I know I haven’t blogged in awhile.  I have no excuse other than that I just haven’t been in the mood.  Actually I haven’t been in the mood for much of anything lately.  Unfortunately, this year my annual Christmas holiday blahs have continued on into January and February.  It isn’t helping that we are experiencing one of the worst winters in years with an unusual combination of either zero degree temperatures or snow on a weekly basis.  Usually our winters are one or the other but both at the same time?  It makes me want to stay in bed and pull the covers over my head and come out when I hear the first sound of a baseball bat hitting a ball.  I did manage to ask a girl out recently though only to once again get stonewalled.  This time I didn’t get the “I like you as a friend” message but rather the “It’s not you it’s me” response.  I have written in the past about keeping the power within and not letting rejection get you down.  This time I listened to my own advice and instead of coming home and feeling unworthy I just found myself wondering why I even bother.

When I was young I loved Christmas.  The day after Thanksgiving my mom and I, with a lot of grumbling from my Dad, would take out all of the Christmas decorations and begin the process of decorating for the holidays.  This was before the day after Thanksgiving was designated as Black Friday, the mandatory shopping day.  We would put Christmas music on, put the tree up and then decorate it, first with the lights, then the ornaments and then lastly the tinsel.  I do not why it had to be done in that order but it did and I was told this every year so that I would not deviate from the plan and go all crazy and put the tinsel on first.  That would be really bad or so I was told.  I would also get in trouble for trying to hide the lame ornaments I made myself either in the back or on the inside of the tree in an attempt to avoid embarrassment when people would see the results of my lame ass work.  “Those are my favorites” my Mom would say as she moved them to the front.  They were ugly ornaments only a Mom could love.  It was a long day but well worth it because in the end the house would be all Christmassy shiny from head to toe.  Then the waiting began.  When you are really young and still excited about the idea of Santa coming the length of time from the day after Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve seemed to last an eternity.  I was anxious for that two week break from school to come as I hated school with a passion even in the first grade.  My parents would give me the Sears catalog and tell me to look through it for toys I might want to ask Santa for.  I would go through the book numerous times circling pretty much every toy that was not a doll or an easy bake oven.  My mom would then take the list and tell me she would mail it to Santa for me and she never let me down as I usually got most of the things I had circled.  Once the two week Christmas break from school came, now called a winter break so we do not  upset the agnostics, I was in heaven or some place really, really nice as the agnostics would prefer.  I would help my Mom in the kitchen who was  busy baking lots and lots of Christmas cookies.  Getting to lick the batter off the beaters was a special treat.  I loved Christmas music and never got tired of hearing it even though it played all day long every day.  I also loved watching all the Christmas shows on TV.  This was before VHS and DVD so shows such as Charlie Brown and Rudolph were a special treat because if you missed them you had to wait a whole year before you could see them again.  I would plan my evenings around them.  I also enjoyed all the reruns that ran during the day on the local TV station of Christmas Episodes of such classics as Gilligan’s Island, Dick Van Dyke, Andy Griffith and Bewitched among others.  The list goes on and on and it was fun to watch those episodes year after year as it was part of the tradition.  Christmas Eve was the longest day of the year.  I would just lie around the house counting the minutes before we could leave to go to Grandma’s house.  With the hour finally upon us we would all get in the car and drive to Grandma’s house where all the other relatives were there waiting.  Grandma would have a big feast set out for all and we would eat until we could eat no more.  But let’s face it.  I was there for one reason and one reason only, to see Santa Claus.  But first we had to sing Carols.  For some reason Santa wouldn’t come unless we sang and we all had to sing.  That was Grandma’s rule and you did not want to piss off Grandma, especially on Christmas Eve.  Finally, after way too much off key singing, I would hear bells outside and I would rush to the window and there was Santa looking quite splendid in the traditional red pants, jacket and the white hair and beard.  Santa would tell us he heard the singing and decided to stop and join us since it sounded like we were all having such a good time.  I wasn’t having a good time but I wasn’t going to say anything.  Not only did I not want to piss off Grandma but it wasn’t a good idea to make Santa mad either.  So Santa would sing a couple of songs with us, usually songs that involved him such as “Santa Claus is coming to Town”.  The old guy sure did like to sing songs written about him.  Then when the singing was done Santa would hand out the gifts and ask each one of us if we were good this year.  I was tempted to ask him why he didn’t know because, after all, as the song goes he made a list and checked it twice, but I bit my tongue and said nothing.  Still there was always the wise guy uncle who would tell him I wasn’t very good that year while I was sitting in Santa’s lap.  “Yes, I was” I would correct him and everyone would laugh.  After Santa left we would open our presents and I would get more of the toys I circled in the Sears catalog.  That Santa sure was smart, I would think.  After a long evening we would head home and when we got there somehow miraculously Santa had visited my house too while we were away and there would be more presents under the tree.   I would rush to open them, just barely getting my coat and shoes off.  There were more of the toys from the catalog, and usually a shirt or jacket that, my Mom said, Santa must have felt I needed.  Also, there was always a new pair of Pajamas and underpants, the tighty whitey kind, under the tree.  Every year Santa always gave me a pajamas and underpants for Christmas and for some reason I was just as excited to get these too.  After we opened our presents Dad would say it was time for bed and I would be all excited about going to my room and putting on my new underpants and pajamas and going to sleep.  The next morning we got up early to go to church and then we would come home and my Mom would prepare a Christmas breakfast for us.  I always wanted to change back into my new tighty whiteys and pajamas and spend the rest of the day in them but I was told I had to wait until the evening.  Only lazy or sick people spend the day in their pajamas or so I was told.  As I look back on those early days of my youth I am surprised that of all the toys and other gifts I received over the years at Christmas time the gift that I remember the most is the pajamas and the tighty whitey briefs.  I don’t remember exactly when they stopped showing up under the tree.  Most likely it was as I approached my teens and stopped being less awed by the world and more pissed off by it.  Funny how when you are a kid you will believe anything anybody tells you about Santa Claus.  That an overweight man can fly all over the world and deliver toys to all the good children by going down their chimney, even if you do not have one.  It was all explained that he was able to do all this because of Christmas magic.  And I believed because I wanted to believe.  It was Christmas magic and that was all the explanation I needed.  It made perfect sense.

Now as an adult I don’t care for Christmas.  The songs drive me crazy as they seem to be played every where.  The crowds at the store annoy me too.  Throw in the cold weather, the short sunny days and long, dreary, dark nights and you have a recipe for depression.  Maybe that is why every year when someone asks me what I want for Christmas I always say pajamas and underwear and they look at me like I am some kind of weirdo or something.  Needless to say I never get them.

So Merry Christmas to all of my blogger friends and I hope you find underpants under your tree this year.  I wish you all much peace and happiness.  May your days be merry and your tighty whiteys white!

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite days of the year.  I like sleeping in and not having to go to work.  I like the food.  I love spending the day with my family.  I like it when the family gets together and I don’t have to worry about buying anybody a gift.  I even enjoy watching the football games even it is the same stupid Lions and Cowboys every year.  What I don’t like about it is the next day, known as Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year or so they say.  Personally, I find it to be the biggest headache of the year.  Long time readers of this blog know that I am a Grinch who hates the holiday season.  Having lost both of my parents during the so called "most wonderful time of the year" has left me with little if any holiday spirit.  Personally, I would love it if I could hibernate on the morning of Black Friday until early February when the annual sports illustrated swimsuit issue comes out.  My dislike for the day grew even more when I got up Friday morning and decided at 7:30 in the morning to make a quick trip to the local store to pick up a few small items only to be greeted by jam packed parking lots and police directing traffic in and out of the local Best Buy.  Shouldn’t they be out there catching crooks or something?  I would like to think that they have better things to do but I am sure the poor suckers that were actually trying to get in and out of the store appreciated having them there.  As for me I grumbled and went home and realized that from now until mid January going to the store for a quick stop to pick up a few things is going to be a colossal chore.  Sigh, sometimes I wish I was part grizzly bear, curling up naked in bed until spring sounds really good right about now.

     I just spent my three day weekend home alone doing the usual things I do to keep my mind occupied, watching my favorite baseball team lose, watching movies, playing video games, reading and listening to music as well as doing the monotonous things like laundry and dusting just about anything to keep me mentally active and take my mind off things.  One of the things I did was watch an old movie, well not to old, called “You’ve Got Mail”.  Even though it is a chick flick it caught my eye because it stars cutey pie Meg Ryan and the very likable Tom Hanks.  As I watched the movie I started thinking about all of the movies and songs out there that are about love and finding love and someone to share life with and for a single guy like me with women problems these kinds of movies can be a little torturous to sit through.  After I watched it I thought of other movies where two people try to fall in love and find each other like the recent “Hitch” with Will Smith.  I have read some self help books and they all kind of said the same thing.  The basic things being “learn to love yourself” and that “only you can make you happy” and that “if you rely on others to make you happy then you will never really truly be happy”.  Stuff that I had already learned from personal experience and have written about in previous blogs.  And I have to admit I think it is good advice and I often find myself saying it to others seeking advise on various issues.  But the thing is I know from first hand experience how difficult it is to do those things and I think part of the problem is that we are constantly surrounded by movies  and songs about finding true love and how happy the people are who have done so and how miserable they were until they did.  Nice message isn’t it?  That you aren’t complete unless you have someone to love in your life.  No wonder there are so many lonely depressed single people out there.  Nothing like the constant reminder from all around you that you should be with someone and if I see that grinning old guy on those eharmony commercials one more time I am going to blow a gasket.  Yes, I know I am alone dammit.  Stop reminding me of it.  The thing that makes it harder is that I know that some of what they say in the movies is true.  Not that you need someone to complete you but rather life can be more enjoyable if there is someone to share it with.  I know this because the times when I am happiest are the times I spend with my family and friends.  I am fortunate to be close with my brother and sister and their families and truly enjoy the family get togethers we have.  I also have two really close friends whose friendship I adore and every minute I spend with them is a treasure.  So I know where all these movies and songs are coming from but do they have to remind me constantly?  Oh well, back to the movies, books, TV and video games and, hey, my baseball team won for a change.   

If you find the following blog offensive then let me apologize in advance.

    So I am having a conversation with a female friend and I mention a movie I saw recently that contained a scene where we see a man’s penis, albeit briefly, but it was there and I saw it.  I said to the friend how unusual this was to see a penis in a movie and it startled me for a second.  Not that I care.  Not that I wanted to see it.  It is just something you don’t see often in a movie.  It is my understanding that the reason is because the people who rate movies think that if a movie contains a shot of a man’s penis or a woman’s vagina it should automatically gets an R rating but a woman’s breasts only gets a PG 13 rating.  Personally, I find this interesting that they actually put ratings on body parts.  I mean you can watch a PG movie and see all sorts of blood and guts but the minute you show a penis or a vagina the movie gets an R, as if violence is okay but nudity is bad.  I know this is nothing new in our media world but it is a subject I think is interesting to talk about.  Anyway after I got through talking the woman had a horrified and embarrassed look on her face and told me she prefers I drop the subject and not say those words (penis and vagina) anymore.  I apologized for embarrassing her and told her that it was not my intent to do so but her reaction to my comment kind of proved the point on why movies that contain images of those things get R ratings. 

     On another day I was talking to a different female friend who I have known for ages and we were discussing penis size and whether it mattered to women or not.  She said it doesn’t. I said I think it depends on the woman.  Case in point, I know there are guys who like women with big breasts and some guys (like me) who don’t care about size, so why wouldn’t there be women that feel the same way about the penis?  My female friend tells me that women aren’t pigs like guys are to which we had a nice laugh.  Anyway, it was an interesting and frank conversation and never once did she blush or get embarrassed about the conversation.  And I still don’t believe her that size doesn’t matter.

     Neither of these conversations was naughty or sexual in nature. Just regular talk as if we were talking about the weather or what we did over the weekend.  Yet, I learned that girl 1 couldn’t handle it and girl 2 had no problem whatsoever and I walked away thinking that I get more and more confused by the female species every day.

     Recently, I had the unpleasant experience of having to pass my first ever kidney stone.  Not sure when it stated but I think I woke up in the middle of the night (funny how these things happen at night) with the urge to pee and when I did my penis hurt.  I went back to bed and woke up the next morning and the pain was still there.  Now this is not a place that guys are use to having pain.  I mean I have had bullies kick me in the nuts when I was little and that hurt a lot but it didn’t hurt in my penis.  It just hurt all over down there.  So anyway my penis hurt and I didn’t know what to do since this was a new experience for me.  So I did what any rational thinking guy would do.  I ignored it and hoped it would go way.  But a week later the pain was still there, and after a lot of worrying, I finally decided to suck it up and see a doctor especially after I started experiencing pain in my gut.  The doctor ran some tests and said I have an infection and a kidney stone and sent me home with pain killers and an anti-biotic and told me to stay home and drink plenty of fluids and hope I pass it because if I don’t they are going to have to go in and get it which kind of freaked me out.  So I went home, took my drugs and laid in bed with the TV on and drank cranberry juice because I read on the web that it would help and, hey, everything you read on the web is true, right?  The pain in my stomach got much worse and too be honest with you I don’t think the drugs were working.  It was one of the most painful nights I have ever had and if I slept for an hour then that is lucky.  The next day I got up and sat on the couch still in pain.  I wanted to stop drinking so I wouldn’t pee and thus be in less pain but I knew the stone wouldn’t pass if I did, so I “cowboyed up” and drank the fluids and dealt with the pain.  On the third day the pain in my gut mysteriously disappeared but my penis still hurt.  I called my doctor thinking this was good news but he told me that the stone had probably just moved into my bladder and the worst was yet to come.  He was right.  Two days later, after drinking a glass of juice the pain got much worse in my penis and all of a sudden it felt like there was something solid in there and let me tell you the penis is not designed for solids to pass through.  In a whole mess of pain I continued to drink with the hope the SOB would soon pass and it would put me out of my misery.  Honestly, the pain was so bad I was tempted to call the doctor and tell him just to cut the damn thing off and for a guy to say that you know the pain has to be bad.  We are very attached to our genitalia.  In the afternoon, after a lot of fluids and pain, I peed into the strainer that I had been given to pee into to catch the stone and I heard a plop and I looked down and there it was, about 3mm in size.  It didn’t look like much but boy was I glad to see it and just like that all my pain was gone and I was peeing like a race horse and relieved to have the whole thing over.  Since then I have not taken the simple act of peeing without pain for granted.

    All of this I thought about as I lay in bed at 3 in the morning unable to sleep and thinking about penis’s and vaginas and breasts and the two conversations I had with the two very different ladies and I realized that if I ever do come out of my shell again and hook up with a girl I hope it is one that I can talk frankly to about things.  So that, god forbid, I ever have problems with my penis again I can talk to her about it without having to use children’s words like “doodle” or “little cowboybob”, and in return if she wanted to talk to me about her vagina she could feel free to do so.

I was up at 2 in the morning the other day.  I had a bad dream about my mother.  I call it a bad dream only because my mother was in it not because anything bad was happening to her or me.  My mother died a long time ago at a young age after suffering for many months with a terrible disease.  I remember when I first heard she was sick.  I couldn’t believe it.  Things like that don’t happen to us, I thought.  But it did.  Early on when my mother first got sick I prayed every night for her to get better.  After a few months it became clear she wasn’t going to so I then started praying for God to take me instead of her.  She was a wife, a mother and a grandmother.  I was nothing and had no one.  It just seemed to me that I would be missed less or so I thought.  I know it was warped thinking but at the time I wasn’t being rational.  Obviously, God didn’t take me up on my offer so then I started praying that she go quickly and without pain.  That didn’t happen either as it was a long drawn out illness.  This is the reason why I no longer believe in the power of prayer.  When one of the sweetest, nicest people on the planet has to suffer so much it forces you to ask a lot of questions.  When you are young you are taught be good and be rewarded, be bad and you will be punished.  Once you enter the adult world however you soon learn that sometimes good things happen to bad people and, yes, bad things can happen to good people.  We wonder why this is and complain that it isn’t fair.  But we soon realize after we have been hurt too many times that life isn’t fair at all.  When you think about it praying doesn’t make a whole lot of common sense in that if there are two people in the hospital, sick and one has no family and no one praying for him and the other has a large family praying for him, is God really going to make a decision on who to help based on the number of prayers an individual gets?  Is it some kind of game?  The more prayers you get for you the better your chances.  I don’t think so.  Sometimes people ask me for their prayers if something bad is going on in their life.  I always tell them okay and I do pray for what they ask for but in my heart I don’t think it does a damn bit of good other than to offer the person who has asked for the prayers some peace of mind.  But I am digressing here as this is about my dream and my mother and not religion which, like politics, I usually try to avoid here.  A few days after my mother passed away she appeared in my room while I was sleeping.  She was wearing the dress she was buried in and looked happy and content as she smiled on me.  Was she really there or was it just a dream?  I don’t know.  It seemed real to me at the time.  Since my mom passed away there is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of her at some point.  Sometimes they are happy memories and other times it is with regret that I wasn’t a better son and helped out more around the house.  She did so much and asked for so little in return.  Along with occasionally thinking of her, I have dreams with her in them.  I call them bad dreams only because they make me sad.  So there I was awake at 2 in the morning.  I didn’t want to try to go back to sleep since the dream was still fresh in my mind.  So I got up and got on the computer.  I checked my e-mail, surfed the internet a little and then bored I went back to bed and turned on the TV.  Fortunately, Star Trek was on so I watched Spock and Captain Kirk and eventually fell asleep again this time with no thoughts of my mother to haunt me. 

     A long, long time ago I had a crush on a girl.  She had red curly hair, she was tiny and thin and had freckles.  She was a cute as a button as the saying goes although I don’t understand the saying since I don’t find buttons to be cute but anyway that is how the saying goes so I will go with it.  The cute little girl and I had a lot in common.  We agreed on our political and religious views and had the same taste in music.  Particularly, we both really liked a rock star that was very popular at the time.  Because I had feelings for her I started doing all the things that I use to do for girls when I really liked them.  I treated her like royalty.  I showered her with compliments.  On any given day I would tell her that I liked her hair if I noticed a new ‘do.  I would compliment her on her blouse, dress or shoes, anything that caught my eye.  They were sincere compliments.  They weren’t Eddie Haskell like “that’s a lovely sweater you have on today Mrs. Cleaver” compliments, but honest sincere compliments.  I also would give her gifts every once in awhile.  Nothing extravagant, just little trinkets here and there that let her know I was thinking of her.  For her birthday I would give her a CD or something.  For Valentines Day I would send her a card in the mail.  I did the same for Christmas.  I got nothing in return other than a thank you.  Despite my efforts I was stuck in the friend zone with her and there seemed to be no way out.  Once a girl puts you in the friend zone you are stuck there for life.  It is like when a baseball player comes up to the big leagues and he has a hard time hitting left handed pitching so the manager starts benching him against lefties and the next thing you know he has a label on him that says he cannot hit lefties and know one ever gives him a chance against them.  Anyway, one day the cute red head wins two tickets for a concert with the rock star that we both love so much.  I asked her who she was going to go the concert with and she said she hadn’t decided.  She told me she had several choices and that I was in the running.  Well, to tell you the truth I got really excited.  Not only would I get to see a concert by my favorite rock star but I would get to go with a girl that I had a crush on.  The romantic in me was thinking that maybe if she picked me to go with her that this would be the night that she finally saw me in another light and I would finally graduate from the friend zone.  So I waited and waited for her to make her decision on who to invite go with her.  I tried not to bug her by begging or sounding too desperate.  I figured cool and laid back was the way to handle this thing.  She knew I wanted to go so I just had to wait and see if I was chosen.  Weeks went by and there was no announcement on which person she was going with.  On the day of the concert I figured that since she hadn’t said anything it wasn’t me.  I sought her out anyway and her friend told me she had left for the concert and when I asked if her friend knew who she took with her she said some guys name that I never heard of.  I was heart broken and very disappointed.   That night I spent my evening sitting on the couch in my underwear, playing my favorite video game and listening to my favorite CD’s while wearing headphones.  I also drank a 6 pack of beer.  I felt like crap and did whatever I could to try to take my mind off of my disappointment but to no avail.  It was now clear to me that I was in the friend zone with no way out.  Not that being in the friend zone is a bad place to be but when you are the one doing all the giving and not getting nothing in return then it’s time to rethink the friendship.  The next time I saw her I asked her how the concert was and she said it was just ok.  She liked the music but the guy she went with was a jerk to her and ruined the evening for her.  He didn’t even like the artist who was playing.  Anyway, she told me she regretted taking him and should have asked me or someone else instead.  I told her, “yes she should have taken me”.  After that I stopped with gifts and the cards.  I still complimented her every once in awhile because I still thought she was really cute but I decided that I wasn’t going to give her anymore special treatment.

     I think of that night now because I just received another one of my occasional e-mails I get from the dating expert.  He sends out e-mails to people that are on his list because he wants them to buy his books and CD’s that have advice about how to meet women.  I get the e-mails because I find them interesting even though I don’t follow his advice.  In his most recent e-mail he talks about the traps that nice guys fall into when they are trying to get a girls attention.  Basically, they shower them with gifts and compliments. Hmm, sounds familiar, I thought.  The author of the e-mails calls it wussy behavior and he says that it is the wrong way to try to get a girl.  Women, according to the author, especially really attractive women are so use to guys fawning over them that wussy behavior such as what I was doing with the red haired girl turns them off.  They see you as just another guy with no spine who waits on them hand and foot and they don’t find that attractive.  It is hard for me to disagree with him since I have experienced the same reaction first hand with my own wussy behavior.

     As I think about that fateful night I also realized that without knowing it I relinquished my power to her.  I had given her the power over me to determine my happiness.  The evening I spent wallowing in my own self pity, depressed that I wasn’t ask to go with her to the concert was a waste of time.  Yes, I would have loved to go with her but she didn’t ask me.  It didn’t mean that there was anything wrong with me or that my life was over because of it.  Yet I had inadvertently given her the power over me anyway.  Chances are she didn’t know she even had it.  My guess is that to this day she has no idea how upset her decision made me.  I bet she had no idea how much power I had given her.  When I think back on it now, I think wow what a dangerous thing to do.  Give someone who isn’t really all that close to me the power to determine my happiness.   What a dumb thing to do actually.  Why should I have let someone else make that determination for me?  It would be different if we had been dating for a long time or even had been married.  Then I could see being depressed about it but getting that upset because she didn’t ask me to go to a concert with her.  No, I should not have let it bother me that much.  One of the things that the dating guru always mentions in his e-mails is that fear of rejection is the number one thing keeping guys from talking to girls.  He is right on that one.  In the past when a girl would tell me no I would take it personally.  Like there was something wrong with me.  It is a hard thing to get over. 

A long, long time ago I decided to make my first big step into adulthood and move out of my parent’s house and get a place of my own.  This was necessary for two reasons.  First of all my parents were driving me crazy.  No matter how old you get you will always be your parent’s kid and they will never stop treating you like a child, criticizing your every move and telling you how to live your life.  Secondly, it was time.  Something inside me said “dude, move out”.  I always thought I would do it when I got married but since I was suffering from a painful shyness around women that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.  Now this was a big scary step for me.  I was moving out of the comfort zone of the home I grew up in.  The place where I knew I would always have a hot home cooked meal to eat and a bed to sleep in at night.  I knew this time was coming though and I saved up all of my money so that I could put a down payment down on a place of my own.  After going through the nervous part of looking for a home and going through the closing I learned that few things are more horrifying than putting your name on a 30 year mortgage that you are responsible for.  Talk about pure terror.  When I first started living on my own I was dirt poor and some days couldn’t even afford the dirt.  My living room furniture consisted of some lawn furniture my parents were going to throw out.  My TV was a 19” with rabbit ears that gave me a poor signal, no cable TV for me.  The only actual furniture I had was my bedroom set from home.  I was living on my own and still sleeping in my twin bed from home.  My food budget consisted mainly of peanut butter sandwiches and hot dogs.  Thankfully I was still welcome at home for 2 meals a week or more and my mother was always kind of to pack me a rather substantial doggie bag.  I never told her I couldn’t afford groceries but I bet somehow she knew.  Mothers are like that.  The worst part was trying to pay bills.  When you are living paycheck to paycheck trying to stretch the dollar so that you can get all of your bills paid on time is tough.  At times I would put checks in the mail on Wednesday for a payday that wasn’t happening until Friday.  To top it all off the job I had at the time was talking about major layoffs and since I had the least seniority that meant if the layoffs happened I would be the first to go.  It was hard enough paying the mortgage when I had a job, I couldn’t see doing it without one.  Of course I had all of the worrisome thoughts of losing my job and my home and having to move back into my parent’s house a failure.  Fortunately for me when the layoffs happened they decided to let go of someone who did not work as hard as me.  The coworker was mad but I was ecstatic.  When I first heard about the possible layoffs I decided to work harder to show I wanted to keep my job and it paid off.  All in all it was not a fun time for me and I wouldn’t want to go through it again but looking back on it now I realize it was probably a necessary step for me to take, a learning experience that remains to me to this day.  Sometimes really tough times can be a learning experience when they are all over.  I could have stayed in my comfort zone and not left home but I knew at that time that wasn’t the right thing to do.  Living paycheck to paycheck taught me the value of a dollar better than any class in school could.  I guess you call that the school of hard knocks.  On one of my first evenings in my new home I remember sitting in my living room in my underwear on a lawn chair watching a ball game on my crappy TV and thinking I was king of the world.  How naïve I was.

Looking back on some of my old blogs I realized that this June is my two year anniversary of when I first started blogging.  It all started one afternoon when I was home alone and bored.  I was surfing the net while watching my favorite baseball team lose again when I came across a link for Microsoft’s new spaces web page.  I clicked on the link and started to read some blogs that people had posted.  I had heard about blogging but had never gone to any sites to actually read what it was all about.  So after reading a few blogs I decided what the heck and I quickly created one and posted my first blog and then promptly forgot about it.  I figured it would die in a few days.  No one would visit or post and I would move on to something else to occupy my time.  But a weird thing happened.  People came and visited and posted some really nice things and said they liked my writing.   So now I had a slight dilemma.  Do I keep posting?  I hadn’t counted on anyone even seeing my site let alone reading it but I have to admit I was intrigued.

The first thing I decided to do if I was to keep blogging was that I had to remain anonymous.  I had read an article in the paper about someone who had started a blog, complained about their boss and their job, told someone they worked with and then word quickly spread and the next thing you know the boss finds out, reads it and fires her.  A lawyer interviewed by the paper said that the company was within their rights and people need to be careful about what they write on the internet.   So rule #1, remain anonymous, rule #2, tell no one you know, rule #3, do not write about the job.  So with these 3 rules in place I started blogging.

But what do I write?  I don’t have an exciting life.  I get up, go to work, come home, eat, watch TV and/or read and then go to bed.  The next day I get up and do it again.  Lather, rinse and repeat. Not interesting at all if you ask me.  So I decided to just write my silly little stories about everyday life and tales from past and try to make them interesting.  Whether or not I am successful is not up to me to judge.  As I look back at some of the writings I thing some of them are pretty good and others are stinkers and I wonder “what was I thinking?”  Those must have been the 3 in the morning posts.

I am amazed at those who blog and have their names and pictures on their sites as well as their family and friends.  Good for you.  I admire your courage.  I could never do that.  If I couldn’t remain anonymous this site would come down.  Sometimes I wonder if the families of those who are not anonymous feel about themselves being written about on the net.  My guess is they don’t mind or they would tell the person to not do it.  Still I wonder.  A friend of mine found out about this blog by accident and she has been wonderful about not saying anything to anyone.  I really appreciate that.  You have no idea how close this site came to being shut down when she told me she knew.

One thing I have learned about bloggers is they don’t stay around very long.  The regulars that I had at the beginning are all but gone now.  Many of them haven’t posted in ages.  Some have taken their blogs down completely.  But then some new people stop by and I discover their blogs and they read mine and we become new regulars.  One of the early people that I use to converse with was a school teacher from Oklahoma.  She was a nice lady and I enjoyed her blog but then she shut it down and I never heard from her again.  I am not sure why but from what I was able to gather from her blog was that she was being harassed by people who found out about it.  It is a shame and I hope she is OK.  Still it makes me glad that I decided to remain as anonymous as I could on mine.  Another former blogger I miss is a woman who shared a house with her husband and 3 boys.  Plus, she was a paranormal investigator and although I don’t believe in ghosts her stories of haunted houses as well as dealing with all the testosterone in her house were entertaining.  Last I heard she had a baby, another boy, and hasn’t found the time to blog.

One of the questions I get asked the most from newbies is “have I really given up on finding a good woman like the title says at the top?”  The answer is no, not really but I am not really trying either so I guess it is the same thing.  Recently, I watched a Star Wars show on the History Channel.  The show dealt with the Star Wars mythology and how it relates to history.  It was very good.  I love Star Wars so it is one way to get me to watch some history and maybe learn something.  The reason I bring this up is because at one point in the show Linda Ellerbee says that the most romantic line in the history of cinema is when Princess Leia, while watching Han Solo get put in that slab at the end of “The Empire Strikes Back” to be sent to Jabba the Hut, says to Han, as her final words to him, “I Love You” and he looks back at her and says “I know”.  According to Ellerbee those 2 words, "I know", are the most romantic ever and she even grabbed her heart and gasped for air as she told the story to add some emphasis to it.  The reason I bring this up is because my theory is that women like strong, confident men.  Cowboys as I call them.  The Han Solo, "I know", type.  I, on the other hand, get a nervous when talking to a girl I don’t know, or anyone for that matter.  The last time I asked a girl out I was so nervous my voice was shaking and I am sure the rest of me was too.  No wonder she turned me down.  Last year I went out on a blind date set up by a friend and I was so nervous days before hand I was taking Tums several times a day to settle my stomach.  Needless to say it didn’t go well.  Women like their men to be confident cowboys.  They like them to say “I know”.  The shy, nervous, quiet but nice types such as myself would have blown the moment by saying something sappy like “I love you too.  You mean everything to me.”  Blah, blah, blah.  That is if I can get the words out without shaking like Barney Fife looking for the bullet in his pocket.

A while back while surfing the internet I got a pop up window which peaked my curiosity. Now normally when I get one of those the first thing I do is curse the internet gods that invented the pop up window and then I close it out ASAP. But this one had a message that I couldn’t ignore. It offered me the opportunity with one click to get all my questions answered regarding how to pick up women. Wow, I thought, all of my questions answered how can I ignore that one? So against my better judgment I clicked on the pop up and it took me to a web site where I could sign up for a newsletter to be e-mailed to be with the aforementioned tips and places where I could go to buy books and tapes on the subject. What the heck, I thought. This I have got to see. So I signed up and soon the e-mails started coming. I never bought any of the guys books and tapes he sells mainly because you have to sign up for a monthly club membership which I don’t want to do but also because I get the gist of the advice he is giving through the weekly e-mails I get. Basically, the guy who writes the e-mails says that women are so use to guys complimenting them all the time that when a guy approaches them in a bar or other social situation and tries to hit on them by buying them a drink or complimenting them the pretty girl automatically thinks loser and shuts them out. The guy who writes the e-mails says that women see such guys as wussies and are not attracted to them. Instead, he suggests, that you should find something about the girl to tease her about and then start making fun of her. Not in a mean way but in a gentle joking way, something that tells her that you are in charge and are not intimidated by her at all. For instance, if the woman is wearing really long high heels, point out her shoes and ask her if she wears them because she is afraid of tall men and then when she says no continue to harp on the shoes. Ok, maybe that is a lame example but you get the point. According to him the worst thing you could do is tell her that you like her shoes and that they match her lovely dress because that would say to her that you are a wuss. That she is so use to getting compliments from guys that another one who walks up to her gives her one does not impress her or get her attention. Instead teasing her says another signal that you are in charge and are not intimidated by her at all. The next step after getting her attention is to ask her for her e-mail address and then not caring if she gives it to you or not. If she says no then say "your loss" and walk away. According to the author, if you play your cards right she will be interested and shocked by your lack of interest and will follow you and end up giving it to you. There is more but I think you get the general idea. Now I have never tried this technique mainly because whenever I meet a girl I like for the first time I usually end up doing my best Ralph Kramden impersonation and the only thing that comes out of my mouth is “hummina, hummina, hummina” or some nonsense like that. It is not exactly a great pick up line that will encourage any woman to spend time with me which would explain part of my girl problems. I also don’t like the fact that the whole thing sounds manipulative and insincere but maybe that is what girls want. I use to know a guy who would walk up to girls in a bar and start a conversation by saying he knows her from high school and wasn’t she a cheerleader and then start telling lots of cheerleader jokes. Usually by the time he was done the girl had completely forgotten all about the “I know you from high school” line and is giving him her phone number. It was a thing of beauty to watch. I do know from personal experience that women don’t seem to take compliments well. Whenever I give a female friend a compliment I usually get a response that includes a rolling of the eyes and a comment that seems to say that I am in idiot. When I tell a girl that I like her dress and that she looks great in it, she will say it makes her look fat. When I tell a girl that I like her new jeans and that they look good on her and she will tell me that they make her butt look big. When I tell a girl that I like her new haircut, she will proceed to tell me everything that the stylist did wrong, that it is too short or too long or the color is wrong. When I tell a girl on a date that she is pretty, she will tell me that her makeup is messed up or that she has bags under her eyes from lack of sleep etc. In other words I can’t win. Either women truly do not want compliments like the man in the e-mail says, cannot take them or I am a total idiot, the worst kind of heterosexual male who cannot tell when a woman looks good or not. It’s enough to make a man stop trying.