Tacos in Icaria

[AndrewP]

My heavens - what a performance. I had to use my hanky more than once. The combination of a story that is dear to me, delivered musically by talented performers was powerful. I've never seen Man of La Mancha but it is a wonderful interpretation of a story that is important to me with an ending different from the books that truly resonates - and called for another use of the handkerchief. I did have a bunch of problems with the rape scene but it was done as tastefully as it could be.

Rose - to clarify - I AM her uncle - of a sorts. She's the daughter of my oldest sister's husband from his first marriage. We met a couple of years ago at her father's funeral.

I'm not sure how much was "womaneese" and how much was just a woman thrust into circumstances not of her own choosing and confused about what she wants.

Ginger - TBH - I don't have a good answer to the bulk of your query

Did you have a good time? What was your favourite moment of your evening? Aside from the tight black Moxie dresses, that chain is here too.

Actually those tight black dresses make me uncomfortable because they aren't the choice of the staff but intended to make them eye candy.

I did have a good time. Certainly listening to her anger and complaints wasn't a lot of fun but once she got that out she was an engaging and interesting companion. You'd smile at one small vignette - she was finishing her drink and accidentally spilled her ice on both the bar and herself. I reached over and picked up a piece of ice from the bar that she missed but the one sitting on her sweater on her chest I pointed out and said that she would need to deal with that one herself.

I will say that my favourite part of our conversation was when she was talking about her vision for the future. One thing that really struck me was her talking about how single women in her congregation are more or less "invisible" and that the leadership doesn't really know what to do with them. She intends to change that. She also mentioned that she had an idea for a business to start but couldn't tell me. When I accepted that she went into details and she has an excellent idea that would be complex to carry off but could do well and plays well to her skill sets for organizing and managing.

One of her challenges and perhaps that of other women of strong faith is that they quite often form partnerships within their congregation. CL and her STBX were very active in theirs. STBX is now pretty much non-participatory. I would think that for many mature women who are single for any number of reasons find the pickings rather slim to say the least when looking around the congregation. Adding widows to failed marriages where often the husband has gone off with a newer model perhaps creates a surplus situation. CL knows well that I am not a person of faith but that I have a lot of respect for her faith. We talked for example about how for a bible study lesson for a class she was teaching this morning she actually went back to a translation of the original Greek text (which surprised the heck out of me and impressed me) to get a better perspective on the original story. I expect she is pretty unique in doing this but she says that the kids she teaches get very into it. She did also say that once her S13 is confirmed this winter that she'll probably step back from being quite so active and push for the next generation to be involved. She said that she's been teaching in her church since she was 15 and figures it is well past the time to pass on the torch.

There was a significant increase in physical contact which I liked. She put her hands on my arm and on mine numerous times and there were several times that our legs were touching or my arm went behind her. Not in a provocative fashion - just comfortable. She seemed to have no problems when I would reach out to touch her. I did notice at one point when she pulled one of her rings off and moved it around different fingers lingering on her left ring finger. I can sympathize with what demons she was perhaps wrestling with during those moments. Taking my own ring off was very difficult and I still miss it. Looking at my finger, even after 2 years from taking mine off, I can still see the groove.

I "believe" that she knows that I will need to be encouraged to continue to interact with her - we'll see. I'm not expecting anything from her today as she has company for dinner but we'll perhaps see if she reaches out to ask about the musical she recommended that I was at today. She may not.

I was thinking just now that men like me are probably fairly pretty rare. I don't recall but it's perhaps been 4 months since she stayed over in my spare room. And here I still am - completely un-smooched. And working on being more or less OK with that.

[DnJ]

Good Morning Andrew

I am glad you had a good time. And yes, I did smile at the ice cube placement and nonremoval.

It sounds like you had a very pleasant conversation and I can see how discussions of the future, life, business ideas, would be a favourite part. Her views about the status of single women within the congregation and her desire to change that is interesting.

Ah, the physical contact, very comforting, very respectful, very Andrew - in the best way. Did you dance with her?

I am curious to see her level of encouragement. Your intentions are I believe known, time for her to show her’s, atleast a little.

I would say that honourable caring men do exist, not sure of the rarity, just may be hard to find.

Keep living forward my dear un-smooched friend. You are doing well.

DnJ

[doodler]

Andrew,

Here are my next three guesses of the enigmatic Turkish taco woman's first name: Anastasia, Esmeralda, and Kim.

[AndrewP]

Here are my next three guesses of the enigmatic Turkish taco woman's first name: Anastasia, Esmeralda, and Kim.

I was wondering if you were still playing.

No

Although "Kim" was the name written on the other ticket that was held for me at the stag and doe. Somewhat surprising as first off, I never told them that I was bringing someone and also didn't say who it was and that person's name wasn't Kim. Hopefully the real Kim got in without issue.

Your magic 8-ball is working after a fashion - but is picking up too much random noise from the multi-verse. Try perhaps shaking it in a darkened closet in your basement.

I'm currently nursing a rather bad hang-over working from home in my PJs. Late last night one of the critical servers went down causing problems with month-end processing. One of the techs left me a voice-mail which I didn't get until early this morning. It's not been a good start to November. Things are largely sorted out. Lots of memos being issued, my boss is making some really stupid pronouncements ("We are now going to stop doing back-ups") and I'm just sick of the whole thing. I know that it's partly the hang-over and partly just being really tired of working for this man who has no clue how things under his official responsibility operate but I am more than ready to just throw in the towel. I do have a son and ex-wife to support though so that option isn't available. This too shall pass though. I know this.

I just did the math and it is now 967 days since bomb-day and 927 days since I was last kissed.

Halloween - one of my most favourite days of the year went well. Of the 100 bags of candy I filled I have 1 left. Usually I get about 80 kids but with the good weather even on a school night there were a lot more. 20S messaged me during the day that I am to mail her a bag of candy so she lucked out that there was 1 left. I did laugh at her message to me where she wrote that "I look forward to your bag once a year". Yeah - that certainly could be misinterpreted . The weather was ideal so I sat out in my sloop dressed as a pirate, drinking rum and handing out candy. I actually don't have a clear recollection of cleaning things up and getting to bed but at 54 a lot of things do run on auto-pilot. Even when I've not had a nip or two, I do find that a lot of "automatic" things in my short-term memory just aren't there the next day. I expect that's pretty common but it does worry me from time to time. It is part of the perils of being "unsupervised" that I can make these poor choices with little consequence.

One of the things about being mature and single with essentially no responsibilities (S24 would manage on his own and my ex has an insurance policy on me) is in my mind the sad reality that taking care of myself or not really doesn't matter. I do still do my best and probably do better than when I was married but it is something I think of from time to time. Disturbing perhaps to know that it really doesn't matter if I live or die. Maudlin I know - but perhaps today is the day for being maudlin.

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I did send CL a couple of pictures of my setup yesterday afternoon - no response - no huge surprise. This is the first message I've sent since I got home Saturday night. I think she's actually anti-halloween. She certainly doesn't celebrate it and has mentioned that before. She's not initiated any contact.

I've talked to a few very good friends and my conclusion is that she's "put me on the shelf". Marked as belonging to her but not of present utility. My belief is that she identified me quite some time ago as a good future partner, did the necessary to get me interested but now is (reasonably) doing her best to deal with the crap that is going on in her life without any real thought about me.

She has posted a couple of things on social media which previously I would have done the obligatory "like" and perhaps comment on. Some somewhat interesting things. I've not bothered. Unlike early on when she was obviously chasing me, she's not interacted with anything I've posted either. I'll always have "stalker lady" and her daughter for that at any rate

The same people I've talked to have also pushed me very aggressively to date others, especially everyone's favourite "flower shop lady". My SIL2 who knows her a bit has suggested to me that she was perhaps in an abusive relationship previously which might explain some things.

One of the things that SIL2 pushed me on was to state who would be a better match - FSL or CL. My own opinion is that in many ways CL is the better match. She's more age appropriate, has a wider view of the world and would challenge me to get out of my comfort zone. FSL is perhaps 20 years younger than me. Certainly much more than 10 - I'm no judge of woman's ages even when I can see their elbows. She also is probably not all that well read and has rather limited life experiences I think. They both have strong personalities and kind hearts though.

I do think that for all intents and purposes that despite all of the potential future positives that I see in CL - that that relationship is stalled on take-off. If I pushed, I could probably make something happen but that's not the right way to do things. As I so very very often am though, I could well be wrong but tying my cart to that particular horse isn't going to get me anywhere anytime soon.

Will she notice that I've backed off? Will she care? No clue.

Oh and DnJ - to answer your question, there was no dancing. We were there during a break from the band and the music being played wasn't very danceable anyway.

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I've been signed up for online dating on match and pof for a couple of years now. Other than for some brief episodes I've kept my profile hidden. I think that this has given me an interesting perspective on the people out there.

There's a widow the next village over - the same village my ex lives in in fact who has been on both of those sites almost as long as I have been. She's disappeared a few times, presumably dating but then come back with additional comments on her profile about how she's not into young guys nor guys who have issues with the fact that she has a lot of guy friends. She's a machinist (posted on her profile) and so having a bunch of guy friends is no surprise.

A couple of days ago I spent a bit of time doing some sleuthing and have found her traces on the internet. The village she lives in is only slightly larger than mine (public knowledge on POF) and I knew her first name from her match profile. Oddly she has 2 Facebook profiles but perhaps one is related to her dog breeding / training. She has beagles. I also found the funeral announcements for her former partner (not husband) who "died suddenly" and just a bit before she started up her dating profile - which is a bit concerning. She has a couple of adult kids and grandchildren. I even have her address and know what house she lives in which is a bit run down and smaller than mine.

Yes - incredibly scary what you can find out easily.

She had a recent public post about Remembrance Day which on a whim I pressed "like" on making it 3 people. She may well be curious as to who this somewhat random person is. It would be pretty easy for her to see similar things about me as what I can find out about her. She may in fact know my ex-wife presuming she goes in to the village grocery store but may not know her last name and make that connection.

I'm debating reaching out to her directly after tapping "like" one or two more times to have her see who I am and not through the dating site to see if she is interested in going out for coffee. The concern that I have is that it could be rather "creepy old man stalker guy" of me to do that. I am perhaps over-sensitive to people's privacy. On the other hand as Vanilla once told me - there's really nothing to lose. I would be interested in knowing people's opinions on this. I am a good Canadian and pretty much always "play by the rules" and this is going outside of that.

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Minor update on the ex-wife saga. I did check in S24's room and yes indeed - he did pass back her pool queue but not the paper towel holder which he's had since last winter. The paper towel holder, I had been going to toss but when I cleaned it, it had a dedication on the bottom from her then recently deceased mother as a Christmas gift. No clue why S24 still has it but perhaps his mother didn't want it (?) which just seems bizarre to me.

[doodler]

I'm debating reaching out to her directly after tapping "like" one or two more times to have her see who I am and not through the dating site to see if she is interested in going out for coffee. The concern that I have is that it could be rather "creepy old man stalker guy" of me to do that. I am perhaps over-sensitive to people's privacy. On the other hand as Vanilla once told me - there's really nothing to lose. I would be interested in knowing people's opinions on this. I am a good Canadian and pretty much always "play by the rules" and this is going outside of that.

AndrewP,

Opinions? Man, I'm clueless when it comes to the dating stuff. But, in my opinion, it would probably not be a good thing to send her any penis pictures before you actually meet her.

[DnJ]

Good Morning Andrew

Sounds like quite a day. Server problems and a hangover. Halloween must have been good, you even have a bag of candy left for yourself - I’m pretty sure S24 will have polished it off by now. Unless you do set it aside for 20S. Her comments are bold, shock worthy, and brash - just what is expected. She is a young person exploring the world and starting to figure out how to make it on their own. A lot of bravado can be shown when you are hiding insecurities and unsureness.

I think you are correct with your assessment of CL. It does appear, for now, that you are on the shelf. Not too big a shock, as you know, she has lots on her plate. A step back was a wise choice.

Oh, dancing. I want to pass on something directly from the fairer and prettier of us. No not doodler - Women.

The last time I went to a social, it was a wedding social by the way, I learned something about dancing. This was, oh my, well I could do the math and calculate. Like you my counter of days unsmoochied, days unhugged, days un-well-whatever, is reaching 400ish, and counting. Doesn’t matter, sorry got side tracked.

At functions like this, most guys sit and drink, and gaggles of girls end up on the dance floor dancing with each other, while the love of their life sits, talks, and sometimes watches.

I don’t know if you have noticed but I don’t really follow the crowd. Shhh, it is kind of a secret, don’t tell.

As such, and because music just gets inside me, I was an early participant in the flock of us in the dance floor. Btw, very few guys joined me, oh well their loss. The women did get most of their unwilling spouses to at least dance a few times.

The girls, mostly W, had a great time. They told me the biggest thing they want to do is just go dancing with their partner. It doesn’t matter if he can dance or not, or how well or poorly, they just love it and want you to join them.

We all have insecurities, dancing seems to be a common male one, females have, well,... hmmm... nothing. Damn they are just about perfect, no insecurities to be seen.

Why I am saying all this. If you ever get the opportunity, and she asks you to dance (or better you ask her) go and do it!! You will make her night. Heck you already making it by dating, you will make it special by dancing.

As to advice or opinion on “creepy old man stalker guy”. This lady is on online dating. She is open to the idea of dating and receiving invitation through that medium. To ask her out for coffee is a good idea. How you go about it. I do like the personal approach but I do not believe you and her cross paths very often, if ever. The, I found your profile and looked you up on google is a bit creepy. It is amazing the information you can find out about someone. So, perhaps, the better approach may be to follow whatever protocols the OLD provides for getting people in touch with one another.

IMO, that is a pretty good approach, in this case. She is expecting or more accurately hoping for such advances, and she can preview you as well. Hey all she can do is say no - well... she could say yes!

DnJ

[dream]

Reach out to the lady through one of her dating sites. Don't be a creepy guy! Just because you can find people and information on the internet, doesn't mean you need to tell that person. lol.

I'm glad you're finally putting CL on the back burner.

[Ginger1]

I agree. Even though we know we all go search for them immediately on FB, we keep that on the D.L., because it is creepy, even though everyone does it!

And why do you refer to yourself as "creepy OLD MAN"? Is she significantly younger than you?

[AndrewP]

But, in my opinion, it would probably not be a good thing to send her any penis pictures before you actually meet her.

Hey - if anybody wants to see that, they need to ask permission first! No freebies. And sadly - no queue.

I agree. Even though we know we all go search for them immediately on FB, we keep that on the D.L., because it is creepy, even though everyone does it!

And why do you refer to yourself as "creepy OLD MAN"? Is she significantly younger than you?

I do worry about age a fair bit as you know but more so about how "appropriate" any actions may be. Perhaps it's a hold-over from dealing with my ex but I am perhaps over-sensitive about violating people's privacy. At 48 she's 6 years younger than me which is no big deal I'm sure. Looking at her FB profile her POF pictures are representative but more flattering than the candid ones where she still looks good but has an expected compliment of wrinkles etc.

It would be nice to bypass the OLD site. I'm going to ask a couple of friends if they know her I think. I'm still reluctant to put myself out on the auction block. I hate to think that I'm being picky - but I'm being picky. There are some undoubtedly lovely ladies whose profiles I see who wouldn't be my first choices but who I would have difficulty saying no to if they reached out. Perhaps I'm being a bit too presumptuous as well but I believe that stable middle aged divorced men are a relatively rare commodity.

2 years ago I would have taken up with pretty much any woman who would have shown interest - flower shop lady for example. For much of my adult life I was made to feel "less than" and that I was just darned lucky to have a woman like my ex wanting to spend time with me. I now know that I can choose. I can choose to stay single. I can choose a new partner. I don't have to accept just any offer because I'm desperate. I think that's a mistake that a lot of people make on rushing in to a new relationship with "whoever". Would it have worked out between FSL and I if she had not backed out on dating me nearly 2 years ago? Quite probably - but it would have been a very different relationship than any I am likely to form now even if it would be with her.

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"Interesting" day today. Since my new primary office isn't ready yet I've been working from home for the last couple of days. I tend to move around from location to location anyway to try to keep in touch with the staff and what's going on at the different sites.

I had an interesting run of good - bad luck today. Even though I don't officially believe in destiny or karma it's nice when things work out. Or perhaps it's just how I choose to look at them.

At lunch time I decided to pop out to pick up some early Christmas gifts for D26 - exciting socks and preserves to put in a gift basket. While in one of the shops, the clerk noticed that my tire was flat. Grumble. Change to the spare and go to a local reputable tire place to have it fixed. I figured that the place where I bought them a few weeks ago would perhaps give me a hassle, not have any possible replacement parts and I just wanted it fixed. For all the days this could have happened, having decent weather and mid-day, on a nice paved street was "ideal". Certainly better than pre-dawn on a major highway in bad weather while I was en-route to an appointment. I expect that this tire would have gone flat regardless due to the installation issues and am grateful that it happened when I was able to easily deal with it.

The tire place was a bit reluctant to do an emergency fix and made no promises of turn-around time but there happened to be a tech free. I went next door to McDonalds (my ex's favourite place that I pretty much never go to any more) and grabbed a coffee and a burger for lunch to occupy my time.

As I was leaving I noticed my old room-mate and friend from University (who lives locally) sitting with his dad so stopped to chat (another weird co-incidence). As often happens - because "how's the family" always comes up, we made a few jabs at my ex-wife and I mentioned that I had been on an actual date. One of the guys there commented that he knows of a widow roughly my age in my village that he plays something called "pickle-ball" with. I think he's going to pass along my existence.

I went back to the tire shop and it turned out that the tech was just finishing up. Total bill - $30. I was pretty darned pleased. He mentioned that the valve was leaky and that the tire bead had come unset. Fortunately - no damage to the actual tire from being flat which could have happened if that kind person hadn't noticed and I would have tried driving on it.

Another bit of "destiny" - in yesterday's paper a job was posted that I am perhaps somewhat overqualified for but the pay range goes up to my own (almost). It's a government role which is not in the domain that I'm used to and comfortable with but it's a 20 minute drive and probably pretty steady work. I adjusted my resume, wrote a cover letter and applied this afternoon. Fingers crossed. They may be surprised to see someone of my qualifications being on their doorstep.

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Busy weekend up ahead. First weekend of the month when I do the full clean of the house. There's the village craft show as well which I'll check out. A local photographer always has some very nice Christmas cards that he does up and I'll pick up a couple for special people including my daughter and CL.

I also have a haircut in the morning and need to hit the butcher shop. We're out of stir fry meats and I'm almost out of the excellent garlic breakfast sausages they make.

I'd hoped to go to things like this craft show with CL - but am not going to suggest this particular one. There's another in the city that she lives in in a few weeks. Perhaps she'll suggest it to me as she knows that it is the sort of thing I'm (and she) is interested in, but I'm really doubting it.

I did get 20S's Halloween candy mailed off to her today - I expect she'll be tickled to get it. From her angst of previous I'd thought she'd split from her boyfriend but she told me to mail it to that address. No clue what's going on there - none of my business.

I need to visit the local cidery / winery and pick up some bottles for the gift basked I've decided that I'm going to give D26 and her H for Christmas. I've got my vacation booked for the end of the month but still need to book my hotel. I'm thinking a gift basket filled with goodies from home would be appreciated. Certainly not something I could reasonably mail.

I started working on a new bird feeder this afternoon and got most of the pieces cut more or less to the plans (my available scrap lumber didn't quite match) but hit a snag during a trial dry-fit so have set that aside to work on later. I find that if I force my way through a project that it doesn't turn out nearly as well as I'd like.

Well - thanks for following along if you made it that far.

[Westo]

Still keeping an eye on you...even over here!