Category Archives: dating

apparatus room + spring break

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Last weekend, B & I had an official date night. We drove downtown and hit Warby Parker for some spectacle shopping (we both found pairs that we like) and then got a drink at the Buhl Bar. Buhl Bar is NOT a dive bar – it is a small, intimate corner bar that apparently was private for awhile and has only been open to the public for a few years.

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It was a blustery evening, but we shared an umbrella and walked down to the Apparatus Room for our reservation. Apparatus Room is on the ground floor of the Detroit Foundation Hotel, which used to be the Detroit Fire Department headquarters and still retains emblems of its past. Big red doors swing open in airy arched doorways; there is a chic post-industrial feel, brick and even fire poles, and art by local artists. There’s also a podcast loft, which we heard about from Karen and Georgia during their My Favorite Murder visit to the Fox Theater a few weeks ago.

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The chef has a 2 Michelin star rating and the food was wonderful. I had the miso eggplant and two glasses of buttery, beautiful pinot noir; B had scallops and we split the Brussels sprouts. It was a delicious evening and we can’t wait to go back. We capped off our date night at home under blankets watching the Motley Crue tell-all on Netflix, which we also thoroughly enjoyed in an entirely different way than our classy Detroit evening.

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In other news, it’s Spring Break week for Miss L so I am trying to wrap some things up at work and then take off up north for a few days with my folks. It’s not exactly the warm tropical destination that most people seek out for their Spring Break, but we never considered doing anything else. Miss L loves her grandparents, it’s the height of relaxation, and having a few days to sleep, knit, read, and maybe do some running, hiking, and shopping is perfect. And I do love a cold winter beach.

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the “killing commendatore” socks matched the cover of the book i was reading

So far this year, I finished one pair of socks, and they went so fast that I immediately cast on for another pair for my mom, thinking that I could get them done in a few weeks and then start the sweater that I’m planning. (My first sweater!)  The second pair, however, have taken forever, and then I ran out of yarn (!!! – the problem with using stash yarn that looks like enough but is just a bit short). So I went to my fave yarn store for a similar colorway and decided to just do the toes in the new colorway (which meant I had to rip back the toe in the sock I’d finished already).
Hopefully I can wrap these up this week and cast on for my new project – yes, the sweater. MTC and happy Spring Breaking.

 

in which there is some knitting, a dream, and freedom from attachment

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I’ve reinstated my long-neglected Ravelry page (I am sixtenpine over there) and have been doing a fair amount of knitting. I’m not, however, a very fast knitter, so projects tend to take awhile to come off the needles.

Miss L is passionately fond of her hot-water bottle during cold winter nights so I finally finished her hot-water bottle cover (ironically, finished during the heat wave I discussed in my last post).

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I continue to plug away at my Log Cabin blanket and have cast on for a little knitted pumpkin to decorate my mantel.

Please visit me on Ravelry and let’s be friends. I only have 3 over there…which, let’s face it, as an ISFJ introvert, is really about as many as I have in real life, too! 🙂

***

My dreams have been very intense lately. I won’t bore you with the details, because honestly, there’s nothing more boring than being subjected to other people’s dreams, but mine are full of ancestral histories of people I’ve never met; crowded turn-of-the-century New York apartments full of antiques, a summer porch, a girl in an old-fashioned school uniform, and my dream-self sobbing through a perfect performance of ‘Ave Maria’.

***

My summer friend has moved away but we still stay in touch many times a day.

In fact, my bag is packed and my passport is ready, because this week, we’ll drop out of our daily lives together and take a trip to a place of perpetual sunshine and summertime.

I don’t know where this connection will lead but I thoroughly enjoy him – he is cheerful, optimistic, humorous, and creative. He writes and lives a life of hard work, frugality, and minimalism. Although he is a devoted Christian, he tends to exemplify, for me, the Buddhist concept of freedom from attachment.

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Although I’ll use our trip as an opportunity to take a social media break (except for Instagram, which I do love to sort and edit my photos), I fully plan on sharing pictures and thoughts from our trip in this space.

I hope you enjoy your week and your attachments, or lack thereof, accordingly.

xo

 

hello, it’s been awhile

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Hello friends. If I haven’t been here in awhile, it’s because I’ve had a really nice summer. I grew wildflowers instead of vegetables, except for a couple of tomato plants that seem listless in their containers. I’ve added more birdfeeders which the deer love, regularly emptying them at night – Sarge and I caught them once, in the first light of dawn, capering and kicking with ghostly grace through my backyard. I got back to running, although I am much slower than I ever have been, and don’t really care much being competitive.

It’s been a summer in which I made a new friend and said ‘yes’ to almost every invitation. I went to a baseball game and watched fireworks on the rooftop of the Detroit Athletic Club. My friend and I enjoyed drinks and small plates in trendy metro Detroit spots. We listened to live music in town squares and had a picnic on the lovely grounds of Cranbrook and watched classic cars on Woodward Ave.

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I spent time with Miss L and my brother and his family, riding rollercoasters at Cedar Point and our traditional trip to the Hudsonville carnival just this past weekend. L and I also went to Mackinaw Island with her Girl Scout troop and she got to spend a few days with my parents up north, beach time and freighters and lighthouses. My brother and father and grandfather and I fished for trout and salmon on Lake Michigan, just in sight of the Point Betsie light.

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Unfortunately summer draws to a close and there are already hints of scarlet in my front-yard maples. My summer friend has a new job and will be moving on in a few weeks and neither of us are certain what will happen next.

Labor Day approaches and I need firewood, I have knitting projects lined up and a long Netflix queue. Miss L has piles of school supplies and a new backpack for her fourth-grade year and every time I look at her she seems taller, with feet and hands the same size as mine, almost.

I hope that you and yours have had an equally wonderful summer and are growing ready for the hibernation time.  xoxo

 

easter weekend

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3.2016_easter eggs

It took a solid 36 miserable hours on antibiotics before I began to feel marginally human again. For the record, I still have some discomfort whilst swallowing, so this strep was no joke.

Yet Miss L & I soldiered on and salvaged some of our weekend. On Good Friday, we typically bake something, and plant some seeds, and do a bit of early spring clean up. Yeah, none of that happened. But on Saturday, we did our annual pilgrimage to Kensington to see the new babies at the farm, and have a bit of a ramble on the nature trails.

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There is a little island in the middle of a lake where the Great Blue Herons have their nests. It’s pretty amazing, even at a distance, to watch them come and go; I always wish I’d remembered to bring binoculars.

And then on Easter Sunday – despite feeling drained and wan with fatigue – I went to church. YES I WENT TO CHURCH.

***DISCLAIMER – IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED BY RELIGIOUS FRANKNESS, PLEASE STOP READING SO WE CAN STAY FRIENDS***

I am not a religious person in any way, shape or form. Under generous circumstances, I might be termed spiritual, but I can’t put a definition to what I believe. I just know I believe it, if it makes any sense. I tend to be a bit suspicious of organized religion in any form, although some aspects of it appeal to me – the traditions, the old-fashioned aspects of storytelling and mysticism, old hymns, whatnot. I haven’t been to church in over twenty years, but when Jax invited me to Easter service at his church, I decided to say yes. I didn’t even know what religion he is, but I was touched that he would want to include me in that part of his life, and it’s clearly important to him.

I was envisioning ponderous but lovely Latin hymns and a measured sermon in an old brick chapel covered with ivy, sunlight streaming in through jeweled stained-glass windows. I thought a dress would be most appropriate, but all I have are tailored black and grey numbers for work, or summer dresses. So I threw my capsule closet rules to the wind and went out and bought a navy blue and white number with a slightly full skirt, to be worn under my navy cardigan with my navy blue platform heels. It felt very Junior League but my impressions of Easter services involve pastels and white gloves and big hats and matching purses, and this was as close of an approximation as I could muster with limited time. (Yes, I will be getting rid of the requisite 2 items from my closet to make up for this.)

Jax looked very handsome in dress pants and a tasteful Brooks Brothers shirt and I was slightly agog with anticipation. When we walked into his church, however, it became clear that my expectations were completely off-base. It was essentially an auditorium, darkened but with flashing lights up at the front and a LIVE ROCK BAND. There was a drummer behind a glass window and three singers gyrating and singing a pop song into microphones. There were guitars and video screens showing lyrics and women wearing skinny jeans in the pews holding their hands up and dancing and singing along. It was all quite astounding and I felt ridiculously fanciful in my Junior League outfit.

It was an utterly mind-blowing experience. I tried to hum along and look interested and attentive, although on the inside I was slack-jawed with shock and horror.  And then when the singing was over I tried to relax and enjoy the sermon, which was about hope in the face of suffering. Then there was some mention of Satan, and I felt my cheerful optimism begin to fade again. And then the pastor said that when it comes to Jesus, you either completely reject him or you fall on your face worshipping him as your savior. Too many people, he said, take the middle road; they might not totally believe, but they’re okay with Jesus, they can take him or leave him. MAYBE EVEN SOME PEOPLE IN THIS CHURCH TODAY, he said, and I felt the cold sweat that had broken out all over me during the singing begin to prickle again. I know my eyes were the size of teacups. Am I so wrong? NO, I don’t 100% believe. I have doubts. I like the basic messages and feel that they are beautiful stories, but am greatly troubled by the forms that organized religion of all forms can take. I would be interested in the Bible from a historic perspective, and I could probably really get absorbed in the Gospel of Thomas. More than that, though – well, I just I can’t attend a church that forces me to attest to believing in things that I don’t totally know if I believe – and that’s what’s kept me away for twenty years. I have no beef with Jesus. But, in the words of a pretty awesome Criminal podcast that I listened to, when asked why he selected a Buddha statue over a Jesus statue for a specific purpose that you will learn about in the podcast, if you choose to listen, the subject of the podcast said, “(Buddha), he’s neutral. I mean, if we threw Christ up there, he’s controversial. Everyone’s got a deal about him. But Buddha – nobody seems to be that perturbed in general about a Buddha.”

Of course, I didn’t tell Jax about my discomfort. If he asks again, I will try to explain it to him; I still think it’s pretty great that he invited me to the service and we spent a really nice Sunday in the sunshine afterwards. But I don’t know if I’ll go back. In many ways, I still feel that my way of spending Easter – with lambs and birds and rambles – is just a better fit for me.

date night

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3.2016_grumpy selfie

On Thursday, it took me almost two hours to get to work, due to Very Bad Drivers on the road. I took this selfie immediately after the man driving the gold minivan behind me honked because I’d let two car lengths grow between myself and the car in front of me. He had a Canadian license plate. Normally I am quite admiring of Canadians so this guy must have been an anomaly. I couldn’t quite believe that anyone would honk over something so trivial, especially considering the 2-3 mile backup ahead of us. Trust me, those two car lengths were not going to get him anywhere any faster.

Today was better. I had a couple of routine doctor appointments this morning so I rolled out of bed past my usual bedtime and had coffee and a nice chat with my gyno whilst I was in the stirrups (TMI, I know) and then took a couple of conference calls before seeing my GP. It was a bright clear day and there were cardinals in the trees. I noticed a sushi restaurant next door to my GP and stopped off for a bowl of warming udon and green tea. The restaurant slowly filled up, mostly with Japanese, which is a pretty good sign in a sushi restaurant. The udon smelled like dishwater but tasted fine and I felt happy. I really enjoy eating by myself. A book, some food, I am golden.

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Yesterday, after Horrible Commute, I got to swapping stories about dating with “CPA”, one of my single female colleagues. She’s never been married so her roster of horrifying dating stories is longer and more hilarious than mine.  My male colleague, “Q”, much younger than me and also single, whom I definitely think should be writing a blog about the Detroit restaurant and night life scene, or at the very least getting some actual work done between shopping for beautiful dress shirts online all day, and who has longer eyelashes than I do, told me that I really need to get back on Match. Or, he said after a pondering moment, go hang out at happy hour at a certain exclusive Birmingham hotel’s cocktail bar. He said, “Tons of rich old guys. And the women are just bad plastic surgery NIGHTMARES. Reeking of desperation. You’d be the A-team!” I didn’t really know what this meant but I then had to confess that the last time I had a date lined up, I called to cancel on the basis that I had norovirus.

Of course it was a stunning lie – someone had suspected norovirus from the Widget Central workout room and it was the first thing that sprang into my head.

CPA and Q thought this was one of the funniest things they’d ever heard. At some point, the two of them are going to insist that I socialize with them. I’m not good in situations like that and they both drive identical low-slung BMW’s that I struggle to get into and out of and all in all, I’m just a suburban homesteading mom with a used but paid for Camry who likes birds and cats and her kid, and otherwise is super comfortable being alone. I do go out sometimes and I’ve dated since my divorce, and have really liked one or two of them. I continue to see one friend, “Jax”, off and on, but nothing has entirely worked out with that “click” that you feel when it’s right.

I still feel a little bad about the norovirus thing. I didn’t want to hurt the guy’s feelings – I just really wanted to go home and get into pajamas and spend time with my two favorite boys.

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After I shut down my work computer and had a quick conference at the school with GB and Miss L’s teacher (this is another story entirely and one that likely won’t be told on the blog, as I do try to protect her right to confidentiality and privacy – I will say that while I thought it might involve the inappropriate use of the word “asshole”, it didn’t and that is totally okay with me – even though there ARE kind of a lot of assholes in Miss L’s second grade class, so who can blame her, really) I noticed that I was really hungry and dressed with a modicum of polish.  So I went to a Middle Eastern restaurant nearby and had an enormous plate of hummus, tabbouli, falafel, grape leaves, spinach pie, and a bright salad that quivered with a mouth-puckering acidic dressing. I came home to a bath and a glass of wine, and Marion Cotillard in “Macbeth” and as I sit here in my pajamas, I am thinking that this is the absolute best date that I’ve been on in a really long time. And it didn’t involve low-slung sports cars or bars or anything other than doing things that I really like including reading a JK Rowling / Robert Galbraith book while shoveling pita bread into my gob. I love date night.

 

 

in which i like them apples

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I don’t have any new pictures to post unless you want to see a pic of the cashmere sweater I just sold on Ebay (full price!! score!!!) — wait, I DO have this recently saved to my camera roll:

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In keeping with the disorganized theme of this post, here are a bunch of random things that I am too impatient to make full, well-written posts about individually so instead I will barf them up in no particular order here.

  • It’s snowing again. Actually, it started with rain, and when I went out to the parking lot my Camry was encased in ice. Given our school district’s antipathy towards educating our children when there is even any HINT of inclement weather, I suspect a snow day for Miss L tomorrow. Please note: It was over 60 degrees on Saturday. #puremichigan #nowonderweareallsickallthetime
  • I was standing around waiting for a meeting to start today (I was early) and idly chatting with some other (prompt) meeting participants and I noticed that two of the heavy grey leather chairs in our commons area were just…gone. There are usually two groupings of four and they are too large to be dragged around to serve as supplement seating for meetings. Plus, oddly shaped and not functional. I mentioned it and HR got a little interested and looked around and yup, NO CHAIRS. Who took them? And why? And is my job really so boring that I actually care?
  • During this same pre-meeting idyll, one of the Finance guys said bitterly, “Kids today are SOFT. We NEVER got snow days when WE were kids. If the f-ing buses couldn’t run – you had to WALK. Or your parents had to take you. Now – two inches and it’s a SNOW DAY.” See my sarcastic commentary about the dedication of our district to keeping schools open – I agree with him. We live in MICHIGAN. We should not be closing schools for anything other than a genuine polar vortex. And I want Jim Cantore over here to authorize it as such.
  • I so, so wish I could tell you all of the odd happenings with my work and my dating life. I really wish I could tell you about my shady former lawyer boss, She of the Sitting In the Parking Lot in Her Mercedes Very Very Late for Meetings Putting On her Makeup In the Rearview Mirror, and about the time one of my dates turned his car into his parking space at his modest rental community and SENT A COLONY OF ENORMOUS RATS SCATTERING INTO THE BUSHES WHERE THEY HAD SET UP A HUGE NEST. But I really try to keep things anonymous and kind over here, I seek not to embarrass anyone or call my work integrity into question, and I don’t always know who reads my blog (hi Mom) – but DAMN I wish I could tell you some things. I can, however, tell you that I am currently interviewing attorneys who will likely serve as my boss. When I tell them firmly that I am NOT a lawyer, and I speak to them forcefully and with complete frankness, I can see them receding into a tight-lipped shell of “WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS”. Yes, I inform them, I am not a lawyer, I will likely be reporting to you, and yet I get a say in whether or not you get to come work here. I usually do not add “HOW DO YA LIKE THEM APPLES” but today, interviewing the Donald Trump lookalike with a name like an Edgar Allan Poe novella about a casserole, I almost couldn’t restrain myself.
  • Currently reading: “Career of Evil”, Robert Galbraith – love this series, truly I do.
  • Currently watching: “An Idiot Abroad” which is just wrong. I really shouldn’t laugh myself off the couch when watching it. It’s just – wrong. But I do and I keep coming back.
  • Weather update: Still snowing. Time to go make dinner. Stay safe and warm out there. And if you are in a warmer clime than Michigan, I don’t want to hear about it but feel free to tell me “HOW DO YA LIKE THEM APPLES” because that’s just karma. xoxo

i know, i know.

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I know, I know. This is why I will never have a famously well-read blog that I can actually make money from and then melodramatically complain about the stress of writing sponsored posts for a living. I am lucky if I post once a quarter and look, not even a big splashy photograph to set the theme.

It’s autumn here in southeastern Michigan but still feels like summer. I am still stubbornly single and it looks like it’s going to stay that way for awhile if not longer, since the only male that I can remotely see myself marrying is Jim Harbaugh and he is taken. And would likely be no better equipped to put up with me than any of the other hapless, deer in headlights men that have blithely attempted to date me and quickly realized that for one reason or another they were utterly and completely in over their heads. (I always thought I was a pretty normal person, but based on the state of my interpersonal relations with the opposite sex, I am now willing to concede MAYBE NO). Mercury Retrograde has once again wreaked havoc personally and professionally with an influx of busyness, tasks, stress, and annoyances but I am largely unconcerned with all of them. Morning meditations and evening tea.

Miss L is joyfully back to school and already has math homework that I can’t figure out. (Common core…!#$%) I haven’t vacuumed in a couple of weeks and there is a spider living in the mailbox that is SO BIG that I can hear its legs tinking against the metal when the lid is closed. I am astonished that the mailman is still brave enough to put his hand in the box to put mail in there since I can barely bring myself to pull the mail OUT and have to shake every piece vigorously to ensure that the goliath isn’t clinging to it.

I haven’t vacuumed in a couple of weeks but am keeping well up with laundry. You’d think that this lack of household cleaning would mean that my attention has been focused on the yard, but no. It is mostly dead or dying. The chipmunks have decimated what’s left of the heirlooms, my house was stalked by a raccoon, and the leaves are starting to fall. This will continue until it snows. The maples lose their leaves first, before anyone is remotely ready to rake. My house looks like a Peanuts cartoon – all green lawns up and down the block and then MINE, hidden under a red and gold mound. I will curse bitterly and get these raked up and then the tulip tree will wait until the very end and drop all of its leaves, so I will be raking in the sun and heat and raking in the cold and sleet. Or not raking at all, which will make the neighbors grit their teeth. I don’t mind so much about Snow Hag on the one side, but I do feel sorry for the dentist on the other. He has a really beautiful lawn and gardens and I am quite sure that when GB moved out, the dentist wept, realizing that a divorcee would never be able to keep pace with yardwork. I try, but have become reduced to just mowing the one strip of grass on his side of my driveway so that in comparison, things don’t look so bad.

Rather than doing chores, I am taking naps and reading ‘1Q84’ by Haruki Murakami. I’ve read some really good books this summer / fall but will save that for another post, as well as my running update. I have a goal of publishing once a week (hahahaha…WHEW) I’ve also been helping Miss L’s Daisy troop – we did a great trip to Gleaner’s in Detroit, and I was a parent helper at their last troop meeting. I thought this would be the equivalent of a child’s birthday party (read: painful) but it was actually pretty fun and I made myself proud by getting all of her badges affixed to her vest (finally). I’m scheduling work trips and getting my passport renewed and watching the Weather Channel and ‘Orphan Black’ and wondering why my DVR won’t record the new ‘Muppets’. (Is that a sign from the universe?)

So, the world proceeds apace. See you next week (hahahaha….WHEW) for my next post.

PS – What does it mean when one has dreams over two nights about someone who they haven’t thought about in years? I haven’t thought about my friend from high school in a long time, but the past two nights I’ve dreamt of her and this concerns me vaguely. I’m also dreaming about packing, which is easier to symbolically deconstruct.

blunt force treatments and glass boxes.

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magic in the city.

magic in the city.

It started out as a small patch that itched and felt like a heat rash. By yesterday midday, it had grown to a fist-sized area of maddening vesicles surrounded by a bruise. I walked into the Assistant General Counsel’s office to ask her about something and before I could finish my sentence, she was eyeing me.

“What the fuck are you digging at on your back?” she demanded.

I hadn’t noticed I was absently scratching while I talked to her.

“Lemme see,” she said, and I shut the door so I could lift up my shirt and show her the patch.

“Yeah, that’s shingles,” she said. “Call your fucking doctor and get in right away, cuz if you’re not already in terrible pain, you will be soon.”

And lo, I found myself at my old familiar Urgent Care. It seems to be exclusively staffed with eastern European doctors who are prone to viewing my ailments as invading armies that must be stamped out and annihilated with blunt force. No delicate sophisticated treatments for them; they prescribe me antibiotics the size of horse pills, a scorched earth strategy of leaving no small writhing germ behind. I like that.

In retrospect, it has been a pretty stressful summer, both at work and on the romantic front, so it’s not surprising that I find myself in bed dizzy and drowsy with antivirals, slathered in lidocaine cream. There have been scandals and sackings at work, investigations and interviews with stone-faced executives who tell you later behind closed doors that they just wish someone would take this cup from them. And on the romantic front, a meeting and a break up and a make up with someone that I am frighteningly fond of, and all the complications that arise from that.

Dating at my age and as a divorced working mom is an adventure and not for the thin-skinned. The men I’ve met have also been divorced and with children, only they’ve been divorced for much longer than I have. They seem open to having a relationship, to letting someone in, but being on their own has hardened them somehow. They say the right things, they do the right things, their hearts are right there, but closed off somehow, in a glass box. I can see it, but I can’t touch it. They know they can do it on their own, they have made homes and a family for their children, they are wary and protective of having that disturbed, even positively, by another factor to balance.

And I completely understand it because I feel the same way. I know I can survive. I love my home, I know I can make it on my own and be happy with Miss L and my job and the blessings that I have; I want more, but that ‘more’ will have to be pretty incredible, and it won’t come at the expense of what I’ve already earned through blood, sweat, and tears. However, I’m still flexible, and open, and the men I date, their glass boxes have grown heavier, shatterproof. I see that and I don’t want to become that. I don’t know how you date and not grow increasingly protective and closed off, but it seems that at some point, you have to be able to let things penetrate, even if it’s scary and hard.

So I have been spending time with a man that I really like. It’s a challenge, there have been stops and starts and many feelings of ‘this is too hard’ for both of us. But so far, we have struggled through it, and I am hopeful that our friendship will last. I’ve let him into my house, which is a huge step for me, to let someone see the flaws and beauty and small chaos where my private heart lives. A couple of times, I’ve had to tell myself, ‘I’m really proud of you, this is a big step, I know that everything isn’t perfect but it’s okay to let someone see that’. Deep breath, open the door, let someone in.

It’s nice to have someone to go for walks with and sit on the porch with, and see movies with. I don’t know if it will be more than that, but time will tell if we’re able to continue the process of letting each other in. I feel good about going slow with that. It’s hard enough to trust a single person, and incorporate them into your life; we have to know we can do that before we start with other aspects. I hope our glass boxes slowly dissipate, but for right now, it’s enough that we can meet in the middle and know we can survive.