Stinky Dog and Other Highlights from the drive Up North

I drove Up North today to spend five days with the family. My dog really needs a bath. She insisted on laying her stinky, slobbery head on my shifting arm the entire four-hour trip. When we arrived, she promptly jumped into the lake (see picture several entries down), which didn't do much to improve her olfactory appeal.

I also made some shidduchim phone calls. My cell phone is out-of-range up here, so I wanted to see if the two SYAS guys wanted to email this week instead of trying to talk on the phone.

The first guy, whom I'll refer to as Dr. Math, wasn't home, so I left him a message with my email address. Apparently he called M.H. after this to say that his computer was down and he probably wouldn't be able to email this week. Better luck next week. I'll try giving him a call on my way home Friday morning.

Bachelor #2, the New Yorker who slipped through from two entries ago, called me on Friday to wish me Good Shabbos. This was after our ill-fated and thoroughly mediocre phone conversation on Wednesday. I was impressed. The goofy laugh and half-stutter suddenly became a little cute instead of irritating. I called him back today and we chatted briefly - I gave him my email address, I hope he writes.

Have a delightful first week of August, everyone!

Dream a Little Dream

I had a brief conversation with another blogger today about escaping from life in the city/suburbs.

Why is it that nearly all Jewish communities are in cities or suburbs? Sure, I understand the need to be close to a minyan and close to good schools. But, why doesn't anyone ever gather a few families and move to a small town somewhere?

I've talked to so many people over the last few years who have expressed a desire to move away from our suburban community in favor of a small-town existence. Maybe they weren't serious.

I'm very serious.

I grew up in a small town on the shores of one of the Great Lakes. I love life up there - the pace is slower, people are friendly, there's plenty to do - skiing in winter and water in the summer (see the pictures a few posts down). On top of all that, it's a resort community - thousands of people come in and out of there every summer - so there's a fair amount of culture and the locals are used to having different people around.

I'd give almost anything to move back up there.

Think about it. If enough families moved up there, we could have a small school. No doubt English teachers would be easy enough to find. I'm sure we could sort out kodesh teachers and send the older kids away for high school, if necessary.

I've thought all this through. Seriously.

Oh well, a girl can dream, can't she?

SJF seeks SJM for quiet life in the country.

The First Phone Call

Today, I'd like to discuss the out-of-town dating phenomenon known as the First Phone Call.

You see, unlike you lovely New York types, we here in the hinterlands cannot dash off to the nearest kosher restaurant or café to meet our dates. Most of the time, our dates live a plane ride away. So, instead of a First Date, we have its poor bastard cousin, the First Phone Call.

I've been trying to figure out what to make of F.P.C.s for the past two years. My best conclusion so far? They are almost universally useless.

Case in point #1: I had a phenomenal first phone call with the Israeli. We were witty and funny, yet we still managed to discuss some serious issues. The result? One glance at me on our first date and he decided I wasn't his 'look'.

Oy. All that wasted time and money.

Case in point #2: I had a very mediocre F.P.C. today with a gentleman from NYC. I had vowed not to date any more of you, but somehow he slipped through the radar. Perhaps it was the good impression he made on M.H. or his cute first phone message. I don't know. Whatever happened, I was prepared to like this guy. Yet, the phone call was mediocre - so mediocre, in fact, that I'm not sure I'd want to talk to him again. There just wasn't any Connection.

What if a mediocre F.P.C. could lead to a fabulous First Date? Is it worth the risk?

I wish there was a Supreme Court-style litmus test for First Phone Calls - you score over 50 and advance to First Date. Under 50? Better luck next time.

Maybe it's me. Am I screwing this up?

Ain't that the question of the century.

Sauna

My long-held anti-airconditioning views may be wavering. Last night (after the post-fast feast of homemade deepdish pizza), I went to bed at 12:30. A normal summer temperature at this time of the evening? 71ish. Temp last night? 88 degrees Fahrenheit. Heat index (what it actually felt like) according to www.weather.com? 101 degrees Fahrenheit.

That's right. You try sleeping in a sauna. My poor dog panted all night. I'll be sleeping in the musty, yet cool, basement tonight, thank you very much.

Not so much new on the shidduch scene. M.H. found me two decent guys on SYAS - I may possibly be getting phone calls from both tonight. I think I should take notes.

I ditched the Midwesterner. The final hammer blow? He asked if my parents were "upper-middle class WASPs, middle class, or working class". Hmm. How about "none of your damn business"?

I can't tell if it's the heat, the fasting, or the shidduchim that are bringing out my worst-behaved, crankiest side. I suspect it's stress brought on by shidduchim with a little bit of fasting and heat stroke sprinkled in.

That cabin in the woods in the upper peninsula is looking better all the time. Yo ho, yo ho, the hermit life for me.

Who doesn't get it?

Ok, so I drop 20 lbs., and suddenly I'm back among the living.

Guys don't even recognize that you're human when you're fat. You might as well be an overstuffed piece of furniture. I suppose they're hardwired like that, but it's a little disconcerting all the same. Am I strange to want to be admired for my brains and charming personality?

It feels nice to get noticed again, but at the same time I feel like a piece of meat. Like the poetry guy who kept telling me how he "understood " me - it's just weird. It's not like I was going to fly to New York and sleep with him. What was he hoping to accomplish with all that drivel? I don't know of a single self-respecting female who would fall for it.

It's stalker week. I'm stalking the Inspector - secretly hoping his date didn't go well, all the while wondering if he made up the story about the date to let me down easy...

I'm being stalked by a random from Brooklyn (not poetry guy) - he sent me three messages after I very nicely told him we weren't a good match. I even wrote him a personal message - not the stock autoreply message Frumster furnishes.

I'm also being stalked by the Midwesterner who tells me that my messages are too brief and he doesn't have a good sense of who I am. This would be fine, but it's a transparent cry for an email because I haven't written to him now in (gasp) 36 whole hours. I should send him the blog address.

New guy on the horizon (yay, MH - she got her SYAS credentials this week and hit the phones like a woman on a mission!) - he gets major bonus points for calling at an appropriate time (9:00 p.m.) and for sounding cute and nervous. Too bad I'm out of town and can't call him back until Sunday.

Can you really tell what someone is like from their Frumster/SYAS profile? I've been looking at profiles that have nothing overtly wrong with them - I just have a gut feeling that it's a bad idea.

What if my bashert just isn't very good at PR?

Revisiting the profile

I spent last night (motzei Shabbos) totally revamping my Frumster profile. Like the former Soviet Union under Gorbachev, I have embarked on a policy of glasnost - openness. I even posted a full-body picture (gasp).

How does one deal with physical imperfections on Frumster or SYAS? I've only been looking at guys' profiles (obviously) and no one seems to have any. Of course, it's not such a big deal if a guy has a beer gut - many women are able to see past that.

I got sick of meeting guys who expect everyone to be stick-woman. So, everything's there - big hips and all - you even get a view of my living room and a taste of my decorating style ;) One-stop shopping.

I guess now I wait.

In other Frumster news... My friend, M.H., had been surfing Frumster looking for potentials - last week she sent me approximately 25 profiles. I deleted some and emailed some. By erev Shabbos, I was corresponding with seven men from around the world.

On motzei Shabbos, we decided to 'cull the herd' - send polite responses to the guys who had already a) freaked me out by sending me 15 poems and writing things like "I understand you" (Note: Gentleman out there, there's no possible way you can 'understand' someone you've exchanged three emails with. Save the bad poetry until we're already in love.), b) shown a remarkable lack of respect for the English language (even though born in the USA), or c) responded shortly and curtly and withoutmuch interesting to say.

We managed to get it down to two men. One (we'll call him the Inspector), I was very interested in - he had already proven himself to be funny, witty, and down-to-earth. The other (the Midwesterner) almost didn't make the cut, but I didn't know enough about him yet to outright reject him.

This is sounding really bitchy, isn't it?

In any case, I had an email from the Inspector this morning saying that he wanted to stop email communication for now since he had a date tonight with a girl he had been talking to. Ugh.

It feels so close - just beyond my grasp. Back to the drawing board, yet again.

I did it

I finally renewed my Frumster membership. Nebby? Yep. Desperate? Maybe.

I went chosson-shopping tonight. It's just weird. It's a little like ordering from a catalogue. You pick out what you want and when you call the store, they're out of the size/color you need. At least with SYAS, someone else does the ordering for you. It's rejection on a slightly less personal level. :)

Do we ever really know what we want? I think I do. I more have a picture in my head of what I want my life to look like. I guess the trick is finding someone whose vision of the future matches up at the key points.

For example: I want a house with a big backyard where I will be Mother Earth and grow lots of flowers and vegetables and tend our muddy, rosy-cheeked children. I want my husband to sing zemiros at the Shabbos table with our guests and sit with a sefer on Shabbos afternoon. He should learn as often as he can, but not be pretentious or overly dogmatic about it.

I'll cook and clean, he'll fix things. I'll iron his shirts lovingly and he'll bring me flowers and whisper how much he loves me in my ear.

We'll go walking and biking and sailing and camping together and delight in just sitting and talking after the kids are asleep.

Does Prince Charming really exist?

Summer as it should be...

Why do I hate NYC so much? Perhaps this will help you understand.

You asked me to put more about myself into the blog. This is it. This is me. This is where I'm from and where my heart lives.

The view from the hammock. Any wonder my favorite colors are green and blue?

Next

It's amazing how much energy simply contemplating the whole shidduch process takes. It's basically what I think about night and day.

The newest prospect is a friend's friend's brother-in-law. My friend seems excited, but her friend thinks that the brother-in-law might be a little flaky. I'm relatively indifferent at this point. We'll dub him BIL (brother-in-law) for the time being. I'll keep you posted.

The other newest prospect is a friend of this same friend's friend. Aaagghh! Apparently he is a real mensch and is a great pie-baker. I'm slightly reluctant because it appears that he's shorter than me. At least that's what his frumster profile says. I can probably safely assume that he's even shorter since just about eveyrone I know bends the truth to make themselves a more attractive prospect on frumster. And he claims to be chassidishe. Hmm. Maybe not.

Well, I'm off to the grocery store for mundane things like eggs and flour. My wonderful friend M.H. took her kids berry picking today and they are bringing me tart cherries and raspberries. A cherry-berry pie looms in my future...

Anti-negativity

I reread the last few blog-posts and I feel like this blog has taken on a decidedly negative slant. So, today, I'm only going to blog about happy things.

I went canoeing for five hours today with some awesome people - nothing beats lazily floating down a beautiful river in a boat with one of your best friends in the world. It was so nice to catch up.

Tomorrow, I get to chaperone the rescheduled trip to the wavepool with four of my favorites from last year. In a moment of sheer wickedness, I emailed the little darlings a 4th of July social studies quiz, promising them a surprise if they sent it back to me filled in correctly. :) They're all geeks (I keep good company), so I had many back within the hour. Now I have to figure out what the surprise will be.

Home. Home is good. Home is the place where I feel like a Human Being. Like a Contributing Member of Society. I mowed my virgin grass for the first time yesterday - it's only been a month since we spread twelve cubic yards of dirt around my pock-marked front yard. Fresh green grass is especially invigorating.

My friend Pauline agreed to go with me to Boston in mid-August for the week after Tisha B'Av. Roadtrip. Camping along the way. SMILE.

Natasha, my lab-pointer mutt, was so happy to see me when I got home yesterday that she peed all over herself. Gross, yet heartwarming.

Finally, it's been raining and thunderstorming for the past four hours. This means that Hashem is footing the bill for watering my lawn today AND airconditioning my house (rain causes drafts).

Ok, enough happiness for now. It's bedtime.

I'm so done with this.

Warning: female venting ahead

At least my trip to NYC and environs has led me to some conclusions. Let's call them the
Modern Midwestern Girl's Guide to Shidduch Dating:

1) It costs a huge amount of money, time, and effort to travel to NYC for a date - not only for me, but for my friends who hosted me at their apartment for five days.

2) As a female, traveling in for a date made me feel nebby and desperate - definitely not beautiful, talented, and worthy.

3) In the Jewish world, women don't pursue men. I am a product of modern times, but even I feel in my gut that it's wrong for a girl to travel to go out on a first date with a guy. Is chivalry dead when it comes to out-of-town girls?

4) Unless circumstances are extenuating, I will no longer travel in for first dates. However, I will willingly split airfare with someone so he can travel to me.

5) Make sure that you have adequate physical expectations of each other before you go through the time, expense, and stress of going out. I spent $250+ for the Israeli to take one look at me and decide I wasn't his type (nevermind his chipped front tooth and beer gut). I know, I know - don't lecture an anonymous blogger about loshon hara or ahavas yisroel. You don't know him or me - what do you care?

6) A friend and I were discussing the difficult dating circumstances for ba'al teshuva guys who are kohanim - they can only marry women who have never been married, haven't slept with any non-Jewish guys, and who aren't converts. This narrows the ba'alas teshuva field down to very few girls. My friend had some wonderful words of wisdom as I was saying, "poor kohanim guys". She said, "H-shem makes sure their bashert meets all the criteria. He wouldn't make my bashert a kohen."

The moral of the story is: Hashem wouldn't make my bashert a selfish bastard who would refuse to split a plane ticket to fly in to date me.

7) It's okay to vent to keep the bitterness from building up. In the morning, you can approach ahavas yisroel with renewed energy and focus. Keep a blog for these purposes.

Venting complete.

You

בס״ד
You
I don’t know you
but your spirit is already
with me
Not the details of you
the shadow above
your eyes
and the grace of
your fingers
soft words spilling from
your lips
stay hidden
Yet you are here
energy without form
you
next to me on the couch
you
across from me at the dinner table
you
watering the flowers in the front
while I
cut the grass in the back
who are you?
You
calling me to the phone
you
whispering in
my ear
your arm around
my waist
warm breath on the hollow of
my neck
rough hand gently cupping
my face
just out of reach
I wait

Massive Irritation

Yes, it wasn't good.

We met for coffee last night. Right away I could see that he had already mentally checked out of the situation.

I also felt no connection to him. Nevertheless, it hurts to be dismissed so immediately and so completely.

We were going to go out again today. When I woke up this morning, I half wanted to call him and cancel the plans. He beat me to it.

Rejection, even from someone you're not attracted to or invested in, is painful.

I've constructed a wall around myself. It used to be only knee high, but pretty soon I won't be able to see over it any more. What will I do then?

I don't know how much longer Hashem expects me to stand this before I give up and build myself a cabin in the woods miles from another human being.

So, I've spent over $200 to spend five days in a city I hate and I have nothing to show for it.

I'm so irritated. Random curse words are trying to slip past my slips, but I have no one to say them to so I'll hold them in for now.

Why? When? Who?

Maybe I'll just stay single.