So, I’ve been perusing a couple of dating sites for quite some time now, and I have discovered something rather ugly about myself, something rather dark and dim about my nature that actually pains me:

I am an ageist.

I don’t like older men.

I don’t like *most* older men, I should say. I don’t like older men unless they’re, well, hot.

Lately I have had a barrage of mail from men who are, shall we say, well past their prime; and while I do reply to said men, my heart isn’t in it at all.

For starters, many of them send old photos, as if they’re trying to hide their age, and that just pisses me off.

I had a man send me a photo yesterday that must have been a good forty years old. To quote my good friend Sue, “it was taken at his high school reunion, and he graduated with Moses”.

While he wasn’t THAT old, the photo did have a twenties sort of vibe, including a tiny little mustache.

I then proceeded to make her pee in her pants by talking about what we would do on our date, including the Charleston, buying hooch, talking about FDR’s policies, frequenting the local speakeasy, and seeing a silent film.

All jokes aside, I don’t understand why men don’t date women their own age. (DAD, I’m looking at YOU.)

I don’t really feel I’d have very much in common with a man in his fifties unless he was really a hip sort of man. I don’t know. Perhaps I just have yet to be proven wrong, and perhaps the bad haircuts and jowly faces in the photos I am sent are not helping matters much.

I’m not saying that I’m hot shit on a silver platter, mind you, but Lord, I don’t want a cold turd on a paper plate!

These men often seem to be highly sexualized, as well, which is all fine and great and good, since I am as well, but I am truly not looking for an IM conversation that goes like this:

(I think you can guess which person is me. Hint: I punctuate.)

Hi
Hello.
hows it going
Good, and you?
good
Tell me a little about yourself.
do you like to fuck
?
i have a big cockk
OK, well…
u wanna suck my cock
Sorry, I have to go.

This is an accurate representation of several IM conversations I have had over the last few days, and sadly, they’re about as intelligent as it gets.

I don’t know what about my photo says “I’m your little go-to girl for sexting”, but apparently something does.

I guess I need to drape myself in Victorian garb and look all prim and proper.

The younger men can be just as bad, don’t get me wrong, but they’re rarely as bold.

I would date a nice older man if I found him attractive and he seemed to be intelligent and we had some shared interests. However, the men I’ve met don’t fit the bill.

I do find myself frequently attracted to younger men, which makes me feel slightly pervy. Men in their twenties. Rowr.

Does this make me an ageist?

I’m disheartened today. If I wanted a father figure, I would call up my dad and have a nice cup of coffee. I certainly wouldn’t be trolling for sex on Yahoo.

I’m trancejen on Yahoo, by the way, should any of you like to chat. And I do mean CHAT, not have virtual sex. I’m full up to my ears in virtual sex.

Happy Thursday. Go out and have sex the old-fashioned way.

This weekend marks our last garage/moving sale; and I, for one, cannot wait, because watching people Christian me down to a dollar for a fifty dollar dress is something that I dearly look forward to, especially when I am sitting in the hot, blazing sun.

Yesterday I purged my closet and dresser drawers and came up with over a hundred items that I don’t wear or haven’t worn in years. I had no idea I was such a clothing packrat. My first instinct would be to sell this stuff on eBay and actually get fair prices, but I decided to just say “fuck it” and chuck everything into the garage sale.

EBay is, for the moment, too much damned work.

I also gleaned a pretty hefty amount of stuff for Amvets, and that is also where we’ll be donating the stuff that doesn’t sell during the sale.

As always, this is a family affair, and my aunts will be over in the wee hours of the morning with their reading glasses and cash boxes in hand, and we will eat donuts while hanging clotheslines and talk family gossip while shouting out various prices to neighbors.

It would be sort of fun if I didn’t feel I was being screwed so badly.

In other news, we are also trying to find out everything we can about becoming landlords.

I am moving into this with much fear and trepidation, because this particular hood seems notorious for trashing property that isn’t theirs, based on what I have seen.

I think that strong credit checks are in order, and also current home inspections, lie detector tests, and regular visits from the Orkin man.

You never know about people and bugs.

In still other news, the guy I went out with seems to have flaked in that there has been no mention of another date.

We were supposed to go out again, and then allegedly got stuck at work and allegedly forgot his phone with my number in it and allegedly could not call me to report that he couldn’t make it. He apologized, but now things seem to have cooled off, leading me to believe that the entire story he concocted was indeed Boolsheet.

So, there you have it.

I believe that the problem with online dating is that there is such a huge pool of willing women out there that men begin to believe we are expendable and start to treat us as such.

It’s incredibly sucky.

In still other news, nothing has been said outright, but it looks as if I have won the Cat Wars and will be taking Skittles with me during the move. Score one for Jen.

Happy Wednesday.

I can’t begin to tell you how this small piece of metal in my nose has had the e-mail rolling in on the dating site. People mention it more often than not. I think it’s a Bad Girl factor. Nose ring = girl who will do very, very dirty things (I can neither confirm nor deny).

Yesterday I got an e-mail from some dude from the hood who said, and this is verbatim, mind you: “Your nose ring is hawt. Message me back.”

I haven’t yet replied, but I think I am going to send the following:

Dear Lover of Stainless Steel Body Modifications,

Thank you for both your interest and your whimsical creative spelling.

I find that several gentlemen are interested in the steel ring that pierces my nose, therefore I thought I’d take a moment and tell you all about it. It’s a 12-gauge ring crafted of fine surgical steel, and it was inserted by a lovely tattooed gentleman at a local tattoo shop near my home.

It did not cause me any pain, however, when the cork was inserted prior to the piercing I was rather uncomfortable due to the small size of my nostrils, which is evident in my profile photo.

People often ask me whether I ever get hardened mucus, or “boogers”, on my nasal piercing, which is a relevant and interesting question. It’s actually only happened once, and rather recently. I was sitting on the sofa watching television, and I felt a strange sensation, as if my nose ring was maladjusted. I went to turn it, and lo and behold! A large formation of hardened mucus was attached, much to my chagrin. I dealt with it in the usual way. Perhaps I should clarify that and say that I procured a Kleenex and removed said booger thusly and did not flick it away or pick it or eat it or anything in that vein, as one might imagine if one were a less sanitary type of person. As I have no idea what type of person you might be, I have no idea what direction your mind might take.

What else can I tell you about my nose ring? I can tell you that my mother vehemently disapproves of it. However, her opinion of my body art does not hold much weight with me, much to her great displeasure. My twelve-year-old son also believes that I would look much better without it. Obviously you disagree, which tells me that we would perhaps be suited for a long and fruitful relationship.

Obviously my nasal piercing signifies that I am of a highly sexual nature and am well-versed in the most carnal and depraved acts. This is exactly why I got it, and I am pleased that you have picked up on that. My level of sexual attractiveness has been raised exponentially with that small piece of metal, thank the gods, and for that I remain ever thankful. One of my greatest desires is to perform oral sex upon a man I don’t know very well in the front seat of a car on a first date, and I do hope that you will help me fulfill that desire in the very near future.

Hopefully I have both further piqued your interest and answered any questions you might have had about my piercing. I very much look forward to another message from you, as you seem to be the kind of man with whom I could have a serious future.

Respectfully,

Jen Trance

I think that’s totally appropriate.

Happy Thursday.

So my date went well!

At first it didn’t look as if it would happen – he had car problems on the way home from work and wasn’t sure whether he’d make it, but he called a friend of his who worked on cars who was able to get it running safely so that he could come and pick me up. He then had this friend wait at his house while we were on our date so that he could fix the car when we got back.

I thought that this was a pretty valiant effort, when he could have just canceled. I was impressed that he went through all that rather than just rescheduling.

Also, what a good friend!

We wound up going to have drinks at a local bar very close to my house because he didn’t want to stray too far due to the fragility of his starter at that moment. It was sort of divey, but I was down.

It should be noted that he opened the car door for me every time, which was awesome. I find that men very rarely do this, and it pretty much melts my knees.

He seemed sort of shy and nervous, but he opened up after half a screwdriver or so and started to talk more, and we shot the shit for a while. He has a somewhat wicked sense of humor, which I love, and he’s very into music, a lot of it very obscure stuff I’m not familiar with, but some of it punk rock and other stuff I really like.

I was very good – I only had two beers. Plus, we didn’t stay out very long due to the friend waiting to fix the starter.

All in all, he was courteous and funny and really nice, and I will definitely see him again. We made plans to have dinner very soon.

He kissed me at the end of the date, and it was good. Very good.

So, we shall see.

I’m all about stretching this process out and not jumping headfirst into a relationship. I think that’s a major mistake I made with Norton. Everything happened so fast and I got caught up without really knowing enough about his personality and principles, and well, it crashed and burned.

I’m taking this one slow.

In other news, I posted some furniture on Craigslist today and Jesus, I am getting about four thousand e-mails. This is certainly going much better than when I posted the sporting goods. I have a woman coming tonight to look at the J-Man’s loft bed, and hopefully my mom’s dresser is going to sell soon, too.

Happy Wednesday.

So, I have a date tonight.

So soon?

Yes.

I thought about it, and I thought about it some more, and then I thought, why the hell not, and then yesterday I went back upon the dating website and perused around a little bit. I got a few messages from a few different people, and one of those messages happened to be from someone who lives in the town I am moving to.

The guy seemed relatively normal and nice, so we messaged back and forth for a while, and we wound up talking for most of the afternoon.

We made a date for tonight, and then he called me last night to talk for a while, and he asked me whether he could come over and smoke a cigarette on the porch with me.

Now mind you, I was already in my sweats with my face washed and my hair disheveled. I looked like absolute crap, so I said no. He asked me why not.

I thought about it for a minute, and then I thought, “Why the fuck not?”

Twenty minutes later, we were smoking on the porch.

I sat out there with him for about an hour or so, smoking and talking, and he seemed like a really nice guy. He works full-time and goes to school full-time for computer information systems, and he currently lives at home to help support his parents.

He’s six years younger than me, has never been married, and has no kids.

He deejays part-time, too, at a local club.

I don’t know whether this will go anywhere, but for right now, the guy seems fun and personable and outgoing and nice, and I think it’s a good idea for me to get back out there rather than stay in and mope.

So tonight we’re going out for drinks.

I’m really not too nervous, since the guy has seen me in my ratty sweats with no makeup, for Christ’s sake; so I can really go nowhere but up at this point, and also because he just really didn’t have that effect on me.

So, there you have it. A promising first date. Something fun and light.

It should be noted that Skittles howled loudly the whole time I was outside on the porch because her Mama was not In, so much so that my mother had to get out of bed and spray her with water.

Heh.

In other news, The J-Man is still sleeping. Given the fact that the J-Man NEVER sleeps past seven-thirty, I should probably go make sure that he is still breathing.

Over and out.

Happy Tuesday.

Well, the weekend.

I did break up with Norton once and for all, since there was apparently some ambiguity there.

He called me last week and told me in no uncertain terms that he was totally uncomfortable in my home (if you have ever been to my home, you know that we are a welcoming sort, and rarely is anyone uncomfortable), uncomfortable around my child, and maybe uncomfortable in his shorts, who fucking knows, just plain uncomfortable and unhappy.

He then proceeded to attack everything about my parenting style and my kid.

BUT he still loves me.

That’s a pretty big But. It’s even bigger than my butt.

I cut him loose, primarily because someone who has only been around my child say, FOUR TIMES really doesn’t have the right to cast aspersions on the way that I parent or the way that my child acts.

My child is not a monster. I may have to tell him to do something ninety-five times on occasion, but he is twelve. Those of you with twelve-year olds, past or present, will get my drift.

This was his Big Problem. That, and the fact that the J-Man occasionally spoke without being spoken to first, and things of that nature.

Apparently Norton is of the Old School, in which children are to be seen and not heard, and hellfire and brimstone is to be rained down should a parent have to say something more than once.

It just ain’t so in my house.

I get irritated with the J-Man, sure. I can even think back to the day in question and remember that he was particularly deaf to my lips that day and was not listening when I told him to move the XBox into the other room or whatever it was I was harping about. I can also remember I didn’t really scream at him due to the fact that Norton was there.

But fuck if I’m going to be judged by someone who A) only has custody of his own (much younger) kids a few days a month, B) has only seen me interacting with my kid on a scant few occasions, and C) has made virtually no effort to interact with said kid.

I’m pissed. PISSED about all this.

Therefore I just sent him an e-mail expressing my displeasure and basically said that I wanted my stuff, and he AGAIN sent me an e-mail railing on about the shortcomings of my parenting and my child and how I needed to take his advice as a superior parent.

Well excuse me, buddy, but you’ve only been a parent for four years. Get back to me when YOUR kid is twelve.

Yeah. I’m irritated. A little bemused as well, but mostly irritated.

So, there was that.

Then we had a realtor come by to look at the house and possibly sign papers to sell it.

It was a no-go. Apparently the market value of our home is approximately Jack Shit, going by the value of the homes in the surrounding area that are currently selling or have recently sold.

It wouldn’t be worth it for us to sell it right now, so we are going to rent it out.

This is going to be a serious pain in the ass, I can already smell it. Renting in the ‘hood is a dangerous game. No one has credit, everyone is suspect, and people don’t take care of shit that isn’t theirs. Hell, people don’t even take care of their OWN shit.

I am trepidatious.

Still, we are forging ahead with this move, and our tentative move date is three weeks from the weekend.

In still other news, my laptop tanked. It won’t even turn on. A Guy from Dell is coming this week, supposedly to replace the A/C adapter and the motherboard, but I have yet to receive a call to let me know when he is going to do so.

Stress? I has it.

Happy Monday.

I have to see the psychiatrist today.

Now I’ve been accused of not giving the shrink a fair shake, and really, I don’t think that’s an accurate assessment. You have to understand my symbiotic relationship with the man.

I see him once every two or three months, he prescribes drugs, and I take them. The appointment goes down like this:

He asks me a few questions. Am I still living with my mother? Yes. Eternally. Do I have a boyfriend? Not anymore, bitch. How is my son? Hormonal. How is my health? Craptastic. How is my mental health? I haven’t climbed up on any rooftops with any Uzis lately, so everyone should be pleased.

Then he assesses my makeup. This is very important. I have learned during the course of our six-year relationship that makeup really matters to my doctor. If I have no makeup on, he will try to increase my medication load, for no makeup means I am deep in the dark depths of dire depression. Conversely, if I have artfully applied makeup, he will try to take away my precious anti-depressants, because I must be feeling great in order to beautify myself in such a manner.

I have learned to walk a very, very fine line and simply apply a small amount of makeup, just enough to look moderately alive but not too done-up as to look pretty. Because, as all women know, Pretty Means Healthy!!

I find this whole thing both ridiculous and hilarious and wonder if he treats all his female patients this way. Maybe he was taught this in med school. Makeup for Mental Health!

Blush for Bipolar!
Eyeshadow for Anxiety!
Dermablend for Depression!

Maybe he’s not really a flaming idiot. Maybe it’s just something they teach shrinks these days.

Imagine if I actually fixed my hair. I’d be off the meds for sure.

What the doctor consistently fails to “get” is that when I’m feeling great, it’s usually because my meds are working, and to take me off of them would be sort of stupid. Yet that is usually exactly what he wants to do.

One day I’m going to walk in there in full makeup, a hot dress, heels, and done-up hair, and tell him I’m completely suicidal just to fuck with his head.

That’ll learn him.

Happy Thursday.

I guess everything balances out, because I do have more good news.

I saw my eye doctor yesterday, and had some testing done, with shitty results; which is not, of course, my good news. My visual fields were for crap, and my vision itself was horrible.

I should mention here that I did just recently learn that by pressing Control and + in Firefox I can increase my fonts to astronomically large sizes, which has pretty much changed my life. No more hunching over the screen and squinting like a crone! Yay!

Anyway, the eye doctor believes (and so do I) that the Lamictal I was previously on for seizures helped my eyesight a great deal, and going off of it really screwed up my world.

If you’ll remember back a bit, it even helped my bum right eye. Unfortunately, my insurance stopped paying for it, and I had to stop taking it.

The eye doctor said that he would call my neurologist and see whether the two of them working together could somehow get me back on the medication.

What I was wondering was whether I could take it concurrently with my Topamax and Neurontin, because really, the Lamictal didn’t do shit for my seizures.

Anyway, the doctors conferred, and one or both of them called my insurance company, and lo and behold, the insurance company agreed to pay for the generic version of the medication! What really stuns me is that miracle of miracles, this all happened in ONE DAY.

Therefore I am back on the Lamictal, in addition to my other seizure meds, so hopefully this will cause a positive change in my vision like it did before.

The eye doctor believes that the reason my vision is shit is due to a nerve inflammation behind my eyes, and that the Lamictal somehow has an effect on those nerves. He doesn’t quite know how or why, but he admits that the brain and the optic nerves are mysterious things that are often difficult to explain.

I’ll take that, I guess. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that this works.

I’m really hopeful.

In other news, it has been storming off and on lately, dramatic storming with loud, booming thunder, and both the J-Man and the cats have been beating a hasty retreat down into the basement as if their little asses were on fire.

The J-Man does this because he’s read too many WHAT TO DO IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY pamphlets at school. The cats simply go batshit crazy when loud noises occur.

The TranceCave has become a haven during these storms, and we all curl up on the bed and watch stupid cartoons (power permitting) until the thunder and lightning passes.

In other news, I am smoking. I know that I suck and I am stupid and I am going to hell and I will get emphysema and the baby Jesus doesn’t love me any more and I am polluting the air and I have stank breath and I am filthy and undesirable and horrible and dirty and smelly and black-lunged and stupid and vile and evil and all countless other rotten things, I KNOW THIS, but you know what? I am sick of apologizing. I’m stressed, I’m having five seizures a fucking day, and I just don’t care right now. I will quit before the move.

Sigh.

The truth is that I feel as guilty as shit about starting again, and I hate it.

I do have good news, though. I’m running on good news.

Happy Wednesday.

The J-Man does not have mono, or strep, or any of the other nasty and nefarious viruses he was tested for. He merely had some weird rogue virus that led to a yucky infected throat that for some reason was resistant to the first round of antibiotics.

This round of drugs seems to be working well, as his throat swelling has gone down quite a bit and his spirits have much improved.

So, there is that, and I am glad. To have been stuck with mono in the summertime would have seriously sucked.

In other news, I am pricing flights to Vegas, and they are sky-high. Over four hundred dollars, even on Southwest? Ri-damn-diculous.

I am waiting, and I am also contacting a family friend who is a travel agent for advice on how long to wait so that I don’t get screwed. Word has it that the oil spill has driven up flight prices, so I’m hoping that they will eventually fall, but the question remains whether they will fall before I go to Vegas or not.

I need this trip big-time. I need some time cavorting with my crazy internet friends more than I can say.

Also in the works is a family trip, and we haven’t quite figured out where we’d like to go yet. I’m thinking one of those indoor waterparks up near the Wisconsin border, but my mother hates to drive long distances, so she is thinking somewhere a little more local. We’ll have to hash it out.

Also, there is the move.

You may be wondering why I haven’t moved yet, given the fact that we have been moving for, oh, a fucking ETERNITY.

Yeah.

I’m pretty much packed. We’ve painted. We’ve cleaned. We’ve organized. The garage sale is a go next weekend.

The reason things have been moving so slowly, I believe, is my mother’s attachment to her house, which is her baby.

My mother loves this house.

I think she’s seriously reluctant to leave it, and I think she has some reservations about moving in with my stepdad, too.

Hell, I do, too, if I’m being honest. The man has OCD, and while we are clean, we are not THAT clean. It’s a little scary to think of bringing a twelve-year-old into a home in which a man organizes his salt shakers and vacuums on an hourly basis.

Still, I’m of the just-shit-or-get-off-the-pot school of thought. I think we ought to just DO it. I’m tired of all this hemming and hawing and would like to stop bringing over the odd box and bag, hire movers, and get it done.

You just try moving my mother, though. She is a ninety pound mountain.

I am being as patient as I can, and I am consoling myself that at least we have a date set for the garage sale, if not the move.

Sigh.

Eventually it will happen. It has to, or the J-Man will have to be homeschooled, and damned if I’m doing THAT.

Happy Monday.

…the J-Man is sick with some mysterious malady that seems to be lasting forever.

Before the SummerBash and before his birthday (the child is now twelve, and while I’m not going to go all Dooce and write an exhaustive letter regarding the fact that my preshus baybee has reached this milestone – LORD, can you believe it?? Twelve!) the doctor started him on antibiotics for an icky throat and a bad cough and he seemed to rally a bit.

Then later this week, the throat seemed to become even ickier and the cough returned, so back to the doctor we went. He ordered a stronger course of antibiotics, a chest X-ray, and some blood tests, apparently fearing something vile. He mentioned mono and walking pneumonia, but he also did a throat culture for strep, and that’s what I’m leaning towards since his throat is all bumpy and full of pus (TMI – beautiful imagery!).

So far the chest X-ray came up clear, but I haven’t received word on the blood tests, so we’re waiting. The poor kid is crabby due to being kept in the house, but I really don’t want to have him outside getting overheated and more sick. It’s bad enough he got sicker after the first round of antibiotics, probably largely from sitting outside in the rain at that damned concert.

All of this sucks because we’ve been invited to a rather stellar outdoor birthday party tomorrow, but rain is expected and I just don’t want to risk either the kid getting sicker or infecting other kids.

For Father’s Day I baked my stepdad approximately two hundred (and I’m really not exaggerating) burned peanut butter cookies. He likes them brown and crispy, to the point in which they are almost inedible, so I spent the morning burning cookies. What a waste.

My father wants “hip, fitted shirts” to wear out dancing, so I am going shopping later today for him. Basically anything a man half his age would like, he’d like, so he’s easy to shop for.

And regarding the previous entry, thanks for your comments; and no, I am certainly not calling Norton, because I do agree with all of you that I’ve been unceremoniously dumped, and I have way too much pride to ever cross that line.

If he did love me, it obviously wasn’t very much, or he would have at least had the courtesy to call me and tell me what was going on, or tell me he no longer wanted to be with me.

I have to just let it go.

To all you dads out there who are there for your children and make the time to be both present and active in your kids’ lives, have a wonderful Father’s Day.

Happy Saturday.