She's Super Freaky

Starting weight: 151.8
Freakout weight: 145
Today's weight: 148.4
Freakout factor: Less freaked, but still irritated

Will I run out of "freaky" blog titles before I get back under the freakout weight? Quite possibly, haha. Yesterday, oops, and today, I didn't do the protein shake diet because the protein shakes are in a cupboard in my kitchen instead of in my fridge at work, where they need to be. So today I redeemed a SBUX reward and got an egg-salad sandwich, of which I have eaten half. Still no jelly beans. Okay, yesterday I had one jelly bean. Sigh. I'm a tough case.

Tonight, Greg is picking me up after work and taking me on Seattle's Great Wheel. Do you remember when Lance Armstrong took me on the Great Wheel? That was a fun night. I still talk to Lance Armstrong sometimes - he is a nice boy who meets none of my perfect man blender criteria except that screaming hot body which I will not talk about any more. :)

Well, Greg does not have LA's hot biker body, but Greg also does not spend all his time on his bike or running around like a hamster on a wheel, either. Tradeoffs. I worry about my own two ADHD sons when I think of Lance Armstrong sometimes, because you just want to say, "FOR GOD'S SAKE, MAN, FOCUS ON SOMETHING!"

I digress. Thank you all so much for your comments on yesterday's post. What a bunch of smart women I have reading my brain dumps! TZ, I'll admit, I laughed all afternoon about your perhaps inadvertent reference to your "current husband" of almost 21 years. :) If he's been around that long, he's the only one that counts! Unless you meant he's on his way out? :) It reminded me of when I would jokingly call X "my first husband." Oops. That is less funny than "current husband," haha. 

I have been thinking about people changing (and I meant Greg, not me, haha). I don't believe he has changed, but I am willing to concede that he has possibly realized his stupidity. ;) He, at least, listened to me and has thought a lot about what I said back in the day. He brought up the other day, "You told me once that you wished we had met a year later. Well, it's a year later - you were absolutely right." (That's a link to my recap of our first date, by the way.)

Just now, I decided that I will make myself go back and read the whole Greg saga on this blog, in order to make sure I remember both the wonderful things and the really, really crappy things. There were a lot of both, haha. You know.

Okay. So I don't think Greg has changed, but he is right about me being right, about it being too early in his post-divorce life to date. He was in a lot of turmoil. An ex who had knowingly claimed the new home buyer's credit even though it was not their first home - so he had just been hit with a $12K tax bill, in addition to all the hidden credit cards he had just found out about, etc. A teenage daughter who moved back in full-time but was playing with his heart strings a bit with "if I'm not happy, I'll move back to mom's", a very strained relationship with his teenage son...etc etc. I *did* say that it was too soon for him to be dating. Because it was.

In other words: I told you so. And I was right and you were wrong. I try not to say these things, but I will say them here, in the privacy of the internet.

So, I am sure he has not changed, but I do know his life has calmed down. And I do know that we were awfully compatible and it's not surprising that he would realize that now - I know I have thought about it, too. We have sparks in a really good way. I have learned from dating that this is certainly not always the case.

Things that will not have changed do concern me. Smoking. He is honest in that he will probably not stop. Oddly, I wouldn't care about this so much unless I had not battled quitting smoking my entire adult life. He's not a "bad" smoker: doesn't do it often, is meticulous about cleaning up afterward, etc. Doesn't generally taste or smell like cigarettes. But he's a smoker, and I am a reformed (and still struggling sometimes) non-smoker. This is very, very nearly a deal-breaker. It should be, I suppose. 

Physical activity/health in general. Here, Mr. W wins hands down, because not only is he very active, he is also one of those people who only eats healthy and then takes lots of weird herbs and supplements on top of it. I will not gloat that when I was so sick, oh, ALL WINTER LONG, he was a little sanctimonious about herbal treatments and preventatives, and now he is home sicker than a dog for days now. Heh. Even herbal people can get sick, what do you know?

Greg and I have spoken about both smoking and physical activity. He admits he will not likely join me on 50+ mile bike rides, but says he'll go to the gym with me. Importantly, he says he will support me and stay out of my way on pursuing these myself. Here, I'm more concerned about *me.* While I have been expressing to Mr. W that I am not sure I want EVERY FREE MINUTE of my summer scheduled into bicycle training rides up to and in excess of 100 miles...I don't want to give it up, either. It's that spectrum again. Mr. W and I went on a very fun 30+ mile ride last weekend and one of the things that sort of spoils it for me is I said, halfway through our ride, "My parents live at the top of that big ass hill (pointing)" and he said, "We can do that as a training ride, from your house to your parents', that will be about an 80-mile loop." I struggle with always training. I'm interested, and not interested. I dunno.

Matt is an active life full of vacations and travel, and love, love, love. Greg is a sleepy life full of home and family and certainly not uncontested compliance with my will and whims. Greg loves recreation, too, but it will be the local weekend getaways to the coast (fishing) or the mountains (fishing), haha. I can bring my bike. :)

Here's the thing. I lament the fact that Greg's world is as big as he is willing to drive and Matt has traveled the world and lived in Prague for several years and wants to take me to Europe this fall. 

But I wonder...SHOULD I lament this fact? After all, the last time I got on an airplane was 1996, to Hawaii. It was my second flight, the first being to Disneyland. I am not exactly a world traveler, and for all I know, I never will be. It is certainly not a priority of mine, to date, anyway. And when Matt says he wants to take me to Europe, most of me is SO EXCITED and ALL IN, but the rest of me is like, "Well, the odds of me saving up vacation time with these kids sucking off it all the time, plus the money - even spending money, etc..." I don't know how fair it is to mourn something I don't have, anyway. And who knows, when I am finally free to travel, maybe Greg would be ON IT. Besides, his big dream is to retire to the Oregon Coast, and WHERE have I been saying I will retire to, since I was in high school?? You got it. And Greg makes his dreams happen (while I tend to procrastinate on mine), so if I wanna retire to the Oregon Coast, well, there's my ticket to a beautiful home on the Oregon Coast with a man I adore.

This is getting a little long, but I'll tell you what my mom said the other day about "SVS"  when I was growing up. He and his family were friends with my parents. I babysat for him, and I had the world's hugest crush on him from the time I was probably nine or ten...until, oh, probably the day I got married. I haven't seen him in years, but safe bet that I'd still have a crush on him. He raced cars, he fished, he hunted, he was tall and handsome, he could do/build/make anything in the world. He rode a motorcycle and had a big truck and a boat, and, and, and...As Reid, my youngest, would say, my heart "beeped" for him.

Hmm, Greg raced cars, rides a motorcycle, has a big truck and a boat and hunts and fishes and is tall and handsome (in that very ruddy outdoorsy way - he's not classically handsome, maybe, but does have bright blue eyes and a dimple in his chin), hunts, fishes, and, and, and. 

So I'm probably still chasing my childhood crush. When I first read "The World According to Garp," I envied the babysitter that got the older man, haha. Dirty Thirty.

Well, my poor mom brought up SVS to dissuade me from seeing Greg again. (Not because she thinks I could go after SVS now, hahahaha). She said that women always love the bad boys, but SVS had a lot of girlfriends after his divorce and Greg will, too. Greg did say he dated a couple women after we split (and I made sure he knows I have, too) and it only made him realize how much he had blown it with me. What a smart thing to say. Poor mom. You shouldn't have made me think about SVS after all these years, now I just feel like I'd be fulfilling my life's destiny.

I have to show you this picture, but I'll probably take it down pretty quickly. I am nearly *positive* this must be a dating profile picture. I told Kim it's his "mail order bride" picture: big, strong man with race car and house and truck = PROVIDER. If it were anyone else, I would be laughing at him, that cocky, arrogant pose and all his wealth spread out behind him. But he gives me butterflies so I just think it's cute. And very silly. Men. They are like young children. He texted this to me as a means of seduction. White picket fence included.

Boys and toys.

It's interesting that you would reference in the comments, Linda and TZ, my concerns about "being loved more than" vs "loving someone more than." I've seen Greg briefly a couple times in this last week (coffee on Sunday and yes, a ride home on the motorcycle Tuesday - Greg
 knows which buttons to push for the desired reaction). There's always been sparks flying between us, but if I were to go down that path again, it's not the same. I think this is what is happening with Mr. W, too. It's his first time dating since the divorce, and he wants so much to be loved and in love again. I *know* this. I know exactly how it feels. And now I also know how it felt for Greg to be hit with that when I locked my sights on him. It is good, and flattering, and it's "well, everything would be great, except," and a whole mixed bags of feelings. I think in many ways, the Mr. W of today would not be the Mr. W of a year from now, but I can't be sure. Can't I keep telling these men to come back a year after their divorce??

We'll see.

Finally, I feel obliged to say something that is weight loss surgery, running and cycling related, in order to not lose my "credentials" as a blogger in anything but matters of my heart! Let's see. It is much easier to be on a liquid diet if you have a teeny-tiny sleeve tummy. I have been running on the treadmill at the Y, and I loved the HOPE OF SPRING on my ride with Mr. W last Saturday. This weekend is supposed to be gorgeous and even though it is action-packed with the kids, I will make sure to get in some cycling.