Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Public Service Announcement: Hell is going to freeze over.

Two reasons:  My ex is being a normal, responsible adult sans snarky comments.  I'm calling it a festivus miracle.  And Krista found a guy.  Admittedly, the second reason is very premature and uncertain, but it sounds good.

My Football RNG has been making his presence known in my little world on a very regular basis, but not so regular I'd assign the stalker tag to him.  I likey.  :-)

In addition to football, I have this whole "Gilmore Girls" obsession going on so let's make a pro/con list a la Rory.

Pros:
He is very sweet and thoughtful.  After knowing me for less than a week he made a point to get a card for my birthday and give me a steaming, hot... cup of Starbuck's Gingerbread Latte.  :-)  Get your collective mind out of the gutter.

He's a single dad so he "gets" it.  He understands my schedule is not super flexible.  He understands I am hesitant to allow my son to spend time with him and/or his daughter because I don't want him to get attached to someone who isn't permanent.

He has a daughter.  I love this because should this become serious I'd have a son and a daughter.  I would love to have a little girl to have tea parties with, to play dress-up with and to put in ridiculously cute clothes.  I wouldn't dislike a guy who had a son, just saying I totally count this as a "pro".

I can use my full vocabulary without seeing him reach for a dictionary.  Intelligence is hot, people.

Cons:
He is a lawyer which is a little weird for me since I have a whole love/hate thing going on with lawyers.  Is it a good idea to be in a relationship with someone who argues for a living?

His fatal flaw is that he is not as into football as I am.  This could be a huge issue.  Although I suppose having one sane human being in the house on Sundays, Monday and Thursday nights would be a good idea.

The final point could fall into the pro or con file: His ex is practically non existent.  This could be a good thing as we should have a complete lack of drama because of this, but this could also create extra drama for those times when she decides to sashay into the picture again.

So far, I am really liking this guy, but considering an adulterous ex husband, an uptight ex boyfriend and several bad dates over the past few months I am doubting my decision-making abilities.  I'm just going to channel the turtle for a while and roll slow and steady. 

Monday, December 13, 2010

Ambushed

One of the advantages of having a fantastic circle of friends is their inability to allow me to dwell in the land of single-dom for long.  One of the disadvantages of having a meddling circle of friends in their inability to let me be solo for a while.

A few days ago one of these intrusive loving friends issued an invite for a game day party at her house.  I have a rather unhealthy obsession with football which can occasionally cause me to erupt in loud fits of armchair quarterbacking so I hesitated to accept, but agreed in the end because I knew my little man would love the chance to play with other children.  I had no idea she planned to entrap me.

I was having a blast, screaming at an inadequate offensive line who allows their already injured quarterback to be sacked repeatedly.  My son was running around like a madman playing with children who are just as crazy as he is and completely ignoring my escalating volume.  Then the doorbell rang to herald the arrival of a latecomer aka another RNG.

My friend excitedly presented her husband's "really nice" friend who he has known since high school.  Now, again, I must emphasize the fact that during a football game is NOT a good time to introduce me to someone you are hoping will be a candidate for the title of Mr. Krista. 

I have to give her RNG some credit though, he wasn't fazed by my complete lack of self-control when one of my favorite players in all of the NFL returned an interception for a 45 yard TD or my impatience with an offense who didn't score a single touchdown all game long. 

In spite of being less than thrilled that my planned day of watching sports and hanging out with friends turned into a blind date I was completely unprepared for, I actually rather liked this one.  He's smart, funny, adequately attentive without being overbearing... not a bad result for a sneak attack first meeting.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Mr. Not-Quite Right

The majority of the time I work as a patient education director, but I'm also an RN and do on-call work in a private office.  Like I mentioned before, if it isn't a married doctor, it's a patient hitting on me and that has all kinds of ethical "rules" attached that I'm reticent to break.

I do, however, run across the occasional single guy who isn't my patient.  A while ago this happened with a cardiologist at the hospital where I work.  After a few dates, numerous hours logged on the phone and too many texts to count I began to think he could be my Mr. Right v 2.0.  He even bought my son a birthday gift despite never meeting him.  Yeah, a decent way to melt the heart of a single mama is to be good to her kid.

Two things that are sure to make me fall in love with a guy: intelligence and wit.  I value intelligence highly and a great sense of humor is a must.  Reid has the first requirement cinched easily.  He is brilliant and I feel myself falling a little bit more every time we have an in depth conversation at the magnitude of his intelligence.  The sense of humor part?  Ehhh, not so much.  He can be funny at times, but there are other times my smart-assery is lost on him.  I have done a lot of back and forth internal conversations about whether or not this is something I can live with or a deal breaker for me.  This particular quandary took care of itself.

One night we were at dinner, we were having a fantastic conversation and I felt that giddy feeling.  At that point I seriously thought that I could deal with the imperfect sense of humor thing because I know that in 30 years we'd still have a great relationship filled with deep and meaningful conversations and that was good enough for me.  I found Mr. Wonderful.  The whole dating drama was over. 

Until I started being playful.  I admit, I am extremely flirtatious especially when I'm in a relationship.  I don't stop the little games when I'm in a committed relationship and become complacent, I just escalate. 

I slipped off my shoe and ran my foot slowly up and down his calf and even traced little designs on his leg with my toes.  He was obviously affected by this pretty quickly.  His breathing was uneven and he kept clearing his throat while he was talking.  I wasn't content to just make him a little warm under the collar, I wanted to have some fun.  The next step was to clean my fork slowly and provocatively while looking at him with one eyebrow raised.  I barely finished licking the last remaining bit of sauce from my top lip when he decided we needed to make a hasty exit.

Confession:  I was really proud of myself by this point.  The speed at which Reid went from discussing the latest case study about Aspirin correlating with decreased cancer deaths in additon to the well-known cardiac benefits to being all worked up was a record even for me. 

What do they say about pride going before a fall?  I've found that old addage to be true thus far.  When we got back to his house, he began kissing me and then abruptly pulled back.  "Krista, I'm a doctor.  A medical professional.  People saw me at that restaurant.  They could have been patients or the family members of patients.  How would they feel about seeing the physician in charge of their health and quite possibly their life in such a compromising situation?"

After being thoroughly lectured, my desire for any more fun that night disappeared along with my silly notions of a relationship with Reid.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Sunday Night Playlist

Tonight I blanked. out.

A little background:  My son's birthday was last month, but I did his party today due to his father's complaints about nothing being convenient for him some scheduling conflicts.  He adores "Cars", so that was the theme I went with for the party.  I decided to make a lot of the decorations myself because A) I'm a crafty kind of girl and B) the ones available for purchase failed to move me save for the scene setter.  So I made oval racetracks and checkered flag centerpieces for eight tables.  This was in addition to making all the food outside of the cake and wrapping my gifts for him.  Needless to say I went to bed at about 4am and my darling, precocious, intuitive 2 yr old woke up before 7am.  I spent the 8 hrs between his adorable wake-up call and the party finishing last minute details, transporting things to the party location, making quick trips to the store and blowing up so many balloons that I thought I was going to pass out.

All this combined to my brain freeze tonight.  My nightly routine for putting my son to bed involves bedtime stories, whispered conversations about the day and finally some lullabies.  I tend to lean towards unconventional lullabies.  Actually they aren't lullabies at all, just favorite songs of mine sung softly like "Let It Be".

Tonight, however, I couldn't come up with any decent songs to sing so our playlist went something like this:
"O Holy Night"
"Silent Night"
"Lips of an Angel"
"Where Are You Christmas?"

Nontraditional, even for me, but it worked.  He was out in under ten minutes and my unusual concert closed, much to the chagrin of the neighborhood dogs that decided to sing along. ;-)

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Putting the "fun" back in "dysfunction"!

Not really, but I am a hopeless optimist.

My ex came over for Thanksgiving, as promised.  I impressed myself with the speed at which I pulled my jaw from the floor when he walked in that morning.  I did my best to basically stay in the kitchen so he and the boy could play and have some time together.  This is an easy task with my "Martha Stewart" complex to create the perfect holiday feast and food bordering on gourmet.

Things were going swimmingly until some chick had to start drama.  The little vixen's name is Dora.  As in "Dora the Explorer".  I wish I was kidding, but my ex did indeed pick a fight over Dora.

My son is 2, newly 2 as a matter of fact.  His world is pretty small, but ever-changing.  One day he is madly in love with Thomas, the next day it is Dino Dan, but some of his few constants are "Cars" and Dora. 

We were at a store recently and he saw a Dora doll, almost the same size as him, and fell in love.  He was hugging it, clinging to it and begging me to let him bring Dora home.  Under normal circumstances, I adhere to the "don't get used to having mommy buy you something every blessed time we're at the store" rule stringently.  This, however, occurred shortly following his birthday.  The birthday at which his dad was a big fat no show.  In a moment of weakness and guilt, I bought him this insanely sized Dora doll.  I have to say it's been a great investment in the potty training world.  When I need him to sit still, all we do is roll Dora up beside him on her own potty seat and it's all good to sit there for a while.

My ex thinks this is an inappropriate toy for a 2 year old boy.  He's a boy, not a girl.  It's a girl's toy.  I disagreed and stated that while fighting the urge to smash the pumpkin pie in his face.  I was fairly certain that would not be considered my most mature move. ;-) 

And the day fell apart from there.  Bring on Christmas!!!