The One That Got Away

How apropos
To know
That the one that got away
Was to clear the stage
For the one supposed to stay.

I Want a Man With a Truck

I was out playing in my garden yesterday morning. I hauled a couple wheelbarrow loads of mulch back by my fishpond. The wheel was flat and as I pondered how I would get it fixed, I looked around my garage. Last year, I had a minivan, but after the broadside accident, I bought a nice, sedate sedan. I can't haul a wheelbarrow in the back of my Mazda.

Kevin mowed the grass for the first time on Sunday. I usually take it in to be serviced in the springtime, but...no minivan anymore. Greg's bike is broken, now he's riding Scott's bike and I'm waiting for all hell to break loose when both of them want the bike at the same time.

So, I'm standing outside, looking around, thinking, and it occurs to me that I need a truck...just for a day or two. So then I think, I need a man with a truck. This is what happens when I think such thoughts. Whaddya think? Should I head to Nashville? Anybody come up with a catchy tune to go with it?

I Want a Man With a Truck

I want a man who knows what he wants
His jeans are clean and fit well in the butt
He’s strong and he’s honest and has facial hair
I want a man with a truck.

I want a man who can toss one back
He brings me flowers and pets my cat
He praises my cooking and calls me honey
I want a man with a truck.

I want a man who can fix my car
He calls everyday to see how I are
He picks me up at 7:00 on Friday night
I want a man with a truck.

I want a man who knows his place
At the head of the table and washin’ the plates
He pinches my butt and rubs my neck
I want a man with a truck.

I want a man I can call my own
Who’s all done lookin’ and wants to settle down
He stretches out long on my big poster bed
I want a man who can….

Oops.

I want a man with a truck.

Who's Afraid of Big, Bad Betty?

Last First Date guy is back in the picture. He is attending a business luncheon with me tomorrow and he has invited to his house for Easter. I will meet his sons and his mother and who knows what other relatives. I called him two weekends ago to tell him I didn’t want to play anymore and to ask him to stop calling me. Our relationship had consisted of phone calls two or three times a week, with a date once a month. How does one build a relationship seeing someone once a month, especially when we live and work only 10 miles from each other? I was exasperated. The relationship seemed to be going nowhere and I was tired of playing the game. Part of me hoped The Wedding Guy would come to his senses, and part of me hoped that I could actually take the rest of 2006 off and learn to live alone in my heart.

After a lengthy phone call with both of us describing what we needed, and with a little more attention from him, I am considering a new tactic. I’m considering monogamy. I’m considering focusing my attention on just one man.

But then, my new best friend from Utah buzzes me on Yahoo Messenger, and there I go, batting my eyelashes, and blushing, and winking, and calling him honey and handsome. He is a wonderful writer, and I swear to God, when he uses clever alliterations and correctly places the it’s apostrophe, my nipples get hard. Later, in the afternoon, the new man from Kentucky IM’s me and off I go, talking about his accounting practice and gardening and starry nights and the moon rising over the foothills. He tells me about the stick shift on his truck and my heart beats faster, the blood rushes to my head. Can I stop?

Can I stop and focus my attention on one man?

I don’t know.

I miss The Wedding Guy. I emailed him last Friday, and called him on Sunday. He hasn’t responded. I don’t think he’s reading the blog anymore, either, and that is just as well. I told him I thought he was selfish for getting involved with me in the first place when someone else already occupied his heart. I think I pissed him off.

Just because I think he did a selfish thing, doesn’t mean I don’t readily see all his beautiful qualities as well.

I know it’s best this way, but I still miss him.

But maybe I won’t after lunch tomorrow.

Big, bad Betty.

Sometimes I even scare myself.

The Sum of My Life

A fellow blogger did a post listing all of the jobs he has held, and it sounded like a good idea, seeing as my weekend sucked and I haven’t decided whether or not to post about it. So…here goes.

1. 7th and 8th grade-concession stand worker at a drive-in movie theatre. My family ran the concession stand…I got $1 an hour.

2. 9th and 10th grade-babysitter for neighbors. I got $1.50 an hour.

3. 11th and 12th grade-waitress. I worked for Pizza King until they went out of business, then a restaurant called Mom’s Place, until they went out of business. I was worried maybe I was bad luck or something, but looking back, it seems that it was just the perils of the restaurant business because no other businesses closed after employing me.

4. College years Summer of 1977 through May 1980-PBS…professional bedpan slinger, one of the most rewarding jobs I’ve ever performed. I felt, every day, that my work made a difference, an important difference, in someone’s life. I helped dozens of people transition to whatever it is that comes next, and I learned from them, so many lessons of life, of death, of regret, of living at its most basic level.

5. Mother’s Helper, Summer of 1980-I fell in love with two babies in Evanston, Illinois. I helped a little boy take his first steps, I comforted him when he was sick with the flu, much to the chagrin of his mother. (g)

6. August 1980 through May 1982-another stint as a PBS, different nursing home, same nursing home where my father died.

7. August 1982-November 1982-Life insurance sales person…very important lessons on selling and being humble. Talk about learning how to deal with rejection!

8. November 1982 through November 1983-Local accounting firm in Dayton. I met my future ex (?) and got a stepping stone to the job of my dreams, the Big Eight! Think accounting firms, not porno star….

9. November 1983-June 1991-dream job, Big Eight accounting firm, first in Houston Texas, then in Cincinnati.

10. June 1991 through April 1992-smaller, local firm. I learned some of the basics of office management.

11. May 1992 through now-my own accounting firm.

That’s the sum total. I dreamed last night that I got a new job writing copy for an advertising firm. The firm was rather bizarre…one big party, people dressed up as characters from Sin City, doing all these creativity enhancing exercises, or so they called them. Seemed to me like they were just having fun. I asked my “boss” when the work started, and she said that this was what the work was. It was surreal, like watching a movie and being in it at the same time.

I’ve had times like that in my life before. Dramatic events where I step back and watch the drama unfold, only to realize the reality. No details yet, maybe never. Not the best weekend of my life.

Wind up, Pitch, Play Ball

Dear Writing Sisters and Friends of WWf(a)C,

I was working in my garden last weekend and realized, as I pulled dandelions out by their roots, and loosened the soil around my rhododendrons, that instead of random thoughts, I was composing in my head. I was searching for alliteration and metaphor, and considering my deepest secrets instead of thinking of the mundane aspects of my day. I don’t know if this is common to all writers, but I don’t think I’m alone in this practice. My time with Women Writing for (a) Change has not just brought my words out into the open, it has changed the very fabric of my life. I think differently, and because I think differently, I live differently.

Fifteen years ago, the first circle formed at a small gathering which has now grown into a movement. We have passed the stone to countless women who have found their voices, expressed their voices, lifted their voices to the heavens in celebration of the changes wrought in their lives.

Those of us touched intrinsically by the leadership of Mary Pierce Brosmer and the teachings of Women Writing for (a) Change want to ensure that the messages we learn and share find a permanent home. We have purchased the 8700 square foot building at 6906 Plainfield Road to create a place for women’s words into perpetuity.

We need your help to raise the $1,000,000 to purchase the building, remodel it to perfection, and to create an endowment to ensure that every woman, regardless of economics, can find her voice in the midst of our circles. We are asked to give to many worthy causes, out of duty, out of historical connections, out of obligations to members of our families.

Pull out your wallet, and give to something that represents you, for a change; that represents the new woman inside of you, for a change; that will benefit the women in your life and in lives to come, for a change.

Touch the souls of women around you and listen to the voices soar.

With deep admiration and respect to all the women who have listened, and spoken, and written before me, and especially, to those voices that have yet to be heard,

Elizabeth J. Winters Waite
Volunteer Chair
Campaign to Create a Place for Women’s Words

Spring Clean Up

I have been gardening again, the warm weather and spring breezes calling to me as I process audits and tax returns. I love springtime. I love the rebirth and regrowth and the hopefulness of it all. I try to be tenacious as the dandelions, forgiving as the daisies and as loving as the Iris in their yellow and violet gowns. There’s a song I like called, “Let Me Fall In Love Before the Spring Comes” and every year I listen to it wistfully, finding myself falling in love all over again, once I get back to my garden.

Saturday, I cleared out the old stuff, all withered and black and sad looking. Most gardeners get that stuff out of the way in the fall, but I can never bring myself to cut back plants that still have green left in them, even if the green is unpleasing. In addition, through the winter, I like to drive by my yard and look at the dried stalks. They remind me of what was and what will be again, once enough time has past. I’m glad I waited this year. My butterfly bush, which usually has only dead, dried stalks at the end of the winter, decided to live and was covered with green wisps when I went to cut it back.

Those days past the anticipation of Christmas, but before the spring thaw are sometimes difficult for me. If I can hold onto the hope that comes with spring, if I can live through the days that lap into weeks that fold into months, then the scene changes and nature’s new spring line rewards my patience.

I cleaned the fishpond on Sunday. One of the fish didn’t make it through the winter. There was no carcass, nothing to mourn or bury, just the absence of a fish. When I cleaned the pond in the fall, there were five. Now there are only four. I scooped out the winter gunk from the bottom of the pond, my watchful eye on the lookout for the missing fish, but I saw nothing. I listened to Garrison Keillor croon about Lake Wobegon, and I tapped my foot to the bluegrass tunes of Ricky Skaggs, as I filtered out gunk until nothing appeared on my strainer except the minnows still alive from Kevin’s venture to the creek last summer. The water was murky and wild looking by the time I was done scrubbing the algae off the sides. I changed the filter and cleaned off the pumps and turned the waterfall back on.

This morning, I took my coffee and my latest copy of Sun Magazine out to the pond. I was dressed for work, my make up carefully applied, my hair turned fetchingly under at the ends. I wore a dress and my leather thongs, newly manicured toenails a deep shade of pink in celebration of the new season. The birds chorused, a pair of cardinals acknowledged my reappearance, the squirrels chattered their nonchalance.

Sunshine sauntered across the pond. Today was the day the pond water returned to normal clarity, the pond scum now safely settled to the bottom once again. The waterfall flow was fast and furious from one spigot, slow and drippy from the other.

I think I’ll leave it that way.

Life isn’t always about all things being equal.

TWG Update

Because you asked, I’ll give you all an update on The Wedding Guy.

Silence.

Sigh.

I tried, really, I did. I tried to let myself just live in the moment.

I tried to ignore his commitments to other people, the distance, the different directions our hearts were headed. I tried to think of him casually, as someone with whom I could simply share time.

I just couldn’t do it.

I called him from my cell phone and left him a message. And while I was at it, I called the Last First Date guy and left him the same message.

I have been in the second place position before. I don't like it. Call it morality, call it ego, call it jealousy, call it whatever, I just couldn’t do it. It gnawed at me. It made me sick to my stomach. It caused me angst.

I have enough angst in my life. I am anxious about work, about my kids, about my mother, about my ex, about the fish that didn’t make it through the winter in my fishpond. I don’t need more angst in my life. I need easy and The Wedding Guy…The Wedding Guy was wonderfully easy to be with, but was so hard to be away from. And away was the biggest part of the package.

But…he was handsome and heartwarming and sexy and funny.

I miss him.