Tag Archive | single ladies

Best Vacation Ever!

Man, I wish I could go on a vacation right now. I really need it. Don’t we all? I’ve been on some great vacations in my life. In honor of Fun Friday I thought I’d share with you one of my favorite vacation stories ever.

A couple of years ago my friends, Kristine and Molly, and I decided to do a road trip of New England. The plan was for us to hit every New England state within a week. Did we have a game plan? No, not really. We just wanted to drive around and see what there was to see.

So we packed up my little 1993 Saturn and set off from Molly’s house in the middle of the country in Pennsylvania.

On the road in Maine

Road trips are a lot of fun. I happen to love driving and since we had no schedule we could go wherever we wanted and stop for as long as we felt like. That first day we visited Woodstock, NY. Woodstock is very touristy and over-priced, by the way. Hippies all over the world are probably weeping in their VW busses because of it. We had a good time though, took goofy pictures and visited some really interesting stores. Then we headed on to Massachusetts.

Everything was fine our first day in Mass. We visited Plymouth Plantation, which was really cool, and Plymouth Rock, which was … a rock. I got a cool t-shirt.

The trouble began that evening.

Now that's what I call a nice location for a Colonial settlement!

You see, Kristine may be my best friend and we may have a lot of things in common, but we also know exactly how to drive each other crazy. When I get super tired I have a tendency to talk too much. I talk so much, in fact, that by the time I get to the end of the sentence I’ve forgotten what I said at the beginning. Kristine, on the other hand, gets really snarky. She becomes the master of the sharp comment. Most of the time this works out just fine. I start talking and not paying attention to what I’m saying and Kristine makes snide comments about everything I say that I barely hear. We have entertained poor Molly this way on several occasions.

But Boston was different.

I had half an idea what hotel we should stay in, having looked on the internet. Only that hotel was booked by the time we got there. So they sent us to another one in the same chain. Well, that hotel was in a completely skeezy part of town. There was no way I was going to stay there. But Kristine was exhausted and in a really bad mood. We got into the biggest nasty girl fight in the car in the middle of four lanes of traffic without any idea how to turn around. It’s funny in retrospect, but at the time Molly was inches away from witnessing a double homicide.

I knew the area a teensy bit though. Much to Kristine’s distress, I got back on the highway and drove all the way out to Cape Ann where my aunt and uncle live. I knew there were some nice hotels up there. Very nice. We pulled into the Bass Rocks Inn in Gloucester tired, hungry, and ready to scratch each other’s eyes out. I went into the office to ask if they had any vacancies while Molly stayed in the car with Kristine, talking her out of murdering me in my sleep. The good news was that they had a vacancy! The bad news was the price tag. But you know what? At that point I didn’t care. I took the room and went to give my friends the good news.

The view from our balcony at the Bass Rocks Inn

I love hotels, but I really love the Bass Rocks Inn in Gloucester. Our room had a balcony that looked out over Bass Rocks and the raging sea. It’s the perfect place to sit around and read a book and listen to the waves crash on the rocks. Part of the hotel is an old Victorian mansion that has been converted into rooms and a small restaurant. They make the best blueberry scones in the world. Gloucester and the neighboring town of Rockport have a million things to do. And I have family there.

Part of me wished we could stay there, but after resting for a full day we journeyed on to Bar Harbor, Maine. We had another hotel incident there, only this one involved going to about three or four different places until we found a vacancy. Fortunately, this time Kristine and I weren’t so pissed off at each other. And Project Runway was on that night.

We went on to New Hampshire the next day, visited an old estate called Castle in the Clouds, and had dinner at a truly fantastic restaurant that had canoes on the wall. I had a blueberry martini. I got very fuzzy and nearly fell in my salmon. And we stayed at a really cool little hotel in Center Harbor on Lake Winnipesauke where the rooms felt like dorm rooms and the staff was like your extended family.

Kristine, Molly, and I at the Castle on a Cloud

There’s something amazing about a sweet hotel on a rambling road trip that makes true friends go from wanting to kill each other one minute to laughing hysterically over SpongeBob Squarepants the next. Just like there’s a whole aspect to friendship that you can only experience when you spend five hours in a car together six days in a row, enduring headaches, mood swings, and breathtaking scenery. We spend a lot of time in our lives guarding ourselves against revealing too much to the people around us, even the ones we call friends. But on a road trip, when you are far from everything you know and trapped in close quarters with your buddies, you learn more about each other than you do every day.

Thankfully Kristine and Molly are still two of my closest friends. We ended up cutting that road trip short by a day because we were just so damned tired by the end. But we met our goal. In six days we drove 2,000 miles and visited New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont. Without killing each other. I still don’t think I’ve recovered financially from that trip but it remains one of the best vacations I’ve ever had. And like we said at every single place we stopped and stayed, I have got to go back there someday!

So that’s my best vacation story. What’s yours?

[Incidentally, if you want to see all of the photos from that road trip and another New England trip I took with Kristine, they're on my Flickr stream here.]

Why Men Should Pay on a Date

Dec21

I was having a conversation with my coworkers the other day about dating and I surprised myself by expressing my firm belief that men should always pick up the bill on a date.

Ooo, really? Do I really think that?

Yes! I do.

Now, I consider myself to be a pretty liberal, enlightened woman. But when it comes to dates of the first or second or anything prior to “we’re officially going out” kind, I have this visceral belief that the man should pay. It seems so old fashioned. It flies in the face of my beliefs about equality and fairness. And after a couple has had THE CONVERSATION and agreed that they’re Going Out I definitely think the bill should be split or that the woman should pay at least half of the time. But before that? When two people are testing the waters and seeing how things go? That check is all yours, bro.

So why do I believe this? Where does this subconscious sense of the rightness of certain things come from?

My theory is that it boils down to hundreds if not thousands of years worth of men needing to prove that they can provide for a woman’s needs. From time immemorial, since before our monkey ancestors dropped down out of the trees, the male of the species has had to compete with other males to prove that their genes are more worthy of being passes on through the female of their choice than the next monkey’s. The female sense of what is attractive has developed on an instinctual level based on which male can keep us and our children alive the longest. If a male could fight off the other males, make lots of babies with us, and make sure that we would all be well-fed and safe then he was in like Flint.

As mankind got a little more sophisticated the form that these things took may have changed, but for all intents and purposes the message was the same. In the Middle Ages noble men were often not allowed to marry until their fathers had died, handing over their lands and titles to the eldest son. Mothers wanted their daughters to marry the richest and most titled lords. Why? Because they could fight off the other males, make lots of babies, and make sure that the women were well-fed and safe. Those men who couldn’t offer the promise of a home and an income were out of luck in the marriage department.

Time passed, society progressed. The Industrial Revolution happened and suddenly the demographics of the mechanized world changed. People moved out of the country and towards the cities. Men didn’t have to have a title or estates to catch the eye of the ladies. But they still had to have means. A job at least. There’s a reason most heroes in Regency and Victorian romance novels are dukes or lords or have money, by the end of the novel if not at the beginning. These are our idealized versions of masculinity. They are handsome, faithful, and wealthy. They can fight off the other males, make lots of babies, and keep the heroine well-fed and safe.

I’m not just talking about money here, in case you were about to accuse me of that. Yeah, you know you were. Money is merely a symptom of something much more important. Ambition. Motivation. Purpose. Money is a side-effect of someone with passion who cares about making their life and the lives of the people they love better. I’m not talking about millions of dollars here, I’m talking about the desire to stand on your own two feet without asking for help from your parents or the government or anyone at all.

So. Here we are again on our date. Nothing turns me on more than a man who is motivated to demonstrate to me that he is thoughtful, independent, and confident. What better way to convey that message than by taking me out and showing me a good time? It doesn’t have to be dinner at Le Bec-Fin. I would be equally if not more impressed if he took me to Sonic for onion rings. Why? Because I like Sonic onion rings. The point is that he is taking the initiative, proving that he is capable of organizing and executing a plan. He is proving that he will not end up sprawled on my couch in a wife-beater with a beer demanding that I make him a sandwich while he watches the game. He is proving that I am not his mother, that I will not end up taking care of him.

Paying on a date is not about a guy impressing me with the size of his wallet, it’s about him showing me that he can fight off the other males, make lots of babies, and keep me well-fed and safe. It’s about him demonstrating that he is mature enough to take a position of authority and to be sensitive to the needs of those around him. Me, yes, but let me tell you, you can tell A LOT about a man by how he treats the wait staff and even the other patrons at a restaurant.

We live in a new, modern society that, for the first time in all of human history, doesn’t place outward, public rites of passage on young men to enable them to search for a mate. There are no rules of inheritance or etiquette that slow down the mating process to ensure that the right decisions are being made and that couples will be able to handle the inevitable stresses of relationships. Maybe that’s why so many relationships fail so spectacularly these days. This one last vestige of the complex social order of days gone by, men paying on a date, sometimes feels like the only rational demonstration of practicality before emotions take over and make everyone lose their heads.

Inappropriate Crush

Dec13

I am the master of the Inappropriate Crush. What makes a crush inappropriate, you ask? Crushing on someone who is completely unavailable, of course. And being consumed with embarrassment at the thought of revealing to anyone that you have a crush on that person. So yes, I am the master of the Inappropriate Crush.

Actually, the vast majority of my love life has consisted of inappropriate crushes. I don’t have a lot of luck with men at all. This might be one of the reasons why. I was never interested in bad-boys, I didn’t really care about the cute popular boys. No, my crushes as far back as I can remember have been much more … creative than that.

Quick! Someone warn this child she's doomed to a life of Inappropriate Crushes!

I was the girl who had the crushes on teachers in high school. Yes, I had a massive crush on Rev. Smith. And it doesn’t get more inappropriate than that. Rev. Smith was from South Africa. He had a beautiful accent and a viciously dry sense of humor. He wasn’t necessarily well-liked by the other kids, mostly because they didn’t get his oddball, quirky humor. He was old enough to be my father. In fact, two of his kids (twins) were in my class. Yes, I had a crush on the father of two of my classmates, a strange man with an accent. He was married, but that kind of fell apart spectacularly when we were still in school and it’s not my place to talk about it. But yes, I loved him. And it was so, so wrong.

I didn’t grow out of the inappropriate crush phase as I got older either. The trend has pretty much continued in one way or another until the present. I was the girl who had crushes on professors at school, including ones who were Catholic priests. And while yes, a lot of this could probably be attributed to daddy issues of some sort, it hasn’t just been about older men.

In my mid-20s I had the worst kind of Inappropriate Crush, the kind that is best classified as Unrequited Love. Dan was younger than me by a few years. He was in my brother’s class in school I think, but they weren’t especially close friends. I thought the sun rose and set around Dan. And so, unfortunately, I started to act like it did. Yes, I followed him around like a little puppy, which was so not what I should have been doing at that age. I baked him cookies and made him a cake. I sewed a button or two back on his dress shirts. I walked around more or less as his yes-man side-kick for months. Then he transferred to a different college. He told me that he knew I would write to him no matter what, even if he didn’t write back.

That was when it hit me. Dan was a douche who had been using me the whole time.

Well, that kind of put a damper on my crushes for a long, long time. It’s an awful thing to wake up and realize a guy you put your heart on your sleeve for has been playing you. I think it’s called being a girl in your 20s.

Fortunately I recovered, somewhat sadder and wiser. Sort of.

If you’ve been reading my Unlikely Hero of the Week posts on Thursdays then you know I’ve developed a unique taste in men. I did him a long time ago, but Michael Emerson is still my favorite Unlikely Hero ever! I love him so much. And when in doubt I can always have a crush on Richard Armitage. He’s dreamy. But up there with them these days is another fantastically Inappropriate Crush, Chris Colfer. Because nothing says inappropriate like having the warm fuzzies for a very gay man. I just like him so much! And didn’t Kinsey say something about none of us ever being completely one way or the other?

Speaking of which, I have a bit of an Inappropriate Crush on Emma Watson. I’d switch teams to date her. Or maybe I just want to be her. I’m not entirely clear on that one.

And if you’ve noticed, I’ve been evading a bit here. Because the question still remains…. Do I currently have any inappropriate crushes?

*bows head in shame*

Yes, yes I do. But before I confess, I need to back up by about a year and a half and talk about my cricket team.

When I first got involved with cricket in the Philadelphia area, before I knew the guys as well as I do now, yes. Yes I did have a few crushes amongst them. I’ve had a crush on three of the guys in that picture above. But I quickly learned not to crush on my cricket guys at all because South Asian men don’t wear wedding rings when they’re playing cricket. And just about all of them are married. My most embarrassing cricket crush moment was finding out that he was married with six kids. I am so glad I never said anything!

But back to the present. Yes, I have not one but TWO Inappropriate Crushes in real life these days. These are my work crushes. Everyone needs work crushes as far as I’m concerned. … Um, as long as you recognize that they’re crushes, that is. Both my Day Job work crush and my Part-Time Job work crush are a little on the nerdy side, not traditionally attractive, both hard workers, both with quirky senses of humor. … Both have very serious girlfriends. *SIGH*

In fact, looking back on things, high school, college, cricket, work crushes, I have a thing for unavailable guys. The ultimate Inappropriate Crush! I would say that I’m attracted to the wrong type, but the thing is, I think I’m attracted to exactly the RIGHT type. It’s just that my type tends to get into serious, loving, committed relationships BEFORE they meet me. By the time they get to be my age those kinds of guys are usually married and busy being good fathers and husbands.

Michael Emerson - Married

So what’s a girl to do? Well, I can always write about the guys I want to be with. I fall in love with my characters on a regular basis. That’s something. Aside from that … maybe I missed my calling as a rich man’s mistress? Nah! The kind of guy I love would never have something on the side. I guess I’m just doomed until my romance novel/romantic comedy plot comes along to surprise me.

How ‘bout you? Who are your crushes, appropriate or inappropriate, real or imaginary?

Are You a Success?

Oct18

What is success? How do you know when you’re successful?

I’m pretty sure that everyone thinks about these questions at some point in their life and wonders if they’re successful. Everyone has a definition of success that they either strive for, reach, or despair that they will never reach. But it’s a far trickier question than it looks like on the surface.

I’m a Writer. I’m a Team Indie Writer. I’ve seen a lot of talk recently about how to succeed as an Indie Author. A lot of blogs and articles and tweets are filled with advice to boost your sales and rocket your books up to the top of everyone’s best-seller list. Going in the other direction, there’s a lot of discussion out there about how to get an agent and be published traditionally. So many people, to my great mystification, seem to be equating numbers/money with success as Writer.

To me success as a Writer has nothing whatsoever to do with sales. Shocked? Baffled? Don’t believe me? Think I’m fooling myself or saying one thing when secretly I mean another? Nope. For me writing is not a numbers game. Writing is Love. My stories are my gifts, a way to share the love inside of me with friends. Indie Publishing for me is a way to share on a grand scale with friends who I’ve never met.

SUCCESS!!!!

So how do I define whether I’m a successful Writer or not? By sales figures on Amazon.com? No! I haven’t checked my sales numbers in ages. I measure my success as a Writer by the fact that I wrote a book I am proud of, had an editor give it the once-over so I could make it better, had a designer friend make an awesome cover, and put it up for sale. That in and of itself is success. I also consider myself successful as a writer because a couple of people, in person and online, have said they really enjoyed my story. Bliss!

And that’s it. No, seriously. I don’t think that a pile of money or being recognized on the street could make me feel any more successful than I do. I know you don’t believe me, but that’s part of my point: Every individual’s standard and definition of success is different. And it is imperative that we all respect those different goals and not look down on someone because they haven’t achieved our definition of success.

The same is true for work. Please forgive me any of my coworkers who may be reading this, but the other day when you guys were talking about how badly you wanted to be named “director” or “senior coordinator” or “vice president” I was hunkered in my cube giggling. I don’t understand the fascination with titles. I don’t care what you call me as long as I get my work done and as long as my boss notices my efforts and appreciates them. I consider myself successful at my job because I accomplish so much on a daily basis. I feel pride in that accomplishment. I like coming to work and tackling my to-do list because it makes me feel good to know at the end of the day that I have done well. Do I have a title? No. Do I have a fancy corner office? No. Does my boss appreciate my efforts and has she shown this in concrete ways? Yes. I am a success at work.

How about life?

Okay, I was raised in a small, insular society that I like to refer to as Pleasantville. (If you haven’t seen Pleasantville with Toby McGuire and Reese Witherspoon then go out and rent it!) I kid you not, the standard measure of success as a woman in this society is marriage and children. Am I married? No. Do I have children? No. Do I have so much as a romantic blip on my radar? No. (Do I have time for a romantic blip on my radar? Hell no!) So am I a failure at life? NO!

I am successful at life. Why? Because I’m happy. I love my life. I love my job, my Writing, the friends I’ve made online and in the real world. I love writing a blog post every day. Each comment makes me smile. I’m a success at life because I make people smile.

This tiny person would grow up to be a SUCCESS!

You know what makes me feel like the biggest success the world has ever known? When somebody says the following phrase to me: “I’m so glad you’re here!” Whether it’s uttered when I show up at a cricket match just in time and have a scorebook shoved into my arms as a game is about to start, or whether it’s when I get invited to a special family birthday dinner when I’m not that person’s family, or whether it’s when I start a new job and show that I can do what needs to be done … that’s when I feel like a bucket of WIN.

But you know what was the moment of my life when I felt like the biggest success ever? It was as I stood by the side of my Mom’s grave on a chilly April afternoon as my brothers and uncle lowered her coffin into the ground. In that moment I knew grief so profound, sadness so deep, that nothing would ever be the same. I felt as old as the ground under my feet. I felt time collapse into that moment of transformation. There was no one to catch me if I fell anymore.

And life went on.

I consider myself successful because I have gone through the worst life has to offer … and I’m still happy. I am a success because I strive every day to take the legacy of pain and uncertainty that my Mom left me with and to make something beautiful out of it. If you happen to buy my book I hope you notice the dedication: “For Mom. You always told me to dream my dreams and reach for the stars. I did. I always will.” Right there. That is my manifesto for success. Every last word of it. That is why I succeed.

So think about it. Do you define success by the number of books you’ve sold? By the money your stories make? Is that why you write? Are titles at work and six-figure paychecks synonymous with happiness in your world? Do you judge your own self-importance by the number of Friends you have on Facebook or the number of people who do what you say when you tell them to? Is your ability to carry on in the face of tragedy something you are proud of? When your time is up will you be satisfied if you leave a legacy of wealth and fame to your heirs or if you pack a church at your funeral or if you have one stalwart friend holding your hand as you move on?

There are so many ways to answer that question. Once you’ve answered it for yourself take a deep breath and ask if you are holding others to your standard of success in spite of what they might want. Are you looking down on anyone because they aren’t the person you want them to be? The time has come to get over that way of judging and to help others achieve success on their terms.

No Kidding

Oct12

I have a big paradox in my life. It blows the minds of a couple of people I know. I love children to pieces … but I have no desire whatsoever to have any of my own. Nope, no kids for me. I’m very happy with other people’s kids, thank you very much!

Of course I didn’t always feel this way. When I was a young and impressionable teenager I was convinced that I wanted a large family, eight kids at least. I came from a small family, my mom, my brother, and me. I was always fascinated and enamored with huge families, like my cousin’s. My cousin Chris was my age and the oldest of eight children. I loved hanging out at his house, although even then the chaos got to me after a bit.

When I entered my twenties I had a more realistic view of family and childbearing. I also didn’t have a single romantic interest anywhere on my radar. Oh, sure, I was the queen of unrequited crushes, but no one ever returned that affection. So I got a little more realistic. Five kids would be fine. Granted, I didn’t have much experience of taking care of kids. I befriended a wonderful family that again had eight kids and just adored hanging out with them, though most of the kids were in their teens and early twenties at that point with one surprise baby eight years younger than the youngest.

As my thirties dawned I realized the biological clock was ticking, and since I still didn’t have a single nibble in the romance department, at least not one that lasted, I conceded that three kids was a much more realistic number. But by that point I was living on my own, I had cats, a job, interests, hobbies, a graduate degree, and a life. Still no boyfriends though. Hmm. This is a problem when it comes to having kids.

There it was. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. Like a time-bomb. I passed the age that my mom was when she had me. No kids, no boyfriend. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. Was life passing me by? Was I failing at it? Uh-oh. I dated a guy for a while who I was crazy about and convinced I was going to marry, but he was terrified at the idea of kids. And then he turned out to be a douche anyhow. And at age 34 I was right back where I started when I was in my twenties, single and childless. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

You’d think that major life decisions are things that happen over a long period of time with years of careful deliberation and thought. You’d think that. But in the summer of my thirty-fifth year, just as I was turning 36 actually, I had a conversation that blew everything I had assumed about life and myself out of the water. It was after midnight at an outdoor restaurant/bar in Toronto. I was on tour with my cricket team. I was deeply engaged in a conversation with an older man who I simply adore. We had spent most of the evening flirting up a storm but by that point I was just talking about things and about my life. I can’t remember the lead-up to the epiphany, but I know I was talking about this feeling of the ticking biological clock and the visceral urge to have children. Very simply he asked me, “And how does that make you feel?”

I stopped. I blinked. I thought about it. The answer came flying at me as clear as day. “It feels like someone is lying to me.” It was not the answer I expected, but there it was. For me the biological imperative of the human female body felt like a massive lie and bill of goods that someone was trying to sell me. The reality was that I wanted nothing to do with it. I had no desire to procreate, or rather to hinge my life and my self-worth around the production of another human life.

Wow.

Maybe if I had met Mr. Right in my early twenties I would have felt differently. No, I’m sure I would have felt differently. I would have had my five children. But life is not a static thing and the desires we have at one point in our journey of life are not the same desires we will have at other points. I’m 37 now. I am set in my ways. I have a full, rich life with hobbies and friends. And cats. I love my one-bedroom apartment and I LOVE sleep. I love the freedom I have to do what I want when I want to do it. These are all very appropriate loves and wants for someone on their way to 40.

So even though the ensuing relationship with that older man turned out to be wild and crazy and rocky, it was very possibly the most wonderful, life-changing relationship of my life. It opened my eyes. It opened doors. And you know what was behind those doors? A whole universe of life-decisions that I hadn’t ever considered. Here I’d been, wrapping myself around the axel because I wasn’t in a relationship and I only had so many child-bearing years left. I was well on my way to considering myself a failure as a woman when BAM!

There is so much more to womanhood than motherhood. Suddenly my whole perception of love and relationships and the timeline of those things has changed. I look forward to finding that special man, but I am quite happy with everything I’m doing in the here-and-now.

But I still do love children. And guess what? Their parents are more than happy to get rid of them sometimes! I adore babysitting my friends’ kids, for free, mind you. It’s a win-win. The parents get a break and I get to play with kids. I teach Sunday school at my church. I have my teenager family who I stay with for days or weeks on end when their parents go out of town. There are kids out there who need friends and mentors. You can love them to pieces without having to share DNA. It’s awesome! I’ve always thought that if I had lived one or two hundred years ago I would have been a governess. Maybe I was in a former life or two. Because that is totally where it’s at!

So here’s my ideal situation. Some day I would love to marry an older man who has children in their late teens or early twenties. I would love to be there for them when they get married and all, and when they have kids of their own I would get to have grandkids! That would be perfect. But I’m not in any hurry. I have so many things to do and so many kid-friends to love first.

Merry Farmer

An Historical Romance