You Can't Make This Stuff Up: Chapter 45: We Girls Like 'Woo'

The Truth is Stranger Than Fiction - An Introduction

Truth is Stranger Than Fiction - An Introduction

My first foray into the Social Networking world was some years ago, in 2005 I believe, with Yahoo. They had a site called Yahoo 360° that was their own attempt at MySpace, which, at the time, was all the rage. I hadn't been bitten by the MySpace bug yet, but I was already an active member of Yahoo, so to get my feet wet, I set up a Yahoo 360° profile.

Blogging was an extremely attractive prospect to me. I love to write, I love to give myself that type of "outlet" to my problems, fears, joys, and experiences. I've kept diaries and journals off and on over the years and they've always been therapeutic when I took the time to keep them up. But this... a public diary? How do I approach such a thing? How much do I divulge? And what, praytel, do I write about that would actually entice people to read it?

Browsing thru existing blogs, one thing was an absolute MUST: I could not, would not, write about mundane things that no one but myself would care about. I needed an angle-- Something that I could write passionately about. Something that people, in general, have an interest in. Something that would grab the attention of the public. And something that had a "theme." I found that, to me personally, a blog that jumped around all over the place was difficult to read. A theme would keep me in check, and allow me to focus, rather than a stream of conscious that I was sure would bore to death anyone who came across my page.

The idea came to me fairly quickly. I was newly divorced and discovering the delights and annoyances of being single and dating in my 30's. It was perfect! Love, sex, relationships, dating... The overall general interaction between men and women has always been a fascination and a sure-fire hit to our society, if not our entire species! I had my topic, I was ready to roll...

Yahoo has since shut down their 360° forum, and the experience I had there was both rewarding and therapeutic. So I am going to retell my adventures in a retro-active tale here, and see if I can gather the same, if not bigger, audience I did there. Maybe I can even get inspired enough to bring the whole thing up to date and wrap it all up into a happy ending? We shall see...

So, here we go! Hello, my name is Jennifer. I am 37 years old and I've been divorced just over 6 years now. Fasten your seat belts, boys and girls, it's gonna be one hell of a ride!

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Chapter 45: We Girls Like 'Woo'

Over the next several weeks, "Tarzan" proceeded to take up so much of my time that I didn't even have the opportunity to see anyone else. I was okay with this. It was nice to get that daily phone call (or calls!) at work, nice to have a man asking to see me several times in a week, and most definitely on weekends. Other than the time he spent with his girls, he wanted to see me as much as possible. Sometimes we went out, sometimes we stayed in, it didn't matter. We were having a blast - both in deep "smit."

I was very respectful of the time he had with his girls, and made conscious efforts to stay away during those times. He had made several comments about me meeting the girls, and I would always recoil at the thought. Even though I knew we weren't seeing anyone else, we had not made any "official" exclusive commitment yet, and I didn't feel that adding the children into the equation was prudent just yet. He seemed to have no problem with the idea, and couldn't seem to wait for me to meet them, but I was still hesitating. Kids? How would I approach that? Kids can be even more judgmental than parents, and they don't always hold back, either. I convinced myself that I was doing the right thing by waiting to meet them, but, in truth, I was terrified of meeting them. They were these beautiful 6-year-old little girls, Daddy's girls, who had been through a bazaar divorce, and already had a new stepfather. "Tarzan" had told me several times that they kept asking him when he was going to get a girlfriend, so one might think that they were ready for that. But what if they weren't? What if my limited experience with children wasn't enough to win them over?

We'd been seeing each almost a month when "Tarzan" had to take an overnight trip to Augusta for work. And who should call me but the Swiss pilot? He tried to convince me to come over for "a glass of wine." And, let's just say that he wasn't nearly that charming about it. I could have... He may have been arrogant, but he WAS sexy. And "Tarzan" and I weren't exclusive. But I just didn't want to. The pilot kept asking, and I kept shrugging him off. In the end, I just never called him back.

Then it occurred to me: If I didn't want to hook up with the sexy Swiss pilot, maybe I was more committed to "Tarzan" than I was admitting to myself? When he came back into town, I told him just that. I told him that I had the opportunity to go out with someone else, and that I just didn't want to go, and how would he feel about "officially" making it exclusive. The broadest grin crossed his face and he said, "Are you kidding? I've been wanting to call you my 'girlfriend' for weeks!"

So it was official - it was the end of the summer, I'd been divorced for just over six months, officially dating for about five of those months, and I had a "boyfriend." :)