My Carrie Bradshaw Moment

Ok, so I'm not exactly Carrie Bradshaw.  If Carrie Bradshaw was an exhausted single mother to four kids, who wears black yoga pants with frightening frequency, then yes.  Yes I am exactly Carrie Bradshaw.

But here's what made me think of Carrie and moi in the same thought bubble:  Remember in Season Five of Sex and the City when Mr. Big reads Carrie's book?  The person I am kind of dating right now has read my blog.  I haven't felt this awkward since...well...on Saturday when one of my best friends met him and addressed him as "John McCain". He looked at her like she had just addressed him as a former POW/governor/presidential candidate, and then at me. "You call me John McCain?" he asked me. Thanks for that, Terri!  Love you!

Like Lucille Ball, I had some 'splainin' to do.  Keep in mind that on Saturday, my sweet big mouthed friend Terri was celebrating her birthday by renting out what is known as a Pedal Pub.  So she and 15 of her best friends climbed aboard this tipsy thing and pedaled around Northeast Minneapolis for the day (I think someone once said the same thing about me in the late 80's)  (waiting for the laughs) (no?  ok...).

One of my general rules of thumb is "no drinking during the day".  I broke that rule on Saturday.  And sadly, I broke it by drinking a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.  But hey, it's not every day you are pedaling a pub with 12 people you've never met before, right?  So I had a good excuse.  As the day wore on, I had a couple more.  And thus, the texting began.  Poor John.  He handles my liquored-up texting with grace and civility.  Or maybe he makes faces and says bad things to his phone, but he always answers and is always polite.  This time I was begging him to join us at the "post-pedaling" part of the day.  And he did.

Oh, what's that?  You just realized that I am fessing up to seeing John McCain again?  If you're judging me, stuff it.  If you're happy for me, thank you.  He and I have been off and on for the past five years.  I have attributed each and every one of our "break ups" to the fact that I'm mostly insane.  I'm a second guesser and an over-analyzer.  But I'm also a big fan of serendipity, and I think that if someone ends up in your life, over and over again, they're there for a reason and you'd better explore it.

Plus, it's nice having my clock cleaned out again on a semi-regular basis.  And he seems to have no allergies to cobwebs, dust and bat guano, which I'm sure he found in abundance between the sheets after I got out of his bed.  Yes, it's been a while.

I could go all therapisty on you, and explain that after years of rejection and head games I've deemed myself unworthy of love and therefore push away anyone who tries to get close, but the reality is, I'm difficult to love.  I blame a lot of things, including some pretty harsh abuse I suffered at the hands of a stepparent, my own parent's divorce, being married to a cheating a-hole and a few other random hurts.

Bottom line is, I pity the fool who dates me.  I cannot even begin to fathom what it must be like..the mood swings, the hot/cold fluctuations, the nagging insecurities and constant worrying about what my stomach looks like when we're naked together.  And that's just the first night. 

I'm a cargo ship's worth of crazy stuffed into a rowboat, if you know what I'm saying. 

I'm also starting to think about the future.  Right now, I'm still chin-deep in busy.  Busy with work, busy with kids, busy ignoring laundry and dirty bathtubs.  But it's not always going to be this way.  Someday, in the not-so-distant future, I'll be alone.  The kids will (hopefully) get up and out and on with their lives, my dog will get old, and I'll get old too.

I remember one guy I dated during my eHarmony days:  I named him Sad Counselor.  One of his favorite subjects to talk about was the fact that he was terrified of ending up alone.  Back then, all I wanted to talk about was the new hutch I had just bought from Ikea and the latest episode of Bones.  His "what if" talks bummed me out.  But now, I kind of get it. 

So back to the Sex and The City parallels: After finding out that his moniker was John McCain, he pressed me a little bit:  "Have you written about me?" he asked.  I should have been all distracting, like Carrie would have been, and avoided the question by perhaps yanking on his zipper as he drove. But remember, I had been drinking, in the daylight.  Drinking PBR. So I confessed.  Told him that not only had I written about him, I'd written several posts all about him and me and our "stuff".  A smart blogger would have gone home then, and quickly, furtively reverted all incriminating posts to draft form. You know, to hide them from prying eyes.  But I am not a smart blogger.  I went home, burned a bunch of pumpkin seeds in the oven, watched a few episodes of "Charmed" (seriously.  I'm desperate for cable, homies) and then went to bed.

Yes, John McCain read my blog.  He sent me a text the next morning, telling me that going forward, we would refrain from discussing politics on dates.  That's when I ran to my laptop and pulled up every post that mentioned him.  Read them through his eyes, read them like I was reading them for the first time. 

I cringed.  I blushed.  I think I may have actually groaned.  And then, finally, I hid them.  Because it's my blog and I can do that. 

Truth is, in hindsight they weren't ALL bad.  I said some nice things about John McCain.  I said some not very nice things.  But mostly I spoke the way I do in every single post:  truthfully.  And at those moments in  time, those days I wrote about John McCain, I wrote the way I was feeling.  I wasn't ready. 

He didn't say too much about what he read.  In SATC, when Big read Carrie's book, he felt bad about the way he had treated her.  He looked at the woman he was with, and realized he was being played just like he had played Carrie.

In my case, I fear the opposite is true.  I thought, right away, of things I had said about McCain that could be interpreted as hurtful, or worse yet, insulting.  I tried to not do that in my posts about him, because in all honesty I felt as though the problems with "us" were mostly "me".  Here was this guy, this great guy, who loved me.  He thought I was pretty, he wanted to be with me, he didn't judge me or call me fat or point out my shortcomings. 

We had our differences.  And yes, those differences are still there.  But time has passed.  All those big ducks I had in a row have been dealt with (oh yes, there's still more drama to be had but the end is finally in sight).  I've changed, changed a lot, in the past year or so.  I don't know if it's called "growing up" or "maturing" or maybe just "early onset dementia" but I feel different.  I feel more like, I hate to say it, Sad Counselor.  Thinking about the future and what it's going to be like when I don't have to drive someone to hockey or baseball or work or a friend's house.  When my nights aren't crammed full with confirmation, conferences, concerts and other commitments. 

And that's where the Carrie Bradshaw/Happy Hausfrau parallel ends. 

Or is it?  I'm going to close with the very last line SJP spoke, as Carrie, in the very last episode of Sex and the City.  It's a great quote.

"The most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous."

Here's to all of us finding some fabulous.