Recently in Les Affaires de Coeur Category

So I'm at the beach Sunday afternoon with my friend Batman and her husband Mr. Science, and she asks, out of the blue: "How you manage to imbibe enough calories? With all the biking, I mean?"

"Simple," I said. "I eat six meals a day."

Now, this is unremarkable, except for the fact that I was wondering, last night at about 3 am, as I finished my sixth, why it is that I always seem to be running out of groceries. Well, duhhhhhh. I am basically eating for two people. I mean, if the average human eats three meals a day, and I am eating six, well, there you have it.

It's not that the meals themselves are especially large. They're average-sized, for a person of my height and gender. There are just a lot of them, and I guess it adds up.

I am not really sure why I am telling you this. It just struck me as funny. I keep getting frustrated by things like eating right before I leave for a bike ride, riding to a friend's new apartment (about 40 minutes away), and then being hungry again within ten minutes of having arrived. Sigh.

Oh well. I am currently replete with spaghetti, so it's all happy satiation in the vicinity of Lizbon's tummy at the moment. Though by the time I am done writing this, it may well be snacktime.

Anyway, to leap from the trivial to the slightly less trivial, the other thing that's been on my mind is this:

I wonder if getting older carries with it a higher tolerance for relationships that are less strictly defined. I have wondered this several times in recent weeks, as I keep coming up against examples of undefined relationships in my own life, which give me greater enjoyment and cause less consternation that I would have expected.

For example, I called Boywich last night because I was feeling blue, and he is still (often) my go-to guy when I feel that way. Sometimes it makes me feel better to talk to him, and sometimes it doesn't, but that's okay. Our relationship would look very odd to an outsider. Sometimes it looks that way to us, too. But we both appreciate it, even treasure it.

We love each other. We aren't exactly romantic, and we're not in love anymore, but we care deeply and differently for each other than we do for our other friends. And I'm cool with that. In fact, it's really nice.

Example #2: Redhead #1. We are certainly friends. And I am quite friendly with his girlfriend, whom I met recently, and whom I quite like. And yet we were, until his girlfriend arrived on the scene, highly flirtatious. The kind of flirtatious where you realize, at some point, that people you both know are talking about you, and wondering if there's something going on.

There's nothing going on, and there never has been. And won't be, because I don't get involved with other people's boyfriends. But I have really enjoyed the flirtatiousness, the fact that there's that energy between us, even if it will never be acted upon. In years past, that kind of thing would have driven me crazy. Now, I like it. It's as if it's a spice, something that adds a little extra enjoyment to being around him.

Example #3: da blonde. A guy I dated for a few months, then stopped seeing, then slept with once casually, then didn't see again for several months, then recently saw in a platonic context, and then had text sex with. Could it get more nebulous than that?

In the bad old days, I would never have wanted to see him again unless I could see him. Or I wouldn't have still been attracted to him, once I realized he wasn't right for me. Or something.

Now, though, it's lovely and fun. I have a playmate, whom I only see now and then, when one or the other of us feels like getting in touch. It's light, and I find that enjoyable.

I find, too, that I am able to enjoy the "crush" stage of things a lot more. It used to simply be painful. Heck, it's been simply painful at various times and with various people this year. But I don't know - I think I am growing more open to the permutations of love, lust, attraction, and everything in between. It's like enjoying the whole process instead of just racing to the orgasm. I am being metaphorical, mind you.

Once you start down the Dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. - Yoda.

Put it down to a sudden onslaught of girly bleeding. I have resisted and resisted and resisted. I bought the French press just in case I had a coffee-drinking visitor, months ago. The boy in question vanished before I could use it on him, and there it sat, in the upper cupboard, looking sexy.

All glass and stainless, small, sleek, batting its little French mesh at me. Drat the thing.

I'd also bought a pound of this. (The Hair Bender - do you even have to ask?)

And again, there it sat, well-sealed against air, in the fridge.

Every night it calls to me and I say, no, it's late, I'm not drinking you. And then today I crawled wearily out of bed at 1pm. Okay 2pm, but that was after doing my exercises. Padded into the kitchen. Threw some bras in the sink to soak. (The ones that got hailed on and danced all night in, respectively - I figured they were due.)

Fed the yowling feline.

And looked up into the cupboard, where she sat, twinkling at me. "Lizzzzzbon.....Psssssst. You know you want it."

Yeah, I do, but "It" is usually some glamorous and flouting-the-laws-of-physics escapade involving multiple young boys.

"You can put hot milk in it."

Yeah, honey, I can put hot milk on young boys, too.

"But they are not in your cupboard. And I am."

Well, I can't really argue with that, can I?

Everyone from doctors to gypsy fortune tellers have warned me that coffee is just not good for me. I've got a sensitive stomach, and my brain doesn't respond well to drugs. I had a terrible time, years ago, kicking an only-mild daily coffee habit, and since then I've really just stuck to green tea, and that not even daily.

But:

My redheads are gone - one's moving away, and the other's got a girlfriend. And my new bike is still waiting for all its parts to arrive. And I've recently come to the conclusion that I am not up to letting anyone get closer to me than a safe biking distance. And....look how pretty it looks in that nice big purple cup.

It tastes just the way I remember it, too. And smells even better.

And now, yes, my stomach hurts. Sigh. Perhaps I ought to just find a new crop of boys.

After a little shameless idea pilfering, followed by judicious googling, I have come up with a list.

What Lizbon needs: (according to the bots)

My agenda needs updating.
My process needs a fresh start.
My referendum debate needs more passion.
The Irish rejection of my treaty has sent shockwaves.
Ireland needs to hold a second referendum about me.
I need a drummer.
And the Irish Times, when reporting about me, needs to use new crayons.

If you ask me, on the other hand:

I could use a 46-tooth chainring, rather than the 45-tooth ones I received. No biggie, but it's a preference.
I could use a good roll in the hay with a good bad boy, preferably at least 15 years my junior, with no significant consequences to either party.
I could use a few days at a nice beach, and a small drink with a big paper umbrella on it.
I could use a nice long bike ride, maybe to Coney Island, maybe with the blonde. It's all platonic now, with him, you know. All fine.
I could use to never have to go on another awful, dreadful, ooky, dull, heebie-jeebie inspiring date.

I could use a little candy. A little sugar in my bowl.

"Meow." That last is from Kitwich. Who knows what the hell she wants?

Again I tried to take pictures from the bike for you, and again I saw beautiful images - a graffiti-covered plaque on the bridge, all blues and blacks; the Domino Sugar factory on the Brooklyn side, bathed in golden light - and yet I didn't want to stop. I told myself I'd take some, walking, on my way to the bar with the friend I was going to meet, but then she wasn't feeling up to going out (she's recovering from surgery), so I didn't take any.

The light would've been gone by then anyway, and I knew that, and I still couldn't stop.

I'm a little heartbroken today, and maybe for the last few days, and I'm not sure how much of it is for me, and how much of it is for the various people in my life who are going through rough times. When I say rough times, I am talking more serious than breakups or job losses. I am talking cancer.

I won't go into detail here, because these stories are not mine to tell, but suffice it to say that several of my friends - two of them very close friends and one a more recent friend whom I'm nevertheless very worried about - are having to deal with some heavy shit. And I as their friend am having to deal with being afraid for them, and knowing how much they mean to me, and how intolerable it would be to lose them.

And then I check my email and see yet another message from yet another guy I'd emailed who is telling me that he is not interested because I am older than his chosen age range (in this case only a couple of years older). If he'd just said that and not included a bunch of chatty banter as well, I wouldn't have minded. But the combination was, somehow, like a slap in the face.

I don't know why that particular email mattered - it's not that I was super-interested in the guy; it just hurt, even coming from a stranger. I suspect it is to do with something larger, something that I can't examine just now, because I can't even examine the things that I'm aware are going on. It's a big tangle - like that giant ball of string that's either an actual or apocryphal tourist attraction in the midwest.

Another friend of mine mentioned to me, just offhand, that he's hung up on somebody, "hung up bad," and I was dumbfounded for a minute trying to figure out how I'd describe my own state. I was going to say that I'm not hung up on anybody, and that that is unusual for me, and somewhat uncomfortable in its own right. Which seems weird - why should I prefer to be suffering unrequited passion, instead of just feeling nothing very much? I guess because it isn't that the alternative is to feel nothing very much. The alternative is to feel much blanker and more empty than one does when suffering the unrequited.

How are these things related? "Even the wisest cannot tell." (Galadriel)

PS. Obviously, these pictures were taken on a different bike ride, on a different day - but at much the same time of day, for there is that slanting evening light. Pocketcam, auto exposure, flash off.

A friend advised me recently to think about what it is that I really want in the boy department, so that I know, going in, what I am looking for and not looking for. It was good advice, but I am finding it hard to follow.

Perhaps in a similar vein, I am finding it hard to decide what to do this week. I have given myself the week off, and perhaps because it's been so long since I did such a thing, I am at a bit of a loss when I get up in the morning (or afternoon).

As I was saying to one of the boys yesterday, I like to get up and ride first thing in the morning; I just prefer that morning comes a little later in the day.

But here's the thing: for a woman who thinks so much about everything in life, I don't seem to have a very good handle on what I am looking for when I get involved (even slightly involved, as in a date or two) with men.

I have no idea.

I get sad sometimes, from being rather lonely most days, and watching anything that smacks of romance (a romantic comedy, or even Wall-e, for heaven's sake) tends to pull the tears right out of my eyeballs.

But on the other hand, I just can't picture being in some heavy relationship that made me feel all tied down. I am not certain I have that in me anymore, or at least not yet. And yet - I also want lots and lots of the kind of sex that one simply cannot have unless it's with someone one knows well and trusts and likes. Or maybe loves.

It's a conundrum, make no mistake. A puzzle and a riddle, and I have no obvious solution to it, and not much hope of finding my way out of it - at least, not with anyone I'd meet through the usual channels.

And now there's a Sherlock Holmes episode on TV, in which a young woman is forced to cut her hair in order to gain a lucrative job, and she cries and cries about it.

Whereas, I had a dream the other day in which I woke up to discover that my hair had grown past my waist, and the first thing I did was rush to my mom and have her cut it all off.

When I really woke up, and ran my hand over my shorn head, I was relieved. Though I remember thinking, in the dream, that I ought to have had my mother leave enough hair to make into those two little knots that I used to like to wear.

A rambling and illogical post, to sure, but there's something about hair dreams that always pulls at my unconscious, as if there's a symbolic meaning.

I suppose the short hair means freedom to me, which I treasure above all else and of which I have carved more and more for myself over the years.

I wonder, though, if there's a way to be just as free, but less lonely.

Note on pics: These were taken with the pocketcam, by the waterfront in Williamsburg. Click to enlarge.

Ahhhh. I hardly know where to begin. I had a great day today, but it was not without its bizarre moments. To begin with, I spent the entire day on the bike, or as close as is possible for a girl with cranky knees. I got up and ate and showered and rode out to the bike shop to meet my two cycling companions (beautiful boys, one very young and one a bit older than me). We then proceeded to ride out to Prospect Park in Brooklyn, the eldest of our posse dropping me easily on the bridge (the young one very nicely hung back to keep me company).

There, we met up with two other cyclists and rode some laps around the park, which was leafy and gorgeous, and generally hung around being lazy the rest of the time. Just so you have the full picture, it's now me and four men (two of them being the glorious redheads).

Here's where it starts to get weird. My phone would not stop ringing the whole time I was there. Everyone I know or ever speak to seemed to be trying to get hold of me today. First I had a client call. Then I heard back from the boy whom Special J has dubbed bird-boy (because of his resemblance to an ibis). I'd called him over the weekend and asked him to just call me and tell me yea or nay, because I happen to prefer to be turned down clearly rather than having them simply drift away, as many boys are wont to do.

Anyway, this was the call back, and it was a perfectly fine conversation. I wasn't surprised to hear that he just wants to be friends, and if in fact he wants to do that and isn't just making polite noises, I think I might be able to swing it. I mean, one can never have too many cycling buddies. In any case, I am relieved to have a clear answer.

But. It was funny as hell to be having that conversation while I was out cycling with several hot (hotter than bird-boy, if we are being honest) boys. And the one who overheard the conversation pointed out that I really ought to have told the guy I was out with three hot boys (we hadn't met up with the fourth yet). And he was right. I should have.

So there was that. Anyway, I had a great time and cycled my legs into jelly, and one of the boys showed me the way home, and it turned out to be super-easy and quick, and I got home and ate and ate and ate and showered again, and so on and took this (I think) very cute pic of the feline sacked out between two fans. Hey, if I had fur, I'd be there too.

But what I wanted to talk to you about is beauty, and the fact that there's a certain amount of relativity involved in it.

As I was looking through some old pics (Mermaid Parade again - yes, I am going to take the camera out more; I just didn't want to carry it today), I was struck by how a photo of someone - a person I'd normally think of as odd-looking, quirky, or maybe even homely (I love that word, and the fact that it has both positive and negative meanings) - can make me see that they have their own beauty.

This woman in the flowered dress struck me that way. It's something about the strong character in her face, and the fact that she seems so unabashedly herself. I like that in people - usually in people I know, because I have come to love them for who they are, and every time I look at their faces I see who they are written there. No, I am not talking about boys here. I am thinking of friends. My beautiful, unique friends. Love you guys, and boy are you beautiful.

Heh. When the going gets tough, the tough put on their sexiest $15 Target sundress, hop on the cycle, have a 40-minute ferocious yelling brawl with a vicious bastard of a headwind, arrive five minutes early for brunch all lathered up and invigorated, and buy a very large new dildo (on sale!).

Then they (or I) go flirt shamelessly for hours with the very prettiest redhead they can find (looking at him for that long made me high), pet the cute doggie, and ride home laughing maniacally. Bwahahaha.

But now I have to work.

Beautiful sunset on the way home tonight (unfortunately I had no camera), but it didn't make much of a dent in the sense that this has been what Boywich would call a craptacular week. Lowlights include being shaken awake every morning by Richter-scale vibrations from the pile-drivers operating a mere 10 ft. or so below my windows. Not to mention having yet another tube blow its bitty little cork just as I was pumping the last tire preparatory to leaving on a ride.

So my ride ended up being to the bike shop, to buy more tubes (and complain about them having weak-ass valve stem connections). And to top that off, my favorite redheads were not even there, nor was the nice girl I usually talk to, nor was her cute puppy. Drat.

Ugh. I am exhausted, sick at heart, sleep-deprived (construction starts early, and I keep having to work all night because I can't focus all day with that horrible, horrible noise and the whole building shuddering to bits around my ears), and generally demoralized.

I couldn't even get it up to think that the friend of a friend's invitation to go for a bike ride (he just bought a new bike) might have an ulterior motive in it, even though I had at one time found him to be very cute. It all seemed very likely that a bike ride is just a bike ride, and even if it's not, he's probably not a good person to date, being, by all accounts, something of a solitary reclusive type. Interesting, but maybe best appreciated from a safe distance.

Which I am beginning to think is true of all men.

I'll tell you something about me (so unusual, on my incredibly self-centered blog, no?):
I used to be very, very shy.

Hiding in the corner, climbing onto the roof at parties kind of shy. Of course, I avoided going to a party last night because I knew it would be that sort, so it's not like I've completely lost that aspect of myself.

But I've gotten friendlier over the years, more able to approach strangers and ask questions and do things like invite people I don't know well to come play with me. Or just offer to share my large table with a fellow diner who needed to be near the powerstrip on the floor, too, and who was trying to balance his drink and his laptop on his lap at the same time while sitting in one of those overstuffed chairs that seem comfortable but are really quite unsuited to working with a laptop.

I'll tell you another thing about me: I have been accused of favoring longish sentences.

Anyway. I got to talking with this young boy at the café, since we were sitting elbow to elbow, the edges of our laptops touching. And he showed me what he was working on (animation), and I described what I was working on (words, and not even interesting ones at that), and it was pleasant and companionable. And I thought, why, exactly, was it that I was so shy all those years?

Well, it was a combination, I think.

Factor A: moved around so much as a kid that I suffered from perpetual new-kid-in-school-itis.
Factor B: too brainy to blend in well with the popular crowd (this was back in the days before Geek Chic, mind you).
Factor C: early experiences did not, in fact, suggest that the world is a lovely and welcoming and hopeful kind of place. Even though I still, in my heart of hearts, have a dogged grasp on the possibility that it might someday turn out to be like that.
Factor D: The combination of the first three (plus some other X factor or two) meant that I lacked self-confidence and therefore went into social situations with a substantial amount of fear, or at least trepidation.

What's changed?

Damned if I know, except that that's a bit of a lie. I've actually been working really hard at a number of things which seem to have self-confidence as a side effect.

On the other hand, I think that's backfired on me a bit. I won't go into the details, but let's just say there may be a reason why I was blindsided by the liked-boy's sudden disappearance. Doesn't mean I want to have to go back to being afraid of people or being self-effacing or anything, but, well, there's that worry in the back of my mind...nibbling away at the corners. Damn.

Hello me lovelies. Here are your bridge pictures! I must apologize for their workmanlike quality; I had only the pocketcam in my bike bag, because it's what fits easily and lightly into the bike bag. (I need a bigger bike bag.)

I took the on-the-bridge pics yesterday, and the of-the-bridge-from-far-away pics today. I had this grandiose plan of getting right on the bike in the morning to travel to an appointment I had uptown. I got all dressed and geared up, and had my bike shoes on and everything, and decided to pump that extra 10 lbs. of air into the tires so they'd be all perky and smooth-rolling, and then as I pulled the pump nose off the rear tire valve, shhhhhhwshhhhhhhhhhh!!!! God damn it.

I tried pumping it up again, hoping against hope that I'd somehow unscrewed the presta valve without noticing or something. Nope. Another valve bites the dust.

Which means I have to change the tire before I can leave. Which means I have to take the goddamned subway. Again. Which I have (mostly) sworn off. And increasingly hate doing. The more time I spend getting myself from place to place under my own steam (and that of my beloved, wonderful bicycle), the lower my tolerance for the cramped, claustrophobic, smelly indignity of mass transit. Not that I'm not grateful to have that to fall back on, but really, there are far better ways to spend my $4.

Lately I am spending it all on tubes, of course.

And coffees for the adorable, simply adorable bike mechanics. I'd much rather buy them coffee, and me Clif Bars and hummus and other assorted fuels than support the MTA, and if that makes me a bad New Yorker, well, so be it. Y'all can suck my you-know-what.

Okay, wait a minute, I'm getting rude, and it's really just an avoidance tactic because I don't want to have to tell you that that boy I liked, you know, the one I really liked? Has disappeared. Ceased communication. No phone, no email, no text, nada. No explanation, no polite, "hey, you're a nice person and all but I'm kinda not interested anymore." Nothing. No manners, apparently.

So there's that. All I can say is I have been feeling thankful for the following:

a) friends
b) bowling
c) brunch
d) bike boys (the better to flirt with and talk bike parts, which always sounds like one is talking about sex. mmmmmm, bottom brackets.....)

And most of all, I am thankful for my bicycle himself, without which I would not be here today spilling beans and posting photos and all that jazz.

Really, he's sanity on two skinny tires, and I love him more than I can adequately express. We went and hung out at the waterfront together tonight just before sundown, the two of us lying on the grass, my head on his saddle, his cranks sprawled on the ground.

I looked up at the sky and out at the skyline and over at that little girl's giraffe hat, and thought luscious thoughts about what it might be like to have two beautiful young boys in my arms at once, and sighed a sad little sigh and thought how stupid that one boy must be, and then thought some more about redheads. It was nice.

PS. The bridge in question is the Willie B (aka. Williamsburg Bridge), which connects the hipsters of the LES with their even-hipper cousins in Williamsburg. Despite that, it is a swell bridge for cycling, with a nice two-lane bike path and a great view.

1. New bottom bracket. There was indeed something wrong with the old one - namely, that it had gotten bent somehow. A car hit the bike at some point, or I managed to whack it with the lock just so, or something.
2. Yes, I spent the big bucks to get the good kind. Of course I did.
3. It wasn't, shall we say, an entirely smooth operation.

a. They didn't have the right tool and had to borrow it.
b. They very nearly couldn't find cups to fit the bracket.
c. The bracket turned out to be a little too short and had to be offset to one side.
d. The bottom bracket shell turns out to be French-threaded, and the bracket had to be put in backwards.

4. I had a great time hanging around with the shop boys, shooting the shit, making dirty jokes, talking about bike parts, and so forth. Yes, there was a certain amount of flirting with tall cute redheads who are probably about half my age. So sue me. One of them had a very charming slight Southern drawl, too. Sigh.
5. Finally finally saw Sex and the City. Kind of liked it, then hated it, then really liked it (I refer to respective sections of the movie). Annabelle and I had fun talking and drinking a touch of champagne afterwards, as usual.
6. Spent the rest of this evening wrestling with my emotions, which are all over the place right now. Because I was busy and/or nicely distracted by young boys for most of the weekend, I had been able to avoid thinking about it. You know what it is. It's not actually an it; it's a person. Now, though, I am no longer distracted, and I find that it's been in the back of my mind for days. Why is this so hard all of a sudden?

I don't normally go in for advertising slogans, except to notice them in a professional sense (I sometimes have to analyze them for work purposes).

But there's one that's coming to mind today because it slots in neatly with what I wanted to talk about here. It's that USA Today tag: Characters Welcome.

I love people who are odd, unusual, unique, maybe a bit off-kilter - just thoroughly themselves. I mean, I don't love every crazy homeless person who bangs into my knees with a pilfered shopping cart full of their prized bottlecap collections.

But my favorite humans do tend to be those who have their own way of thinking, perceiving, talking, dancing, two-step shuffling down the street. Those who favor rare nerdy-looking bicycles whose frames are constructed like airplane wings.

Those who wear clothes they dyed themselves because they really like the way the fabric takes the color a little unevenly, as if it's been waving about at the bottom of a coral reef for a while.

I like crazy cat ladies and men who paint their fingernails blue, artists who make elaborate virtual pieces in Second Life that cleverly piggyback on the environmental programming that rules the movements of clouds, in order to create slow color changes in their "sculptures."

I like people who talk to themselves, especially when the conversation looks interesting.

I liked the guy with the crab codpiece whose skin was not only painted blue but also precisely stenciled with a ghostly white webbed pattern.

So why, when I'm newly dating somebody, in the phase where I am certain that I like the person but it hasn't yet moved into the boyfriend stage (and may never do so), do I fall prey to the fear that the guy (one of whose proclivities is mentioned above) won't be similarly enchanted with my own unique character?

I mean, there are objective signs that he's down with at least aspects of my particular idiom (to borrow a Pythonism).

He didn't bat an eyelash when I introduced him by name to my bicycle (and vice-versa).

Our conversations typically rank fairly high on the geekometer, and he doesn't seem put off when I do my deep sea diving act.

But I can be really, really earnest, and I suspect there are times when I resemble a large, enthusiastic dog, and, well, that can scare some boys off.

I dunno. It's just nervous-making, that early time. And I don't have much of a strategy for surviving it.

A friend was advising me today to try and just stay in the present, which is funny, because I'm quite spectacular at doing that - in every other area of life.

Sigh. I am trying. Somebody pass me the Zen.

PS. Shut up, Boywich, I know what you're thinking, but I have become spectacular at it in the past couple of years. Really.

PSdeux. Aren't they wonderful, these faces? Click to embiggen, of course.

Here I sit with a cat on one side of me and an upended, rear-tire-less bicycle on the other.

The former is business as usual, but the latter, well, there's a story behind it. It's a pathetic little story involving three blown tubes (the last exploding in an impressively loud boom which caused my right ear to ring for about two minutes afterwards), a pump that seems to be on the fritz (unless I am a lot clumsier than I think I am), and two closed bike shops (drat!).

Anyway, that has no relation to the photos I've gathered here for your amusement, risking a severe jostling, a bit of overheating, and a tendency to become irate (see item #1) while trying to make my way back to the subway.

Luckily I did make it back without incident, and when I got home and looked at what I'd gotten in the Nikon, well, I felt it was worth a little heat and hassle. The colors really looked like that. I love that camera.

And I did manage to get in a smallish bike ride before the whole tube-explosion incident, and I did have a rather nice date, again before the tube-explosion incident. Life was different before the tube-explosion incident. Okay, it wasn't. I'm making that bit up. But I did get a flat in my apartment while I was about to leave for said date and I did have to make that funniest of phone calls. "Um. I have to fix a flat before I can come see you."

Doesn't strike you as funny? Well, perhaps you are less of a bike geek than either I or my date. I thought it was damn funny. Especially since I didn't (thankfully) get another flat while pedaling over there. Whew.

But of course, that was before the tube-exploding incident.

You know what else was before the tube-exploding incident? The Mermaid Parade. Which, if you ask me, is best enjoyed through photographs rather than in person. But then I am biased. I hate crowds. Shut up, I know that I live in one of the most crowd-filled cities on earth.

I have coping strategies for that. Most of which involve the aforementioned bicycle currently lying on the living room floor flashing his bottom bracket at all and sundry. Sigh. Damned exploding tubes.

PS. Click on any of these to see bigger and in better detail. Oh, do it this time. It's worth it.

PS2. Yes, I know you want more details about the date. I am trying to be circumspect here. I like the guy; he is sort of my type in a way I didn't know I had. So let's allow him a little privacy, ok?

Yes, it's true, I had another good date. Really, I am afraid to write anything more than that, for fear of invoking the wrath of the aforementioned dreaded Internet dating gods. But I shall risk it, for the entertainment of my few but loyal readers.

So, the bare outlines (which is all you're gettin', loyal or not) are that yes, he is a fellow bike geek, for which I am very grateful, because I just don't think I can date ordinary non-cycling mortals anymore.

He is tall. He is willowy. He is dapper. He has a head full of interesting thoughts. He took me to a very interesting event on Friday night, and then we made up some further interesting events of our own.

'Nuff said? I hope so, 'cause it's all you're gettin' from me.

In other news, I spent the day doing nothing very productive other than bike maintenance. Made tea and promptly fell into a sudden nap while it was steeping, then got up and drank it and looked at the sky and decided it was too much on the edge of thunderstorm to risk a ride in the park, and then realized I am really just kind of tired. I've been riding rather a lot, which is wonderful, but once in a while, whether you want it or not, your body simply must take a rest day.

And maybe that is why I haven't done any of the more work-oriented things on my list today either. Just tired.

PS. No, that is not us in the photo. It just seemed apropos.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

I'll leave y'all to work the rest out for yourselves.

We start this summer off with a bang. The bang, that is, of my broom hitting the floor and whacking a 4-inch cockroach stone cold dead. It took several whacks, mind you. These suckers are tough.

And here we have a photo of the lovely feline princess in her accustomed summer pose. "Willya put that damned Nikon away, already? I'm trying to nap!" Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. Cockroaches, on the other hand, are a source of endless fascination, though her only assistance on this one took the form of identifying it before it made its appearance. It was so big, even my puny human ears could hear it fluttering its icky wings. I know, gross.

I steeled myself for the kill as soon as I saw her doing her best bird dog imitation, which consists of meowing and pointing, just like a setter. Apart from the meow, of course.

Anyway, it's dead and gone, and I sprayed. Of course, I'd sprayed last week, too. Sigh. The beauties of awful muggy weather are many.

Anyway...none of that is really on my mind at all right now. What ought to be on my mind is completing the project that's in front of me, due tomorrow. What is, in fact, on my mind is, well...impure thoughts about the date I had a few days ago.

Mind you, I did not have impure thoughts (or actions) at the time. This is how my mind works. I have a first date. If it goes well, I simply have a good time talking to them. Many times, I will have a good time talking to them even if I don't want to see them again. But if I do want to see them again, I end up being so overwhelmed by the intensity of getting instant exposure to a whole new person that I just can't do anything dateish like kiss them.

This is why men who think I'm going to sleep with them on the first date make me laugh.

Anyway, this particular fellow did not make any of those kinds of improper moves; he was nice and well-behaved, and we had a really delightful conversation.

And I thought, hmmn. Maybe.

So then over the next few days my brain does that mysterious thing that it does, whereby it decides that it really liked that guy, and that it's going to distract me from thinking about what I'm paid to think about, and instead I am going to start imagining pleasant scenarios that involve doing all kinds of things I would never have thought of doing on the date itself.

I don't know what this phenomenon is called, or whether anybody else works like this, but this has happened to me once before. (Yes, Shan, with a certain blonde who shall remain nameless.) And really, of course I don't know what will happen with this one. It might follow a very different trajectory (though I hope not), and end with me deciding, Nope. But I would like it if it went the way the other one did - namely, that I conceive a sudden and furious passion for the lad. Because, you know, that is fun.

Shhh. Don't tell anybody - least of all the gods of Internet dating, those feckless hounds of hell.

I had a nice date. A nice first date. And I'm certain it will all go to hell in a handbasket the next time I venture out to see this person - or any other carbon-based lifeform, for that matter - and that really, I should just stick to bowling with my friends, or eating Mexican food and drinking that deadly sangria they make over in Sunnyside, or I should just hang my hat up and settle for the occasional foray into blondie's hot pants, or something.

Whoa, did I actually say that out loud? Ahem.

Two Guinni, ladies and gentlemen, just two, and already she loses her taillights which are, in fact, strung about her fingers, and half-drops the precious bike while trying to give the nice cool/nerdy guy a little tiny kiss, and then, well, she rides like a bat outta hell home in about 20 seconds flat. Okay, 20 minutes, but who's counting?

Here, look at this nice purple iris. Ain't it pretty? (So I trekked out to the border planets, learned to say "ain't...")

Really, I'm not that drunk, honest I'm not. Claudia, does this count as a BAT trip?

Oof. Hot. Spent all day on bicycle in near-triple-digit heat. Didn't really affect me too much (or so I thought) until I was riding home and wondering why I was so strangely exhausted and why my head kind of hurt, and then looked at temperature gauge on handy-dandy bank time & temp sign, and saw that it was 87 degrees at 11pm. Oy.

I know, I'm crazy, right? Riding in that mess.

But while I was pedaling and moving, there was a breeze, so I thought, oh this is fine. And it was. Until it was all dark and felt somehow hotter than it had all day. I think maybe I need to drink more Gatorade before collapsing onto bed in hot (unairconditioned) bedroom.

Ha. And the blonde wanted to go for a (bike) ride tomorrow. Oy.

(Shut up. Don't nobody say nothin'. I can play with naughty little blondes if I want to. Plus, this other boy emailed me.) (Not that that means anything these days, since they just email and then disappear.) (Poof!) (Anyway, where did I put that Gatorade? Hey cat! What are you doing with my Gatorade?)

Well, I don't know what to tell ya. I was looking at Shannon's excellent review of a mediocre (-sounding) book, and she casually drops a Deep Thought into the fray and moves along with her review, leaving me standing there with my mouth open, going "Hunh. That completely ties into the weird swirl that's been growling around in my gut the last few days."

I am not sure how to describe the full swirl. Let's start with Shan's insight. The question of whether everyone (or anyone) has a soulmate.

Which led me to wonder whether anyone would have the idea that there ought to be "somebody out there who's perfect for me" (to quote or near-quote an actual online dating ad that came on TV while I was working this evening), if we hadn't been brainwashed to think in these terms from early childhood.

I recently added some language to my online profile that makes it patently clear that I don't particularly want to or expect to get married, and that I certainly don't want to procreate.

I don't think that's why I haven't been getting any dates in the last month or two, and I hope that's not why there seems to be a longer-than-usual delay in my profile being approved (it's been days - what is their fucking problem?), but again, it gives me to think.

Specifically:

1. Do I really mean that?
2. Do people see that as some kind of sign of pessimism?
3. Is there anything wrong with thinking that I might be really quite happy if I just date or even have a boyfriend, without attaching some kind of lifelong, earth-shattering significance to it?
4. I need a haircut.

The Naked Science episode on TV right now is discussing "extremophiles" and the possibility that they may live or have lived on Mars. Sometimes I think there is a human equivalent to these microbes.

For those who don't know, extremophiles is a nice logical name for microorganisms that favor difficult environmental conditions - extremes of temperature or radiation, chemical environments that would be toxic to other forms of life, that sort of gig.

Don't you know someone who lives like that in an emotional way?

I do; a friend of mine was just telling me about his regrets at having left a relationship that I'd call doomed. The person he broke up with was married to someone else, lives more than a thousand miles away, and has - shall we say - lots o' baggage, in the forms of multiple dependents and health issues.

I told him it was okay, nay, good, to make an intellect-based decision in a situation like that, but I don't think anything I said penetrated to the decisionmaking center of his brain. Or, as he'd put it, his heart. He's probably still gonna get back into that mess. See? Extremophile.

I have apparently (I hope) grown out of such behavior, though it took me years and years, and it's not like I don't occasionally relapse and be drawn to something that's not so terribly healthy for me.

Though I think that the fact that for the past several years I've been able to eat healthy foods and only healthy foods with no difficulty whatsoever suggests that I probably have that ability in other areas of life.

At the moment, I am feeling very anti-complications, and anti-"settling." Anti-settling for less. Anti-settling down. All that.

I'd rather be airborne, thank you very much, and the concept of being tied to someone else, of having to give a good god-damn what they think of my every little decision and behavior, well let's just say it's an unsavory prospect. Apart from the sex, of course. That sounds appealing.