After my crash and burn adventure with Mountain Man and with much encouragement from my co-worker and BFF, I decided to browse the dating sites again. Feeling burned by Chemistry.com for sending me someone fickle enough to disappear I jumped back on the eHarmony bandwagon. (Mostly due to a reduced rate for re-up) And started browsing. I sorted through the bazillion matches and checked out all the lame ducks sitting in a row on the page and felt my heart sink…AGAIN, nothing that made my heart skip a beat or even sparked my interest. Was it because I was kind of still bummed about Mtn. Man going MIA or was it because I was just not that into any of them? After a thought provoking “WoW Factor” conversation with @MommaSunshine on DM via Twitter, I decided that my heart would know when he was there and would somehow let me know.
October 28th…a Thursday…he appeared on my list of 5 matches and I immediately felt that pang in my chest. He looked like the kind of guy I swore of years ago…tattoos on his arm, too good looking and in my head I thought about every punk rock, hard rock and emo rocker wanna-be, I’d ever dated in college. The one break I had from the Bio was my four years of college and how I’d packed in every single heart breaker my schools had to offer and how awful I felt after every one of them moved onto the next groupie type girl with Bettie Paige bangs and fishnet stockings. (Side Note: Whole other blog post, but yes I did dig the boys in the band) And to be honest I’m not that girl anymore. While I still adore my black eyeliner, I have learned moderation is best and the thought of that girl in Converse and too short skirts makes me smile now and then, but she’s not me today.
Soooo, after many glances at his dating profile and the deep pounding of my head between my ears I hit him up for the steps. Dating sites like eHarmony and Chemistry remind me of other step type programs. Finish these steps and you might earn the keys to the palace of serenity…or you might not. Either way you’re left feeling accomplished and somewhat deflated if it doesn’t go as planned. We zipped through said ‘steps’ and made it to the part where you get to email openly and freak each other out with stale questions and stupid answers…but instead he sent me his personal email. Refreshing to say the least and right to the point. By the end of Halloween weekend we were ready for our 1st date. It felt like weeks of talking had passed by the time we got to texting that following Monday…not just a few days.
1st dates freak me out. I always go buy a new outfit and often return them if the date is bad so I don’t have to be reminded of the crappy night. His proposal was to meet up for Pie. Since I don’t live very close to the trendy part of Los Angeles County that I’m used to we selected Marie Callendar’s in our booming surburb and made the date. I started to wonder about the ‘WoW Factor’, does that sort of thing show up on 1st dates? Is it reserved for when you’ve already spent time getting to know someone? So when I walked up to the Pie Joint and I saw him through the window I felt something in my chest sort of sigh for me. I hadn’t even seen his face yet and something deep in my soul was already boiling over with curiousity. Is this him?
I never felt this with Mtn Man. He was different, sure but he was showing me a new way to be treated. Listened to and looked after and made the center of attention. But even I had reservations about HOW I really felt towards him. There was never that ‘WoW’ in our meeting…it wasn’t until we’d spent hours talking that I decided to give him a shot and we all know how that ended.
Our 1st date was awesome…
- single Dad
- loves his kiddo more than anything/li>
- great eyes/li>
- dedicated to his work and providing for his little guy/li>
- sees his Grandma every weekend./li>
- moved to my hood to be closer to his kiddo/li>
- we like mostly the same music/li>
For now I reserve the right to keep him…Not sure where this will go or how this will play out…but, my heart and my head need to connect at some point…