The Seeking Daddy Project Day 25: Come on, PURR!

“Purr!!  Come on, PURR, you little mutt!”

My boyfriend Tate loves cats.  Unfortunately, we’re both allergic to them, but alternately he is slowly warming up to my Lottie.   Up until now, he hasn’t been her biggest fan because by virtue of her size, her bark is high-pitched and hurts his ears; plus, I’m guilty of spoiling her just a bit.  I think it’s more that he’s had to come to terms with the fact that he’s dating a single mom than anything else, really.

Everyone loves Lottie eventually, though.  She’s just that amazing.

Sunday afternoon, as we were on the couch catching up on the show we watch together, “Almost Human,” Lottie snuggled between us and rolled over onto her back so he could rub her belly.  I watched this moment play out in delight, struggling to conceal my happiness that he was finally taking to her.

Tate petted Lottie absentmindedly for awhile; then, during a commercial, he seemed to take more notice.  “Come on, purr!”

The thing is...toy poodles don’t purr.

Not wanting him to be disappointed, and relishing in this heretofore unseen moment of affection between them (Lottie snuggles up against him regularly, not understanding the concept of a person who doesn’t like her because it’s literally never happened before, but he’s taken a bit longer to come around), I tried to produce a guttural, purring sound in the back of my throat.  It sounded more like I was choking on a hairball.

“Purrrrrhrhghghghrrrrrrr,” I growled.

Tate looked at me in surprise. I immediately stopped and made my eyes super wide.  “Oh my gosh, she’s PURRING!”

He burst into laughter.

“You sound like you’re hocking something up!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.  She was purring!”

“You’re a goober,” he said, shaking his head.

He continued petting her and I continued to try to make purring sounds, to little avail.  Eventually I had to stop because, well, phlegm.

After Tate left, I was thinking about closely that relates to our relationship with God at times.  We want to hear from God.  We want a neon sign from Heaven.  We want direction, or clarity, or blessings, or answers.  We want purring.

Come on, God, purr!

But sometimes God doesn’t purr.  Sometimes God is like a little toy poodle who just snuggles up against us and shows us His love that way.

And shouldn’t that be enough?

The Seeking Daddy Project Day 24: Ummmm...

"How do you know which are the best deals?" a male voice to my right inquired.

I was standing at the meat cooler at the back of Food Lion, sifting through different types of ground beef: 93/7, 85/15, 80/20.  Tubes in perfectly portioned pounds.  Packages with a little more, a little less, a bit here and there, weighed out.  I was concentrating.

Last week, seeing that my team was suffering though malaise because of snow days and a general inability to just get anyone on the phone so we could, y'know, do our jobs, I decided the thing I could do would be to cook something.  We can have a team lunch! I thought. It'll be awesome!

So, a week ago, I sent an email out to my whole team titled "ITALIAN FEAST!" and now there's a conference room booked and my coworkers are bringing sides and oh yeah, I remembered this afternoon...I should probably go get the stuff to make the lasagna.

I was getting ready to make a decision when this perfectly pleasant man decided to strike up a conversation.

Now, mind you, at this point in my life I'm usually fine in random social interactions.  I talk on the phone to 50 strangers every day, for crying out loud.  I'm no longer the awkward, shy, bumbling child I used to be.  I'm lovely - chatty, even - most of the time.  My manager said he wanted to hire me after the first time we spoke on the phone because you just can't fake that.

But sometimes, it's late and I've worked for 10 hours and all I want to do is get out of this store and go home to my dog and curl up away from all human contact and there's a stranger talking to me.

"Umm, I, uh...I'm just looking at them," I stammered, wondering in that moment why I was even nervous.

"I'm usually a this type of guy," he pointed at the 70/30 ground round in the right hand corner of the cooler, "But I know it's not as good for me."

I didn't really know how to respond.  It was like I had forgotten how to have a conversation.

Suddenly I was aware that I was blocking almost all the other selections.  "Oh, I'm sorry, am I in your way?"

The man looked at me like I had just apologized for existing.  "No!  I'm just...trying to be friendly."

"Oh, sure!" I answered, and rambled out some long winded explanation about how I was getting beef for a "work thing" and how it was going in a recipe and I just wanted to get the best one...but at that point the more I spoke, the less he seemed to care.  The awkwardness hung thick in the air as if an invisible dense fog had enveloped that meat cooler.

I reached back in, shifted one of the packages to the left, grabbed it, and hurried away down the pasta aisle.

There's this thing that Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" does in Orange is the New Black where she hits herself in the temple over and over for being so stupid, and that's just such a perfect representation of how I feel a large portion of the time, I can't even tell you.

I don't get it; I really don't.  I can speak to strangers all day and be as smooth as a frog's belly.  (Now there's an image.)  I can go into a restaurant and strike up a random conversation with the server that spans the hour of a meal.  I even bantered with the checkout guy at Food Lion like ten minutes later! 

And yet, sometimes, I get the better of myself and forget how to speak.  Or think I'm in someone's way.  Or apologize for existing.

I can only hope, as I get older, that this will happen less and less...or else I'm going to have to start smacking myself in the temple in public.  That should help the awkwardness, right?

The Seeking Daddy Project Day 23: I'm not bitter.

I've been reading a new book called "Meaty," written by Samantha Irby.  It's honest, vulnerable, heartbreaking, and hilarious, and I can't seem to put it down.

She writes a lot about dating and the tragicomedy it is, which I can totally identify with in so many ways.  She says she's been in love seven times.  I've been in love twice, maybe three times - but definitely twice.  Neither of those relationships worked out.

At 31, after nearly 15 years of dating and almost all of those experiences ending in jagged, devastating heartbreak, I was reading this book when I stumbled across one of the most starkly truthful narratives I've ever seen.  I have to share it, because I could've written it.  These could've been my words as easily as they are hers.

The language is a little salty, so please forgive it; but it's raw and honest and real.  Sam Irby, I feel you.

Bitter.  Scariest word in the entire dictionary.  Meanest word there ever was.  Nastiest tasting word to have in your mouth.  I would almost rather be called a cunt, right to my fucking face, than to have some dismissive asshole refer to me as bitter.  I'm not bitter, I survived a liar.  I'm not bitter, I weathered a cheater.  I'm not bitter, I sustained a massive injury to the giant, bloody muscle in the center of my chest that is responsible for pumping blood through my entire body.  So this hostility you've encountered isn't the result of my ingesting too many sugar-coated romantic comedies and metabolising them into virile hatred for real-life men with all of their salt and their human mistakes.  That would be amazing, if I could just skip weathering all of this heartbreak to instead compare and contrast every prospective boyfriend against the character Denzel played in that one movie I liked.  But no, I came by these feelings honestly.  And I don't accept bitter.  Wounded, yes.  Traumatized, sure.  Grieving, okay.  Anything other than bitter.  I put too much work in to be callously tossed aside as bitter.  Bitter is for someone who hasn't earned it. -"Meaty," page 26

Bitter is for someone who hasn't earned it.

Sam Irby has.  And I have, too.

The Seeking Daddy Project Day 22: The more I see.

Today has been one full of reading, of thinking, and yes, even of praying.  I have quite a bit that I'm turning over and over in my mind and heart tonight.  I don't have much extra mental energy tonight, but I thought I'd share one of my favorite Lizzie Bennet quotes from Pride and Prejudice - one that I find scrolling through my thoughts quite often as I get older:

“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.” 

Jane Austen is the wittiest and sharpest writer I've ever read; she's also, often, the most un-apologetically truthful.

The Seeking Daddy Project Day 21: Show me how to go.

I'm sorry this post is so late.  Technically, I'm writing it in the wee hours of the morning on February 22nd, but hopefully you'll all let that slide just this once.

I had the great pleasure of catching up with a friend after work tonight - in fact, this is the first time I've even really been at my computer all day.  I'm sleepy and ponderous after hours of talking about faith and challenges and God's will.  So, to honor our conversation, here's a hymn that I first heard when visiting her church a couple of years ago.  Its beauty haunts me.

Shepherd, show me how to go
         O'er the hillside steep,
How to gather, how to sow, —
         How to feed Thy sheep;
I will listen for Thy voice,
         Lest my footsteps stray;
I will follow and rejoice
         All the rugged way.

Thou wilt bind the stubborn will,
         Wound the callous breast,
Make self-righteousness be still,
         Break earth's stupid rest.
Strangers on a barren shore,
         Lab'ring long and lone,
We would enter by the door,
         And Thou know'st Thine own;

So, when day grows dark and cold,
         Tear or triumph harms,
Lead Thy lambkins to the fold,
         Take them in Thine arms;
Feed the hungry, heal the heart,
         Till the morning's beam;
White as wool, ere they depart,
         Shepherd, wash them clean. -"Feed My Sheep," by Mary Baker Eddy

The Seeking Daddy Project Day 20: Seeing more clearly.

“Wow, these are old,” my optometrist said, peering skeptically at the box of contacts I had brought in for my contact lens fitting.  “We can definitely get you a way better fit than these.”

It’s a pleasant fact of my current existence that I have, quite inadvertently, surrounded myself with dreamboat men to help me get through the mundane trivialities of adult life.  After more than a decade of suffering through a painfully awkward teenage experience and a bumbling early young adulthood, I can somehow now banter easily with men who even a few years ago I’d have been too shy to speak to at all.   My massage therapist is one; my eye doctor is another. The feeling I get when I inevitably deliver some deadpan one-liner that leaves them helpless with laughter is immensely gratifying, let me tell you.  It’s like a sigh of relief after years of holding my breath.

My optometrist is a strapping young man who hails from the same area as my hometown in Pennsylvania.  At my first appointment a few months ago, right after he walked in and shook my hand, I declared, “So bad news: I think I scared your assistant because I’m practically blind.”  He took to me immediately.

“I’m surprised they would even refill this prescription for you after so long,” he mused, shaking his head as he stared in disbelief at the contacts I used.  “I guess because you’re, uh…nice…they figured it was okay.  I definitely wouldn’t have refilled a prescription after four years!”

I tried to look innocent.  “Uh, yeah, about that, so…I really hate the air puff test, so, uh...I just used the same prescription.  It reminds me of dodge-ball in elementary school.”

He chuckled as he updated my file in a tablet-like device that made me feel like we were in Sick Bay on the star ship Enterprise.  “Well, these will be a huge improvement.  They’re much more breathable and comfortable.”

After a few more questions and mournful wails from me when he said my eyes are probably too bad to undergo Lasik, he walked me out to the receptionist where I proceeded to spend half a month’s rent on the exam fee and a year’s supply of these new lenses he recommended.  The chipper girl at the desk put in an order for them to be delivered to my house.  Presumably, for the first time in four years, I’d be able to see more clearly.

Seven business days later, they arrived at my house, and this morning, I pulled back the little foil lid that always makes you feel like you’re opening a tiny present and shoved them into my eyes excitedly.

I’ve been walking around in them all day, and honestly, unless I think about it, I can’t really tell much difference so far.  I haven’t noticed my eyes getting dry as much as usual, even though I was at work a whole hour later than normal today.  And, if I really stop to focus, I can tell my vision is sharper – but it all kind of blends together, really.

Maybe that’s what seeing more clearly is all about – it’s minute, gradual, and not really earth-shattering when it finally happens.  Just one day, you wake up and put on slightly better lenses.

But that tiny little improvement, well, it makes all the difference.

The Seeking Daddy Project Day 19: I am worth more.

"That's why I love sales," my manager said, leaning over the little wall of my cubicle and grinning slightly, the way he does when he's sharing a truism.  "To do a job like this, you have to have yourself together.  You have to be self-assured enough - you have to have a sense of your own value and know your own worth and be secure in that - to do it well."

As I've mentioned, my manager is a smart guy.  We seem to have a strength of communication and exchange of ideas, he and I.  Even so, in that moment, I froze inside.  I nodded in agreement as he kept talking, waxing philosophical as he often does...but inside, my mind was racing.

You have to have a sense of your own value. You have to know your own worth.

If we had stayed together, today would have been my two-year anniversary with my ex-boyfriend.

There was never really a time, from the Friday evening we met at the beginning of October 2011, that we weren't dating, but he hemmed and hawed at making it official for four months - probably, again, out of fear.

I'd been thinking about that today, off and on.  During the busy bustle of the office, amidst phone conversations and notes and emails and tasks, whenever I took a moment to pause, to breathe - the date swirled around me.  Memories pulled off their cloaks like dusty statues and showed their faces again.

Know your own value.  Know your own worth.

I remembered that, shortly following our breakup, he checked a dating site in my living room as I made him breakfast the morning after I helped him pack his late father's truck so he could move three hours away.

I remembered that he spent my 30th birthday party three months later texting with another woman.

I remembered that he didn't even bother to call the weekend before my best friend - and one of his very good friends, as well - went to prison for seven years.

Know your own value.  Know your own worth.

I remembered all those things, and I've come to a conclusion.

I am worth more.