Call Me Crazy

There is a crazy woman in town, and she is sitting next to me on the couch at Starbucks as I write this. There is another empty couch, and by my count there are three empty and relatively comfy chairs and at least seven empty tables, and she has chosen to descend upon my sacred space. I don't want to hurt her feelings and get up, but I feel trapped, and I hate that.

Sometimes, I admit, I feel as if I have lost touch with reality, maybe gone a little bit kooky. But I would never join somebody else on a couch built for two in Starbucks, even if there was not an empty seat in the house. I'd rather stand. I'd even delay my caffeine fix and head out to find another coffee house with more appealing seating arrangements. Proof, I think, that I have not completely lost it, at least not yet. Phew.

I used to see her around here all the time -- at the health club, at restaurants, on the street. Always on the phone, always screaming at someone. Well, except when she was at the restaurant with her husband, son, and parents and she was chain-drinking wine and screaming at all of them. Who needs a phone when you can do it in person?

I was not surprised to hear that she is now divorced and living downtown in her parents' condo, having lost custody of her son. I didn't hear this directly from her, since I buried my head in my laptop the minute she sat down on MY couch and tried to make conversation. I heard it from someone else who had the dubious good fortune of being cornered by her on her recent return to the neighborhood.

What happens to people? I can only guess that when life started for her -- and by life I mean adult, married-with-children life -- she seemed normal, to the extent anybody can seem normal, whatever "normal" is. Yet here she is, my age, on temporary leave from her elderly parents' nest, flitting from couch to couch in Starbucks in the wee hours of the morning in search of someone who will listen to her. Will she end up on the street one day? Is that the natural progression of things?

The weird thing is she seems happy in her delusional world, the one in which she thinks everyone wants to talk to her, sit with her on the couch. Maybe it's liberating to just be crazy. Not crazy the way I am crazy, but totally-all-screws-loose-and-all-pistons-misfiring nuts! I think I might talk to her after all, get some pointers.

California Dreaming

As I sat getting my toenails painted bright pink this morning, I flipped through a glossy women's magazine looking for some deep insights into life.

There were the usual articles about hair and nails, and standard summer fare about which bathing suits are best for your body type (they never list old, tired, and saggy as one of the body types, so I remain woefully unenlightened). And there was a fascinating article about how our perceptions of beauty have changed over the decades.

Granted, I didn't read the entire article -- I just read the really important sentences, which were magnified and highlighted in bright blue -- and I looked at the pictures. Attitudes about beauty may have changed over the years, but my attention span has never been capable of accommodating a magazine article that jumps to multiple pages.

Anyway, good news friends. Middle aged women are viewed as far more attractive than they were thirty years ago. And guess who thinks "cougars" are hot! Yes, you guessed it, the twenty-five to thirty-five year old male set. Shocking that this phenomenon hasn't spread to middle aged men, who still seem to prefer twenty-somethings to your basic cougar or, certainly, if cougar is to be defined as a woman older than you are, to your basic octogenarian.

I think I've already mentioned some of my own anecdotal evidence regarding twenty-five and thirty year olds pursuing older women, as my cyber dating inbox tends to fill up fairly regularly with cheesecake shots of young studs writing clever messages such as "Hey." As you can imagine, I get pretty excited when the rare fifty-something sends an email; whether it's indicative of maturity, integrity, or bad eyesight, I just think it's a nice gesture for an old guy to pay attention to an old broad once in a while.

Today, I received an e-card from a startlingly handsome fifty-four year old. I checked the map, and San Diego seems a little far for a productive relationship, but you never know when my book tour will take me out that way, so I responded with an alluring and very clever "Hey." I anxiously await his response.

At the rate I'm going, I will still be frequenting computer dating sites when I'm seventy-five

(and getting my toenails painted bright pink and flipping through glossy magazines in a never ending search for the meaning of life, and love). By then, I might kind of like the whole cougar concept -- as long as the fifty-somethings don't include cheesecake shots.

Air Kisses

I can't believe it! Blago, guilty? But he said he was innocent, and why would someone say he's innocent if he isn't?

Nobody knows him better than his wife, Patti, I assume, to whom he blew a kiss before the verdict was read. A kiss! Blown across a crowded courtroom! Is there anything more pure than that? What do twelve jurors know? He is just a chatty guy who tends to go on a bit but deep down just goes about being innocent and blowing kisses to his wife. Shame on the rest of us, thinking we know better.

Maybe we're just so accustomed to seeing men behave badly that we rush to judgment. Maybe we need to step back and cut the guys a little bit of slack, with them being born with one chromosome that's only half the size of a real one and all.

Take my gynecologist. Like Blago, he's pretty chatty, although as far as I know he hasn't come close to committing any kind of fraud. He's a really good doctor, and a super nice guy, but he's got that stunted chromosome problem, so sometimes silly things come out of his mouth. Like when he came right from examining my daughter into my room, and gushed about how beautiful and bright and thoughtful and solid she is, how she's one special kid. (The full size chromosome was still working when he said all that.)

Naturally, I did the math, and gave him a look which said, Obvi! She's my daughter, half Ocean. Hello!!!! How could she be anything less than beautiful and bright and thoughtful and solid and downright special? Yes, I said all this without uttering a word, because women can do that, and as Blago has shown us, it's a useful skill to be able to keep the chatter to a minimum.

Anyway, my doctor's Y chromosome kicked in before he had a chance to save himself, and he looked at me, incredulous. "She is so much saner than you are!" Harumph! He should stick to gynecology. Then, to add insult to injury, he told me my back hurts because I need to do core exercises. You just don't say that to a woman who has already told you she is in the throes of P.M.S. Honestly.

But back to Blago. Apparently he's going to have to blow his kisses for the next three hundred years from a jail cell. Just for being a chatty Cathy. I'm glad Patti continues to stand by him, no matter what the rest of think. She knows him better than anyone.

Coffin Fits

Maybe I tend to give people too much credit, but it would never occur to me that a customer in, say, a mammoth Swedish home furnishing store would choose to have a seat and take a dump in a display toilet.

But the mammoth Swedish home furnishing store does pretty well for itself, so the powers that be behind its success must know their shit (so to speak) when they insert a sign into the opening of a toilet that sits in the middle of a floor crowded with shoppers reminding passersby that the inviting little porcelain structure is there for display only. I mean, seriously, I had to pee like nobody's business when I approached the pretend bathroom and it wouldn't have occurred to me in a million years to lift my skirt right there and relieve myself. Again, though, maybe I give people too much credit. Maybe most folks wouldn't see things the way I do.

Come to think of it, most folks don't see things the way I do. And I mean that as a compliment to most folks, since I'm fully aware that my view of the world can be a bit twisted. Just ask my daughter, who was on the verge of killing me yesterday in the mammoth Swedish home furnishing store when I couldn't bring myself to like any of the beds she picked out for her new apartment, because for some reason, to me, they all looked like coffins. Like I said. Twisted.

Twisted or not, though, I pretty much destroyed any hope she had of purchasing a bed there, so off we went to spend more money than we would have in the mammoth Swedish store on a bed that wouldn't spook her every night. I liked the new furniture store anyway; there were no toilets on the floor, so I didn't have to feel nervous that I would suddenly stumble upon some guy "whippin' it out" or, worse still, settling in with a newspaper.

Yep, I give people way too much credit. Twisted.

Table for Three

Last night I ate dinner in the real world. Everything's relative, of course, and I do recognize the real world is a bit less well-heeled than most places on the north side of Chicago.

But to me, for all practical purposes, the real world is anywhere but here, here being deep dark suburbia, specifically my little corner of it. The real world, last night, was a funky restaurant in the fringes of a slightly offbeat, youthful neighborhood in Chicago, where there were folks of all colors and ages and types of attire. On the menu, there was no chopped salad from which one could request all good stuff omitted, nothing that afforded all that much opportunity for brutal modification.

It struck me that there were lots of tables of three. In the "real world," people don't automatically fall into neat couplets; it's okay to be unattached. Sure, there were plenty of well matched pairs, but there were just as many odd-numbered configurations. Saturday night belongs to everyone in the real world. If I was the third wheel for my friend and her husband, I was certainly not alone. Refreshing.

My friend looked over at a table of two young couples. "That used to be us," she remarked. Was it? They looked so happy, so self-assured. I can't remember feeling that way when I was their age. Actually, to me they looked so young, so wet behind the ears, I wondered what they could possibly have to talk about. A lot, I suppose, since not once did their table fall silent the way ours did on a somewhat regular basis. Well, I'm sure what they had to say couldn't have been that important. I wanted to go over and tell them to enjoy it while they could, because this moment, and so many others like it, would pass very quickly and careers and marriage and child rearing would take their toll and before they knew it they would be just like us. But I decided it would be mean spirited to tell them all that, so I stayed where I was.

This morning, when I took Manny for an early morning walk, the neighborhood seemed even more unreal than usual. Whether something was missing or something had been added I can't say; all I know is it sent a chill up my spine as a strolled through the suddenly surreal streets. My legs started to shake, my breathing became shallow. I haven't yet broken out in hives, but I'm guessing it's only a matter of time. Maybe I'm just allergic to this place.

It made me want to go downtown again, soon. Where change happens so regularly nobody even notices. Where the restaurants and the streets and the people form an erratic mosaic, and slight changes in the atmosphere don't shake everything up. Real? Who knows. But it's not here.

So Many Men

I've been a bit of a slut the past few days, snuggling up every night on the couch with two of the tastiest men I know. I have yet to meet a man on a dating site who can come close to satisfying my basest urges the way Ben and Jerry can.

Yesterday, as I slurped contentedly on a delectable mix of flavors, message alerts from from the Jewish dating site were popping up on my Blackberry faster than I could lick up the stray drops. I had inadvertently failed to log off after checking out the last bunch, and activity tends to pick up when they see you are online. It's too hard to access them on my little smart phone, though, and there was no way I was going to risk missing out on one bite of Ben or Jerry to leave the room and check out the eligible bachelors in hot pursuit on a Friday night.

Actually, I kind of forgot about all the cyber suitors, being so wrapped up in the comforting icy embrace of the hunks from Vermont and all, and went to bed still basking in the glow of yet another evening with my two best guys. Naturally, when you spend half the day alternating between slurps of ice cream and drawn out naps on the couch, you tend to be wide awake in the middle of the night, so I decided to see if the "real" man of my dreams had tried to reach me.

Among others, there were flirty little emails from an adorable thirty-seven year old, a hot looking forty-three year old from New York (good to keep in mind for my next visit), a guy my age from Tel Aviv who, I could tell, has never seen a stick of deodorant, another guy my age who emails me every night and hasn't yet figured out my lack of response is not accidental, and two guys who only wanted to know if I write about men in my blog. "Only if they're assholes," I replied. I'm guessing I can scratch the two of them off my list.

I didn't respond to anyone else, although I was tempted to pursue an exchange with the guy who has chosen Jamesbond as his screen name. It was tough, but I resisted the urge. Which leaves me in a bit of a quandary. I am officially out of Ben and Jerry's, having polished off the last of the four pints I purchased earlier in the week. And, since I'm out anyway, I made a vow to myself that I would not spend tonight, Saturday night, sitting on the couch eating ice cream.

I suppose I'll just sort of fail to log off the dating site, and hope for the best when I return home from work this afternoon. Otherwise -- well, promises are made to be broken. It's off to the grocery store.

Once is Enough

It's happened again. I allowed a guy in whom I had about as much interest as I do in Lindsay Lohan's prison schedule to dump me first.

Don't get me wrong. This one was a catch. He is divorced, employed, and breathing, thereby satisfying all the requirements on my "Potential Life Partner Checklist." He even claimed to be heterosexual -- not a requirement for me but certainly a strong factor to be considered -- and he kept telling me how smart and funny I am, which is not as good as telling me I'm sizzling hot but is better than some of the words my husband has used to describe me.

Bottom line: it's summer, the days are long, and I need a diversion. Heck, I've stocked up on new sundresses and calf-enhancing wedges, so why not go out on a few dinners. I am no doubt the unrivaled queen of the first date, which is always fairly easy to come by. But by the time date number two rolls around, my latest potential life partner -- no matter how much of a loser he is -- always seems to come to his senses before I do and blow me off. And it's always a relief, but ouch just the same.

Back to cyber dating sites, I suppose, to search for someone with a bit more staying power. There are, however, several benefits to my uncanny ability to push away or turn off or maybe even scare off every eligible, breathing suitor before either of us gets in too deep (and by that I mean a second date). It's great for my budget. If my dates are always "firsts," I never have to take out my wallet and even pretend to offer up my share. Sex is out of the question for me without the intimacy of at least one repeat engagement, so I rarely have to shave my legs. And the best thing is I can wear the same favorite outfit every time (although it hasn't occurred to me yet that maybe that outfit isn't working; I'm just assuming it's my personality).

This latest guy was nice enough, although I seemed to make him nervous. Or maybe he always had that funny twitch, but I don't remember seeing it at first. He billed himself as devoid of bullshit, which seemed to be true during our meeting, but canceling a Friday night dinner because of sudden work commitments made me kind of skeptical. Call me crazy. He said he'd call me later to reschedule; I told him it wasn't necessary.

I'm tossing my favorite sundress in the wash so I'll be ready at a moment's notice for the next first date.