The Cat

For over a week now, there is a grey and white cat that perches itself outside my front door and incessantly meows. I am not a cat person, never have been and this little beast is doing nothing to endear me to the genus. I'm not quite sure why it picked my house of all places to set up its nightly terrorizing. There is no food out that would draw it close, I definitely have not gone out to pet it, and it didn't get the hint when I tried to shoo the thing away. So a friend and I came to the conclusion that karma, Mother Nature, Buddha, God, Mohammad, or some being/force out there is trying to drop the clue of my impending cat lady status. And based off the last three guys I have dated, I may as well go adopt some more puppies cause that seems like a far better option than being attached to one of them for any length of time.

So guy #1, he was maybe my best lesson in why it isn't always a great idea to date a friend of a friend. There was no set up though. We met on a float trip and within hours of returning home, I had a friend request waiting along with a message from him. After a couple weeks, I finally broke down and agreed to go out on a date with him. For starters, the guy was probably in a no win situation as my expectations are more on the unachievable level but I didn't think he would crash and burn as badly as he did. He did get points because he drove 2 hrs just to take me out but that's about where the point earning stopped. During the first hour we were together, I learned in no certain order that he had gone to jail for a DUI and had to pay $25k in fines, that he "didn't feel bad for me because I got myself into this" when I was discussing having to do call right after a day shift which meant working for about 30 hrs, and the icing on the cake was that he may or may not have a kid but he didn't want to find out cause he didn't want to pay child support. I pondered whether my friends were playing a joke on me. I was half way convinced it was a ruse when I asked my friend about the potential kid and they knew nothing about it. Regretfully, I allowed my friends to convince me to continue seeing him beyond that first date but eventually came to my senses. The major problem with dating friends of your friend is that you have to see them at different events throughout the year. Can't wait for the awkwardness of this year's float trip.

Then there is the waiter who got my number when my "friend" (same one who decided this cat showing up was a sign I'm destined for cat ladiness) wrote it on a receipt. And besides the story about how things started, there wasn't a whole lot bad about guy #2. His only major fault was his lack of understanding and patience. My internal medicine rotation killed this relationship. When you have to be at the hospital at 4:30am and he gets off at 11pm, it doesn't allow for much time to see each other. It was a great lesson though that I can't trust my friends with paper and pens. This same friend decided to sign me up for an unknown number of dating websites for my 28th birthday but the funny thing about the present was that I didn't get to know about it until about three months later.

And to round it out, guy #3. He was a random encounter right before I left for audition rotations which meant we spent about four months communicating before we actually went out. It seemed promising but didn't live up to expectations. Prior to this date I had been sick for about a week and not able to stomach much. I ended up not being able to eat very much nor drink the bottle of wine that he insisted against my attempts to graciously decline. So he took it upon himself to drink the whole bottle of wine minus the 3-4 oz that were in my wine glass. He also ate all of the bread as he continued to drink and at the end of the night I nearly vomited after he decided to point out that he must have backwashed into his glass because of the remnants at the bottom. Okay piece of advice for potential backwashers, this is not something you draw attention to. You try to hide this and the embarrassment on your face so your date doesn't think you are totally disgusting. Through dinner it was becoming more evident that the wine was having an effect on him (the other option is that he just had horrible manners). He went from sitting square on to having to lean against the wall perpendicular to me. Our conversation was limited to sports and family. While I love talking about both of those topics, I was doing about 80% of the talking and he would interject with things like "my parents are going to love you" or his plans to teach me how to shoot a gun. I don't deal well when people try to push me to do things and there were already multiple times he struck that nerve. And I definitely get the instinct to turn and run when I get the clinger vibe. To end the night, he had to drive me home. My question regarding whether or not he wanted me to drive didn't go over so well and also distracted him enough to cause him to lose balance and trip off a curb. Looking back, I should have gotten a taxi though I'm not sure if we even have those in Jeff City. My knuckles were blanched the whole ride home as he almost took out a group of pedestrians and ran up on a sidewalk. There was definitely no second date and I regretted that he knew where I lived especially after I received some guilt tripping texts and the fact he was an ex-Marine. And my attending ripped into me about letting him drive me home after he had the whole bottle of wine. I now have the number for my own personal white Subaru taxi courtesy of Dr. A.

Hopefully the next won't be nearly as bad as #1 and #3 or my random checking of the dog adoption listings may turn into actual calling. But right now as I sit here watching Lexie trying to paw at a ball with another toy in her mouth, I love it being just us two. Definitely no cats are needed.