Love is in the Air

When Grace finished college in December, she moved back in with us. I, of course, was thrilled. I consider Grace one of my closest friends and love having her around. That's not to say we don't annoy each other occasionally...
One of the difficult things for Grace, as she turned 23 in January, is dating while living at home. At Thanksgiving, she started dating a guy who she liked. They grew closer and ended up dating for three months. Then, the Monday before Valentine's Day, they went out one night, had a lovely time, and she didn't hear from him again. Usually they texted each other several times a day, sharing news of their lives.
She finally got a text from him on Friday before Valentine's Day. He said he was busy all weekend so she should go out with her friends and have fun.
That is the last she heard from the guy.

This is one of Grace's new headshots for her acting career

I know Grace liked him, and I know she was heartbroken, but she surprised me by not wallowing in it.
Last week, she had dates with three different guys. She created her own version of the Bachelorette. She'd come home and say, "Chad is not getting a rose."
But while she was trying to assuage her broken heart, she accidentally met a guy she really liked. And that's why, now, a week later, she's had half a dozen dates with one guy. Sometimes, they have two dates per day, meeting for brunch then later for drinks.
"See!" I said. "This is what it feels like when you really like someone."
With the other guy, the one who disappeared, she'd be figuring out her schedule and saying things like, "Well, I have to work early tomorrow so I don't think I'll go out tonight."
With this new guy, she stayed out until 3:30 in the morning without a thought for the next day's schedule.
Last night, the new guy picked her up here at home. We never met the guy she dated for three months, but we met the new guy last night, after a week.
After I came home from teaching yesterday, I had worked out. I still wore a sweatshirt.
"Aren't  you going to change your shirt?" she asked. She must really like him if she wants me to make a good impression, I thought.
So I changed into a more fashionable shirt with a cardigan, and I was ready when he showed up.
He came to the door and knocked, and she brought him inside for awkward handshakes. He's even taller than Earl, which is like a pot of gold under the rainbow for Grace who stands 5-foot, 10-inches tall. He seemed nice and personable, he has awesome dimples, and he makes my daughter smile.
Whether it lasts or not, Grace knows what it's like to fall hard for someone.

Bachelor Irony

I've watched The Bachelor, a show on ABC, for four or five seasons now, and I was excited when Juan Pablo was chosen as the latest bachelor. Why? Cause he was hot. He had an animal magnetism that became apparent even when he was shown speaking on camera less than any other guy on the Bachelorette. His accent -- he was raised in Venzuela -- limited his on-camera time.
So, like millions of women around the country, I was sold on Juan Pablo simply because of his looks, his smile, the light in his eyes.

At the beginning of the season, with 27 girls and one bachelor, the activities and the interactions were interesting, wondering who would stand out, who would get cut. None of the women were especially onerous this season -- no one to hate. Sometimes the women got a little snarky, but overall they were well behaved.
And Juan Pablo seemed pretty straightforward. When one of the girls got drunk and made a fool of herself, he sent her home the next morning, explaining that as a father, he couldn't bring someone unstable into his household.
I thought Juan Pablo was fairly honest with the women. In the beginning, I may not have noticed that he didn't have a lot of intelligent conversation because he was busy listening to the women's stories. He definitely had chemistry with some of them.
For the first time since I've been watching, it became obvious fairly early in that he slept with one of the women during a romp in the ocean. He later regretted that and told the woman he regretted it. That was pretty selfish on his part. Nothing either of them could do about it afterward.
During the season finale Monday evening, I read a book while Juan Pablo had his final dates with two beautiful blonde women. The words, the women, the families...it just didn't catch my attention.
Juan Pablo, a Latin man with expected sexist tendencies, had shown himself to be fairly shallow. The conversation shown between him and the women consisted of him telling the women how pretty or sexy they were. Things didn't seem to go much deeper.
And now, there's an outcry that Juan Pablo was in it for the fame, for the sex. Stories abound on the web. Here's one from CNN. Juan Pable didn't tell the woman he picked that he loved her, only "liked her a lot." Truthfully, how many people, dating only one other person, can know in 10 weeks whether they love someone.

Here's a picture from Conde Nast showing Juan Pablo with his top choice Nikki.

The irony to me is that people are angry that Juan Pablo was superficial, when they picked Juan Pablo for superficial reasons -- simply because he was handsome.
We rooted for him to become the bachelor because he was beautiful then we're disappointed that he picked women who were beautiful.
We kinda got what we asked for.

What Story Would You Tell?

Have you ever listened to the Moth Radio Hour? I hear it on my NPR station and have an app on my phone so I can listen if I missed the radio broadcast. People usually tell stories that are funny or tragic. They either make me laugh or cry.
I asked Grace what story she would tell on the Moth Radio Hour. She thought maybe she'd tell about the parties her French friend threw while she visited Paris. I suggested she could tell the story about her sorority sister who sabotaged her romance then slept with the guy herself. No, she decided, she would tell the story about flying home from France in tears when American Airlines bumped her up to first class. I posted briefly about this story in December 2011.
I'm not really sure what story I would tell. I wonder if I've written a blog post that would make a good Moth Radio Hour story.
I'll try occasionally to tell a brief story on my blog that could expand into a Moth Radio Hour story.
I'm not sure why, but I've been thinking about the incident that made Earl get serious about dating me.
Earl and I both worked as reporters for the Tampa Tribune in Pinellas County, that's the little peninsula that stands between Tampa, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. St. Petersburg and Clearwater are in Pinellas County.
Earl covered the courts and I covered city government in Clearwater. Earl started working there about a year before I did. He was married at the time I met him, but it was a rocky marriage. (That's a story I'll let him tell.)
He and his wife, Elaine, decided to separate in January, and I had a two-bedroom apartment so I offered to let Elaine have the extra bedroom. I'd met her a few times when we all went out together. I was 26 and figured they'd be back together in a few weeks.
I saw Earl most days at work, but never told him that his wife didn't spend nights at my apartment. Some days I'd find evidence that she had been in the apartment while I was at work, but I rarely saw her.
One day I had an assignment to cover Gasparilla, that's a pirate day celebration around Mardi Gras, and I was going to ride a boat across Tampa Bay. I could take a friend, and I asked Elaine if she wanted to go with me.
"You should take a date," she said. I wasn't dating anyone.
"Take Earl," she suggested.
And I did.
Earl was picking me up early, at 8 or 9 a.m. The night before Earl's early arrival was the only night that Elaine spent in my apartment. She was there when Earl came to pick me up.
Eventually, Elaine moved in with the man she was spending time with, and Earl and I started dating. We went back and forth a hundred times. Earl would break up with me and go to marriage counseling with Elaine. Then he would come back and say he couldn't stop thinking about me. He'd show up on my doorstep with a 6-pack of Dos Equis, which was a new beer at the time. Finally, Earl decided to get a divorce.
We continued dating, but as someone just coming off a divorce, Earl wasn't too serious. We still went back and forth until I met Sergeant Randy.
I met Sergeant Randy through work. He was a cop, and I was working on a story about prostitutes -- a new program that punished the "johns" more than the women. I rode along with him one night as he staked out prostitutes, and they arrested the men who propositioned them.
I remember sitting in the front seat of the cruiser with Randy and we had an instant flirty rapport. He made me laugh. Now when I think of him, he reminds me of Ray Romano from Everybody Loves Raymond.
He asked me out, and I said, "yes."
The next day, I told Earl that I was going to start dating someone else.
I loved Earl, but the anguish of the back and forth was too gut wrenching for me. I figured it might take him years to get over his divorce, and I was ready to move on. His marriage counselor told him that I was only "a flash in the pan."
That day, after a goodbye lunch and lingering kisses, Earl decided he was ready to get serious. He wanted to be exclusive.
I'm not one of those conniving women who planned to force Earl to get serious. I truly found Sergeant Randy attractive and I'd had enough of waiting for Earl.
To this day, Earl remains a little jealous of Randy and refers to him as Katzenjammer, because he has a German sounding last name.  We haven't stayed in touch, but he did come to our wedding party and give us a gift of margarita glasses.
And whether Earl admits it or not, now nearly 24 years after we married, Randy had a role in bringing us together.

Teenage Puzzles

My mom called one night this week. "I just wanted to find out how Tucker was," she said.
Tucker, our remaining child at home with his two older siblings at college. He's 16 and frequently sullen, but sometimes buoyantly friendly. There's no predicting which one he'll be.
"He's fine," I said. "He got a 97 on his chemistry test."
He works out three days a week after school to get ready for swim season. He spends a lot of evenings fetching his girlfriend from her college dorm 15 minutes away and bringing her back to our house. She's probably here for dinner three or four nights a week.
"I saw that they'd broken up and didn't know who did the breaking up, but wanted to make sure he was okay," Mom said.
She's friends with Tucker on Facebook. I'm not. I never know his status in relationships or otherwise, unless he volunteers it.
"Really?" I asked. "She was just here last night. She was going to take the bus back to school and we told Tucker to drive her."
After I talked to Mom for awhile, I called down the basement to Tucker. He spends a lot of time playing  Xbox or watching TV in his man cave.
"Who broke up with whom?" I asked.
"Don't worry about it, Mom," he said.
"But you're okay?" I called.
"Yeah," he said, with that tone that includes the word "Duh!" even though he didn't say it. "We're not dating but we're still together."
"Oh..." I had no idea what that meant.
But I do know that when I got home from running errands last night, she was here again. She's a sweet girl, but the bridge between a girl in college and a boy in high school is pretty great, even if they're only 15 minutes apart.
Still, maybe they've figured out how to take the sting out of break ups. On Facebook, they're not a couple any more. In real life, she was here three nights this week.
I can't figure it out, so I'll just make dinner for the both of them and stop trying to solve the puzzle.

Girl Complications

When Tucker started high school, just two years after his older brother Spencer, I worried. I had a little talk with Spencer about not dating Tucker's friends or ex-girlfriends. I didn't want it to be awkward with the older high school boy swooping down on the younger girls. Well, I didn't think to give the opposite warning, which is why we're now in an difficult girl complication at my house.
Nearly a month ago, Tucker, who just turned 16, came home and said he was going to the prom with Jordan. Jordan's a senior, 18, and the ex-girlfriend of one of Spencer's best friends. Awkward.
At first, I thought, "No big deal. It's just prom."
Then I started getting the texts, "Be home in a minute. Had to walk Jordan home." Or in response to my "Where are you text?" he might respond, "At the park with Jordan."

Tucker getting fitted for his tux.

Not that long ago, Spencer was reminiscing about his friendship with Jordan and how strange it felt to hardly know her now. She was one of those girls who started dating older boys in high school and she grew away from Spencer and his friends.
When he found out that Tucker was going to the prom with Jordan, he said he didn't blame Tucker for going to prom with her because she's "a hot senior girl."
Then he added, "I don't want Tucker bringing her here to hang out. That would be weird."
Tucker always brings his girlfriends to hang out at our house. We've got a TV and Xbox in the basement. They sit on bean bag chairs or the futon. Earl and I put in lots of loads of laundry trying to keep an eye on them.
I agreed to Spencer's conditions because I didn't want to make him uncomfortable.
Then Spencer and Earl left for a week on Spring Break. Tucker stayed home because of track practice, and he asked if he could have Jordan over. Since Spencer was gone, I said yes. And most nights, Tucker and Jordan hung out at our house for awhile.
When she came in, she'd talk about track practice or prom plans. One night she sat with me a few minutes watching Long Island Medium while Tucker cleaned up in the basement, throwing away chip bags and empty Gatorade bottles.
At first it just felt uncomfortable to have Tucker dating this older girl, but now I hear them laughing together and I feel like Tucker has been good for her. She has seemed really sad and searching whenever I saw her the past couple of years. She seems more comfortable in her own skin. So maybe dating Tucker helps her feel more confident. But I still have the Spencer issue and he did have to return from vacation eventually.
"Mom, can I have Jordan over?" Tucker asked.
"Oooh. Spencer is going to be home by 9:30 so you'd have to walk Jordan home at 9," I said, feeling like I'm in a Cary Grant movie where someone leaves by the back door as someone else is coming in the front door.
"How about 9:15?" Tucker asked. Then he stopped. "Never mind. 9 is good. I can't believe I said 9:15. That would just be so weird."
So far, I've managed for Spencer to avoid running into Jordan at our house. But if the relationship continues, I don't know how I'll continue the juggling.
And next week at prom, they're all bound to run into each other.
Yesterday, Spencer and two friends were in the kitchen eating pizza when Tucker and I left to order his tux.

Spencer and Claudia going to prom last year.

Spencer's friend Dillon asked, "Who you going to prom with Tucker?"
Of course, Hayden, Spencer's friend who used to date Jordan, was right there in the kitchen too.
"Jordan," Tucker said. And Dillon swallowed the pink lemonade in a gulp.
"Wow," Dillon said.
"Yeah, he outdid me this year," Spencer said as we walked out the door.
I'm just not cut out for this life sneaking around and trying to keep different factions separated. I thought boys would be less complicated than girls, but maybe it's the other people's daughters who make it so complicated for me.