Whelp. Where did that long weekend go? Hm…let’s recap, shall we?
Friday, June 30th: Office closed at 3PM, however, I still had a bunch of stuff to do before I could get the hell out. I ended up leaving at 4PM, which was still much better than my usual 5:30 exit time, so it was nice to have a couple of hours back. Picked up the dog at daycare, went for a quick walk, and then guess what? Fell into bed. Deep, long, wonderful, glorious sleep.
Saturday, July 1: Woke early and took the dog for a walk before the torrential downpour that happened for most of the day. Ended up having a productive morning cleaning the apartment, airing it out…just good, clean fun. Listened to Marc Maron’s WTF podcasts for what seemed like hours. More walks after the rain stopped, a luxurious nap, and again, to bed early! Man, am I boring.
Sunday, July 2nd: Woke early again and walked the dog in the AM, slowly drank coffee and generally lazed. Another glorious day with not a whole lot to do…and still 2 MORE days to vacation as well! I was digging it.
But I was also going a little stir crazy inside. This got my brain churning about my work situation and what I really want to do moving forward. As I showered, I started thinking about some opportunities and got excited about them…they have to do with potentially the restaurant business, entertainment, marketing and merchandising…I knew just the person to inquire about my thoughts - CC. You may or may not remember CC from waaaaaaayyyy back in the OD days, but he was someone I sort of dated before SexyPants came along. Anyway, we texted a bit, and he told me he’d be happy to help me with some of my thoughts when he was back in town in a few days. I’m excited about my thoughts, but maybe he can help me solidify them in a way. He knows people. Fingers crossed!
Thought I’d take myself to dinner again on Sunday night - I love the idea of dating myself! It’s been fun!
So, decided to just walk down the street to the restaurant in the cool boutique hotel. Always love that place for it’s funkiness as well as the great food and (sometimes) fun at the bar. I’ve met some interesting people in that place.
Anyway, walked out the front door of my building and down the steps and was talking with one of my neighbors when I got bit another neighbor’s dog. Long story, dumb story, but…
I posted about it on FB to see what people thought of my situation. Bottom line, I have a douchy neighbor who has several dogs (I’d heard he had SIX at one time in his small apartment), not all of them on leashes, and as I was talking with my neighbor, one of his smaller leashed dogs got tangled around my leg and BIT the back of my ankle. Punctured my leg and it bled only slightly.
I wasn’t mad about that. It didn’t hurt. BUT what I WAS mad at was that the guy refused to believe that I’d even been bitten! Wouldn’t look at me OR my ankle and walked away from me, saying, “we’re good.”
Seriously? No. We’re not good. There’s more to the story, but the bottom line is, I went to urgent care and had my tetanus shot updated (I was due anyway) and some antibiotics and came back and reported the whole incident to the management of the apartment. Dude had a Great Dane unleashed (didn’t even have one on him!), AND I was bitten. My fear is that this apartment group doesn’t really give a shit. That’s a WHOLE other story.
After ALL of that, I walked down to the restaurant and had a seat at the bar, but I just couldn’t get into the whole “dating myself” thing because I was too distracted by the thought of what had just transpired with the whole dog bite situation.
I kept checking FB and all of the advice was to rat the guy out, but before I did ANYTHING, I needed to go to the doctor, STAT.
So yeah, ended up having a couple of glasses of wine, no dinner and walking myself home, putting myself to bed and then getting up in the morning so I could immediately go to urgent care.
Monday, July 3rd: Urgent Care. Tetanus Shot. Antibiotics Rx. Report incident to apartment manager. Didn’t feel much satisfaction except for the fact that I was taking care of myself and not being a dumbass by not doing anything about it. The sucky thing was that it took my whole morning. Luckily, I got my morning walk in with the dog - she even went with me to the doc in the box! :)
Then off to see my parents at the lake.
While I was visiting with my parents, I was also getting pinged on FB by a guy I’d gone out with…oh, YEARS ago. So long ago that I didn’t really remember what had happened with him after our initial Tinder date. I remember we’d met at the park on one of my famous dog walking dates and I remember having a pretty smart conversation with him, but I didn’t remember anything else about the dude except that he was a commercial real estate developer…
And that we’d become FB friends and every once in a while I’d see a photo or something from him pop up and I’d like here and there. Whatever. No biggie.
ANYWAY. He wanted to know if I wanted to meet for happy hour or something that day, and I already had plans for the evening to see my friend MM, who is a brilliant designer, party planner, florist, extraordinaire. I said I couldn’t but then asked him if he might be available for brunch the next day, the 4th of July?? He was hesitant at first, but then we agreed on a place for the next day, and I was happy to have plans, but really didn’t think that much more about it.
Lunch with my folks was great, kind of short and sweet. We discussed plans for this coming weekend…OH!! I haven’t told you this: my brother and his wife and their baby are moving back to the US from China! And they are coming on Sunday!! I get to meet my sweet baby niece! I’m very excited about that…much more about that coming up!
So, nice lunch, good talks, and then it was back to town for me to meet up with MM. Know where we ended up agreeing to meet? At the restaurant at the boutique hotel where I’d tried to take myself to dinner the night before. I was bound and determined to have dinner there at some point over the long holiday weekend, so…perfect!
Has a really great meeting with MM. Talked about her plan to create a new home decor line that infuses African fabrics into home accessories and a very, very concise group of loungewear and to turn her floral studio into a textile lab of sorts. I like her idea. There are many directions it could go. I gave her a lot of ideas…
And then I ran some of my “shower thoughts” past her…and while she was intrigued, I know that I need to talk with someone more along the lines of CC, who is more in the restaurant biz and will know more.
All in all, it’s so GREAT to have these creative meetings and I want to keep running things past my peeps as well as give advice. This is really what life’s all about, no?
After dinner, I was homeward bound. Nice to just walk the couple of blocks.
The BIG fireworks close to my downtown place were that night, but I wasn’t all that interested in going to see them. I wanted to go to bed. So I did.
Tuesday, THE Fourth of July: Sheesh! Finally Tuesday! This was kind of starting to seem like the longest long weekend ever! I guess it was because I didn’t travel anywhere, you know? Like a glorious staycation.
So then I had the brunch plans with the guy from the past. I’m going to have to give him a name, because I searched and searched to find the RAD I did of him and couldn’t find it!
So, I think I’ll call him by his initials, AA.
I got to the venue and he’d gotten there right before me. I couldn’t remember much about the guy at all, except for the fact that I knew he had several grown children (4, to be exact), and that it’s very clear that he loves them dearly. They are like this adorable BFF club, and I love looking at their photos from practically all over the world.
Okay, so I get to the place…he’s there, I sit down, and he’s soooooo utterly happy, he’s practically singing. Well, he actually IS singing, and I was thinking…WTF is this guy so happy about? What a weirdo. And then I thought to myself, self, what is your problem??!! You have been complaining for YEARS about sad-sack guys who SUCK....guys who are “in a bad place”…guys who just can’t.
So I gave it a shot.
And you know what?
I had so. much. F.U.N. with this guy! You guys, he is fucking funny, he’s super hip to what’s happening with the younger generation (because of the kids in their 20s), he’s totally up on current events, smart about politics, what the hot new restaurants in town are (real estate development, remember?), entertainment, music, travel, the list goes on and on and on…
And, AND! It took me a little while but then I remembered from pictures that I’ve seen on FB that he’s in the process of building my DREAM HOUSE! Yep. He’s in the process of building a home that’s exactly the house that I’ve always dreamed of living. It’s modern with rustic touches and windows everywhere…kind of like a gorgeous glass house. Oh. My. God.
I just kept kind of scratching my head. How could I not really remember anything about the one time we’d met before? Clearly it must have been weird timing for one or the both of us.
Regardless, we were drinking these MAGICAL GREEN Bloody Marys (made with tomatillo instead of tomato juice) and having the absolute time of our lives. We sat out on the patio for hours until it started to get kind of late and (heh) they ran out of our magical green mixture! We seriously drank the last of it! HAHAHA~
So, we’d been talking for hours, and he’d taken Uber there, and I was going to walk, but I’d ended up driving because I was going to be late if I hadn’t, so I offered to drive him home. He lives very close to my place in a high-rise apartment while The Dream House is being built.
Quickly got to his place, and I wasn’t really familiar with his building, so he offered to show me his place. Now, before you go getting all…woooohoooo…hold your horses. It was all very, VERY innocent. :) I was truly interested in seeing what his place was like for research purposes! You know I want to move.
Anyway, he showed me the nice pool area because there was going to be some live entertainment there for the 4th of July (hadn’t started yet), and then he showed me his place, which was filled with furniture (because he’d moved a houseful of furniture into this apartment), AND a grand piano in one corner and guitars of all shapes and sizes strewn everywhere! Clearly, he’s a bachelor and clearly he’s musical (remember the singing).
Not only is he musical, he’s passionately musical and when he started playing stuff for me, my heart lept for joy. This guy is absolutely a joy to be around. How could I have not seen this on our first meeting??
And then. And then!!
So yeah, he’s a bachelor and has his kids around him a lot, so there are a lot of 20-something gadgets and stuff all over the place. And I played with some things on his coffee table while he sang to me. I picked up a funny-looking Magic 8 Ball, only it wasn’t a Magic 8 Ball, it was green and it was called something like a Sarcastic Ball or somthing.
So I was laughing about it, and AA stops his singing and says, “Ask it anything.”
So I shook the ball, and while I shook I asked, “Will I ever meet my soulmate?”
And I turned the ball over and the message said, “OBVIOUSLY.”
WHOA.
And then, he said, okay, I’m going to ask a question now…
“Will she kiss me?”
And before I knew what was happening…
It was a small kiss because it threw me for a loop. I was a little blown away, and I did find myself backing up a bit rather than leaning into this kiss and just going for it. I wasn’t quite ready for that, but let me tell you, it charmed my socks off!
And then I said it was time for me to go. AA walked me down to the lobby and tipped the valet for me and opened my car door for me and told me he’d had such a great time. And I said I did too. And we kissed goodbye.
And as I drove off for home, I was absolutely flabbergasted.
Talk about a plot twist on this long, strange, sloooow weekend!
Of course, I blabbed this whole story (and more) to Athena on our regular Tuesday walk. Finally, more than just losers, sad sacks and dick pics to discuss. Yeah, we opted out of rushing to see a fireworks show, but I think I’d already had my fill by then.
What a weekend! What a gloriously strange and wonderful weekend.
xox,
GS
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