Make Your Own Kind Of Music

That quote/phrase/saying, (whatever you want to call it) sums up my feelings exactly.

I was taught by my wonderful mother that I have worth, and I shouldn't base my success as a woman on if I have a boyfriend/husband. As a result of her constantly reminding me to love ME, I feel like I DO love me. I am a confident, independent woman.  I don't "need" someone to complete me, because I AM complete. If I had a husband he wouldn't be completing me, he'd be an addition to my complete-self.
Metaphor Warning: It's like singing a solo compared to singing a duet. Both can be beautiful, both can be awful; but one isn't better than the other just because there is an additional voice. Does that make sense?
But...just like the picture above says, there is something so appealing about having that "someone".

Which is why I ".com date". Because even though I'm happy singing my own song, it doesn't HURT to want someone to sing with.

Right?

Curiosity Killed The Catfish

Ever heard of Catfishing?

It's something we online daters have keep an eye out for.
According to urbandictionary.com, catfishing is:
The phenomenon of internet predators that fabricate online identities and entire social circles to trick people into emotional/romantic relationships.

Well ladies and gentlemen, I caught myself a catfish! And by caught, I don't mean I was in an emotional/romantic relationship with a fake person. I mean I caught a person red-handed, pretending to be someone they aren't. We'll call him.....Darius, because guess what...THAT ISN'T HIS REAL NAME!

About two months ago I went through this kick where I'd look at the man catalog and message a person a day. Darius was one of the people that I messaged, even though his profile was very lack-luster. The thing that made me message him was that one of his two pictures was of his buff arms. It would be an understatement to say that I LOVE buff arms.

I had forgotten that I messaged him until a week ago when he replied to my message and said, "Hey u! Sorry it took me a minute to reply. How r u?"
Red Flag Moment: Please spell out simple words like, "you" and, "are".
After a snarky response of, "A minute....a month...whose really keeping track?", we emailed back and fourth for a few hours. Then he sent me his cell-phone number and asked me to text him.
We text for a couple of days, which basically means I grilled him with a ton of questions, because my curiosity knows no bounds. Still though, you have to take their answers with a grain of salt, because they could say anything, and I wouldn't know the difference.
TANGENT: There is a very fine line between cautious curiosity & creeper. I feel like when you're online "dating"  you are constantly having to toe that line. Because I'm always worried that the person on the other side of the screen isn't really who they say they are, I am always in "Find out about them" mode. Which often means googling the tiny bits of info they give me and hoping they return a result. The perverted Jew-to my utter surprise-was exactly who he said he was...I looked him up. That's when you start to feel creepy. Because now...instead of going through the "get to know you" process WITH someone, you already know things about them. BUT you only feel bad if they turn out to really be who they say they are. But you can never tell, until you do that "research".
We went a couple of days without corresponding at all, which was fine with me. I decided that if he wanted to contact me he could, but I wasn't going to be the one making the effort.
Last night he text me, and after getting into our conversation, I decided to do some of my "cautious curiosity research".
Taking the info provided by the dating site, and the info he told me about where he worked, and what his name is; I did a google search. His job seemed to me like something that would have a news article or two written about it. What I was hoping to find was something that would verify what he was telling me.
The whole time I'm doing this "research", I was still texting him, and asking him questions; getting more details that I can enter into my search.
In doing my research I found out he isn't who he says he is. The names, and dates, and stories he told don't correspond with the info I found online.
The pictures I found of him from the news articles look like the two pictures from his profile, expect the profile pictures are like 10 years old.

 I'm pretty proud of myself for being such a sleuth! I can't imagine our "friendship" would have gone any further anyway...but now I can totally call him out on being a catfish!
I want to say to him "So If you're Darius....who is (insert his REAL name here)."

Age Is Just A Number

I have always had a love for old men.  They are adorable to me. I used to joke that I wanted to have an old man "zoo" so I could just observe them at my leisure. (I know it's weird...I'M weird).

On a completely unrelated note...haha....I've always pictured myself "ending up with" a guy who is older than me. I think every girl does. From the time I was little I always thought my husband had to be older.

Online you can limit your search down to the tiniest detail. My typical search is pretty broad. I usually search for a male, with a profile picture, who is 5'5 or taller, and is between the ages of 29-39.
I recently had a friend tell me, "Tacy, age is just a number!" We'd been talking about the dating potential around here. I said everyone was too young; he did not agree.
I guess I do agree to some extent, that age is just a number, but let me throw a couple real life situations out there, just to play devil's advocate.
On more than one occasion I have had "flirts" (which are vague, "cookie cutter"-site generated messages you can quickly send to someone whose profile you are viewing. Example: "I'm interested! Let's get to know each other!") or personal messages from men who are WAY older than me. As in 60+!
The first one I brushed off as an accident, saying "Meh-that's just a computer illiterate man who accidentally sent me a "flirt". But then the next day he sent me another one. And he's sent me yet another one.
I also had a guy, screen-named Gunslinger43, who saved me as a "favorite" and sent me a personal message telling me he was impressed by my profile, that he liked my pictures, and he wanted to "get to know me". He didn't have a picture posted, so I clicked on his profile to see what he was all about. The 43 in his screen name? That's the year he was born, haha. He's 71 years old! I ignored his message, and he sent me another one about a week later! The only reason I'd be half tempted to respond is if he was going to leave me a whole lot of money sometime soon (if you catch my drift), but his profile says he, "Lives a humble life". 

Maybe Gunslinger43 was sitting around with his friends and they said, "Gunslinger, age is just a number!"
Haha!

So THAT'S What Crow Tastes Like

1. . Fig. to display total humility, especially when shown to be wrong. Well, it looks like I was wrong, and I'm going to have to eat crow.

The morning after I wrote the post about R2 being a complete jerk, he contacted me and we made plans for him to come over to my sister's house for dinner and a movie.

Later that afternoon it started to rain, and because he drives a motorcycle he told me that if the rain kept up he wouldn't be able to make it. I told him if it came down to it, I could pick him up.

Just before dinner I text him my sister's address. Here is the conversation:
way out there?!
I guess so!
Idk if I want to drive out there, lol

I wasn't 100% sure if he was being sarcastic or just stupid...because I don't know him THAT well, so I said:
well that's lame!
Ten minutes later (because he hadn't said anything) I said:
So are you coming or not, R2?
It's like 30 minutes away :(
Wow.....for real?! I normally live 30 HOURS away!
Haha
NOT "haha", R2. you could have thought about the distance THIS MORNING, I mean....hello!? Jeesh
Sorry!!!! :(
whatever
you leave tomorrow morning?
at 4am
Then no correspondence for an hour and 15 minutes.  In that time I was drafting up a mean text message to send, expressing all the angry thoughts going through my head. As I was typing out my "you suck" text HE text ME and said:
I guess not then huh, :(
Guess not what?!
You aren't coming to pick me up
I don't even know where you live! I didn't even know you WANTED me to pick you up! Why would I pick you up? 
i messaged you at 6:40
the last thing I got from you was at 6:30 and you said "you leave tomorrow morning?"
ok, it was 6:41 not 6:40
:(
this sucks
Don't just send a sad face, R2! We're freakin adults! If you still want to hang out give me your address!

So he gave me his address.

Since he didn't show up for dinner everyone in the house (especially me) was FUMING because of his ridiculousness. When I announced that I needed to borrow a car to go meet up with him, my sister and brother-in-law thought I was insane.
But I HAD to meet him so I could know if he was as big an idiot as he was coming across as.

I'm SO glad I went over to his house!
I pulled in front of his house (behind his drenched motorcycle) and he was standing on the porch, smiling like a ninny and waving at me. Almost like when you get home and your puppy is really excited to see you.

Trying to describe him would take WAY too much time.
I'm 99.9% sure his mind didn't even register that canceling plans at the extreme last minute is....rude.

We talked on his porch for about an hour and a half. It was great to finally get to know him! Instead of trying to see what he is like through messages. And now he makes sense to me. I will never have to read another text and be like, "What does he mean by that?"

He is a great friend! A great TEXT friend...like I wanted all along!

Moral of the story: You NEVER know what someone is like until you talk to them face to face. And you should NEVER read anything into a text message.

While driving home I kept thinking how comical it was that I thought he was "stringing me along". I'm pretty sure there isn't a malicious bone in his body. In fact, the whole time I thought I was being snippy and argumentative in my texts he probably didn't even realize I was trying to be snippy and argumentative. Haha!


I'm hoping this is the last blog I write about R2. Because between eating the humble pie and the crow I'm getting pretty full.

Pie In The Face

Remember the post about the humble pie? THIS post?

Well I ate the humble pie, and now I want to throw up!

I'm on vacation in the same town as R2, and we had decided previously that we'd "chill" while I was in town. I'm not here FOR him. My brother-in-law planned on me coming here a long time before I even knew R2 existed, but he was going to be a perk to my trip!

I was really excited about meeting him. We've been texting every day for almost two months, and I just really want to know what he's like in person.

Well it hasn't happened.

And HE has made it not happen.

I know he is busy with a job and all...but he has to have at least one free hour to hang out with me! Right?!

I'm just really confused by him.

We've both talked about how fun it'll be to "chill", even if it was just hanging out at my sister's house. But every time I've said, "Ok! I'm free!" he has had some stupid excuse. It'd be a whole different situation if I had just showed up and been like, "ok! Let's hang out!" But he KNEW I was coming and said he WANTED to hang out. Even after I landed in AZ he said, "let's chill!" He could have just ignored me, instead of stringing me along.

And to put the cherry on top of it all; on the website I met him on you can add people to your list of "favorites" and it tells you who had added you to their list, and tells you who your mutual favorites are. Well last night I was on the website, answering some emails from other people, and I looked at my list of "mutual" favorites and R2 wasn't on there anymore. Which means he UN-favorited me!

After the RJ incident and now this, I'm just about ready to thrown in the .com dating towel.

It's like the John Denver song where he says, "I think my heart is broken. There's an emptiness inside. So many things I've longed for have so often been denied."

My poor little heart can't take much more rejection.

I'm My Own Worst Enemy

I spent a good portion of Monday writing out a LONG blog, all about how I had been texting and talking to this great guy (I'll call him RJ) for a little over a month. And about how sometimes I go all weird with people I meet online, because I don't know how to show ME through a text or email or phone call. And how my weirdness had almost scared, RJ, off....twice.  And even though I'd given him the "Get Out Of This Friendship Free" card, he didn't cash it in, because he was able to forgive my weirdness.

Well...Monday afternoon I got a text from RJ that said something along the lines of, "I have to be honest, Rexy, I'm beginning to see us differently." (he calls/called me Rexy sometimes).

I said, "See us differently how?"

And he said, "I don't think we can be more than friends."

:-(

Too bad too, cause he was SOOO nice, and hilarious, and really good looking.

And he doesn't think it was that big of a deal, but if I didn't have him to lean on the whole week of my nieces funeral I would have gone insane.

So thanks, RJ, for being a great friend. And even though I told you I didn't want one more guy in my "friend zone" I'm sure I can squeeze you in.

I'll Have The Pie

I couldn't decide whether to name this blog, I'll Have The Pie (as in humble pie) or Judge not, Lest ye be Judged!

One of the first posts I wrote (you can find it here) was about texting, and a guy I nicknamed R2.

The last thing I said about R2 was this, "So I guess it's back to the man catalog for me! This guy was a dud!"

Well...I have to rescind that statement.
R2 was/is not a "text friend" dud. He's not very good at texting, and I get a lot of "haha" and "lol", but he's always there, and will always respond to what I say. It's great. It helps that he is 2 hours behind me, so when I'm awake at 2am, it's only midnight his time, and he is almost always ready to chat until I fall asleep. In fact, we're texting right now, and for some reason I love the fact that I am the one who will end our conversation by being the first one to "go to bed". Is that weird? Yeah...a little bit huh.

One day R2 and I were texting and I can't remember exactly what was being said, but it somehow lead to him saying, "I don't judge people," and I said, "Me either!" And I quickly realized that was very untrue.

I judge people. Especially online. And I judged R2 A LOT. To the point where I had to apologize to him, because in one of our many conversations I found out something about him that explained why I thought he was a "dud" in the first place, and I felt AWFUL.

I still think you have to judge a little, but I judged him pretty harshly. Hopefully I've learned my lesson.