Isn’t it Ironic

Two blog posts in one night? I guess tonight I am really enjoying the sound of my own “voice.”

So you, dear readers, know all about the erstwhile mancation. And you know that it was pretty much the worst mancation ever. While waxing poetic about taking time off from dating and time for myself and blah blah blah, what was I really doing? You got it – thinking about guys and wishing I were dating. I knew that I couldn’t jump into another relationship so soon after three back-to-back-to-back relationships (as the bad texter corrected me when I just said “back to back”) but this big strong part of me really wanted to just get into a relationship as soon as possible to keep from doing the scary work of looking at myself and taking care of myself. I guess you could say I went through relationship withdrawal. Like any addiction, it was mighty hard to give up. My single self was pretty deeply buried under my relationship self.

And, as you know, I ended the mancation a couple of weeks ago and have gone on a couple of dates. The most recent guy is the fabulous emailer who I met for drinks a week and a half ago. We had a fun time, laughed a lot, and are making plans to go out again.

But…….

I just don’t feel that excited about it. And you know what? I sincerely think it has nothing to do with him. He was funny and cute in email, funny and cute in person. There’s no real reason not to be optimistic.

But the bottom line is, I think maybe I just don’t want to date right now! Yes, you heard me — after struggling through a few months of forced and half-assed mancation, I am finally in a place where I feel so content on my own that I am hestitant to rock the boat. My life has (work aside) become incredibly tranquil. I don’t have the drama and stress that plagued my recent relationships. I spend time with friends, I read, I go to sleep whenever I want and eat whatever I want and watch whatever I want to watch on TV. It’s the first time in a long time that I can be truly, completely — I guess you could call it selfish!

I’ve always been a “why not” kind of person, so I’m sure I’ll go out with this guy again and try to keep an open mind.

But frankly, in my current mindset, someone’s got to be pretty damn awesome to compete with my all time favorite guy.

That’s right….

Noodles is by far the frontrunner.

Five Years of Dating in Los Angeles (and Counting)

Last week after getting back from Ohio, dear readers, was jam packed with playing catch-up at work and lots of fun plans during the week, which left no time to fill you in on the life of Little Miss Law! So tonight I finally get to be in my PJs, watching my guilty-pleasure TV (The Hills), and catch up with the blog.

First, a confession. After much hyping of the mancation, it has, somewhat anti-climactically, come to an end. I think I explained the original purpose for the mancation — to take a breath, focus on Little Miss Law, get my head straight, and just enjoy being single. And I really have enjoyed, and continue to enjoy, being single. It’s a unique kind of freedom that it’s easy to forget about when you’re in a relationship: the ability to make all the plans you want, any night of the week; not having to worry what anyone else wants to do, eat, or watch on TV; not having to call and check in with anyone; and so on. Of course, these things do cut the other way — there are moments when I crave having a significant other to pick up the phone and call, or to come home to at the end of the day, but overall the single life is completely agreeing with me.

Still, I have slowly started to dip my pinky toe back in the dating pool, so to speak. I had belonged to two different dating websites before I met my most recent ex, met him on one of them, and never really used the other one, though I have continued to get the emails from the site continuously. In a not-so-sneaky-but-effective ploy, the site sends you the profiles of those people who email you, but you can’t actually read the emails until you pay. (Surely Little Miss Law must have the willpower/common sense to resist this blatant tactic? Um…sadly, no. You’re talking to the girl who no longer picks up her home phone because she will inevitably be persuaded into donating to her alma mater/the Democratic National Committee/Los Angeles firefighters…you get the idea.) Anyway, I was accruing more and more emails that I couldn’t read and I was generally uninterested in reading them (40 year old men need not apply), until I came across one profile that caught my eye. It was witty, interesting and the pictures were cute. Oh, what the hell, I thought, and I forked over the money.

What happened next should come as no surprise to me or to anyone else who has spent as many years dating in L.A. as I have: a fabulous date followed by a fabulous blow-off. A date that lasted hours because we were talking animatedly the whole time, a text message the next day saying he had fun, and then……nothing.

**crickets chirping**

What can I say? As they dedicate a whole chapter to in He’s Just Not That Into You, the poor guy must have died. There’s really no other explanation. And that’s very unfortunate, because he truly seemed like a good person.

There’s just something about dating. What can be more invigorating, and yet what can be more depressing? It seems to call up a whole contradictory mess of emotions. I’m an optimist, so I want to get excited about someone–because otherwise, what fun is it? Then again, it’s important to be realistic, for obvious reasons. Beginning to date again is supposed to mean I’m moving on, and yet it also makes me nostalgic for my past relationships, because the idea of starting over, learning the ins and outs of someone new, is just as exhausting as it is exciting. Maybe because of that, I’ve had these weird urges over the past couple of weeks to call or email my ex. (I haven’t.)

Dating again also makes me realize that the mancation, while very important and useful, was also very emotionally safe. If I made the decision not to put myself out there, and not to date no matter what, it made me invincible. I wouldn’t open up and, so, I wouldn’t ever be hurt or disappointed.

Much as I’d like to live in a world where I never get sad, where I would never again have feelings for someone that aren’t reciprocated, where I’d never again have a relationship make me cry, I know that’s not going to happen. Ultimately I believe I’ll end up with someone just right, but to get there I know I need to be open and not closed off.

And if that means kissing a few more frogs along the way, well, so be it.

I have a lot of L.A. dating stories over my several years here that I could share with you, and I’m liable to have many more…so, dear readers, I’ll keep you posted!

Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number (or is it?)

Am I dating myself already by referencing Aaliyah’s debut album from 1994? Well, so be it.

A few weeks ago, dear readers, I posed the age-old question of whether men and women can be friends. Another platonic date and another mix CD later, I am still wondering. Last night, my young friend B. (how young you ask? Well, both numbers in his age are the same number. And no, he’s not 11) and I met for dinner near where I work and where he lives. I was struck again by how mature, how interesting, how easygoing and how sweet he is. And yet everytime I had a positive thought, it was quickly followed by my inner voice screaming, “HE’S TOO YOUNG FOR YOU!!!” This is 100% true, I concede. Along with several other things, some age related, some not, that would be likely dealbreakers. And, of course, the mancation. So that leaves me with the conclusion: “So, good. We’ll keep being friends.”

But then I wonder, does this type of friendship work? Or will we inevitably have an awkward moment in the future? I suppose only time will tell and I should enjoy his company in the meantime. I’m not trying to be egotistical, but here are a few things that make me (again) query whether he was telling the truth when he said he just wanted to be friends.
–He made me mix CD # 2 yesterday.
–Yesterday I mentioned offhand “Oh, did I tell you I was engaged?” and his jaw dropped and he said, “You’re ENGAGED?” Then I had to clarify that no, I WAS engaged. Past tense.
–He is more willing to make plans ahead with me than either of the last two people I dated. (ok, that is probably more of a commentary on my relationships than anything.)

My friend T. opined that B. is a smitten kitten (speaking of which, Noodles is sleeping peacefully next to me…he is so cute) and so I asked her what to do. She told me that in her view, I had 3 choices. I could date him; I could tell him that “for his own good” we shouldn’t hang out; or I could just keep on hangng out with him as friends. I’m not going to date him; I already told him so; and so #3 seems like the obvious choice. Am I being naive?

After dinner he gave me a 1 block ride on his motorcycle back to my car. (Don’t worry M & D – we rode slow and I wore his helmet.) I’m such a scaredy cat but it was exhilarating.

There’s something just so wide eyed and unjaded about him. I remember being that way.

Oh, to be 22 again …

The age-old question

First of all, dear readers, I am proud to announce that I am the new owner of a laptop, so you can expect more regular blogs from me from now on…without interruption of the billable hours. Yay.

And now for the topic of the day, a question that my girlfriends love to debate with me: can men and women really be friends? Harry and Sally of course had this infamous discussion, and my friends like to emphatically opine that no, they can’t be. I have long argued that of course they can. I’ve always enjoyed being friends with guys. Then again, recently I have discovered that the guys I’m friends with all fall into a handful of categories that could, I suppose, be deemed exceptions to the general rule that men and women can’t be friends, as opposed to proof that they can. These categories include: 1) guys I grew up with; 2) guys I’ve dated in the past; 3) my friends’ significant others; 4) work colleagues; and 5) gay men. Until recently, almost ALL of my guy friends fell into these simple categories.

Then recently I met a guy who doesn’t fall within any of these categories. I met him through a Spanish conversation group I joined, in my effort to return to those things I love to do. He is fun, outgoing, easy to talk to, a sweetheart and fairly cute to boot. But he is also a few years younger than I am, (which could be the subject of a post in and of itself) so combined with the mancation, this caused me not to think of him as a potential date from the outset. Still, this week we ended up having a phone conversation the likes of which rivaled my marathon phone calls in middle school, and made plans to go to the movies.

Now, we had made the movie plans almost as soon as we met (a long story, involving a scavenger hunt and movie tickets as the prize). So I didn’t feel strange about going to a movie with him. I thought it would just be friendly. However, all of my friends started nagging me that I was stringing the poor guy along and that if I didn’t want this to be a “real” date, I needed to tell him. Though I was too chicken to call him and tell him this on the phone (oh, the horror), I did muster up the courage to email him and tell him that I was taking a break from dating and that I didn’t want to be presumptuous but I also didn’t want to be misleading, but that I was still happy to hang out as friends.

I was relieved when I received a return email that said he was happy I brought it up, that he was worried about the same thing, and was glad we were on the same page.

Whew! So we went on what he dubbed our “platonic date.” Still, there was definitely a tinge of awkwardness that made me wonder if perhaps he wasn’t completely honest about us being on the same page. (For the record, if I was in his position, I would have said exactly what he did regardless of how I actually felt.)

At the end of the night, Mr. Platonic told me he had a present for me, and extracted from his pocket a CD he had made at work of various songs from bands/artists that his company represents. The label of the CD said, “Songs for Little Miss Law.” (I listened to the CD twice already–he has excellent musical taste.) It was such a sweet thought, but was it just a friendly gesture? As a girl who likes to make new friends, I’d like to think so. But the skeptic in me (spurred on by my friends) is…well, skeptical.

So there you have it. Can men and women be just friends, dear readers?

To be continued…

Honing my Dating Skills, on the Job

Dear readers, I apologize for my lack of blog-ness recently.  My recent lack of a computer at home has made blogging difficult (as I can’t bill this time to anyone!) but hopefully I will be buying a shiny new laptop this weekend.

I know what some of you (ahem, Knittikins) are going to say about my post title.  “But Little Miss Law, you’re on a mancation!  What is this talk of dating??”

Relax, dear readers.  The mancation remains in full effect and there is no dating to speak of going on.  However, I have discovered that I can somewhat maintain my dating skills in the meantime, and get paid at the same time!

How, you ask?  Three words:  Summer Associate Recruiting.

If you really think about it, dating is a lot like interviewing for a job.  You suss out your date/interviewee for potential red flags and make a mental checklist of pros and cons, all the while trying to put your best face on and appear attractive to this person that you may not even like.  You make sometimes engaging and sometimes banal chit-chat.  With some people, the time flies, and with others, you want to stab out your own eye.  Of course, the criteria you use are different depending on whether you are interviewing for a future boyfriend/date/life partner or interviewing for a future co-worker/lunch buddy/research slave.  But the process is essentially the same.  As one summer recruit put it this week as I ushered him from office to office for a series of 20-minute interviews, “This is a lot like speed dating.”

Dating has its advantages over interviewing.  For example, it often comes with a meal.   Then again, if I had to sit over a meal (even free) for two hours with some of the recruits I have interviewed, I might have to fake a death in the family and run away before the entree, so the advantage of interviewing is that typically the (potential) torture only lasts for 20 minutes.

At any rate, over the past two weeks I have been given a crash review course in how to: listen to boring speeches; smile and nod encouragingly at asinine comments; ask thoughtful questions; and be generally perky with a complete stranger.  I feel that once the mancation ends this may serve me very well when I re-enter the world of First Dates.

Things that are complicated about dating that recruiting helps with not at all:

1)   Picking out the first-date outfit.  Especially disastrous now that I have no roommates and hence no one to approve or veto.

2)  Dealing with the X factors.  Does your date drive like a maniac?  Drink like a fish?  Write on his Crackberry during dinner?  Who knows! 

3)  How to meet potential dates in the first place.  Online?  In a bar?  Set-ups?  Blech, blech, blech.

I could regale you, dear readers, with a series of stories of bad dates and bad interviews that would make your head spin.  For instance, the date who took me to an obscenely expensive restaurant, ordered an obscenely expensive bottle of wine, and then made me split the tab with him.  (My HALF was $260.  I was a first year law student.  I wish I were kidding.)  But I’ll save those stories for another day.

Until then:  bill, bill, bill.

“Didn’t your parents teach you better than that?”

Last night I went out again with J. to her local bar — not to drink, but just to get out of the house and spend some time with J.  As always, though we weren’t there too late, it was a highly entertaining evening. 

First, we spotted our good friend TL, in all his beige-jacket-over-a-T-shirt finest.  You’ll recall that he had sent me the lovely text of “Did we meet last night?” after the last time I chatted with him.  Sure enough, last night he looked straight at me and smiled with not even the vaguest hint of recognition.  He appeared to have charmed some (unsurprisingly, intoxicated) girl into hanging out with him.  I wanted to warn her, but J. advised me not to ruin things for the poor girl who was clearly enjoying her misconception that he’s a cool guy.

Then, even worse, I ran into The Bad Texter.  I had met him 3 weeks before, he had sent me a few badly spelled texts, and I had never followed up with him.  I spotted him, and oh-so-maturely, I swiveled and ran in the opposite direction and then cowered upstairs.  Eventually I realized that I was going to run into him eventually and that I needed to just suck it up, so J. and I headed back downstairs and I prepared to face the music.

Sure enough, before long I found myself face to face with him.  He looked at me and whined, “You never texted me back!”  “I know, I apologize,” I replied.  “No you don’t,” he said.  “If you apologized, you would have texted me back.  That’s rude.  Your parents taught you better than that, didn’t they?  Why didn’t you text me back?  Be honest.”

I hemmed and hawed a bit, and when I realized that he wasn’t going to let this one slide, I replied, “Like I told you last time we met, I’m taking a break from dating.”

Oh boy.   I had no idea what kind of floodgates that was going to open.  I then was regaled with a speech about how women are irrational, why was I imposing some artificial rules on myself, blah blah blah.

I didn’t tell him, of course, that if I met the right guy I would consider ending the mancation, but he wasn’t it.

At any rate, for the next half hour or so, Bad Texter alternated between bitchy (“Fine, it’s your decision!  Whatever!”)  and sweet (“I just couldn’t stop thinking about you!”)  When J. and I went to say our goodbyes, he asked, “So if I text you this week, will you text me back this time?”  This guy just won’t take no for an answer!  Luckily J. chimed in with, “She can’t date you!  She’s on a mancation!”   He was annoyed (J. got a not-quite-joking finger) but I think he finally got the point.  Whew.

Ah, the fragile male ego.

Tonight I am having dinner at Knittinkins’ abode and get to see her father, who has sort of adopted me into the family (after all, I did live with 2 of his daughters for 4 years), and apparently reads my blog! 

Have a lovely weekend!

Bad texting part II

Dear readers, as you know this was a grueling and stressful week at work, and so Friday night I had every intention of staying in with some Netflix, a glass of wine and Noodles.  Instead, I ended up going out with my friend J. to her favorite local bar (walking distance to her house), staying out till the bar closed and sleeping on J’s spare mattress.  Not exactly a relaxing Friday evening, but all in good fun. 

J.’s friend S. practically lives at the bar (no, really — he is there almost every night of the week) and sure enough, we spotted him the minute we walked in on Fri night.  When we hang out with S., we always seem to meet entertaining people.  He smokes, so we end up out on the balcony with him — I hate cigarette smoke, but smokers do tend to be quite a social bunch, so it can be fun. 

While out on the balcony, we ended up standing next to a guy who I had spotted earlier and commented to J. that he looked like Topher Grace.  (I had just been watching In Good Company on TV before I went to J.’s house, so Topher was on my mind.)  Topher Lookalike (I’ll call him “TL” to protect him) was wearing a T-shirt with a white blazer over it.  (Yes, wow.)  We started chatting and I discovered a couple of things.  1) He was just as big of a tool as his outfit suggested, as he started using some of the worst pick-up lines I have ever heard.  2)  He is a 2L at the law school I attended.  (Really, this should not have surprised me, as most of the single guys I went to law school with were giant tools.)

The evening went on and J., S. and I continued to hang out and chat.  At the end of the night, TL came up to me and asked for my number.  J. was horrified when I gave it to him, but I assured her that I had no intention of going out with him, but I am not one to turn down what has the potential to be excellent blog fodder.

And, just as I hoped, TL came through for me.  Yesterday J. and I went to the 3rd Street Promenade and were having a pleasant afternoon of shopping when I heard my phone beep, and found this winsome text:

“Did we meet last night?  Sorry, asshole text I know.”  -TL

So, as it turns out, there are much larger texting crimes than bad spelling, and this is certainly one of them.  It’s really pretty inexplicable.  If he has no memory of me, why is he contacting me?  And what makes me think that I would ever respond to such a text?  (I didn’t respond, though J. and I spent some time conjuring up some truly snarky responses.)

All the more reason why the mancation is an excellent idea . . .

Bd txts drv me crzy. :P

First, dear readers, an announcement.  Little Miss Law is officially on a mancation.  Yes, you heard me right.  A mancation, i.e. a vacation from men.  (My friend D. coined the phrase.)  Don’t worry, I am not turning into some kind of Bitter McBitterson man-hater…far from it.  But after my recent breakup, and considering that the recent relationship was fairly closely preceded by my two previous relationships, I decided that it was time to take a breath, step back from it all and focus on myself.  I think that sometimes jumping right into the dating pool again can, on the surface, seem to make getting over a relationship easier.  It’s a distraction, to be sure.  But more often than not, I think it just makes things worse — it’s easy to fall into the trap of projecting whatever mixed/hurt/intense feelings you have onto a new, undeserving person; it’s easy to try to rush things instead of letting them develop naturally; it’s easy to start comparing the new person to the old person.  I can envision any of these things happening, and so, mancation it is.  And so far, so good.  I can honestly say that I have no desire to date someone new right now, and focusing on myself is a really nice treat.

Of course, under Murphy’s Law, times in my life when I have actively tried to meet someone, it doesn’t happen…and so far, on my mancation, I seem to be attracting more attention than usual.  Go figure. 

On Saturday night, I went out to a bar with my girlfriends to celebrate my friend J.’s birthday.  (We started with happy hour at Cabo Cantina at 4 pm…it promised to be a long night.)  At some point in the night, J.’s friend came and brought a group of guys that he had been at a BBQ with.  One of them was tall, pretty cute, and wearing a very endearing pair of black-and-white checkered Vans.  We chatted for a while, and one or two cocktails later, he was heading out to another party, and told me that he wanted to take me out to dinner sometime.  I told him about my mancation, and I’m not sure if he didn’t get what I meant, or if he just thought it was funny, but he ignored my explanation and we exchanged numbers.  I thought to myself, well, mancation aside, it’s nice to remember that there are fish in the sea, blah blah blah.

Then later that night I received the following text message:

“i went to a frnds bdy pty.  But i wnt to g out w u son”

Oh.  My.  God.  Any slim chance that my mancation was going to end in the near future abruptly vanished.  Those of you who know me, know that I am sort of a spelling nazi.  (I did win the state spelling bee in 5th grade, after all.)  If I like someone, I will try to be flexible.  Spelling errors happen.  Typos happen.  But that text, my friends?  That was nothing short of a dealbreaker.  (On the plus side, much to my sheer amusement, I got to hear my friend JV exclaim “I want to go out with you SON!” for the rest of the night.)

I know what you’re going to say.  It was a text message.  Everyone abbreviates in text messages.  It was late.  He was probably drunk and tired.  Etc etc etc.

 Guess what?  I.  Don’t.  Care.  If he can’t even write a text message that contains full words (much less punctuation), what do you think his e-mails are going to look like?  His online chatting?  Call me crazy, but in this high tech world, where everyone e-mails, the thought of tolerating more than one such text message/email sends shivers down my spine.  Perhaps I was spoiled by my recent ex, quite the smarty pants, but sheesh.

To sum up:

1)  The mancation remains in effect.

2)  When the mancation ends, bd splrs nd nt aply.  Thx.