4 Generations

L to R: Mom,  Great Grandma Q, Me, Grandma C

My first ski trip

Mr. Intelligent and I decided to take our first ski trip to West Virginia.   A bunch of people he knew were renting a house on Timberline Ski Resort and a room opened up in the house so we snapped it up and headed off on our adventure.

We started out Friday night and loaded up his car with way too much stuff.  I only used about half the clothes that I brought and I swear we brought back at least as much food as we took.   Somehow I did leave the mustard behind *sigh*

Our travel was completely uneventful right up until we looked at this grey line on the map and discussed how it would take at least 20 miles off our trip.   How bad could the grey line be we said?  And so we stopped at the turnoff and looked at the road and decided to take it.   About 2 miles up the road a sign said: ”No snow maintenance past this point.”  That should have been a sign – literally – of what was to come but we ignored it.  After all… there was no snow on the ground at this point.  Little did we know that snow was going to appear in another mile and that road was going to get steep… so steep you seriously couldn’t see where it was going to end.   You know where this is going right?  We got stuck and couldn’t go forwards.  So we had to go backwards until we could get turned around and return back the way we came with our tail between our legs. 

We continued onto to Timberline resort in the growing snow and slippery conditions.  It was so slippery that we couldn’t get up the road to the house we were staying in.  Now I understand why the ad said “4 wheel drive recommended”.   One of the guys came down in their truck and we loaded up all our stuff leaving our car by the lodge.

Friday  night we hung out.  Saturday morning we got up early to go out skiing and skied until lunch.  We skied back to the house wrecking our bases on some crunchy gravel. Doh! And then to some skiing in the afternoon followed by supper and relaxation in the hot tub.  It was very weird hanging out looking at people’s hair getting crispy with frost.

The next day was frightening cold so people were slow to get out the door.  We only skied for a couple of hours before returning for a long lunch and then sking for just another couple of hours in the afternoon. 

I enjoyed the whole weekend and fell just twice.  I ran down blue and black slopes with relative ease.  There was only one slope that I didn’t do – a double diamond run.

On Monday, we returned to town via New Germany State Park.  We dropped by and did a bit of cross country skiing before continuing on our trip home.  We also stopped by the Blue Goose bakery that made the most awesome pies.  Wowsers!!!!  Worth the stop!

I shall call my first ski trip a success and hope to repeat it next season.

Keeping myself sane

I have now been skiing 6 times and have discovered that I love it!  How could I have missed out on something so amazing for the first half of my life?  And this is all thanks to Mr. Intelligent and some fortuitous luck.

I knew that Mr. Intelligent was very keen on downhill skiing.  Despite that, I still had no interest it.  As far as I could tell, you were taking your life into your hands and you were one tree away from brain damage or worse… death.

For some reason that he couldn’t explain, he decided to ask me to a special showing of a ski film called ‘Solitaire’.   This didn’t particularly interest me as a matter of fact but, I decided to accept the invitation because it interested him.  It was actually a very good movie and I enjoyed.  There were several scenes in the movie where I really felt like I got it – I understood what drew Mr. Intelligent and so many other people to downhill skiing.  Because of this movie, I decided to try skiing.

Mostly I have gone to Whitetail but I have also made a trip to Liberty.  Believe it or not, I have been down a black diamond slope at Liberty.  Hard to believe but its true!  We went to Liberty on the weekend.  I tried some of the easier slopes and then went off to my lesson.  To be honest… I was a bit bored by the whole day and after a couple of hours, Mr. Intelligent wanted to go home.  He was bored too.  I convinced him to let me go down a blue at least once before we got home.  We went down several.  I fell a million, bazillion times but nonetheless I had a blast.  At the end of the day as we were heading back to the front of the ski resort, he told me to go down this bit of a hill and then turn left instead of right.   I did as he instructed and apparently headed down a black rated slope.  I fell just once so I feel pretty proud of myself.  He told me as we were packing up that I made it down a black slope!  Sneaky devil… he knew that I would freak out if I knew it was black.  Instead I trusted him to tell me where it was safe to go and just followed.

Since then, I have been to the top of the mountain at Whitetail and skiied down several long blue slopes.   The first couple of times I fell but I managed to negotiate the runs without falling the last couple of times.  I wish I could say I looked elegant and sexy as I headed down the slopes but I don’t.  I stop, I start, I waver,  I flail a bit and I recover.  My ski gear looks far sexier than I do.   But it is a start!

And I have discovered that it is one of the few ways I can shake off the stress of work.

Taking my life into my hands

I have decided to learn downhill skiing.  I have been twice to Whitetail in Pennsylvania and have taken a couple of lessons.    I am already off the bunny hill although I have to say that was actually kind of frightening and I fell really badly hurting my knee.

I haven’t given up although I think that black diamond runs are not in my near future.

Easy does it

It has just been over two weeks since Mr. Intelligent has decided that he wanted more than friends.  I won’t have any problems remembering this date since it happened on Thanksgiving.  And when he decides something, he isn’t wishy washy about it.   He has jumped in with both feet.

He was worth waiting for is all I have to say.  He is so very different than anyone I have dated in years.  I didn’t even know nice guys like him existed anymore.  And this is where I sadly profess that dependable, sweet and reliable is sexy.  It’s true… I don’t need a bad boy to go weak in the knees.   I just need him.

Eduardo always said it was about the little things.  You could always tell someone’s character by the little things.  Based on that, I have hit the jackpot.  He will hop up and find my glasses because I am too lazy to get them myself.  But he knows that I can’t read the subtitles very well if I don’t wear them. If we leave the bottle of wine in the kitchen he will go out and get it so he can fill up my glass.  He even picked me up from the airport at midnight this week.  He volunteered… I didn’t even ask.  Volunteered!  Wow!  He cleared an evening and spent it with me because he knew I was super upset by something.  Thoughtful beyond belief.

I don’t know if I treat him as well as he treats me.  I think I have the little things covered with ensuring there is coffee in the house for him, giving massages and even purchasing a little guide for hikes that he wanted.  I write him my scribbles just about every day and send him “Todays view” which he enjoys.  I can only hope that the little things I do in return make up for all the ways that I feel treasured by him.

I am taking this relationship day by day and that seems to be working for me.  Each day, I try not to misstep.  Each day, I try to show him that I care.  I try not to think very far into the future.  I just enjoy the moments I have with him.

Met Mr. Intelligent

After a number of emails, I have met him.  He is different in person than he is over the phone and in email.   Not any less smart, I might add, but his conversations involve a little less mental gymnastics on my part.

He is a very sweet guy in the sense that he is very considerate and kind.  This has been missing from my life and appreciate it to no end.   He is incredibly funny and we have the same kind of dry humour.  He introduced me to the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and I have to admit that I found him hilariously funny.   I will have to continue watching that show through Hulu.

After getting a distinct hands off vibe from him for the first few meetings, I was surprised at how affectionate he has turned out to be.   It is a side that I never expected to see and I am enjoying that.   He makes you seem like you are the most important person in the world to him.

He has some of the same views I have about relationships that I hope will make us compatible.  I think we also have had some common experiences that I hope will bind us closer together.  But it is not all roses.  He is a complicated man which I think will ensure that this relationship will not be a walk in the park.  I can be a little complicated too so that likely isn’t helpful.

I am attracted to him and hope we will get a relationship off the ground but my insecurities about how poorly I do in relationships is rushing to the foreground.   I don’t know if I should just be me or try to do something different – me but a different me.  I don’t even know where to start on that.  And I don’t know how to read this guy.  Is he interested?  Not interested?  Cautious?  We had a fantastic date a couple of days ago but when I asked when we could see each other next, he said he didn’t know.  Is it really because he is busy (which he is)?  Wants to go slowly?  Or is it a repeat of John?

ARGH!!!!

 

Because my life wasn’t interesting enough

Eduardo and I have seen each other another couple of times and it always starts out tense before morphing into something pleasant.  In fact, I seem to be tense around Eduardo a lot of the time.  I don’t think it is necessarily due to Eduardo doing this or that bad thing because he isn’t always doing anything that I can perceive.  It seems that I have conditioned myself to expect some kind of ulterior motive or game behind his actions and I am looking for his “real” reason for his actions.  And generally, I think you can translate “real” into meaning negative.  There is just so much to get past that I don’t even know how to start.  And this is just to try to get back into friendship.  I don’t know that anything further is even possible.

But that is of course not all that is going on.   A less interesting bit is this new gentleman that approached me on OkCupid.  I had actually hidden myself on OkCupid but he had apparently put me in his favourites which gets around the hiding and he approached me a couple of weeks ago.  We have just been emailing and now talking on the phone. 

What can I say about him?  He is very smart and owns his own home.  He is Eastern European and seems to identify strongly with his birth culture.   He probably lives about 12 to 15 miles away from me across the river.   I can’t say that is ideal for driving but it is not bad.   He is talkative.  I can’t imagine him having any problems with striking up a conversation.  In fact, it can be difficult to get him off the phone.   He is not soft-spoken and I can’t imagine him being a wall flower. 

I am not sure if we will meet and I am not sure I am dying to meet him.  He has been very interesting to talk to but over time, I am discovering myself drained by my conversations with him.  I feel like I am in the midst of a debate all the time.    And always on the losing end.  He seems to be very informed about pretty much everything.  I can’t say if he is right or wrong but he is certainly sure that he is right.  It just doesn’t seem possible to have a simple conversation with him about anything – even movies.

And I know that intelligent conversations don’t have to make you feel like you are debating with someone.  I know I have felt like this occasionally with Eduardo but even we have plenty of conversations about weighty topics that involve a back and forth exchange that just feels like a conversation.  Other people that I consider to be intelligent and informed are Neil and Chris.  I can’t think of a single time that we have gotten into debate mode.

And last night, I was pretty upset by the end of the conversation.  We discussed religion.   I said that I preferred to be with someone that wanted to share my faith.  That by going alone to church and church events, I was effectively single and I was tired of being single in that aspect of my life.  He disagreed with that assessment and when I made the comment that  I was tired of being lonely in my faith I felt like I got nailed to the wall.   It seemed like he was saying that there was something wrong with my faith and my relationship with God if I was feeling lonely in my faith.    I was feeling pretty misunderstood by the end of the conversation despite putting some effort into trying to explain myself.    And yet… when I broached this topic to my friend,  Neil , he understood exactly what I was saying after just a couple of sentences.   And he didn’t disagree with what I had to say about it.   What I was feeling was not wrong.

I will go to meet him in person once or twice and see what he is like in person but the more we talk on the phone, the less hopeful I am that this relationship will go anywhere romantic.

Interesting twists and turns

I can sum up my dating with John by saying that I took him back again and it was even worse than before.  He blew off three dates and was late (or left early) for the other two.   We lasted a week and I asked him to leave again.  

But that isn’t really the twist and turn although it was interesting.  The twist and turn is Eduardo.    When he found out I was dating John, he revealed to me that he still loved me and wanted to get back together with me.  He had talked about reconciliation before but always dropped it.  The latest has been in June.  But in June,  I had decided that I was no longer interested (if I ever was before) in reconciliation.  It was a funny thing that had decided it for me….  He gave me a passionate kiss and I realized there was absolutely no spark.   To me, that meant that resurrecting the relationship would just be too hard.   And I wasn’t prepared to work that hard.

Unlike the other times where he broached the topic and then dropped it, he was persistent to the point of scaring me a little bit this time.   During this time, he denied me access to the kids.  He felt that if I didn’t want to give him a second chance then I was not the kind of person he wanted his kids around.   He had some logic in there that appeared to be valid for him but I am at a loss to explain it.   I still have difficulty with what he did with the kids because although I was given access back to the kids, supposedly the kids no longer want to see me now.  I have to assume it is because of all the emotional crap that went on around them during this time.

 But eventually, I caved and told him I would go out on a couple of dates and see if some spark could develop.  We went out on a few dates and it seemed like something might develop.   Although I was feeling all warm and fuzzy and toward him, I didn’t have that deeper spark that meant a more intimate connection was desired.  And then a couple of things happened that did not show Eduardo in a positive light.  In fact, it completely killed most of my feelings for him including friendship.

Eduardo still wants to get back together but I am struggling even harder with my feelings for him.   I don’t feel those deeper feelings for him.  I want to try to build our friendship back up but his feelings for me are getting in the way.  I treat him as a friend and he feels that I am treating him disrespectfully.  But the ways in which he wants me to be treating him are not how I treat friends but how I treat that someone special in my life.  And he is not that person for me.  Actually, nobody is at this point.

The other big problem is that I don’t trust him.  After all the lying and deceitfulness that went on during my marriage,  there is no trust left.   Even when I thought we were friends over the last year?  I just simply assumed he was lying to me.  No idea if he was or not, I just assumed he was.   He says he has stopped lying and has said and done things that seem to back up his statement but I am finding it very difficult to trust him.

And of course lets not even discuss what my friends and family think of him.

So… that is what is doing on in my love life…

New financial goals

My mortage company approached me with an offer to refinance my mortgage.   The interest rate was more than 1% lower and they were not requiring PMI although I no longer had 20% equity in the house.  It was a good deal.  I refinanced back to a 30 year mortgage to drop my mortgage payment almost 250$.   In hard times, this will be a good thing.   My mortgage payment is being skipped this month so I will be putting that money into my emergency fund.   That means that my emergency fund is now complete at 6 months.

It also means that my goal to pay off my mortage by 62 is a little further away.  I now need to chop 12 years from my mortgage instead of 7.  Depressing isn’t it?  The good news is that my extra payment is actually larger (since my principal + interest is smaller) and each extra payment will kill 5 to 6 months in the beginning.

I think this new mortgage is a good thing and will help me out financially in the long run.

On and off again

After a couple of days, John came back.  I listened to what he had to say and I took him back but I certainly had cooled off on my feelings for him.  And the relationship failed to get better.  I told myself that I would be patient because he worked a lot but in the end the relationship was just unsatisfactory.  I pretty much felt like I was single with the amount of care he appeared to put into it.

The end came about because of a personal crisis that occurred in my life.  It was basically equivalent to a death in the family (but don’t worry – nobody died).  On Monday night, when it was clear that the crisis was looming, I called John asking to see him.  He was working til midnight and needed to get up in the morning for a 6am shift.  He said he wouldn’t come over to my house but I could stop by his work at the end of his shift to speak to him.   I was fine with just 15 minutes for a hug and reassurances that all would be ok.   I understood that he needed his sleep.  But at 10 minutes to 12 when I texted him to say I was coming over he said he had went home to bed.  Seriously? 

Saturday night, it was even more clear that the crisis was not going to be averted and John was actually with me during the phone call.  It should have been crystal clear that I was upset and emotionally spent.    I asked John to just hold me and told him I wasn’t interested in sex.  But he couldn’t just hold me and wanted more.  Seriously?  Isn’t it obvious that this is not the time and place.  It is not all about you.

And then on Sunday morning the entire crisis came to a head.   At 12:30 it was clear that I was not going to make our date at 2:30.  I called him to tell him briefly what had happened and asked to push our date back.    We had talked about going to the mall and going out for lunch or dinner.  I had to deal with the crisis and wouldn’t be able to meet him until 5:30.  This is when I found out that he made plans to see his cousin at 5pm.  He basically booked another obligation over our date and shortened it down to just a couple of hours.  I wish I could say that was the first time it had happened.   He said he would call me.  He never came over, called or texted me.

It was finally clear that I was last in all of his obligations and even when I was in a crisis,  I was still last.   As my friend Neil says,  Don’t make someone a priority when you are only an option to them.  

It was very hard to break up with him.  He was hurt and then he was angry.  He didn’t understand what I was telling him and thought that spending more time with me in the future would fix the issue.   But it hadn’t fixed the issue in the past when I said I was frustrated by our dating and I didn’t think it would fix it in the future.  He said he would change but I wanted his care and concern to be something that came naturally and not something I had to force from him.  And lastly, I didn’t want to compete with his relatives.  That was going to be a losing battle.  Finally, I told him that the crisis was forcing me to choose and I wasn’t choosing him.  That wasn’t the complete truth but at least he seemed to understand it.  And he essentially called me a bitch without using that word for choosing the other option over him.  It is not entirely true that the crisis broke us apart because if our relationship had of been stronger, the crisis would not have prompted me to break it off with him.  The crisis just made me make my decision sooner because it made it unavoidably clear what I meant to John.  He might have cared but he didn’t care enough.  Been there… done that… I wasn’t repeating it.

So much for sweet

That relationship is over and done with.

After about a week and a half of attentiveness and desiring to see me, things started to trail off.  I initially blamed it on work because he was working insane hours but then he started showing up well after he said he would and his texts saying he missed me and was thinking of me stopped and then he didn’t show up for a date and finally my text messages were being ignored.

From declarations of love (on his side) to finished in just over two weeks.   Could this be a new record?

I have no idea what went wrong.  His explanation was that it passed through his mind that he no longer wanted to be with me so he didn’t show up for the date and decided to end it.  But it wasn’t until I specifically asked him if it was over that he fessed up to it.

I feel completely blind-sided by this whole thing and I really wish I never got involved with him.  He was incredibly sexy so now I will be looking at future dates and comparing them to him.  I could do without that because most men I have approached (or approached me) have not reached his level of sex appeal by a long shot.

But it was becoming clear that other things were off.  I was hopeful they would have been resolved in time but perhaps the end was indicative of the fact that things were just impossibly wrong between us.