Mind Over Matter

Disclaimer:
This isn't just a blog about my dating life, but until I figure out how to try to make some more friends....

How worthwhile is this grand mission on which I have embarked? Consider this: I started out with practically nothing seven months ago. Since then, I've written blog entries entitled "The Best Night of My Life" and "The Greatest Night of My Life." This one could be given a similar name, but I won't bother. The way things are going, I would soon run out of adjectives to describe these nights.

Now, as anyone who's read this blog knows, it hasn't been easy for me to achieve any of the improvement I've made. This week was no exception. On Monday, I started to feel ill; I was coming down with one of the colds that was going around the office. Within hours, I started pumping myself full of Zicam and Airborne. I had a Starbucks first-date set for Tuesday, and I wasn't about to cancel it.

Those products help reduce the severity of cold symptoms, so I pulled myself together well enough for the Starbucks date. Somehow, though, things took a turn for the worse. It was a blind date, with a girl I'd met on eHarmony. I've done so many of these things that I thought there was no way I'd ever again fail to make it to a second-date: I had this down, right?

Nope. This time, I was nervous. Not very anxious....but nervous. I wasn't myself at all! I stumbled trying to answer questions as basic as, "Do you like movies?" I don't know what it was. Possibly some combination of the slight cold, the waiting I'd done since my date was a little late, and...the girl herself. It was a surprise - I was expecting an average girl, but I'd ended up on a date with one who was incredible. Incredible to the extent that I had the perhaps-fatal thought that I could marry her. Yikes.

She was another carless city girl, so I offered to take her home like the last girl. She accepted - a good sign. She had to finish a grad school paper before midnight, and close to 8:00, she kept chatting with me even after I told her I'd let her go. As I drove her home, I attempted to stay in keeping with my usual - making humorous comments, kidding around. But somehow, I was too nervous! A few minutes before we got to her house, I failed miserably trying to get out a very basic sentence. At that point, I knew it was over.

She said "Well thanks for hanging out with me tonight, and maybe I'll see you later.....?"

Yeah. She actually put the emphasis on the word "maybe" like that! And that was the end of that.

And so, I trudged on, relatively unphased. After all - I'd had an apparently wildly successful first-date two days prior, so this was just an anomaly. I continued to pump myself full of Zicam and Airborne. I needed to be healthy by the weekend! The fact of the matter was that I was dating two girls who were only available on weekends. If I didn't see them this weekend, it would be at least a whopping five weeks between dates with one of them, and three weeks with the other.

I broke my own rule and used a text message to set one of the dates for Saturday. My new acquaintance responded immediately. She had something else to do, but she seemed determined to go out with me anyway. She had to let me know the time later, but she followed her own text and reassured me that she was going. In turn, I told her that I'd leave Saturday open.

Well, I kept it open for nothing. She never got back to me. It made no sense at all, so I wondered if something had happened to her. She also has a blog (this could have been a match made in Heaven!), so I checked it. Sure enough, she had a new entry - something about rejection from men. That means either A) she's a total flake and tied up my Saturday when she could have just declined or B) there was some type of breakdown, with her sending a text that never reached my phone. It's almost surely case A, but just to be sure, I sent her another message a couple hours ago. I really want to blast her for wasting my time like that, so I'll e-mail her or post on her blog if she ignores me.

:-)

Now, it's really only the principle that bothers me about that last girl. The truth of the matter is that there was something much bigger in store for Sunday, and Saturday's broken date was probably for the best.

I was fighting the cold with all my might. I didn't know if there was anything to the saying "mind over matter," but I was certainly going to give it a try on Sunday. I'd somewhat lost my voice, but I was good enough to go.

Finally, it was time for my fourth date with the one girl with whom I've been almost completely comfortable. I told her we'd celebrate a late Valentine's Day, and we did. It was amazing for me. Back in college, when I'd never even been on a date, I'd have big hopes every February of having a date for Valentine's Day. Big hopes every year, but they went nowhere. I never even managed to have a brief conversation with a girl I was interested in back then, let alone go out on a date with her.

I took a hint from an eHarmony commercial, and had two dozen roses waiting for my date in the front seat. Sweet. She went to put them in water, and then we were off to a fondue restaurant, with a plan for bowling afterwards.

We'd only spoken for a few minutes in the last month, but things were just like before. I was myself with her, and she seemed the same - a completely different person than on our first date, when she was much shyer than even me.

I was as confident as ever. I effortlessly handled things like stopping a waiter to correct my date's order. We were having a lot of fun, trying to cook our own food and getting burned by hot oil. It was a great idea on my part; the activity-based dinner was great conversation fodder. As always, I found myself asking a lot of questions...a whole lot. It would have helped if she'd asked me more. She probably only asked me a few of her own, plus some reciprocal questions based on mine. It's an odd thing. Most of the dates I've been out with have been like that. Asking me questions is one thing the two girls that inspired thoughts of the "m" (marry) word had in common....but enough about that. I like this girl anyway.

And she likes me. Dinner and the commute took over 3 hours, so it was too late to go bowling afterwards. She openly referenced doing it another time, and she'd been laughing at my barrage (slight exaggeration) of jokes all night, so I knew everything was good. She said she'd had fun again, and thanked me for everything. She repeated that while we stood outside her home. When she finally stopped talking, I took a step forward, put my right hand on her waist, and we kissed goodnight.