Category: Random thoughts

My relationship with making plans is somewhat tempestuous. While I absolutely love a spontaneous invitation to do something fun, I am also a big fan of having something to look forward to.  I love that anticipation of pleasure. The wondering how it will go. Yes, it is important to live in the moment…and no, I shouldn’t do so much what-iffing…but what-iffing the possibilities when you have plans with someone is part of the fun. 

Often things seem to fall through when I make plans with people, and I am not sure why that is. 

Over the long holiday weekend, I had multiple layers of plans go astray. Which left me sort of..in limbo. Which is exactly the place I least like to be. In fact, if I were a designer, Hell would consist of ironing, pulling weeds and “maybe we should do something this weekend, I’ll let you know on Friday night.” 

Spontaneity is great. Definite plans are even better. The maybes are a killer. 

You might think that all of the anticipation and what-iffing would lead to disappointment. That is only true when the plans fall through. When the planned activity happens, I am never let down. Somehow, everything is better than I expected almost every time. 

Why do you suppose that is?

Obviously, it is because of something about me and also about the people I make plans with. 

Me? Since part of the what iffing includes the direst of possible outcomes, any time my plans work out I am thrilled. I mean,  I was probably assuming there would be a tsunami, so when people actually end up at the beach with me it will be way better than that! Optimistic pessimism is great. 

Most of the credit has to go to my friends and family: the best people on the planet, and also the most fun. It is well documented in my blog. They are huggers, laughers, tongue sticker outers, drink pourers. They are story tellers, football watchers, coffee drinkers, domino players. They are caring, tolerant, compassionate, smart. They are whimsical, prone to hijinks, golf cart racers, food servers. 

They are, without exception, the kind of people who take care of each other and love each other. 

What did I ever do to deserve them? Hell if I know. I show up on time. I kiss everybody.  I bring a lot of booze. I laugh at everyone’s funny stories and cry about the sad ones. Sometimes both at the same time. I post about it all here. It doesn’t really seem like a fair trade. 
You know what time if year it is? It’s the time if year I think about what to do on my vacation…

Who wants to come along?

I recently met someone in person who I have been talking to online for a few months on a very regular basis. You can interpret “regular basis” as pretty much every day since the beginning, ramping up gradually to a few hours a day in the last three weeks. 

As we started to talk about the logistics of possibly meeting each other in person, we discussed a lot of things we’d been talking about for weeks. We talked about how similar and different we are, what obstacles we might run into along the way, what things in our personalities might make the obstacles not matter quite so much, and how we’d gradually started to form a bond even without meeting. We also agreed that we have such compatible communication styles that even if sparks didn’t fly we would probably remain good friends.

At some point I mentioned that I never extended my dating search as far as Seattle, and he was outside of the age range I normally put in my search. He should not have shown up in my list of matches at all. His profile was full of things that would make me shy away from contacting someone. Still. He showed up in my match list somehow, and for some reason I sent him a message in spite of the distance and other reasons not to.

 He teased me about how even though I like to think the world is all science and physicality, he thinks there is a place for magic in life,  and that it was plain that kismet had thrown us in each other’s path.  The only way to find out what chemistry had to say about it would be to just meet in person. Kismet and chemistry have to work together. 

When we found a date that worked for both of us to me to drive up to meet him, I got to wondering when we’d started talking exactly so I went and re-read our first day of messages. I sent him the first message about 10 weeks ago. I didn’t go back and re-read any conversational threads, but one thing jumped out at me. He lives on an island near Seattle. The first time we chatted online, I joked about how if I was a more strategic dater, I’d make sure I treated him well so I’d have a place to stay on the island all Summer. He replied that he was not into strategic dating, but was holding out for kismet and chemistry,  and a life replete with ellipses.

Ellipses are my favorite punctuation mark. I abuse them mercilessly. Obviously, I liked him immediately.

I sent him a screen capture of that part of our first chat, and we laughed about how kismet and chemistry seemed to be our destiny given our mutual fondness for ellipses. 

Last weekend there was a drive, and a ferry ride and another bit of a drive to discover if the bond formed through writing words could be as strong in person as we thought it might be.

Chemistry, it appears, agreed with kismet in the matter and shot a bunch of sparks at us. 

Some things require a lot of intervention from..something..in order to ever happen. 

Sometimes you meet people who connect with you on a deeper than usual level for reasons you can’t quite put into words. In this case, words were the reason we connected. We will see where this goes, one step at a time.

Kismet and Chemistry.  

They’d be good names for cats, we thought. The cats who stand guard over the Sea Monkey Museum that doesn’t exist, for instance. Anyone breaking into the museum that doesn’t exist would be transported by Kismet directly to the imaginary coin operated jail. 

In addition to kismet and chemistry, sometimes you need some help from whimsy. 

Which would also be a good name for a cat, but we can invent that one another day.