A Kept Woman

Interesting comments from everyone yesterday. I intentionally did not approve any of them until really late in the day because I didn't want people's opinions to sway each other. Opinions were all over the place, and focused on totally different things...which was sort of expected, there is a lot going on.

First, there is the question of moving in after 9 months, which some people have an issue with (GLB, Double-A, Ally), and some think is plenty of time (Povosgirl, Kate, Brookem, Ruby). Really, I think it depends on how big a deal you think moving in together is. I don't really think it's a huge, earth-shattering thing, so I feel like 9 months is enough for the right people. If it doesn't work out, well...you just move.

And then there is the age difference. A couple of people felt like it might be a real issue (Scott, GLB), most felt like it is a factor, but not a deal-breaker (k.d., Brookem, Ruby). I am in the latter camp...it is hard to be that far apart, but it is not something that can't be overcome. He is something of a young 40, and she is an old 24, so I really don't think that the age difference, on its own, is something to be overly concerned with.

And I don't question their affection for each other. I don't think she likes him only because he makes a lot of money, and I don't think he likes her just because she looks great in a sun dress. They genuinely have a great time together. And some people speculated that maybe deep down I didn't like him or question his motives (ella, Trixie, Scott, GLB) or hers (Jordan)...but that is not the case, I like him very much, and I like them together.

So what's the issue? Well...in truth it is a combination of the above. My problem, the more I think about it, is that they are at completely different life stages, and she is really "exposing" herself by moving in. What do I mean by this? Well, I don't think she is in it for the great apartment, the beach house and the Lexus SUV, but it is also impossible to separate those things out.

She is really adapting her life to his much more than the other way around. The only problem is that if things don't work out...she immediately has to "leave" that world. A break-up would be compounded for her because she lives in his house(s), drives his car, etc. (Part of this is her personality...which I can't really explain for some reason...)

So, I don't think this is a dysfunctional or ill-conceived relationship. I feel like it is fundamentally sound and is built for the long haul. But...we all know that shit happens, and she is putting herself in the position of being a "kept" woman. Now, if things start to sour, how much would she be willing to suffer before she totally tore up her life and moved on?

Anyway, that is my two cents worth...the next question is...do I say anything? I think it is basically none of my business, so I will likely keep my mouth shut...

[And yes, I get the irony of this entire post, no need to point it out]

Other than that, not much going on. Thursday Chicken Fingers were delicious as always:-) I may be going away this weekend, so I may not be blogging...kind of up in the air...Enjoy!

Let's Gossip:-)

I have this friend...I am going to call her "Sally" for absolutely no reason at all, other than I need a name for her. Sally is 24, works as a Financial Advisor for an insurance company, and is overall a pretty a regular girl. Last fall, Sally met and started dating "Doug". Again, no significance to the name.

I like Doug a lot. He is nice and smart and funny and adores her and treats her really well. He is also 40 and divorced (no kids.) Doug works in real estate (I don't know exactly what he does...I think he is a commercial broker, but don't quote me on that) and makes a pretty good living. He has a really nice apartment in the North End and a house on Cape Cod...I don't mean to imply that she is "after him for his money", because she isn't, but I know that Sally likes that he buys her nice things.

Well, last night, Sally informed me and Smoking Hot Roommate that she is moving in with Doug and she expects to be engaged by the end of the summer. I have to be honest, I think this is a bad idea...although I am not sure that I could put my finger on the reason right away. I don't necessarily think it is a bad idea for people to move in after dating for nine months. And I don't think that an age difference like that is insurmountable. I think they are genuinely in love, and id I had to guess, I would say that I think they will get married pretty soon.

But still, there is something about it that doesn't sit right. She mentioned that her father was really upset by it, and I think I kind of agree with him. But...before I ramble on about this, I wanted to get a random sampling of opinions from the peanut gallery;-)

Just on the facts, does it seem strange to you guys? If so, why? I actually think I have figured out what it is that bothers me, but I wanna get some unbiased opinions first. For the record, Smoking Hot Roommate is not at all bothered by their moving in together...

So, don't be shy...make with the opinions...

7th Grade Plans

Sorry to be late in the day with this...I know how so many people wait anxiously every morning for me to post:-P Truth be told I have been super busy all morning and yada, yada, yada...

Anyway, I have my last story from last weekend for you. Why does it seem that every time I go back home I end up with like a week's worth of stuff to post? Probably a good idea that I moved...

As I mentioned, Munchkin stayed with her brother this time. Those of you who have been with me for a while know that her brother and I have a decent, but somewhat complex, relationship. I have gotten past the part where he sued me, but I haven't totally forgotten it;-) But Munchkin loves him, and I don't really have any reason to doubt that he has only the best intentions with her. He wants to be a part of her life and goes out of his way to do so. In that sense, I guess I am sort of stuck with him.

A ways back, he had raised the prospect of her coming out to stay with him and his fiance for a couple of weeks. I wasn't totally comfortable with that, but we settled on her going there for a week, and then her brother, future sister-in-law and maybe a cousin of theirs coming out here to go to the beach for a week after that. That seemed to work out real well for everyone.

So, the subject came up over the weekend. Additionally, we talked about the fact that they are pretty close to buying a house. And then, out of nowhere came this bombshell from her brother "The new house is in a great school district. Munchkin could even move out here for an entire school year in a few years if she wants."

Say what?

I mean...is he fucking serious?!? Well, yes, he is serious, which is the problem. And, he is just being an asshole, because if he seriously wanted to do that and thought he was relieving me of some burden, he would have asked me and not mentioned it with Munchkin around. But that is not what the weasel wanted...he was hoping that Munchkin would think it such a great idea that I would either have to acquiesce or be the total bitch who told her no.

But it is just basically a stupid idea. She had to switch schools last year, and doing it again for a year just for shits and giggles is just a really stupid idea. Not that she would have any trouble adjusting, but there is no reason for her to do so. None of this even gets to the quality of the respective schools. Anyway, I don't even know why I am wasting finger-energy to type out a rational response.

Fortunately, Munchkin wasn't a huge fan of the idea anyway. I think should would enjoy it and would like the chance to see her brother more often, but she likes where she is, loves her school and wouldn't want to be away from her friends just to do it.

Still, the whole thing...in my words from Monday...made me want to "drive a wooden stake through his skull".

Attack of the Obtuse

Kind of a silly story that serves no real purpose other than to highlight the stupidity of one random person who's name I don't even remember (Bobby? Benny? Something like that).

This happened last Friday night when I was out in Chicago with the BFF's and some old friends. Yesterday's post was too long, so I didn't include this, but I wanted to because it is funny. I have another part of the weekend to include tomorrow which is less funny, but in the interest of keeping posts to one mood...I will hold that out for a day.

Anyway, after dinner we went to a little bar to hang out. Kind of a dive...not too loud, cheap beer, everyone was in a pretty good mood. Somehow, I met Blockhead, a cute, nice, charming guy who had trouble picking up obvious messages. I think that maybe one of his friends knew one of my friends or something along those lines, I am not real sure how it came about.

But we got to talking...I seem to make lots of friends in bars...and he was really nice. However, it was pretty clear that he was trying to pick me up. He laughed a little too loud at my jokes, found excuses to touch my arm, seemed a little overly interested in anything I had to say... So I did what I feel like is the responsible social thing to do, which is to say the word "Boyfriend" a lot.

I am certain that I mentioned having a boyfriend at least five times... he said he liked my shirt and I said "Oh thanks, my boyfriend bought it for me," or "Oh, I don't really follow basketball. My boyfriend took me to a game this winter, but that is the only one I have been to." I will talk to anyone that I think is interesting, but I don't want anyone getting any mistaken ideas if I can help it.

Anyway, it was kinda weird. I just kinda felt all night like he was still actively trying to pick me up. I dunno...maybe he heard I was a slut:-), maybe he figured there was a chance I would lose the inhibitions since I was on vacation, or maybe he was just dumb. But he kept trying to buy me drinks (seriously...if you ask "Do you need a drink?" more than twice, you are overdoing it...25 times is just awkward) and he spent like three straight hours sitting or standing right next to me.

Again, I didn't really mind it...he was funny and interesting and not at all a bad person to hang out with. He just really didn't seem to be picking up the messages that I wasn't looking to take someone home. [For the record...if I am interested in taking someone home with me, there will be very little room for misinterpretation of intentions]. Heck, I called The Boy from the bar while he was sitting right next to me! And, I went maybe a little overboard on the "I love you and I miss you" part, just for show.

He did get a little overly flirtatious to where it started to become uncomfortable, but that was kind of right when we were getting ready to leave. And then...he totally had a tantrum! He was honestly, seriously pissed that I was leaving and not staying to hang out with him. And he tried to get my number, made some veiled accusations that I was leading him on and yada, yada, yada.

At first I was just trying to be nice, and went with "Well, the BFF's are leaving and they are my ride home," and then when he offered to drive me later on, I added "I have to get up early anyway, I have a breakfast date with my sister." And he was still giving me some weird attitude about it, so I was maybe a little more forceful about it (:-D).

And...well, I don't really even know how to describe it because it was all so very weird. But he was definitely having some bizarre tantrum over it. Weird enough that when we left the bar, BFFb was wondering if he had missed something I said, because all he heard all night were the oh-too-obvious boyfriend hints.

So, that is my story. I guess the upside is that BFFb didn't go back in and throw the kid over the bar...he must be maturing;-)

Bowling with Tinkerbelle:-)

Someone found me the other day by searching "massage + happy ending + longwood florida". I am result #2 in a Google search of that...hmmm...interesting.

We had a great weekend!!! (Although, it looks like it was less eventful than GreenLineBoy's) We had great timing on Friday and got in to Chicago at about 7:30 local time. I had the horrible urge to eat McDonald's for dinner, so we stopped to get dinner there before we got on the plane...hee hee. The BFF's were waiting for us when we landed, and BFFg was no longer pretending to be mad at me for not calling her all week.

We got Munchkin to her brother's house in no time and then met up with a bunch of friends for drinks. It was really nice to see them all and I was all tucked in to bed by midnight:-) BFFb was making fun of me because I couldn't sleep like a little kid the night before Christmas. I woke up at like 6:45 and went to Starbuck's and showered really early before anyone else even woke up. I was just really excited to see my little sister that I couldn't sleep (and the time change, too, I guess...)

Breakfast was really fun, and she showed me a lot of stuff she had done at school recently. And then I took her bowling, although we only bowled a little bit and played some other games for a while and then had pizza for lunch:-D We went back to get her Mom and then we went to our Aunt's house because they were having a barbecue so I could see everyone. And because they look for excuses to hang out and eat and drink a lot:-)

That ran all afternoon, and Tinkerbelle was absolutely exhausted by about 7:00, so I took her and her Mom back home and said good-bye. Which is still kinda sad for me...I really wish I got to see her more often. They are all coming out to visit me in a couple months, though, which should be a boatload of fun!

I had dinner with just the BFF's, which was really, really nice! I wasn't at all hungry, since I had been eating all day long, but it is just so nice to sit around with them and just do nothing. No new progress to report in my plan to get the two of them to move out this way...I will have to keep working on it.

Sunday morning I went over to pick up Munchkin to find that she had flowers and a card for me for Mother's Day:-) Isn't she just the cutest thing that ever lived? She had a lot of fun with her brother and their family and no one tried to kidnap her away from me...so that's good;-) (Her brother did have a semi-serious request that made me so made I wanted to drive a wooden post through his skull, but I don't feel like writing about that now...)

We met our Mother's family for brunch, and got to see all of them, too. I don't have the greatest relationship with my Mother's family as a whole, but there are some of them that I care very deeply about, and they are all family, so it is still good to see (most of) them. The couple of them that are totally persona non grata had the sense to stay home...

We landed at about 3:30, which gave us plenty of time to get home and relax a bit before dinner. The Boy was at his parent's house for Mother's Day, but I kinda wanted to hang out with Papa Bear, Smoking Hot Roommate and Big Sis. Mother's Day is a pretty big deal for all of them, and I feel special that they invite us to share it with them. It is not really a somber or sentimental kind of thing...but both girls hold their mother in extremely high regard, and both still miss her, so they like anything that reminds them of her.

So, every Mother's Day, Big Sis and Smoking Hot Roommate meet somewhere for breakfast: just the two of them and no one else. They have done it every year since their Mother died, even when Big Sis lived in London and Smoking Hot Roommate lived in Phoenix, they always came home for Mother's Day to see their father, and to have their annual breakfast.

I think it is a very nice tradition:-)