“What, no post this week?” Marlie texted me last Friday morning.
“Nope,” I wrote back.
” 😦 ”
“I know.”
There was a brief pause and then I received:
“Will there be one next week?”
I took a deep breath and then slowly typed, “I don’t know.” Continue reading Slow For Construction.
Last week was our 100th post.
Since then, I’ve sat here every night and tried to write something creative and interesting that would express how I feel about achieving this milestone.
I started off with a cute conversation between Bree & me during one of our recent catch-up sessions, which then would lead into the revelation. But then I decided I wanted to use that conversation in a later post.
So then I tried starting with a flashback about the phone-date I’d been having with Shannon two years ago that lead to My Boyfriend and I reconnecting, which consequently resulted in the creation of this blog. But that wasn’t working the way I’d wanted it to.
I then crafted a number of other intros, but frankly, they were all crap.
“Happy New Year, Bitches!”
I looked at the Facebook message on my phone, placed it back on the nightstand and then rolled over, pulling a pillow over my head. It was Friday, January 2nd and I was starting the first weekend of the New Year celebrating with a nap with The Cat.
The phone pinged again and I wearily reached over to pick it up. I looked at the screen.
“When do we start running?!”
I groaned, and was about to set it aside again when:
“Helllooooooooo!”
Two seconds later:
“Tracey? McKenzie?”
“Guys??????”
I sighed in exasperation. I turned off the phone and went back to my nap. When I woke up later, there were two more Facebook messages and two threatening texts:
“TRACEY. ANSWER ME. NOW.”
“WE ARE GOING RUNNING.”
Oh god.
It was Lux.
“Okay. Tell me. What is it?” Sheri asked as she pulled the lid off her soup cup.
I opened my cheese sandwich and removed the wilted lettuce. I placed it in a pile on my plate with a deep sigh.
“This is not going as I’d hoped,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
We’d met for lunch between our two offices so we could fill each other in on the latest news of our lives. We usually order our meals ahead of time at Chipotle so we can avoid the extensive line and just pick up our food and grab a table. But we’d been running late on our plans and had to settle for a mediocre diner instead.
I often wish I was one of those people who, when faced with a period of uncertainty, would make it a point to get extra sleep, eat nourishing, empowering meals and meditate quietly on how everything happens for a reason and so therefore, there is no reason to worry.
But as we all know, I’m not.
I don’t really know what turned things around for My Ex. Actually, that’s not true, I do know. But that is not my story to tell, so I won’t. But I will say this. Ever since that call in July, he has never wavered. Not even once. There was no back and forth or indecision.
But as we’ve all seen, I’m not the easiest person to “date.” I can be insecure, needy. I can get paranoid, I can drink too much. Sometimes all those things at once. In the beginning of the three months before his visit, I was so nervous he would change his mind that I would regularly get hysterical and freak out and and accuse him of ‘playing me’ and shriek things like, “I won’t tolerate this! I won’t!!”
Then, the next morning I would call him up and say in a meek voice, “I’m sorry.” And then in an even meeker voice, “Are you still coming?”
And his response was always the same: “I’m still coming, Tracey.”
“Okay. I have to stop you right there.”
“Yeah,” I said with a laugh. “I figured as much, Kanye.”
“I need a glass of wine for this.”
“Yeah, I figured that too.”
“Or a bottle,” she muttered.
I sighed. I’d just revealed to Tina that My Ex had come to visit.
And she was not happy.
At least, I had been ready. That morning.
Now that evening, I was sick with anxiety.
I’d spent the day cleaning my apartment, getting a much needed, much resented manicure, and drinking an exorbitant amount of coffee to keep me going. I was too nervous to eat but by 9pm, I was becoming dizzy from lack of nourishment and excessive caffeine, so I shoveled in a handful of Fritos.
Of course, that was when the downstairs buzzer went off.
Continue reading …One.
And so that’s what I did.
I went on Date Eight, Date Nine, Date Ten and Date Eleven. I stuck to the promise I’d made to Lux, and when I met guy I liked and he asked me out again, I went.
But as much as I tried to keep an open mind, still, my head just wasn’t in the game.
In fact, one guy put it perfectly when he said, at the end of our date, “I enjoyed meeting you Tracey, but you didn’t really seem there.”
He was right.
Which is why I never wrote about any of them.
Not Quite A Cougar 