this is a bad idea. let's do it anyway.

Oh, hello August and your intense desire to make me question my existence. I get solemn and even my annoying coworker asks me what is wrong. I'm just trying to tune her out.

Hot Girl Summer had been going quite well. Has been. Is been. *(I am on my phone so the cadence and lengthiness will be different and typos will be rampant.)*

A month ago I sat around the fire with a couple of girlfriends and talked about everything under the sun while drinking everything under the sun while sitting under the moon. It might have been enough for July, to have that comraderie, community, confessional time. It made me look forward to when their husbands are dead and we can live together or side by side as golden girls.

I tried to capture the expansiveness of that soul filling night in a poem but it failed. I was even so present that I didn't know where my phone was and did not take a single photo. The whole fact and feeling of it lives solely in me. And hopefully my gal pals. 

A couple of weeks later I went to the small hippie wedding of a poetry friend where I didn't know any guests when I arrived but made mingling friends with two Pauls and a Jane. One Paul was very cute but very short and asked me to dance for a slow song and everyone was like aww thats so cool you guys danced. We also fast danced together, ate together, spotify dj'd together, chit chatted and and then he left me with just a hug in front of everyone. Was I supposed to chase him down and force my number on him?  Or was it just the two buck chuck fueling the wistful romantic clichés of a wedding? The bride and groom were together because she took the initiative to stalk him down after their initial meeting. 

I had Paul's last name (Jane was a good wing woman) so I stalked him on facebook to verify what I had heard. 33, a former touring punk band member, came home to start over as an IT student. Also apparently fairly Christian.  I probably used the lords name in vain as I am wont to do .

I held off on reaching out because that night ended with me phone chatting with my latest okcupid match Andrew for almost three hours and we had a date set for the next weekend and I wanted to avoid a love triangle. I also wanted to give a few days to see if Paul asked about *me.* 

Andrew is cute, days away from turning 37, also lives with his parents and tries to pull the "care taking" card even though they are always yelling at him in the background.  He's divorced but has a good job history and the only legal hiccups were around the divorce. He doesn't drink and drive so instead of him coming to my town for our date, I went to him.

This was a bad idea.

He really had no excuse for starting to drink Saturday afternoon. They hazily wound from his sister being in town, to us not having a firm enough plan, to being nervous about meeting me. While I was disappointed I didn't let him cancel and flipped it to me picking up what I thought was going to be a slightly buzzed man but turned out to be one HAMMERED motherfucker by the time I picked him up.

We attempted to go to Texas Roadhouse but they were out of rolls so I led him out of there before poor Joey could ever come back for our order. We went to the movies instead where I had to help him get his credit card in the slot and told him to "Stay" when I went to the bathroom. The teenagers working might have thought I was a good person for taking my handicapped brother out for the evening.

You'd think he would have been sober after a 2 hour movie and he was better but not 100%. He got a bit better after some George Webbs. 

He's incredulous that I'm still talking to him. I don't know, he's cute and humble, kinda funny. Says sorry all the time, so likely damaged.  I told him I'll give him another chance to show up here sober but if he's always sloppy,  I'll take the hint. 

And I added Paul on Facebook.  He messaged me "hey Cindy!" and I messaged back "hey Paul!" That was two days ago. Our connection might have just been under the influence of wine t. He's damaged in his own way: covid killed his dream and now he's living with his parents and starting over. 

IT'S LIKE I HAVE A TYPE. and my type is a version of myself. 

So all this and some other stuff is going on and its like all of a sudden I am thinking, *wait, have I been hot all along?* which is kind of fucking with me because I am also at my heaviest weight ever. I don't really think I'm hot but I'm starting to realize things such as I do not only exist through my perception.  

But on the flip side of things, I'm also feeling like shit. I have no lung capacity, I am out of shape and am embarrassingly out of breath when I walk up the stairs at work. I keep trying to convince myself to do the bare minimum. A walk around the block. Maybe even just to the corner and back. But its so hot. So humid. And I am one easily sweaty lady. I have been eating like a toddler. My desire to not do dishes has me hitting the drive thru or eating easy foods like grilled cheese and air fryer chicken nuggets on paper plates. Decent halfway healthy foods require planning and heat and dirtying all the dishes then leaving them sit until a work from home day. I am sick of summer hours. Spending three months going to work an hour early every day just so I can have off on Friday afternoons wherein I mostly nap out of exhaustion? Boo. 

A fall/winter boyfriend might do me some good. Get me out and moving around, a little sexercise, a reason to clean up, someone to cook for who might help me with dishes. Adderall might have the same effect if the end of October would ever frickin get here.

The gist is that I am uncomfortable but nothing new there.