A book elegantly bound

I've spent a good deal of time tonight reading folk tales from France and Germany. Germans are apparently much blood-thirstier than the French. But you want to know the real conclusion I have come to?? I'm a fairy tale nerd. There are all sorts of nerds in this world... Here's visual proof- There are Star Trek nerds, Star Wars Nerds, video game nerds, computer nerds, science fiction nerds, music nerds, Japanese nerds, ect. And I am a fantasy/fairy tale nerd. I love them. I get excited by adaptations of them, I find the differences in them in regards to culture fascinating. I just think they are great.

Went to dinner tonight with Katie and our waiter was totally cute. The problem is that, as a patron of a restaurant, there is no way to know if a waiter is making a lot of eye contact with you and smiling because he thinks you are cute, too, or if he is doing that to get a good tip, and then he meets up with his girlfriend after work and laughs about all the ladies whom he got good smile-tips from... (I left him a standard sized tip, to avoid becoming one of these ladies.) Or worse! His girlfriend is the hostess and sends all the parties of only girls to his section. That's totally brilliant and evil at the same time. Well played, possible girlfriend/evil mastermind. Well played. But I did check his finger and there wasn't a ring, so I don't feel bad about saying he was cute.

Not sure about if the Starbucks drive-through guy is married or not... so I'll just not talk about him.

P.S. If anyone tells you that I don't have a physical type, they are horrendous liars. Luckily, for all the men-folk out there, I stray from it when given enough incentive. ;)

Honestly all of this cute boy talk is just a smokescreen. I've had such a rough/emotional week that I've started taking it personally... All of it. I've cried more in the past week than I have in a month. And I dont even know where it's all coming from... but it's certainly welling up. It's so much easier from the safety inside a happy marriage to think that dating is easy... that there are thousands of people out there who are/would be interested in you if only you were single. That you would be snatched up in an instant if you were single... but when push comes to shove... those people aren't real, and you find yourself alone and hurting and as confused as all get-out, cause somehow in the course of your marriage your husband managed to convince you that he was the luckiest guy in the world because you chose him... but now no one seems to want to be the luckiest guy... and you don't know why. And you start believing that your fairy tale has run it's course and you are gonna turn into the eccentric old lady who lives in a shoe, decorates the tree in her yard with broken mirror shards, and travels the world to avoid remembering that she's alone.

Now, I'm far more likely to turn to cynicism than desperation... I'm not likely to accept a proposition from the type of guy who would offer a proposition... but I don't really want to turn to cynicism either... I've said it a million times and I still really believe it. I don't *need* someone... I'm capable of living my life as it is. I'm capable of just being the cool aunt to my sister's and my friends' children. I'm capable of doing all the driving and the phone calling and the decision making. But I want more than that... I want to be the not-quite-so-cool mom. I want to have a family to take care of. I want to have a partner in life, again. I just don't know how to get that... cause I'm a girl and not super forward unless I'm at a breaking point and just trying to move on... I mean Nathan and I just sorta fell together.... and I don't know how that could happen again... Lightning not striking twice and all that.

I'm sorry. I try so very hard to be Pollyanna. I try so hard to look for the bright side- to focus on the positive... but I don't know what it is about this week... I just feel like I have so little to give and so much sadness stirring up inside me and nowhere to go with it. I feel like I have to fix something inside me that's irrevocably broken before someone else could love me as more than a friend or sister... or like I have to change who I am for someone to find me attractive and I don't know that I'm willing (or even able) to do that.

I have so much love and laughter and care and passion and fun and joy to share. And cheesy-ness... I have lots of cliches and cheesy-ness to share, too, as you may have noticed. It's like Death Cab says-- I'm "like a book elegantly bound but in a language [they] can't read."