Today is Friday the 13^th. Is that significant? It is if you believe it is. Belief is one of life’s strongest, strangest, things. Anyway, there’s a roundabout point to this somewhere. I wanted to tell you the story of how I met Shawty.

This spring I was finally, slowly, like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, starting to look about and notice the people around me. Namely men. I’ve never been great at being alone, and I’d been alone for two years. It takes a while apparently to get over a 16 year relationship. Not that I’m over it completely, I still feel the tentacles of the happiness, and of the hurt, and of the plans and dreams and hopes, with the Ex , they just don’t control me quite as much. I was looking around and in fact I was pretty infatuated with a man and as I’m not one to sit by the window embroidering in the hopes that a gentleman will come calling, I orchestrated a couple of meetings, with friends, so we could get to know one another. And that’s what I was busy with.

In the midst of all this, I went out to dinner on a Saturday night, unexpectedly, with some friends. It was one of those typical serendipitous, spontaneous things that often yield interesting results. I had heard of Shawty in a totally tangential manner through work along with his ex girlfriend, whom I had just met and who was the driving force behind the impromptu dinner. The Ex knows him too, in fact, the Ex told me to say hi to him. So we go to dinner at their restaurant (Shawty’s and his ex’s), I’m introduced, I say I’m so and so’s ex wife and he asked me to say hello. That was the breadth and scope of my interaction with him that night.

I would not have been able to pick him out of a lineup even a few hours after meeting him. I literally paid no attention to him whatsoever, aided by the fact that I was having fun at dinner and that his ex girlfriend turned out to be an idiot so I just assumed he was as well by association. (Also he’s 8 years younger than me and she’s 8 years younger than him… so you can understand my complete lack of interest.)

A week later he befriends me on the fulcrum of all social interactions, facebook. I figured it was work related and accepted. When he started writing me I answered to be polite. And then a friend of mine hit me over the head with something heavy and said stop being a moron, this isn’t work, he’s interested.

Because apparently I’m crap at assessing situations.

Long story short he asks me out for a drink, all the while we’re messaging back and forth. I’m not really interested in the drink but my friends all yell at me to get out there and it’ll be good practice and you don’t even remember how to talk to a man!

So obediently I go, and it was lovely. He is intelligent, and interesting, and polite, and has a commanding yet effacing way about him that made him seem very manly to me.

He’s also not my type. He’s wee… he’s about my height, and he’s got very dark hair, nice hair granted, lots of it, and well cut and maintained, but very dark brown, he’s got very dark eyes, all of my exes had light eyes, so it’s unsettling to me to look into his eyes, like endless pools of darkness, he has a beard – I guess that’s a generational thing, most of the men his age seem to have beards nowadays, and we probably wear the same shoe size. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with him, he’s a good looking guy. He’s just the opposite of everything I look for in a man, physically at least. In fact, that first night, he tried to kiss me… he literally wastes no time at all, and I pulled away, not out of some masterplan on how to get the guy, but simply because I was not attracted to him. Not even a little bit.

In fact, the next morning I woke up royally pissed off at the world, at fate, at karma because finally, finally, I meet a man who’s interested in me, who is nice, and well mannered, and well-traveled, and well-spoken, and interesting, and smart, and a gentleman and I don’t like him. Why? Why????

Obviously, my friends said sleep with him anyway, you’ve got to get back on the horse, or clean out the cobwebs and whatnot.

But fate, who may be a bit of a bitch sometimes, is not stupid. He left for a three week-long event in Rome a couple of days after our failure of a date. And in those three weeks we texted every day. Every day. And though texting is not like speaking, I got to know him. I started becoming attached to him, I had the typical dopamine response to the phone pinging that teenagers get. So when he came back I decided to… clear out the cobwebs.

You know how the first time with a new person can be a bit awkward and uncomfortable even though it’s exciting and overwhelming? Yeah, not like that with Shawty. With Shawty it was much more akin to a religious experience, with angels singing and trumpets trumpeting and the heavenly light of whatever deity you believe in bathing us in it’s warm and mystical rays from above.

And that, my friends, is why I’m still here five months later. Because, it turns out, Mr. Perfect, is not quite so perfect, but the flesh is weak and I’m a pansy.

All this started with me talking about belief and there was a point, I believe things will work out fine with Shawty, I believe we’re in it for the medium term (he’s a tad too young for the long term), I believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that we’ll get to where I want to be in this relationship. And belief is half the battle won.

But that’s for the next episode.

Last Tuesday was my birthday. I turned 42. I had a good day, in fact, I had a good week. I now celebrate for at least a week, big birthdays get the entire month. Why? Well, as we get older there are fewer and fewer birthdays to look forward to, so I believe we should celebrate more. I don’t have that many birthdays left, I’m possibly already over the halfway mark. So each extra year is a blessing. Also, and I’ll only ever admit this here… I quite enjoy having a fuss made over me. So Tuesday I had coffee with two girlfriends and then I went to the spa with a group of other girlfriends and had lunch with them and got presents and cake. I got flowers from the Ex and a really sweet message from Shawty who clearly still needs a lesson on what is expected of him on my bday… but he’ll learn. I spent the evening with my children and the Ex and that was lovely.

I celebrated Wednesday and Friday as well, I’m honestly really lucky to have the friends I have. Saturday Shawty took me out to dinner and that deserves a post all to itself.

42. Is it a lot? Is it a little?

I feel like I’m still in my thirties. Early thirties at that. I feel like I want more children, like I want to do so many things, like I could reinvent my life at any moment. And often I wonder if I’m simply being delusional. I’m right at the cusp of not being able to have more children. I’m also in a place where who would I even have them with?

Reinventing my life, now that’s easier, I don’t believe there’s an expiration date on that. Not like my traitorous body that will soon decide it’s done with the whole reproduction thing. This year has been interesting, bittersweet, but full of newness and hope and quite a bit of crazy. I’m starting to feel alive again, hopeful, energetic, I’m looking forward again. I’ve started feeling like a woman again, I’ve lost oodles of weight, I feel prettier, better, healthier, more attractive.

A lot of that is Shawty. Which really makes you think about the impact sex actually has on our lives and our well-being. But that’s another post in and of itself .

42… I can barely believe it. It seems like a lot, but it’s not is it? Barring a tragedy that frankly could befall any of us at any time so it doesn’t bear thinking about, I have quite a bit of life left to live. Deciding what to do with it is the difficult part, and the fun part.

And just like that suddenly I feel like writing again. Not that I haven’t been writing in the past few (six!) months, I just haven’t been writing well, so I haven’t been writing publicly.

It’s been a confusing, exhilarating, sad, ecstatic, lovely, nerve-wracking, sexy, back to adolescence time of discovery. I was very busy living and feeling and I couldn’t put words to it. I have lots of notes though, confused, badly put together notes with abysmal grammar and worse spelling, so we can take a little trip back in time together and make sense of my summer, a little bit at a time.

Clearly, I’m seeing someone.

Someone who couldn’t possibly be more alike and yet dissimilar to the Ex, someone who has put me through hell and back, but not the serious hell that I went through with the husband back when he was that, the adolescent hell of rapid heartbeats, raging hormones, and melodramatic theatrics. The fun hell, the alive hell, the bat shit crazy hell.

Someone who couldn’t possibly be more different from my expectations of the person I should be with (with whom I should be? Certainly, more correct, but stilted don’t you think?).

We’re going to be calling him Shawty, let me introduce you. Shawty appeared in my life suddenly and unexpectedly at the end of April. When I met him, he didn’t register at all. He’s not my type. Well, evidently now he is, but he wasn’t back then. The guy I described in the last post was… “he gives a very strong “manly” vibe, he’s so tall, his voice is so deep, his hands are so big…”. Most of the men in my life were similar… very tall, light brown hair and eyes, deep voices, very kind and caring, workaholics with easy personalities…

Shawty is… not tall. He’s my height, possibly a smidge shorter, I’m about 5’6’’. He is soft-spoken, he has very dark hair and eyes and a beard. He’s got a bit of a belly, he works in the restaurant business and has no time for anything.

He’s eight years younger than me. He’s got a shitty personality. He’s not even a little bit accommodating, and he’s bossy, and if he decides something you could set fire to him and that wouldn’t change his mind.

He’s super smart, and he can talk about anything, and he’s super confident but not in an annoying way. He will go miles out of his way to help out a friend. He works, harder and better than most people I know, he’s meticulous and detail oriented. He’s also a bit of a nightmare where work isn’t concerned, because that’s where all his attention goes. But he’s getting better. He’s pathologically secretive and he has a really messed up relationship with is ex-girlfriend.

He makes my heart beat like crazy when I’m near him, he takes my breath away, he makes me nervous, he is an amazing lover, and he’s got a way about him that I can’t explain, but it makes me completely unreasonable. I have never lost my shit as often and as explosively with anyone else, but he can also calm me down with no more than two or three words.

He’s always in control of what happens, except lately where sometimes I am, and that makes him crazy, but also has brought him closer. He goes after what he wants. Like a freight train. That’s what he did with me.

I have no idea where this is going but no matter if, when, how it ends, it was exactly what I needed, not what I wanted, but the best things never are, are they? So you’ll be hearing a lot about Shawty. I suggest popcorn and a soda, cause a lot of it is like a bad soap opera, or a really, really good one.