All the way to 1.5 dates!

Alright, so this was not just another first date, but I still went to get my hair done. I was so busy trying to control the situation that I forgot the cardinal woman's rule, "is he worthy of me?" (But I did look wonderful!) I was still on disability, but I didn't want to say so to him because then I would have to have that "MS" talk, and I just wasn't ready to. So I let him think I was going to work every day.

I received an email about an other wine event at the Peninsula Hotel that looked wonderful. It was pricey, at $80 per ticket but...I sent him a text with the wine email attached and asked if he was interested. The response wasn't quite what I had anticipated, that being that he had already planned going and had purchased his ticket. No offer to go together, or he would take care of getting me a ticket also. When will I learn?

Me being me, I immediately purchase a ticket to the event, but waited several days to text him that I was also going. When he returned to town (he was always somewhere other than California) he didn't immediately call me, nor even return my call when I called him (That's right Shelley, take the bull by the horns!)

Now being the clever person that I am, I was trying to figure our how to finagle an invite to his house and a ride to this wine event. So you see why this is down as just .5 of a date. As it turned out, the event was a bit dressier than most things in LA, and for women it was requested to be adorned in a dress. He suggested that maybe I would need to freshen up or change and would I like to come over to his house after work to do that? BINGO! I love it when the stars align!

So now all I had to do is dress up like I had been at work, bring a change of clothes, and see where he lived. And of course, get my hair done. So I spend the better part of my day consulting with Bubba, my stylist, as to what I should be wearing i.e., what I still fit in, and which Spanx I should wear. I then shed my jeans, and poured myself into the only pair of pants that still fit, did my make-up and went to get my hair done. I once again got the admonishment to not sleep with him (wasn't so sure this time) and set off over the hill to look like I just worked a full day. Now I don't know about you, but at the end of the day, I usually look like hell, but I looked FABULOUS baby!

The whole drive there I just kept giggling that I actually was masquerading in work clothes, so that I could change into a dress, and that my spanx were chocking the ever-loving shit out of me. The things I come up with!

I got there, and he was very nice about showing me to his bathroom and had a whole set of towels out for me. Did he think I was moving in? Anyway, other than trying to shimmy into a pair of super-control top pantyhose, I really didn't have to do anything, so I spent a lot of time doing nothing at all, other than looking in the mirror. Shit, I've got to lose weight! And wonder how fast gangrene will set in for my legs now that I had totally cut off all circulation due to the vanity of trying to look thinner than I was. I hope I don't explode out of my sausage casings during the evening!

Off we go (yes, in his car, and yes, I will have to come back up to collect my belongings.) We spend a few hours with young ladies trying to get more that a pour of wine-very interesting people watching! After 6-7 (oh hell, maybe 9-10) tastes of wine, we come back to his place, and my fat is still firmly in the artificial places I had sequestered it to. As we are coming back into his beautifully appointed apartment (and believe me, he had told me where everything had come from) the wine works my mouth and I ask him why he has those tacky rugs in the hall? They don't seem to belong. He seems truly flummoxed and I try hard to back-track and take back the words. I try to switch the subject, and ask if he ever curls up in his living room with the very pretty throw on the other sofa (meticulously laid out) and he answers no, like I had just suggested committing murder. We start to make out (can I still call it that at my age?) and when he makes a comment that my pantyhose are so tight, I roll off the one foot deep couch and hit my knee on the glass table.

Now I'm not a wimp, but I was seeing stars. I'm not sure if it was the intense pain from dislocating my knee on a piece of furniture, the lack of blood to my brain due to constraining my fat, or the thought of that the explosion that might pop me out of my pantyhose was imminent. Any way, I was not staying around to find out. I told him I had better be going, or I might regret something (he could fill out the blank the way he liked.)

After I called him the next day to once again apologise for my Cabernet brain and comment, I never heard from him again. It dawned on me that he was indeed OCD, he bragged about everything, and seemed to drop names and places of his friends, never his own. I started laughing when I realized I had been so wrapped up in dating, that I didn't stop to think about the person. And no, he wasn't worthy of me!