Chivalry is not dead yet...or is it?

I specifically remember when I was a teenager, my dad saying "Always let the guy open the door for you, that's what he is supposed to do, you step back and let him open the door." I remember thinking like most teenage girls did of their fathers, that he was old fashioned at the time. It's funny because boy do I notice it if a man doesn't open doors.
I am pretty sure every girl loves to be treated like a princess whether she admits it or not. To an extent of course, I don't need a man doing every little thing for me. No girl wants a doormat, a guy who does every little thing for her and a "Whatever you want dear!" with no opinions of his own.
I am perfectly capable of climbing up a ladder and hanging my Christmas lights or putting stuff in the attic, or mowing a lawn. Or lugging groceries in the house. Or even using a level and a power drill (which my friend Cara taught me how to use! GIRL POWER!) hanging a picture on the wall.

I was at a book store one time and I held the door for the people coming out behind me and one right after another people just kept going through without a) saying thank you or b) taking the door from me. After about the fourth guy that walked through, I thought this is redunkulous! So I slowly let go of the door. What happened? It slammed (all solid 75 or so pounds of hardwood) BAM right into a guys forehead! I felt horrible, but at the same time I kinda felt like, that's what you get, dude for letting a girl hold the door open for you and all of your friends...
I was on a date one time where the guy held my car door open as I was getting into the car. Right next to us there was a younger couple in their early twenties or so, and the girl looks at her boyfriend and says "Awww!!" and she looked sad that he wasn't doing the same for her. The guy looks at us, gave a little eye roll and laughed and walked over to her door and opened it for her too. She smiled all big and we laughed. It was funny how my dates chivalry inspired them. It should be like that every time, at every age right? I cook, I clean, I do dishes, I grocery shop, I fold laundry...so sometimes it's nice to be treated like royalty every now and again, and not like everyone personal assistant. Even if it's just to be dropped off at the door of the store to skip having to get rained on, or simply just having a man help me put on my coat. It is the little things that us ladies notice. Even a full on feminist would enjoy a door being held open for her. She might never admit it, but she does. I think it's the least men can do, after all the PMS and child birthing pain we have. Not to mention menopause. Guys, just think of it this way, every door you open for us is one less head we bite off less snippy comment or look of death from us. It's a two way street. At least in my book. I can be super cranky and when a man or "my man" does something as simple as lifting something heavy for me or even something as banal as just taking my plate to the sink for me, it slowly makes me feel appreciated. If I was ever in any bit of an "icy" mood, those little things slowly chip away that iciness. When guys do little things like that for us it makes us want to do more for them...it's a win. What do you girls think? Agree? Disagree? I want to know!?!?Comment away!

Intuition...

Intuition is a funny thing. I think it's something that appears strongly after one has kids. Mothers intuition. Mine has failed me a few times, but for the most part when I went with my gut feelings even when there was no medical evidence to support my initial feeling and then later my gut feeling proved to be right. If I could only give my dating life intuition the same attention as my mothers intuition. I mean take my date last week. Why did it take me telling my friend all the gory details of said dudes personality and once I said all of the things I was concerned about out loud realized that dude was not my type, kind of obnoxious, kind of rude, kind of perverted. And why oh why did I think I owed it to him to meet him and make sure in person that maybe there was one sliver of a chance that he wasn't the initial jerk I thought he might have been. I went. I was insulted more then once in the first 15 minutes, and if you know me, you know that I do not get offended easily. I couldn't have wrote that Dear John letter soon enough. In the past I might have dated the jerk for a while before coming to the realization that he was too much of a jerk and not enough nice guy, all the while making excuses for his behavior. But not anymore. Now it's just not worth my time. Right now the only thing that is worth my time, is my boys and my yoga practice. Speaking of which gotta go study, got a full day of YOGASTEPS Dristi tomorrow.

Namaste and

I wish for you a lifetime full of correct on the spot right on intuition that you don't ever ignore!!

How are people meeting these days???

I won't do it. I refuse to get on an online dating site again. NEVER! Cross my heart hope to die, meet a man before I cry. I have had lots of dates from the internet, but in all truthfulness, in the past 8 years I have had in the very least 30 dates a year and in all 8 year combined, I have had a whole less then 10 dates that were from plain old meeting in person, friend of a friend etc...So if I refuse to meet a man on a dating website, and I rarely go out to bars, lately it's been like maybe once a week(which is way more than normal), and that's to the same old haunt and really what are the chances of meeting my future husband in a bar?? At the risk of not sounding desperate, HELP!!! How are people meeting these days?? Everyone at my church is married, at the gym all the guys have head phones in, and even when I make eye contact I don't get that feeling back...guys want to work out, not get oogled in the gym right? I've been told some guys can be very imtimidated and that they won't approach a a pretty woman...but come on!! What's a girl to do? I've been told the old adage "Once you stop looking you will find him." So I am stopping. Except at the gym. And church. That's it. Promise. Cross my heart hope to die, kiss me kiss me, before I cry. Thoughts? Suggestions?Love?

Gavin

My baby. Sweet little thing. He has a story. A HUGE story. Where oh where to begin?? He has his own website. He doesn't even know anything about it. LOL. I was given the website by Vanderbilt Children's Hospital as a means of keeping our family and friends in the loop on what was going on with Gavin in his treatments. It was awesome, and I used it. Everyday I would write in the online journal. It kept me sane. I wrote all my innermost thoughts on there. Here is the link if you feel so inclined to read about what a mom deals with when her son is sick.A lot. Keep in mind that the website was way before there was Facebook and cool blogs like this one. If you don't feel like going there I will do a recap.

Gavin was born a normal healthy baby boy on April 7, 2001. We did not know anything was wrong with him until he was 6 months old. He caught a virus, but his condition (Cardiomyopathy) could have been caused by a virus or he could have been born with it, and it just took 6 months to show up. I took him to the Pediatrician three weeks in a row, and they kept saying nothing was wrong. 2ND week, they said he had a virus, nothing to do but give him Tylenol, one week and a whole bottle of Tylenol later, we were back at the Doctors, this time they did an X-ray and sent us to Vanderbilt. We were told that night, that he had Dilated Cardiomyopathy (which means enlarged heart)and that his heart was the size of a 17 year old males! We were also told he could need a heart transplant. They said they would give him drugs to hopefully shrink his heart. Eleven days later he was put on the heart transplant list. The medicines made him feel better, and his heart had not got any bigger, but had not gotten any smaller either. Nine days later he got a heart! Ten days later we were sent home, the day before Thanksgiving. He has done well after his transplant, only hospitalized twice for flu (just to make sure there was no rejection) and for routine tests, biopsies etc... He was doing fine until May 2004.He had been complaining of his belly hurting for a while, but it was never enough for him to want to take anything for it, or to lay down. We took him to the Doctor, first time they could not find anything wrong, second time, he was pale and dehydrated, so they sent us to Vanderbilt Children's hospital. After Cat scans, and ultrasounds and a lapropscopic (sp?) surgery and a myriad of tests he was diagnosed with Burkitt's Lymphoma. It is caused by the drugs he was taking to keep his body from rejecting the heart. There are only 4 or 5 different kinds of medicines he can take and they all cause cancer.

In 2006 Gavin was in pre-k and excelling well and loving it. All of the sudden we noticed his little nose started point up on the end. He looked like little Cindy Lou Hou from The Grinch who stole Christmas. I would touch it and squish it, and he would say " Mom stop it doesn't hurt" but I knew there was something wrong, it felt spongy. Not like normal cartilage of a nose should feel. We called the doctor and they sent us to a Ear Nose and Throat specialist. He did all sorts of tests and said yes it was our worst fear. CANCER. A fast growing cancerous tissue. The closest name to it they could come up with was Large diffuse B cell Lymphoma.

When Gavin was about to go into surgery, I asked him if he knew what they were going to do. He said" They are gonna go in there and get the Kleenex out!" I said "You put a Kleenex up your nose?" and he said "No! You said I had a fast growing tissue!" Out of the mouth of babes.

They did a biopsy and went in under his lip (from inside his mouth, there was no scarring visible from the outside) and scraped out as much as they could. Since they would have no way of knowing if they got all of the cancerous cells ,we still had to do chemo. Gavin had about six months of out patient chemo, which was way easier then the first round of cancer. He had a port put in (which is also called a central line, a more permanent IV for kids who are going to need lots of blood drawn and chemo etc..It keeps them from having to keep getting stuck with needles.) and we would go to Vandy once a week and they would hook him up to chemo, and he would get a infusion of chemo and then we would go home. Gavin was such a flirt, he would flirt with the nurses, and he really didn't have to much after affects. His hair thinned a tiny bit, and the doctors said he was not allowed to go to school, just so he wouldn't catch more illnesses.

Gavin always will get sicker easier then the rest of us. He also keeps the illness a lot longer then us. Has has had Pneumonia almost every winter since his heart transplant. Twice he was on a ventilator from complications to Pneumonia. Last February was one of the first that he did not get Pneumonia.

As one could imagine having a child that has had a heart transplant, and cancer twice, pneumonia too many times to count, it takes it toll. I live in a fear that every time Gavin gets a fever, that its his body is rejecting the heart. In fact we have to call Cardiology every time he gets a fever higher then 100.2. Sometimes I feel like we are sitting in a ticking time bomb just waiting the hear the bomb explode again, "Your son has cancer, or pneumonia, or fill in the blanks." I have an older son Jonah that has never broken a bone, I think maybe had blood drawn a whole 3 times in his life. Gavin has been stuck with more needles than you can imagine. When he first came home from the transplant, he had to get blood drawn twice a week, to check for levels. Until he was a year, they would draw blood out of a vein in his head! This is a normal procedure, hard to see, which is why they would not let parents be in the room when they did this. When he hit one year, they would draw the blood out of his legs or arms. It wasn't unheard of for them to try 5 or 6 times before they found a vein. Chemo shrinks your veins, and the poor baby barely ever cries now when he has to get blood drawn.

For now Gavin is healthy. He has to have a heart cath on June 15th 2010. Which it is considered "routine" but when they are taking a piece of your child's heart out, its never routine!

If you are interested in reading more about Gavin, I journaled almost daily while he was in the hospital, it was my sanity, there was lots of pictures posted and day by day updates.http://home.gofetch.org/home/gavinblack

The quest to find my Mr. Bad-Boy-Nice-Guy....does he even exist?

I don't get men. Boys. Whatever they are...They say they are looking for Ms. Right. But then they email me with shallow I only wanna get laid things like and I kid you not in a second email (and the first being nothing but "Beautiful") was -"What are you doing tomorrow, you me, your house, bottle of wine and the NCAA tourney!" Really???? WTH?? That's what frigging sports bars are for, smart one.


Or the "I just wanna snuggle" guy. Yeah sure. You just wanna snuggle. Uh huh. I believe ya.

Then there is the "I have way too many girls on my Facebook bad boy", who likes me, but just not enough. And deep down I know he is too much of a bad boy, not enough nice guy in him. If there was enough nice guy in him, he wouldn't have answered his phone and texted people (and by "people" we know its women who he still keeps in the running’s ) in the first 15 minutes of our second date.

I know there is no such thing as the perfect man. But really I only have a list of about ten things. About five of those ten things, are non-negotiable. Like No drugs, no prior jail time, no history of violence. You know the usual, decent hygiene, belief in God, yada yada. The rest are things I can, will and have dated outside of my” usual" preferences, knowing that men aren’t perfect. Like dating men who are 5 foot 10, or just too close to the under 6 foot mark. Yikes. Or bald. Double yikes. Not that I have anything against the follically challenged or vertically challenged (going all pc on ya) Or who wear Rustler jeans on a regular basis. I didn't know they still make those. I think all school bullies wore those. I am not a snob. Really. I just know what I like. He doesn't have to wear Tru Religion jeans or anything and as a side note, I refuse to date any man who wears Affliction, Ed Hardy or anything of that sort...because we all know Jon Gosselin started that douche-wearing- style.No thanks.

Enough about fashion and back to the nice guy. He's awesome. Been a bachelor for way to long, but still knows how to treat a woman. Could use a little tune up in the beard/hair/wardrobe, but nothing that a shopping trip or barber couldn't’t fix. In the words of my mother, when she showed me picture of a man she wanted to date a man who had a molest-stache (thanks Robert!) or the TomSelleck Stache and I quote my mom: "But that can be removed!" in a super happy voice. Speaking of removing the molest-stache, I actually had a man shave his molest-stache for me. I didn't ask him too, and he didn't even get a date. Poor man. Back to Nice guy.  I have dated enough losers to know that this guy might be worth hanging in there for. I guess the whole he had been single for so long kinda scared me away. But with a little help from a friend and pink roses :-) i did it...I took the plunge and we've been together for 3 months now...It took me 3 months to edit and publish this post! Geeze! I am a happy woman, happy to be done dating losers.