I fainted on Saturday. It was the first time I have ever fainted. I have been having dizzy spells for a few months now and, of course, I have not been the most diligent about getting to the doctor to figure out why.
The dizzy spells are called "presyncope." I have looked them up. It is not vertigo or anything else. It's presyncope. That basically means; "about to faint."
The severity of the dizzy spells has ranged from; low - a light cloudy feeling with no loss of balance to moderate - a very dizzy feeling with a loss of balance and a need to steady myself by holding on to something nearby. Over the past several days the frequency of moderate "presyncope" episodes has been much higher. On Saturday, for the first time, I experienced an actual fainting episode.
It was just my luck that I went face first into my brand new coffee table. I must have reached out for it to steady myself but went down too fast. I remember being on the floor looking down at my hands with my knees and butt on the ground and legs to my side. No sooner did I realize what just happened when blood began to drip rapidly out of my face. I was still confused and weak but I knew I had to move fast because there was so much blood dripping and dripping and dripping...
I was in shock and ill equipped with my band-aid situation. I didn't want to do it but I had to call my mom. When she came and looked at the two deep gashes in my face she realized I needed stitches. She was talking about plastic surgery and stuff too - it was really scary. This is my FACE! And why am I fainting at age 25?
I ended up with 24 stitches and I have a big puffy black eye. Oh yeah, I also ended up canceling a first date with a nice, cool and funny guy.
That is why I say - I have the worst luck!!
Monday, December 1, 2008
Mr. Perfect (Part 1...)
This is a true story that happened to me this October - November (2008) I wanted to tell it as a story so here is part 1... enjoy:
____
It had been a while since I had been ‘in love’. I had forgotten what it even felt like. All I knew was that the comfortable situation I was in was nothing even close to a relationship. I felt closeness and familiarity but I was not getting my needs met. (In his defense – he was not even pretending to try to meet my needs. I knew that.) Something changed in me that September. I had become ready, for the first time in a long time, to open up to the possibility of finding something real. It was an exciting and happy time for me and I was ready to share that with someone else. So I put myself out there – I joined eHarmony.
I thought I was taking the high road over sites like match.com. On eHarmony they matched you up based on compatibility. It cut through the ‘trying to figure out if we even have enough in common to bother with going out on a date’ phase. Also, eHarmony is a little bit more pricey and definitely makes more of an effort to make you pay for it before you can really actually use it. This, I thought at first, was a good feature – it eliminated the ones who were looking for fun and left only those who really wanted a relationship. So I decided to try it out.
When I first looked at my matches I remember perusing the results vividly. Everyone was I flipped through was “ehh… okay… possibly acceptable… eww no… eww no…. no WAY…ehh… no way…umm maybe… ok maybe… no WAY… no WAY” and then, all of a sudden… “WOAH!!” I had come across the profile of a 26 year old man who was unattainably hot. I mean… unattainably gorgeously HOT.
So the next thing I did was view his profile – beginning with his other pictures. From his pictures I could tell that his front picture was of him at least a few years ago. The rest of his pictures were even more amazing and he definitely picked the right one to make the headline photo so it didn’t strike me wrong. Then I read his profile. I could tell that he was either; English second language or had very poor grammar. Okay, actually, this part was not entirely obvious. I knew it was most likely English second language but to a subtle degree and really only showed up in his verb tenses. Other than that I could tell he was kind and had a giving heart and cared about mankind. He had also quoted a speech I had before on NPR. It was a speech given by a well-known and loved professor who was also terminally ill cancer patient and had a loving family. The speech had actually made me cry. All of this seemed wonderful but I hesitated before contacting Mr. Perfect. I had never really actually preferred to go after guys that were this hot. Instead I tried to contact Mr. Second Best on my List of Matches.
I kept going back to Mr. Perfect’s profile, though. I had to show my friends, my sisters, my mom, everyone – this extremely hot man who showed up in my match results! I noticed after a couple days that his profile had been updated to say that he had met someone on there. It read something like; “Thank you everyone for all of your communications. I met someone on here (Hayley) and even though I have not met her yet she fulfills all my needs.” That struck me as sort of odd that you could stop searching before you actually had determined you found what you were looking for but he was genuinely too hot to care. Maybe he was just a lover at heart. Albeit, a shy lover. My assumption was that he was not the type who was ready to meet a girl right away. My assumptions about him stopped here because – appropriately – I had determined he was taken. I pictured Hayley as some beautiful blonde girl who was sweet and lucky as Hell and then I stopped looking at Mr. Perfect’s profile. This guy wasn’t for me.
About a week later, I had reached open communication with a few boys and was possibly actually ready to try out a coffee date with one of them. I woke up on one normal weekday morning and checked my 7-8 emails from eHarmony. They were all updates about my new matches and the ones who were trying to communicate with me. To my shock and elation this Mr. Perfect had sent me his first questions! I was so happy. I answered them right away. They were good ones – not the same 5 questions everyone had sent me so they got me thinking. Now, at this point, I had taken a few steps back and remembered that I might not have a whole lot to offer someone like this. From his pictures I could tell that he has traveled the world. This boy skydives, never drinks and never smokes. I smoke every day (unfortunately). I don’t like drinking but I will have a couple if I am at a bar with friends. I can hardly say I have traveled the world and I have definitely never done something as exciting as skydiving. Oh well, he was too hot to care. By the end of the week we had reached open communication and taken the conversation to g-mail. We chatted back and forth via e-mail for a couple days and then started to chat on g-chat. I actually don’t think I had chatted on g-chat before but it became our new daily thing. I woke up to little messages from him that grew increasingly adorable. We would chat in the morning while I got ready for work. We would chat again when I got to work. We would chat more in the afternoon.
Soon I had begun to realize that this man was more than just this Mr. Perfect – we had a lot in common. This man was my Mr. Perfect. He was successful to the point that he had already achieved what I am striving for. He was intelligent to the point that he was just a little bit quicker than me and I consider myself to be pretty quick. Ok maybe he was a lot quicker than me in some areas, but not to the point that I couldn’t learn enough about this stuff to catch up with him. My one claim to quickness over him was that he couldn’t beat me in online scrabble. It was only fitting, I mean, English was one of 5 languages he was fluent in and it was not his first. I didn’t take too much pride in the scrabble thing I just thought it was cute that I could best him at something. I mean, this was Mr. Perfect we were dealing with here.
During the second or third week of our communications on one Tuesday afternoon I emerged from a late afternoon meeting to find a vase of beautiful red roses being delivered to my desk. This bouquet was huge. There were a dozen roses is there, arranged with baby’s breath. The arrangement was wrapped up in cellophane with a bow and there was a white little teddy bear attached to the vase. I was shocked, delighted and a little embarrassed at first to see this huge display of affection being delivered to my cubicle. I immediately reached for the note to see whom this was from. The note read “Just to keep your week on the bright side. Have a beautiful day. – (Mr. Perfect’s first name)”
I immediately sent him thank you after thank you on g-chat. I did not want to let him know that he was the first guy to surprise me with flowers like that. I mean, boyfriends have brought me flowers before but no one had ever sent me flowers completely by surprise like that. I had never received flowers at work before. I was so surprised and I think I melted right then and there. I was hooked.
I thought back to the situation had been so wrapped up in before. I had been trying to “squeeze apple juice out of a lemon” as my cousin Angela would say. I was trying to turn something that wasn’t into something that was. Now here I was – I had so effortlessly moved on and opened my heart and the timing must have been perfect because I had found this wonderful man who was amazing in every way and felt the same way about me. I was so happy….
::sigh::
Wait – how did he know where I worked?!?
Ok – I admit – it didn’t hit me with that much shock. I would have felt significantly more alarmed had some other random guy sent the flowers… like someone who was not so dreamy. I assumed he just googled my name. My full name appears in my g-mail signature so that made sense. I have a linked-in profile that says where I work so that also made it make sense. To confirm this theory; I decided to google my name. Just as I had suspected; the second search result was my linked-in profile.
So the days ensued this way and I was officially in la-la land. Every morning I woke up to little g-chat kisses and hearts and sweet words. At work all day more kisses and hearts and beautiful poetic words of love. In fact, it was not long before Mr. Perfect was telling me that he loved me. I was definitely hesitant to say the same at first. I mean, I had not met him yet. He seemed too good to be true. This man was so successful, so gorgeous, and so doting. He was an entrepreneur and he was also a democrat. He was perfect.
____
It had been a while since I had been ‘in love’. I had forgotten what it even felt like. All I knew was that the comfortable situation I was in was nothing even close to a relationship. I felt closeness and familiarity but I was not getting my needs met. (In his defense – he was not even pretending to try to meet my needs. I knew that.) Something changed in me that September. I had become ready, for the first time in a long time, to open up to the possibility of finding something real. It was an exciting and happy time for me and I was ready to share that with someone else. So I put myself out there – I joined eHarmony.
I thought I was taking the high road over sites like match.com. On eHarmony they matched you up based on compatibility. It cut through the ‘trying to figure out if we even have enough in common to bother with going out on a date’ phase. Also, eHarmony is a little bit more pricey and definitely makes more of an effort to make you pay for it before you can really actually use it. This, I thought at first, was a good feature – it eliminated the ones who were looking for fun and left only those who really wanted a relationship. So I decided to try it out.
When I first looked at my matches I remember perusing the results vividly. Everyone was I flipped through was “ehh… okay… possibly acceptable… eww no… eww no…. no WAY…ehh… no way…umm maybe… ok maybe… no WAY… no WAY” and then, all of a sudden… “WOAH!!” I had come across the profile of a 26 year old man who was unattainably hot. I mean… unattainably gorgeously HOT.
So the next thing I did was view his profile – beginning with his other pictures. From his pictures I could tell that his front picture was of him at least a few years ago. The rest of his pictures were even more amazing and he definitely picked the right one to make the headline photo so it didn’t strike me wrong. Then I read his profile. I could tell that he was either; English second language or had very poor grammar. Okay, actually, this part was not entirely obvious. I knew it was most likely English second language but to a subtle degree and really only showed up in his verb tenses. Other than that I could tell he was kind and had a giving heart and cared about mankind. He had also quoted a speech I had before on NPR. It was a speech given by a well-known and loved professor who was also terminally ill cancer patient and had a loving family. The speech had actually made me cry. All of this seemed wonderful but I hesitated before contacting Mr. Perfect. I had never really actually preferred to go after guys that were this hot. Instead I tried to contact Mr. Second Best on my List of Matches.
I kept going back to Mr. Perfect’s profile, though. I had to show my friends, my sisters, my mom, everyone – this extremely hot man who showed up in my match results! I noticed after a couple days that his profile had been updated to say that he had met someone on there. It read something like; “Thank you everyone for all of your communications. I met someone on here (Hayley) and even though I have not met her yet she fulfills all my needs.” That struck me as sort of odd that you could stop searching before you actually had determined you found what you were looking for but he was genuinely too hot to care. Maybe he was just a lover at heart. Albeit, a shy lover. My assumption was that he was not the type who was ready to meet a girl right away. My assumptions about him stopped here because – appropriately – I had determined he was taken. I pictured Hayley as some beautiful blonde girl who was sweet and lucky as Hell and then I stopped looking at Mr. Perfect’s profile. This guy wasn’t for me.
About a week later, I had reached open communication with a few boys and was possibly actually ready to try out a coffee date with one of them. I woke up on one normal weekday morning and checked my 7-8 emails from eHarmony. They were all updates about my new matches and the ones who were trying to communicate with me. To my shock and elation this Mr. Perfect had sent me his first questions! I was so happy. I answered them right away. They were good ones – not the same 5 questions everyone had sent me so they got me thinking. Now, at this point, I had taken a few steps back and remembered that I might not have a whole lot to offer someone like this. From his pictures I could tell that he has traveled the world. This boy skydives, never drinks and never smokes. I smoke every day (unfortunately). I don’t like drinking but I will have a couple if I am at a bar with friends. I can hardly say I have traveled the world and I have definitely never done something as exciting as skydiving. Oh well, he was too hot to care. By the end of the week we had reached open communication and taken the conversation to g-mail. We chatted back and forth via e-mail for a couple days and then started to chat on g-chat. I actually don’t think I had chatted on g-chat before but it became our new daily thing. I woke up to little messages from him that grew increasingly adorable. We would chat in the morning while I got ready for work. We would chat again when I got to work. We would chat more in the afternoon.
Soon I had begun to realize that this man was more than just this Mr. Perfect – we had a lot in common. This man was my Mr. Perfect. He was successful to the point that he had already achieved what I am striving for. He was intelligent to the point that he was just a little bit quicker than me and I consider myself to be pretty quick. Ok maybe he was a lot quicker than me in some areas, but not to the point that I couldn’t learn enough about this stuff to catch up with him. My one claim to quickness over him was that he couldn’t beat me in online scrabble. It was only fitting, I mean, English was one of 5 languages he was fluent in and it was not his first. I didn’t take too much pride in the scrabble thing I just thought it was cute that I could best him at something. I mean, this was Mr. Perfect we were dealing with here.
During the second or third week of our communications on one Tuesday afternoon I emerged from a late afternoon meeting to find a vase of beautiful red roses being delivered to my desk. This bouquet was huge. There were a dozen roses is there, arranged with baby’s breath. The arrangement was wrapped up in cellophane with a bow and there was a white little teddy bear attached to the vase. I was shocked, delighted and a little embarrassed at first to see this huge display of affection being delivered to my cubicle. I immediately reached for the note to see whom this was from. The note read “Just to keep your week on the bright side. Have a beautiful day. – (Mr. Perfect’s first name)”
I immediately sent him thank you after thank you on g-chat. I did not want to let him know that he was the first guy to surprise me with flowers like that. I mean, boyfriends have brought me flowers before but no one had ever sent me flowers completely by surprise like that. I had never received flowers at work before. I was so surprised and I think I melted right then and there. I was hooked.
I thought back to the situation had been so wrapped up in before. I had been trying to “squeeze apple juice out of a lemon” as my cousin Angela would say. I was trying to turn something that wasn’t into something that was. Now here I was – I had so effortlessly moved on and opened my heart and the timing must have been perfect because I had found this wonderful man who was amazing in every way and felt the same way about me. I was so happy….
::sigh::
Wait – how did he know where I worked?!?
Ok – I admit – it didn’t hit me with that much shock. I would have felt significantly more alarmed had some other random guy sent the flowers… like someone who was not so dreamy. I assumed he just googled my name. My full name appears in my g-mail signature so that made sense. I have a linked-in profile that says where I work so that also made it make sense. To confirm this theory; I decided to google my name. Just as I had suspected; the second search result was my linked-in profile.
So the days ensued this way and I was officially in la-la land. Every morning I woke up to little g-chat kisses and hearts and sweet words. At work all day more kisses and hearts and beautiful poetic words of love. In fact, it was not long before Mr. Perfect was telling me that he loved me. I was definitely hesitant to say the same at first. I mean, I had not met him yet. He seemed too good to be true. This man was so successful, so gorgeous, and so doting. He was an entrepreneur and he was also a democrat. He was perfect.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Hello and Welcome...
To a female's twenty-somethings....
or To a twenty-something female's somethings.
These are my thoughts.
They are my experiences, my feelings and then, ultimately; what it all turns into: my thoughts.
I hope you enjoy my ramblings and my genuine wish is that you find them in some way helpful.
Take care,
Renee
or To a twenty-something female's somethings.
These are my thoughts.
They are my experiences, my feelings and then, ultimately; what it all turns into: my thoughts.
I hope you enjoy my ramblings and my genuine wish is that you find them in some way helpful.
Take care,
Renee
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