidden it, all of your future boy/girlfriends, college admissions boards, and future employers will know that you used to write poetry (gasp).

Incidentally, I'm not surprised if you don't know the scent of iris. Irises have a delicious honey aroma that will make you melt, but they don't like to broadcast it. You basically have to get right in there and risk walking around with pollen on your nose. You won't care, though, because you will be drunk on the scent of paradise. Drink it in and let springtime be your sin.

Kill Blog #3

This rat was whole when I went to the bathroom. When I came out a few minutes later...it wasn't. At least I have definitively solved the mystery of what happens to the missing rodent parts: He eats them. When I moved him away from the guts so I could clean them up, he just moved to the body and started (gag) crunching bones.

Kill Blog #2

They produce a lot less blood and gore than your typical rodent, but dead birds are still lame because their little downy feathers get everywhere.  I think this little birdy just had his little birdy heart ripped out.

Damn it. I just swept and mopped that floor yesterday, psycho!

I should have suspected the kill would be waiting for me in the hall when I woke up to a pile of lovey pets on the bed. Homicidal kitty cats get really affectionate when they have death on the breath.

Kill Blog #1

A friend suggested that I start a kill blog for my sweet sociopath pets. Since I definitely get more death in my house than dates, it seems like a reasonably entertaining way to stave off writers' block. If you have a weak stomach or can't handle witnessing the circle of life in suburbia, you might just want to skip any Kill Blog posts, including this one. 

As I've mentioned before, I am blessed to have three very distinct funny, furry personalities in my home: one dog and two cats who take protecting the house from rodent infestation very seriously. The cats have access to come and go as they please, which means they sometimes often bring their "work" indoors. Tonight when I came home from a night out with my friend L, my dog was super excited to show me this dead mole in the bathroom. 

I'm not sure what the deal is with moles. I think the cats bring them in, kill them, decide they are too small to deal with, and stash them just under the dryer to torment the dog. This is the third one Lola has alerted me to in the past week. At least moles are teeny and rarely mutilated when I find them in the house. Birds and rodents on the other hand are usually a bit, um...messier.

I won't rehash all the former kills. There will be plenty more in the future, I'm sure. However, allow me to tell you about one particularly bloody weekend. It is kind of gross, but you have to be just a little impressed with the sheer volume and creativity.

Friday (The Trifecta)

• 6:30: Lola starts freaking out and begging to be let down off the bed. I’m pretty sure that means one of the cats has brought a gift and I don’t want to deal with it, so I let the dog down and pull the blanket over my head and pretend to sleep.
• 7:00: Whimpering and running around on the hardwood floors hasn’t stopped, so I get up to investigate.
• 7:02: Clean up rat head, rat tail, and random rat innards from the hallway. Let the dog outside. (#1) 
• 7:15: Dog won’t come back in, is trying frantically to get at something in/on/around the lawnmower. Cats are also lurking in the vicinity. I move the lawnmower all around to prove there is nothing there, but dog is not convinced.
• 7:25: Dog is losing her mind trying to dig under the lawnmower, so I turn it over to, once again, prove there is nothing there. Only there is. A freaking rat is clinging to the bottom. I run and grab a bag and broom.
• 7:26: As I try to gently extract the rat to relocate it to a safer home, the dog swoops in, plucks the rat up by the tail, starts shaking it like a squeaky toy, and runs triumphantly off to her hiding place under the porch swing. By the time I get across the yard, the rat is dead. Despite the fact that the cats make me deal with death almost daily, I am somehow totally traumatized to see my sweet fluffy lover dog take such glee in killing something right in front of me. (#2)
• Sometime that evening: Black kitty is playing with two halves of a rat in the hallway. (#3)

Saturday/Sunday (The Lesson)

My friend T called me on Saturday night and asked if I wanted to meet her and some friends for a drink. Since I hadn't yet changed into my sweats (you know I love them!), I decided that it would be just as easy to say yes as it would be to say no. I left the house around 9:00 and headed down to Ballard. I had a great time and for the first time in probably over a decade, I ended up staying out all night. 

When I arrived home at 8am, I noticed something seemed amiss. Nothing major, just a few papers strewn about, like the cats had gotten a little rambunctious. I let the dog out to pee and then started to head off to bed. However, I was stopped by the sight of my slippers where I'd left them in the middle of the living room. Only now, one of them was decorated with a rat foot, a rat tail, and a neat little package of rat organs. Do you understand what I am telling you? There was a little rodent still life artfully arranged on my slipper. I grabbed a paper towel and a grocery bag and leaned in to start the cleanup. It was then that I noticed the rat head, eye wide open, staring at me from INSIDE MY SLIPPER. (#4)

I get it, kitties. You are cute, furry, little four-legged mobsters. You leave me disgusting little messages to teach me not to spontaneously stay out all night. I'm just going to clean this up and go to bed...What the hell is that bird doing on top of the bookshelf?

In my exhaustion and shock over the slipper, I had failed to notice that the cats were both keenly focused on a little bird sitting on top of the bookshelf. I opened the door and the bird started to fly towards it, but the little black kitty jumped from the back of the couch, grabbed the bird in her mouth and carried it off under the bed. 

Luckily, the bird made its way to a corner behind the nightstand where I was able to retrieve it and release it outside. (#4.5) Later that evening, I caught black kitty once again playing with two halves of a rat in the hallway (#5.5). 

My garbage collectors must hate me. 

Root Ramblings

Have you ever noticed how many different uses there are for the word, "roots"? Yeah, me neither. Today, though, my mind started wandering, and that's where it landed. How many ways can you think of to use "roots" in a sentence? I'll give you a minute.... cue Jeopardy music...

Once you got started, you may have noticed that root definitions are kind of like roots themselves - branching, intertwining, going a lot deeper than you initially thought. I'm not going to bore you with a list of all the different definitions. I'm just going to bore you with a couple that jump out to me personally. If you want to abandon ship, now would be the time. Still here? Let's start rooting around with roots!

I'm pretty sure that when making a list, only my math teacher friends may have included a math definition. For the rest of you, bear with me; I'll make this as painless as possible. In math, "root" is used in a couple different ways. The root of a number is this radical value (pun fully intended) that when multiplied by itself a certain number of times creates another number: the square of a square root, the cube of a cube root, and so on. The roots of a polynomial (also called "solutions" or "zeros") are the values that make the function evaluate to zero. Visually, you can picture roots as the spots where the graph of a function crosses the x-axis.

Since not all functions cross the x-axis, not all roots are real. In fact, lots of numbers and polynomials have imaginary roots. That means there are a lot of imaginary zeros that are really solutions, even though they aren't real solutions. Confused yet? It might start getting complex (another pun!) here, so I'm just going to let you ponder this: The number of complex (including imaginary) roots is infinitely greater than the infinite amount of real ones.

This whole roots thing started as I was in the umpteenth hour of pulling grass and weeds from my flower beds. The grass had really taken root during the course of a particularly wet winter and spring, so I had plenty of time to ponder grass roots as I tried to eradicate them (quite unsuccessfully, I'm sure). Here's the thing about grass roots: they form incredibly strong networks. Spend a few hours trying to infiltrate the network and you will have a new appreciation for the concept of a "grassroots" organization. The roots may not run terribly deep, but they spread and interweave in a way that makes every individual blade a vital, seemingly invincible part of the entire system. (GeekMercy here for you less garden-y and more Star Trek-y folks: I imagine grass roots are something like the Borg collective.)

http://www.ck12.org/book/CK-12-Biology-Concepts/r26/section/9.14/

Taproots are much more solitary creatures than grass roots, and probably even more frustrating. If you have ever tried to remove a dandelion root from your lawn or garden, you know taproots. Taproots are super deep and strong, and virtually impossible to remove completely. I am pretty sure that every dandelion and starchy rumex root that I've left mangled in the soil sprouts three new plants, purely out of spite. Taproots can bite me.

Is there anyone that you keep in your life simply because you have a long history (i.e. deep roots) together? It might be a childhood friend or a significant other, but it's someone with whom you no longer share anything other than tradition. That person is your taproot. You know that the garden of your life would be a lot less messy without that person, but experience has proven that it's a lot harder to get rid of them than you thought. You can't just cut them off because they keep coming back. I think if you really want to get rid of that person, you have to treat them like a taproot. Get your hands dirty and dig really deep to sever the root, making sure to get all the little secondary roots too. It's hard. I mean really really hard. After digging for a while, you start to think that it would just be easier to tolerate the dandelion. It is familiar and not so bad really, so you decide to just leave it alone. Next thing you know, you are overrun with dandelions. Not me. I'm on an emotional taproot eradication campaign, clearing the weeds out again so the lovely things that I've planted have room to grow.

I could go on with more examples of roots. I'm pretty satisfied with my metaphor, though, so I'm going to stop while I'm ahead. Besides, I just spotted a rogue dandelion in my hosta that must be dispatched. Until next time, happy weeding!

Real-World Problems

One of my jobs, the one for which I am certified and the one that is my calling, is Math Teacher. When I was offered a full-time position as a professional Data Jockey, I accepted for the salary (after doing the math, it was virtually impossible to say "no'), but I kept a part-time position as an online math teacher so I could still feel like I was performing my math mitzvah. Teacher discounts at office supply stores, craft stores (Michaels!), and J. Crew are just an added perk. Teachers: Here's a list of all the other teacher discounts that you didn't know existed: http://www.giftcardgranny.com/blog/the-complete-list-of-66-teacher-discounts/.

This year, I switched my Algebra 2 and Geometry classes to a Common Core curriculum. Much of the CC content is the same as our previous curriculum, but one major improvement is the quality of the written assignments. Our old curriculum had a single written assignment at the end of each unit, consisting of 20 five-point problems that were basically just straight computation tasks. The new CC problems, though, are far more interesting and teach valuable life lessons. Here are a few of my favorites: How to locate keys accidentally dropped off leaning towers in Pisa, Montreal, or Abu Dhabi; securing a sponsor and entering a sailboat race in San Francisco or Australia; how to make a 3-D printer profitable; calculating the largest TV that you can buy based on your car's trunk size; and being a crime scene investigator. Regarding that last one: No worries. The cow wasn't injured and the driver who swerved to miss her on Highway 2 passed a field sobriety test. Even if you aren't a math geek, you have to admit that these Real-World Problems are kind of fun, right? Right? At the very least, you must agree that they are more interesting and teach more relevant skills than "calculate the volume of a sphere with a circumference of 50π."

Written tasks can be a great way for students to demonstrate a plethora of skills and conceptual understanding...provided that the problems are well-written, engaging, and complex enough to justify a student's written explanation. I know my math teacher friends can attest to how difficult it is to actually create a good problem, so here are a couple of my own to help you out. Feel free to adapt and use them in your own classrooms/lives. Have fun!


1) MathMercy's firewood guy called her out of the blue to ask her out on a date. (Perhaps he felt guilty for delivering the firewood that she was carrying when she tripped and landed on her face back in December.) MathMercy remembered that he was a nice guy and she didn't have anything else going on that afternoon, so she agreed to coffee and a chat in the park. During their conversation, Firewood Guy mentioned that he came from a very tall family, and that at 6 feet 8 inches tall, he wasn't even the tallest. MathMercy comes from considerably shorter stock, and just happens to be the shortest in her short family, at only 5 feet 2 inches tall. Although she is used to being the shortest person in a group, she is pretty sure she has never met anyone quite that tall. She wonders what it would be like to always be looking down at people instead of looking up at them. a) How does MathMercy's height compare to Firewood Guy's height? b) How tall is someone who is proportionally shorter than MathMercy? c) MathMercy's neck is getting sore from looking up all the time, and she realizes that if she places a mirror in just the right spot between herself and Firewood Guy, they can hold a conversation by looking down at each other's reflection in the mirror. If the mirror is 5 feet 2 inches away from Firewood Guy, what must be the distance from the mirror to MathMercy? 

2) MathMercy has observed that the more of something she wants, the less she gets, and the less she wants, the more she gets. Identify the type of variation and sketch a graph demonstrating the relation.

I have created a different sort of problem for myself that I am, unfortunately, unable to convert to an equation and solve. Probably shouldn't say anything, but if I don't it will feel like I am harboring some sneaky activity that I shouldn't be messing with. I agreed to let my ex take my dog and me out to the park a couple of times. I thought it would be harmless if I stood my ground and gently but firmly kept it at a purely platonic, non-romantic level. Maybe we can just be friends, right? Wrong. He isn't ready and I'm not equipped to keep shutting him down. It's too much...I don't know...feeling about something I simply don't feel.

Just to complicate (or perhaps simplify?) things: I have been quite honestly telling the ex that I really just like first dates and that I have no desire to date anyone consistently. Then, I end up meeting someone that I am really looking forward to seeing again. Stupid universe! And that's enough about that. 

Mozart, Mercy, Moving On

Pardon my language at the outset, but shit got crazy weird since my last post.

Communication from my ex did not end with the surprise texts last weekend. Nope. It got so much worse. I started receiving emails professing his remorse and his love and his desire to prove himself to me. Pretty heavy stuff that I never expected nor had any desire to hear, feel, or respond to. I don't feel mad or sad or glad about anything he could say or do anymore. I simply don't care. The first day I realized that I couldn't remember when I last woke up thinking about him or her or us was awesome. Huh. That sounds way colder than I mean. Let's see if I can explain without making myself sound even more like an unemotional sociopath.

"Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest."
-Mozart, Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse

According to Mozart, learning to laugh is the secret to life and becoming Immortal, and I agree. I rarely take much, including myself, very seriously for very long. What I consider a major perk to being A) a Gemini, B) a little bit flighty, and C) cheerful by nature can get annoying to people who are more grounded or focused than me, people like my mother for instance. One of her most common phrases during my smart-ass teen years was, "Oh MathMercy. Stop being so mercurial!" Ha. She probably hasn't said that to me for almost 25 years, but it still comes out with her voice in my head. Basically, I am positively moody, emphasis on positive. I have no attention span for things that don't delight me, so I don't hold on to bad moods, anger or sadness very long. Once I decide to change my mind/mood, I pick myself up, dust myself off, move on, and don't look back. I am a master conflict-avoider mostly because I generally don't have the patience to argue for more than a couple minutes and I am too easily distracted to hold grudges. So when I say I really don't care, I mean it. I have moved beyond feeling (good or bad) for a marriage that seems like a lifetime ago. I am looking forward, not back.

At the same time, I can't just ignore someone - anyone - telling me they are in pain. When I couldn't stand it any longer, I replied to my ex and told him as tactfully as I could that my life is different now, that I can forgive but would never be able to forget what he did, that I have started dating, and that I enjoy living alone and free of commitment and baggage. Whew.

Mercy
In his reply, he mentioned something about me living up to my name. That brought up memories of my grandmother quoting this to me when I was little:

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
-Portia, The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare

Arg. I am straining to maintain an un-strained quality of mercy, but I refuse to sacrifice the un-strained Quality of Mercy. In other words: no stress, no bad days, no time to do anything that doesn't make MathMercy happy. I hope you find happiness soon. It won't be with me. I don't want to be rude, but I refuse to deal with this. 

Moving On
This afternoon, I went out for coffee with a guy that I had only chatted with a couple times on POF. I usually try to get to know someone better before agreeing to meet them, but I think I needed to assert my independence. I wanted to prove to myself that my life wouldn't change just because my ex moved back. I'm a single lady who is free to date whomever she wants, right? Well, today I was free to date a very nice gentleman who looks like a clean-cut Snoop Dogg/Lion. At the end of our coffee date, I was also able to assert my independence and self-reliance by calling AAA when my battery kicked the bucket.

While I waited for AAA, I ate some delicious street tacos (goat! I am so adventurous) and played Candy Crush. Anyone out there have tips on beating level 245?. When the AAA dude arrived, he tested my battery, starter, and alternator, and then showed me on his printout just how old and dead the battery was. He sold me a new battery, we compared levels on Candy Crush, and then I drove on home. No stress, no bad days, happy MathMercy is on her way.

Surprise!

This is the grill of the Mack truck that just smacked into me head-on a few hours ago. Metaphorically, that is. In an extremely rare turn of events, MathMercy is speechless. I literally have no words. Please help.

Hypothetical to the scores of scorneds out there: How would you react if you were informed that your ex was coming back from the other side of the country, and that you had something - however small - to do with it? Think about it for a second. Now really think about it. Do you have your response in mind? Good. Hold onto that thought. Let's continue.

Are you feeling vindicated in the knowledge that you were right? Are you feeling at all pissed that your ex has the audacity to pop back into your brain and your life when you have finally rediscovered yourself and realized that you will never be yourself with him, or probably anyone else? Are you imagining what you would say if a mutual friend said your ex wanted to meet up with you?Are you fantasizing about the things you would say to said ex's face if you happened to bump into said ex at some event? Are you feeling perhaps just a little too much glee that everything is going right for you and not so much for him?

So, I have this friend. Let's call her, um...MythMary. These are her reactions to the hypothetical situation above: Um, I don't want to be all, like, "told you so", but who didn't know that moving away with your mistress/rebound wasn't going to work out? What a jerk.  I just hope his friends let him know that he has nothing to gain by contacting me, as I have nothing to say to him...except maybe "told you so". Ha. Told you so. 

As you can imagine, MathMary MythMercy Myth...screw it...MathMercy is extremely grateful to her multiple sources. Yes, moles, you can rest easy in the knowledge that you were not the only one to warn me, so no one has to know I heard it from you. I am eternally grateful that you all tried to warn me of the blindside. Armed with good intel, I felt I was prepared to know that my ex-husband was living in the same state as me within the next couple weeks. Now I can avoid unpleasant surprises. No drama, no sweat.

Okay, new hypothetical: How would you react if your ex started texting you from the road on his epic drive "home"? What the FUCK?!?! 

In the first hypothetical, did you ever imagine that your ex would actually contact you? It never occurred to me. What if the things he said were all things to which your only response would make you look like an asshole? You know this is not your home, right? Yep, you are a coward. Of course I was right - you don't have to tell me. Sorry it didn't work out for you, but my life is honestly a whole lot better now, so thanks for leaving. As far as I'm concerned, he doesn't have the right to use my name and/or phone number anymore, but I'm not really enough of a bitch to tell him that while he's driving cross-country with his tail between his legs. I haven't replied yet. What would you do?

Rings and Things

Sorry I haven't written for so long. I have been really busy with work and just haven't had anything that exciting to write about on the dating front. This is going to be a bit of a potpourri catch-up post.

First and foremost, my Seattle Seahawks won the Super Bowl! Three weeks after the win, the Seahawks balloon that I bought the night before Super Bowl XLVIII is still bobbing in my living room as the greatest cat toy ever. My Sundays feel empty now...27 1/2 weeks until kickoff, but who's counting?

Just like the Seahawks got their rings, I got mine, and I feel like I worked just as hard for it as they did. I wanted to do something with my engagement ring to make it more relevant, so I took it and an amethyst my grandmother gave me a few years ago to the jeweler who made the ring. I envisioned making a big-ass blingy ring with the amethyst and all the diamonds from my ring, but the jeweler talked me out of it. Perhaps I didn't properly communicate to him that I am totally at peace with my inner Jewish American Princess. In any case, he convinced me that an amethyst of that size would just get scratched as a ring, so I should turn it into a pendant instead. Three hours later, I had designed a pendant using the amethyst and the center diamond from my ring, selected a new stone for the ring, and had charged an amount greater than my rent to my debit card. I won't confess what I paid for the jewelry, but I will say that it was by far more money than I have ever spent on myself. For something so frivolous too! It actually felt gloriously symbolic of my independence to be able to pay for my very own baubles for no other reason than I wanted them. Happily, when I picked up the ring and pendant, I also received appraisals stating the combined value was nearly four times what I'd paid, so I think I did a pretty good job for myself. Plus, they are so sparkly! I love sparkly.

Football, jewelry, what's next? Oh yeah. Dating. Not much happening with the online dating because I'm just not that motivated anymore. I'm kind of over the get-to-know-you and decide if we should meet in person messages. After about five, you start to realize that you're having the same conversation with five different people. There may be plenty of fish in the sea, but not many of them stand out. I had a funny conversation the other day with another Plenty of Fish-er about the similarities in POF dudes. It turns out that there are also some generational differences. A bit younger than me, my friend E's preferred age range is 25-40, while mine is 35-45. Upon comparing notes, here's what we determined: Men in their late 20s and early 30s claim to be artists and musicians, but the dream dies in their mid-to-late 30s, at which point they become personal trainers. As men move from E's accepted age range into mine, they apparently take up hiking and MMA fighting. Seriously. You have no idea how many guys claim to be MMA fighters and/or personal trainers on POF, and they ALL hike. In my age range, there are also a lot of truck drivers. I'm not sure what's up with that, but there have been enough that it bears mentioning. I'm not a snob, but I'm not looking for a truck driver. Nor am I looking for a delusional "MMA fighter" or "personal trainer". 

Honestly, I'm not really looking for anybody, which makes online dating seem like a waste of time. I don't want a relationship, and I obviously don't want a one night stand. I still have enough dates to keep me from being a total spinster, and I have plenty of free time to myself and no weird pressure. Sure, there are times when it would be nice to have someone next to me, but I don't want it all the time. In truth, I think I just like receiving attention. There's nothing wrong with that, right? The other night I gave my number to a 26 year old hottie solely because he flattered me by saying he wouldn't have guessed I'm older than 28. 26 is really young. Then again, if I'm not looking for anything in particular, should age matter? We've been texting since Friday and just exchanged POF user names. Honestly, if he weren't so young, he would be a hot prospect. He has a masters degree, is an architect/contractor, grew up in Montana, and he can spell and punctuate. Am I ready to own being a cougar? Stay tuned, gentle reader. Stay tuned. 

Reflections, Rockin', and Rollers

Almost three weeks in, 2014 has been a good, productive year so far. I have been blissfully busy with work and play, but I haven't taken any time out to reflect yet. Hold on to your hats, folks. It's Reflection time!

First, a brief word about Reflections. When I was in math teacher school, my fellow future math teachers and I all vowed to make our future math students write Reflections every day. That sounds like a vow to be a dedicated teacher, right? Well...not exactly. You see, we had to Reflect a lot in math teacher school, and I hated Reflecting. Fellow math teachers: you know that twit who whines, "but this is maaath! Why do I have to write in maaath class?" on every story problem or journal entry? That twit is basically me as a math student. Thus, when I vowed to make my future math students write daily Reflections, it was mostly out of spite. I figured that if I had to Reflect to become a teacher, my students should be forced to Reflect twice as much, by golly! Luckily my training and my teaching experience have demonstrated that Reflecting on a lesson actually really helps students make a connection between what they learn and what they know/understand, so it all works out. Even so, let this be a lesson to you, kiddos: Sometimes grown-ups make you do character building stuff just for kicks, and every now and then it just happens to be good for you. (You didn't hear it from me.)

The Reflective Property of an Ellipse

Ok, that's enough of a tangent. Is there a point to all of this reflection? Probably not, but if there is, I'll get around to it soon. (Excuse my bad math humor, but you get a gold star if you can correctly identify all the puns. I have even included a clue. Sorry, math teacher friends. You are automatically disqualified.) 

In a previous post (Pants), I mentioned Moe's Mo'Roc'n Cafe, the club where I spent just about every night of being 21-23 years old. Last week, I attended a Moe reunion party and a couple of the anniversary shows, and I had a fantastic time. I saw some great live music, I got out of the house three times in five days(!), and I saw a bunch of old friends, a couple flames, and even a fling or two that I haven't seen since the club closed in 1997. Think Rock 'N' Roll High School's 20 year reunion, only not nearly so boppy.

It was weird to reconnect with people who only know me as the 23 year old MoeMercy. These are people who never knew the awkward, slightly insecure, drama geek, wallflower TeenMercy or the more cautious, slightly insecure, homebody, wifey MathMercy. These people met me during a period of young adulthood when I was relatively carefree, confident, flirty, independent, opinionated, and sometimes loud and obnoxious. You know what? I like that chick. So, maybe I channel my inner MoeMercy more often...only without all the booze and staying out until 4am every night. MathMercy needs her tea and sleep. 

MOE!

Happily, the Sunday night show at Moe started and ended early (because apparently no one can stay up late on a work/school night anymore). I was on the freeway heading back to my little suburban cottage by 11:30, reflecting on what a great week it had been and how awesome it was that I would still probably be home by midnight. About 15 minutes from home - right by my old house actually - police lights came on behind me. I pulled off onto a dead end street as two police cruisers pulled up behind me. 

I have been pulled over maybe 5 times in the 25 years that I have been licensed to drive (That's right. Idaho gave out licenses to 14 year olds. Terrifying, right?) The few times that I've been pulled over before, I totally panicked and more often than not, burst into tears. Disgusting. This time, though, I was oddly calm as the officer walked to the window and told me my tabs were expired. I told him this was probably going to sound like a line that he hears all the time, but I had just received the truck when my divorce was finalized on 12/16, and had only decided not to sell it a couple weeks ago. I simply hadn't thought about the tabs yet. He asked a few more questions, collected my documents, and walked back to his car.

It seemed like it took waaaay too long for him to check my record. While I waited, I used my smart phone to pull up a copy of the divorce decree to prove my story. He still wasn't back, so I looked up the nearest emissions check station and DMV office and added them to my agenda for the morning. Still waiting, I turned up my iPod-powered stereo: Police and Thieves. Not as bad as I Shot the Sheriff, but not good. I turned the music off  The longer I waited with the lights of TWO police cars broadcasting my shame to the neighbors who were doubtless peeking out their windows, the more I felt like I was going to jail. Let me go on the record here: this was totally irrational. I just couldn't imagine what could be taking so long, and my imagination was left to its own devices. Oh my gosh. I told him I hadn't been drinking, but I did have two beers about three hours ago. Should I tell him when he comes back? No. Then I'll be a liar on top of whatever else he's finding on me. I should probably just practice saying the alphabet backwards. Z - Y - X...What is he finding on me anyway? Did I maybe get caught by a red light cam that I don't know? Can they arrest me for that? Rational thought inserted here: my name is not on the title for this vehicle yet. Will they let me use my debit card to bail myself out or do I actually have to call someone? Who should I call? Mom is an attorney, but could I really handle calling my mother from jail? Shit. There were people smoking (something that is perfectly legal) in here tonight. If I reach for that fabric spray in the back seat, will he think I'm reaching for a gun? I kept one hand on the wheel, grabbed the spray, and got off a couple spritzes just before he finally came back to the window. I braced myself to be asked to exit the vehicle.

"What's a good contact number for you?" The officer wrote my phone number down in his little notepad. He continued, "I feel bad because of your situation..." Is he about to let me go? Oh wow. Please let me go. I really don't want to see what the inside of a jail cell looks like. "...but I do have to give you this ticket" (which was already written out, tucked behind his notepad). He then told me he was NOT advising me what to do, but he STRONGLY recommended that I check the box on the back requesting a mitigation hearing so I could present my story and my proof of registration to the judge. I thanked him and promised to take care of the tabs first thing in the morning. As he drove to the end of the cul-de-sac to turn around, I started to tuck the ticket into my wallet. Wait. My phone number is not written on this ticket. Did that cop really just take my digits? I think he did! If I had been flirty, could I have avoided getting the ticket altogether? He was cute and had really nice blue eyes...I'd date that guy, especially if he wore his uniform. Yeah, I think uniforms are pretty hot. After all, this blog IS called "Confessions..."

My tabs are now current, I have mailed my request for a hearing to the Seattle Municipal Court, and now I'm just waiting for that date. If Officer Blue Eyes does call, I want to make sure there's no legal awkwardness between us. :)

Aloha and Mahalo

January 3 is an aloha and mahalo day for me. Trivia tidbit of the day: according to Wikipedia, aloha has only meant "hello" and "goodbye" since the 19th century, but it actually means "affection, peace, compassion, and mercy." Nothing is more appropriate for my January 3 than "hello, goodbye, affection, peace, compassion, and mercy," as well as the gratitude and respect expressed through mahalo.

Pigeon and me in our kittenish years

One year ago today, I said goodbye to my best friend of almost 18 years as I released my Siamese mix, Pigeon, to the great hunting grounds in the sky. Graceful, playful, talkative, and aloof, Pigeon was my familiar spirit, my daemon through adulthood. What follows are a few of my favorite memories of her.

Pigeon was an excellent judge of male character, which is to say that she was generally not a fan of my boyfriends. Perhaps I should have paid closer attention to the fact that she consistently pissed on my ex husband's skateboard for the first year or so that she knew him, right? Pigeon had an amazing trick where she would jump out a third story bay window and into another on the outside of the building in order to escape from her litter mate during games of chase. She would then sneak up behind him and meow at him to get the chase going again. Pigeon would always lie dangerously close to a heat source and she knew that the pops and clangs of a 100 year old radiator meant that heat would be coming soon. A clever kitty, she would bang on the radiator to try to get it loud enough to turn on. As a kitten, she had an adorable habit of leaving her tongue sticking out just a little bit. She would wake me up by sitting on my chest, staring earnestly at me with that ridiculous tongue sticking out. It was all I could do not to laugh her off of me every morning. There is no better way to wake up than with laughter and love in your heart, and I adore her for giving me that gift. Aloha and mahalo, Pigeon.

My heart broke when I took Pigeon to the vet that last time. It was the first time that I had been to Inglemoor Animal Hospital, but I was so impressed with the level of compassion and professionalism that they showed for what could have been a one-time visit. When I requested cremation, the vet told me that Pigeon's ashes would be spread over an apple orchard in the Yakima Valley. True to her word, I received a postcard with a picture of Pigeon's final resting place a month or two later. The vet also told me not to stop at the front desk to pay, that we would take care of it at a better time. That was such a small gesture, but it meant so much to me. I have been treated just as well every time that I've been back to the clinic. I highly recommend them if you are in a need of a vet in the Bothell/Kenmore/Juanita area.

PepPurr and Savvy moments before a play-fight

Six hours after saying goodbye to Pigeon, I said hello to a new black kitten. I know that may seem awfully soon, but it was something I needed to do, and I'm so glad I did. My PepPurr is a lovey little clown who is an amazing playmate to my dog, Lola, and my other cat, Savvy. She may not be an alter-ego like Pigeon was, but she is a manifestation of sheer joy and love. She allows Lola to lick inside her ears, has taught Lola how to wash her own face with her paws, and is fearless in bringing out the kitten in a cranky cat who is twice her size.

PepPurr and Lola clownin'

Incredibly affectionate, PepPurr likes to smash her face into mine and purr for attention, and she wakes me up with sandpaper kisses on my chin or nose. When I was having a tough time last summer, PepPurr, Lola, and Savvy would come together and compete with each other to lap the most tears off my cheek, which almost always ended in laughter. Honestly, I could go on and on about how great this cat is, but I will spare you any more crazy cat-lady talk, dear reader. Mostly I just want to express how grateful I am that PepPurr came into my home and my heart on 1/3/13. Happy adoption day, PepPurr! Aloha and mahalo.

In keeping with the theme of cats and this blog's supposed theme of dating, I will close with this, a gift from my cousin L, who has also found himself wading in the deep end of the dating pool. I love it.