Entry the Ninth

I am a member of one of those dating sites where you get to have fans and favorites. I'm sure that any singles know exactly what I'm talking about.

Anyhoo. I 'meet' this guy on-line, lets call him Richard. Richard and I swap e-mails for a couple of weeks (I ain't no slag). We meet for coffee for a coupla hours, e-mail some more. Things just seem to fizzle after that without any animosity.

One day I am sending a business e-mail to another Richard and I see his name. I send him an e-mail simply saying "Hey, saw your name in my contacts and was just wondering how you are." He replies that he was just thinking about me the other day and is glad that I mailed, because he was going to mail me soon too. Can we get together for dinner soon?

Going well so far, no?

We arrange dinner, and he fetches me from home and we go to an okay restaurant. He isn't feeling well, so it is a fairly quick dinner. He drops me off at home, and all is good.

The next day, fairly late in the day, not stalkerishly 6:30, I SMS him to find out how he is feeling and to say thank you for the dinner.

SIDENOTE : The dinner was not fantastic. We went to a seafood restaurant (I don't eat seafood) and the service was very slow and the place was TOO dark, noisy and crowded. The conversation was "first-date" strained. But it didn't totally suck, and he seemed like a really nice guy.

And what do I hear after that? Nada, Nothing, Zip, Zilch.

But no, that is not the end of the story.

After this episode I hide my profile from view. My subscription has expired, I wasn't really into any of the conversations I was having, and maybe my feelings were a tiny little bit hurt.

A few months later, I vow - I am going to try this thing one more time. One more three month subscription and then I am done. Never to try Internet dating again. So I make some edits (my picture remains exactly the same though) and resubscribe.

One day, while checking out who has added me to their favorites, who do I see is a FAN of mine - Richard (who will now just be referred to as Dick).

WTF??

This is the message I composed, but never sent:

Dear Dick,
Thank you for adding me to your list of favorites. Clearly you think I must be SO desperate that I did not notice that you chose to treat me with utter disregard. It is your prerogative to not be interested. I am fully aware of that sometimes guys are "just not that into me". I get it, I really do. Perhaps I was just a little hurt at the way you treated me, but I assure you, it took me 5.5 seconds to get over that.
But who the fuck do you think you are to even add me to your favorites? Do you think you have the right to go around acting like a first-grade prick and expect people not to notice? Seriously, who does that?
Perhaps you realised that the 21 year old blond was really only after your money? Or that the 19 year old who "just wants to party, and have fun" is a total piscat who will shag the first guy who buys her a drink.
That perhaps that I am one of the 5 real woman on this site, who isn't after anything more than your company?
Just like it is your prerogative to not be interested, it is my prerogative to tell you to fuck off. I am no longer interested. You had your chance, you blew it. Deal with it.

I am no longer a member of that site. And my Internet dating days are done. I just can't get that into it.

This is a seriously long entry, so I am going to leave you with this one last question:

WTF?

Entry the Eighth - All I want for Christmas . . .

Being in the position of not needing a man. Financially, emotionally or physically. I, however, wouldn’t mind having someone around to be my plus 1, or to argue with me about which super hero would win in a battle of super heroes.

So seeing as I can afford to be a little picky, I have compiled a list of non-negotiables.

• Ciara will always come first. Always. I am not a perfect parent, and she is not a perfect child. Disagreements or ‘problems’ will be brought to my attention and discussed in a calm and tactful way. There will be no accusing, insinuation or demanding. If that happens - the door is the long rectangular thing with the handle - See Ya!

• Looks are less important than personality. Although there must be a mutual physical attraction. I am no super model, but I expect you to be. Har Har just kidding. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

• You must have a personality. An identity free of peer pressure or work commitments or what your mom says. I expect you to state your beliefs with strength. However, things change, especially one’s perspective. Be prepared to listen to differing opinions and often agree to disagree. Your opinion is not the only opinion.

• You must be at least as intelligent as me. I don’t plan to dumb myself down ever again. I don’t do it for Ciara, so don’t expect me to do it for you. I am reasonably intelligent, although somewhat of a absent minded dork :-)

• You may not take yourself uber seriously. I am the worst "laugh at others" person - ever (if it’s funny I mean.) I laugh just as heartily at myself - often. If I laugh at you, don't be offended. Take it in the lighthearted way it was intended. A kick-ass sense of humour is a total must. I don’t do serious and brooding very well.

• I don’t do the whole cooking and cleaning thing. That is why they have Woolies and Sara. So that I don’t have to do it. If you are looking for someone to be your housekeeper / nanny / personal cook / general dogsbody, I am not your girl.

• Buying me flowers or gifts when it is not my birthday or Christmas makes me feel weird. I don’t like it - don’t do it.

• I don’t do the whole "Romantic Night Out". Lets just grab some burgers and spend the night shaking our booties*. That's a lot more fun, really.

• I don’t hint, insinuate or try to make you guess when something is bothering me. Don’t do it to me.

• Technically minded is a preference, but not a must. I don’t get artsy-fartsy, so I don’t see much in the way of general conversation. But whatever.
  

Well, that's it. Not to much to ask for. Surely there is someone out there for me?

* This can mean whatever you want it to, baby!

Entry the Seventh

I had a very interesting weekend past. I say ‘interesting’ instead of ‘bloody awful’, because I like to think of each thing that happens in my life as a learning curve instead of a ‘disaster’.

So, Sunday comes around and I decide that maybe I should assemble the lawnmower in my garage so that we can finally put away the panga’s we have been using to travel from one end of the garden to the other, and maybe find that dog that has been missing for a few days.

I open the box to be pleasantly surprised that the only "assembly" required on the actual lawnmower is to lift the handle into an upright position and tighten.

I flex my muscles Johnny Bravo style and bask in the brilliance of me.

Then I see that the plastic-grass-catching-thingie (yes that is the technical term) needs to be assembled. No problem. I mean it is just a plastic-grass-catching-thingie. Right?

Instruction (1) Place both pieces, so that the hooks and screw openings line up.

Yup, okay, but it doesn’t line up. Let me push it a little here. No, still not working. Let me poke here. Fuck that, this is not working. Let me move on.

Instruction (2) Hook the clips into the openings. If this is difficult, use the small end of the spanner provided.

Yeah, now we are talking. A Spanner!

So I push and try to clip. Nothing is working. Ciara - get me a screwdriver. Now using screwdriver to try and push the bloody clips into the hooks.

Bam! I stab myself in the thumb with the screwdriver and start bleeding all over the bloody place. I am using all sorts of interesting and fancy words. My mother pipes up with the useful comment "I was just going to warn you that that might happen." Well thanks a bloody lot. I mean, you couldn’t have warned me, say, before I stabbed myself in the frickin thumb?

Long story short (okay, that ship has already sailed), the blood loss must have caused an epiphany.

I suddenly realised how to use the small end of the spanner and got the thing assembled in about 10 minutes after I stopped the blood flow and bandaged myself up.






Footnote : I love my mother very much, and after her helpful statement, she did say things like "That was really sore" and "Are you okay, will you still be able to mow the lawn?".

Entry The Sixth

I am in a really good mood right now.

Not only becuase I just got an e-mail about how I can make my woman happy happy and cause green jelousy in all the chaps with my new extra large shlong, but because it is almost time to go home. Which leaves me only 50 working days until I get to go on leave.

I am so happy. Becuase I am so tired. So very, very tired.
(Sound of me weeping softly onto my desk)

Entry the Fifth - To vigilante or not to vigilante

I love Dexter. No not the weird little kid with a funny accent. The Sunday-night-after-the-eight-o’clock-movie Dexter. He is a cold blooded serial killer, but he is hot, and he only kills bad guys. And he always gets it right. Always.

What I would like to say about Vigilantism is "Yay for them." But I am not an impulsive kind of girl. I am not the type to look only at one dimension of anything.

To fully express my view on vigilantism I would have to write a long, long, long blog. Because it is complicated. But let me break it down as much as I can.

1. I could never do it. I truly don’t think that I have the capacity in me to murder, no matter what evil thing they had done.
2. I would like to think that I could protect myself, and my family to the point where I could take someone else’s life. But I have never been in that position. I have never experienced that level of fear.
   

The biggest problem with vigilantism is that mistakes can be made. Innocent people can be harmed, or killed.
It’s all good and well to Cheer every time a vigilante puts a drug dealer or child rapist in his grave.
But what if they get it wrong, what if it is your child or brother or sister who is incorrectly gunned down? What if they make a mistake and it affects you? Directly? In you home, where it hurts the most?
Sadly, with a mostly ineffectual policing system, as we have in SA, vigilantism is rife, and probably needed.

So, ultimately, what am I for?
I am for a stronger, more armed, more trained, better paid, better equipped, larger, more involved police force so that vigilantism wouldn’t be necessary.

Entry the Fourth

It finally happened, that question I have been dreading since I brought that little being into the world almost 7 years ago. Ciara suddenly asked me the question. I was, for only a moment, going to lie. But I didn’t, I braved the unknown waters and told the truth, in all its gory ugliness. I told the truth.

We were busy serving the chicken for dinner on Saturday night, and that is when it happened. She looked up at me with her lovely large blue eyes and asked me "Mommy, is that a real chicken?"

I was momentarily flustered, I blushed, I needed time to think, what would I say?

"Do you really want to know the truth?" I said, trying to buy time.

Perplexed that I would even ask such a question, she said "Yes".

"Yes, my angel" I replied, with a hint of sadness in my voice "this is a real chicken."

Her beautiful blue eyes filled with tears. "But mommy" she cried, "there are only a few chickens left in the world"(1).

I smiled the reassuring smile of a mother and said "No, my sweet angel, there are millions of chickens in the world, and it really is okay if we eat them. That is why God put them here on the planet. To lay eggs and for us to eat."

She wiped her tears away, and said "Okay mom." She sniffed, and then shifted gears so fast I was almost knocked over. "You know what? When we were in the butchery the other day, guess what I saw on the floor - CHICKEN BLOOD."

Oh, I how I am looking forward to the "Where does beef come from?" question.







(1) We watch Animal Planet quite a lot.