Pitfalls of Online Dating

I have been divorced for over two years, and without a spouse for over nine. As the old saying goes, "You can get used to anything." But I would like to add, "Sort of."

When I started this blog, I decided to try a few different adventures, and one of them was to take the plunge and join an online dating service. Up until now, I had no desire to go out or date. When I started the blog, I thought that this might be a good adventure to pursue. It was fun seeing flirts, hits, and smiley faces from unknown men saying that I was cute. Some of the men on the site were from other states, and I thought that I was safe.

Then my son said, "This will be good for you, Mom,, but you should try to actually respond to their flirts and send them an email." That seemed easy and harmless. Eventually, there was one man that looked nice enough and he kept sending me flirts. He was in his mid 50s and he looked cute. I thought, okay, I'm interested. I sent out my first flirt. Two weeks went by before I heard anything. Then he sent me his email address and said to contact him that way because every time he would try to send me an email, it wouldn't go through. I took a deep breath, and send out an email by using my generic email address and not my personal one.

The next day when I checked my email...Bingo! I received a long email, which went something like you are beautiful, you are my special someone, your eyes are shining diamonds, and you look like an angel. Whoa! Was he on drugs, or blind, or what? He told me a little bit about himself, along with his likes and dislikes, and that he was a widower with a child. Then he added that he would be moving to my area! Well so much for my feeling safe.

I actually know people that have used various dating sites. A few of my friends have shared their stories about their friends dating and getting married, and how they seemed quite happy. One close friend related the story about how one guy hit her up for money to invest in a 'Drive In Movie Theater.' Like those are really thriving! Another friend told me the story of how her friend met a guy on online dating, who just got out of prison, and another potential date admitted to accidentally killing his wife. Another person told me how a colleague corresponded and met a man who was in prison. When he was released, he stayed with her, and emptied out her saving. It took a long time before she ever got that money back.

Before I received that first email, I felt flushed with excitement that someone would find me interesting. After receiving the email, I felt vulnerable. The man's email made me wonder, am I a target? How many other women received this same email? Was I a potential mother image for a man with a child? Or, was he just a lonely man looking for someone? There was just too much information in his email. I guess I am not that special someone. My trust level is pretty low, maybe even gone. I have been there (married once), and I don't ever want to go back to a place where you love someone, only to have him leave, and you have to pick up the pieces and heal yourself.

My dating email, filled with flirts, winks, smiles, and hits are now directed to my junk mail. I don't want to know every detail of a stranger's life. I guess I am just not ready for online dating.

Does anyone else have any experiences, good or bad, about online dating? Would you be willing to share them?

Traveling Solo with My Husband's Playlist

Last week I made an importune trip to Door County, Wisconsin to do research for the next book in my Leigh Girard mystery series. It’s a 4-½ hour drive one way to the Door County Peninsula, which if you haven’t been there is often described as the “Cape Cod of the Midwest.” I took the quicker route on the way up, but on the way back I decided to take the scenic route, 42, which meanders through a series of harbor towns that hug Lake Michigan.

Since radio stations flickered into static as I drove, I plugged in Jerry’s IPod and began listening to his playlist. Jerry and I have been married for over forty-two years. We met at a John Carroll sock hop when he was a freshman and I was a senior in high school. I’m mentioning this because with so much history between us I thought I really knew him. But as I listened to his music, I realized that I did and didn’t know him, and that after so many years this guy can still surprise me.

His predominate group was the Rolling Stones—no surprise there. We’d both been Stones fans from the start of our relationship. We’d even attended a concert in Cleveland when the Stones were first starting out, sitting close enough to see them sweat. Very cool. And there were the expected tunes of our turbulent generation, Neil Young’s “Ohio,” Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate One,” some Bruce Springsteen, the Eagles, the Beatles.

So as I drove through Algoma, Kewanee, and toward Two Rivers past the nuclear power plant that still had the large boulders out front to deter terrorists, hauled there right after 9/11, my mind journeyed through our lives together, moments we shared because a certain song was playing and we were together.

Then suddenly Willie Nelson started singing “You Were Always on my Mind.” Great song, but I’d never put it on my playlist. But it meant something to Jerry. Was I seeing a different, more sentimental side of my husband? Or did he just like Willie Nelson? Maybe I shouldn’t read too much into one song. A few more songs played, I kept driving, my eyes drawn to Lake Michigan as it curled light toward the shore ceaselessly.

As I neared Two Rivers, a song I’d never heard before started playing. The song had such poignancy and spoke about an enduring love that it took my breath away. “Hold me till I die, / Meet you on the other side.” A few more songs played; I stopped for lunch in Two Rivers, home of the first ice cream sundae, the song still with me.

After lunch I could have turned on the radio, but I didn’t. Instead I kept listening to Jerry’s playlist, cycling through a second time waiting for that song. This time listening more closely to the words, trying to decipher why my husband had put it on his list, a man who kept his emotions in check. The song said everything I felt about our years together. “Stay with Me/You’re all I see.” Maybe we do find each other in song, I thought, as I hurled past farms and rolling fields, the music another journey, another destination.

When I hit Milwaukee the traffic picked up and Bob Seeger started singing “Roll Me Away”--the best traveling song ever, all about freedom of the road, freedom of the self, America’s restless spirit of individualism. I hit the repeat button and let him take me with careless abandon through the snarl of city traffic. “I could go east, I could west; it was all up to me to decide,” I sang along. I didn’t see a young hawk flying but like the girl in the song I headed home.

When I got home, I asked Jerry about the mysterious song. He grinned and said, “Yeah. It’s ‘Just Breathe’ by Eddie Vetter of Pearl Jam.

“Why’d you put it on your IPod,” I asked.

“I like it.”

“Me too,” I said, “me too.”

Buzzard Sunday in Hinckley, Ohio

Buzzard Day in Hinckley, Ohio, is officially on March 15. Every year the Buzzards, or Turkey Vultures, fly back from their winter residence to their permanent summer home in Hinckley, just like clockwork. This phenomenon has been going on since 1957.

On the following Sunday after the Buzzards arrive, it is designated Buzzard Sunday. Naturalists and rangers are on hand at the Buzzard Roost, which is located in Hinckley Reservation, to hand out literature, answer questions, and share stories. This year, my daughter and I attended Buzzard Sunday together. We started out at the Buzzard Roost where the main programs were held. Across from the main area, Scout troops pitched their sleeping tents and built wood and rope projects for the visiting children to engage in.

A number of naturalists talked about the Buzzard that they had on hand, along with a hawk and an owl. I learned a number of interesting facts about the buzzards. Buzzards are not predators, they eat road-kill and sometimes when they eat too much, they barf. They eat vegetables, fruits and they really like pumpkins. Buzzards have a 6-foot wingspan, and large nostrils, which give them a keen sense of smell. At one point the man next to me shouted out, "Buzzards in the sky!" My daughter and I looked up, and with our free binoculars, that were handed out by the committee, we watched two buzzards circling in the sky.

The Buzzard Roost offers some buzzard merchandise, like buttons, pins, bumper stickers, t-shirts, hoodies, and caps. I eyed the hat with a buzzard head on the front and tail and feathers on the back. My daughter gave me a stern, "No," and we left the tent. There are also snacks available for anyone who is hungry or thirsty.

After we spent time at the Buzzard Roost, my daughter and I drove to the elementary school for the annual "all you can eat pancake and sausage breakfast." We waited outside in a long line, and eventually got into the building, purchased our ticket, and got our tray with our breakfast. We sat down in the crowded cafeteria with the other hungry buzzard goers. While we ate we listened to the locals tell stories about the buzzards.

If you like what you read, circle your calendar for the Sunday after March 15 for Buzzard Sunday. Just remember to bring along a camera and a sense of humor...and maybe buy that awesome hat with the buzzard head and feathers on it. I know that I will!

See you next year.

The

Looking for "Spring and All"

The first day of spring this year it snowed, three inches of spitting snow that plunged me back into a wintry frame of mind. The day before had been a sunny 60 degrees making me believe in possibilities—bike rides and hyacinths, reading on the patio—what was I thinking? Haven’t I spent the majority of my life in the Midwest? So on Monday I decided to go looking for spring with my digital camera in hand, my gloves in my jacket pocket, and William Carlos Williams’ poem, Spring and All, as my guide.

Why Spring and All and not T.S. Eliot’s more famous springy poem, The Wasteland? Because I was on a mission of hope, not a mission of despair. My first stop was my suburban backyard. Purple headed crocus punching through the snow and brown dead leaves. Okay, I wasn’t “By the road to the contagion hospital,” where Williams’ poem begins, but I was “under the surge of the blue/mottled clouds driven from the/northeast—-a cold wind.”

For Williams, spring is about movement amid the winter waste, about “stuff” coming to life. So next I headed to Independence Grove Forest Preserve because the one sure indicator of spring where I live is the annul overflowing of the Des Plaines River, which closes all the low lying areas along the forest preserves’ trails, making biking and hiking next to impossible and canoeing dangerous.

As I walked the muddy trail toward the underpass to document the flooding, all along the way were “the reddish/purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy/stuff of bushes and small trees/with dead, brown leaves under them/lifeless vines—“ that Williams describes. But what’s not in his poem were the staccato clicking of spring frogs, the sewing machine calls of redwing blackbirds, and the tentative murmur of the river rippling sunlight.

There were also echoes of Frost’s spring poem in the budding willow trees whose first color is yellow not green. Chickadees peeked seeds from tall grasses sending fluffs like hair across the brown fields. When I reached the flooded underpass where the cars spun by overhead in their hum to be somewhere else, the river didn’t disappoint. Brown and sunlit it pushed itself everywhere with a pulsing that I envied in its passion and its intent.

Walking back I was caught by everything green that I’d missed earlier. ”Now the grass, tomorrow/ the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf.” I was so taken with green, I left the trail and wandered for a while trying to decide if the green leaves tight among the dead leaves were the start of wild geraniums or some other wild flower I’d yet to learn. And while I looked and thought about the green leaves, the redwings whirled their song, and the morning stayed cold, as “the profound change/ has come upon them; rooted, they/ grip down and begin to awaken.”

Where do you look for spring?

First Paying Job in over 40 Years

I used to work in a greenhouse for almost 10 years. I wasn't paid in cash but I took my pay in trade. I know what hard work is because I had nine children and now almost 14 grandchildren. I babysit and do a number of things with my grandchildren that keeps me busy.

As I said, most of my jobs have been without pay, like writing and publishing both a parents' newsletter and an alumnae newspaper at the high school where my children attended. For a time, I helped my daughter in her catering kitchen for nothing, then in exchange for a few dollars. Eventually she fired me because we clashed.

Now after a two-year hiatus from the greenhouse, I called and got back my old job. This time the job came with filling out employee papers, and a salary. I will clock in and out on a time sheet.

The first time that I worked at the greenhouse, every part of my body was sore, from the roots of my hair, right down to my toenails. I had to learn how to adapt to working in a greenhouse, wearing layered clothes, and sturdy work boots. It is hard carrying around big sacks of soil, carrying filled trays with soil and plants back and forth to different greenhouses. My legs got tired from standing on the brick and hard dirt floors for hours at a time. There is definitely a lot of heavy lifting, pushing, and standing.

Now after two years, I thought that working at the greenhouse would be easy. Well, I was wrong. After about three hours, every muscle in my body was in pain. I leaned over trying to stretch and almost started to cry two or three times, and almost walked away from the job. I worked for six hours, went home, moaning. I took two aspirins and stood under a hot shower. Eventually my body seemed to be okay.

With the pain came a number of lessons that I learned at the greenhouse. I learned that I love working there, and when I am not there, I miss it. I learned that dirt is called soil: baby plugs are little plants, and watering can take hours a day to do. On a gloomy winter day, the greenhouse is warm and there are plants in bloom. and being there makes me feel alive.

Now at the age of 64, I am a bona fide employee, who will be working for money. The work is hard but rewarding and I will take home a pay check, two times a month. It isn't the money but feeling productive about myself. So in that aspect, I have a lot in common with the plants.

My Love/Hate Relationship with Skype

There’s a stereotype rampant with the techno-savvy generations behind baby boomers that our generation is techno-stupid. Case in point, when I purchased my laptop two years ago, I signed up for a year of tutoring at the Apple store. Though the information was solid and helpful, the teaching style was somewhat condescending. Almost every tutor I was assigned spoke in that slightly raised voice one uses when talking to children. “Okay, now you try it. That’s right, very good. See you can do it. It wasn’t that hard.” My encounters reminded me of that SNL skit a few years ago where the grandkids have to keep reassuring grandpa that what he’s seeing on the TV isn’t real.

That said—this blog isn’t about my techno problems with Skype. It’s about my emotional problems with the Internet telephony that enables you to see the person you’re talking to via the computer. Up until my son was awarded a Fulbright to teach in Manila for five months, Skype had no relevance in my life. I knew about it in the vague way you know about a country you have no intention of visiting. But once my son left, I reluctantly became a Skyper.

What I love about Skype is obvious. Once a week I’m able to talk to my son, hear his voice, watch the play of expressions on his face, know through two of my senses that in another time zone, in a place thousands and thousands of miles away, he’s there.

What I hate about Skype is equally obvious. He gets to experience the same thing. There’s no hiding when you Skype. Believe me I’ve tried. Sitting in the darkest part of the room, which elicits from my son the complaint that he can’t see me. Duh, that’s the idea. And to make matters worse, with Skype you not only see the person you’re Skyping, but you see yourself as well. Tucked in a corner of the screen is your own image.

So, lately I’ve been putting on makeup before we Skype at 8:30 a.m. Chicago time, which is 10:30 p.m. in Manila. My son deserves to see his mother looking her best. And I deserve to see myself at my best. Unless you’re a total narcissist, you can’t help being self-conscious with that tiny version of yourself staring back at you.

Here’s the other thing I hate about Skype. When my husband and I Skype my son, we’re robbed of one of our parental tools--hand gestures, which have kept us on the same parental page through many a phone call with our son over the years. With Skype there’s no way to signal each other when we’ve strayed into dangerous territory. No slicing hand over the throat, indicating change the topic now. No shaking the head no, which means don’t say anymore, you’re really stepping in it. Or my favorite—no dramatic shrugging of the shoulders and shaking of the head, meaning what are you doing! And all the other gestures we’ve perfected. So we do a lot of nudging each other under the table careful to keep our expressions neutral.

But the worst part of Skyping is when I hear the swishing sound which means the computer is ready to Skype, and I click on the call button, listen to it ring, then see the message: User not on line. Has my son gone to bed? Is he okay? What’s going on?

For me, Skyping is a too vivid reminder of absence and presence, which my emotional self has yet to process. What’s your experience with Skype?

Mother of the Bride

I have nine children, six boys and three girls. I have experienced a lot of things - childbirth, first communions, confirmations, piano recitals, sports, plays, grade school graduations, high school and college graduations, marriages, and the births of grandchildren. I have been the mother of the groom to five of my sons. Now I am taking my first tentative steps into being the mother of the bride. This is a new and awkward role for me. In the beginning, I tried to do it quietly and thoughtfully without stepping on anyone's toes. Unfortunately, I was successful for a few hours, and then I screwed it up. Not only did I put my one foot in my mouth, I ended up with both feet in it. That was just the beginning.

It is hard to be asked questions or advice when you know what you should say but being honest just might get you into trouble. The hardest part for me was the Wedding Fair. I saw more flower arrangements, more photographers with their new and "in" photo presentations, dresses long and short, simple and trendy with and without a flowing train, cakes of all shapes and sizes, and women who had glazed eyes, like mine. But sampling pieces of all different wedding cakes and flavors was a perk, as was the free candy that I snatched out of the bowls on the vendors' tables.

My daughter and her fiancee are paying for the wedding. I should have learned to say, "If that's what you like and want, go for it." But no, I seemed to have added a little bit more like, "You know what would be nice, or if it were my wedding..." That doesn't go over well at all.

A destination wedding might be the best route. Yet, my fear of flying might add more stress upon stress. Then again, it would add to my year of adventure. Since this is just the beginning of my adventures in the role of the mother of the bride, I will be adding more about this in my future blogs.

If anyone has any words of wisdom for the mother of the bride, or wants to share any of your stories, please feel free to do so.