If you weren’t able to pick up last week’s Chicago Tribune Sunday magazine, don’t worry. Single dad dating: How to date while still being a good dad is available online and has been picked up by newspapers across the country.
Do you have any advice for single, dating dads?
It’s been much too long since I last blogged. A lot has been going on; some wonderful, some not so wonderful.
I always ask to hear the bad news first. (Why? I don’t know. Especially since I then become preoccupied and tend not to hear the good news). But I’m a creature of habit so here goes: A few weeks ago my long-term boyfriend, Jon, had a serious fall rupturing the tendons that connect the quadriceps to the knees, on both legs. Ouch. I know. After surgery and rehab he’s now back home, but the focus of life for him, and consequently, in a much, much, much lesser extent, me, has been altered.
Both of Jon’s legs are locked securely in braces and can bend only 40 degrees (that’s up a whopping 10 percent as of our post-op visit to the surgeon this week). This of course means lots of things; notably, he won’t be dancing at my daughter’s wedding in August.
But it also means, according to the surgeon, that by the day of the festivities he should be able to participate as much as possible. He’s a trooper and an athlete so he’s already pushing through. And that’s the wonderful part. The wedding! It’s progressing nicely, though not without the normal kinks – the caterer’s representative has gotten a promotion and is suddenly not so available, the manager of the hotel where our out-of- town guests will stay and who had promised the world, stopped answering my emails. Yep, she’s gone. But, hey, the new guy seems very nice.
But I love the calligrapher, the florist, and most importantly, and unequivocally, the groom! So no complaints.
What I have learned in this crazy season of wedding planning is that it is so easy to lose perspective. To get bogged down with the details, the unnecessary worries. Is it going to rain? Does this purple match the invitation? And if I keep doing that, I’ll end up looking back on this period with regret. This should be FUN. So, screw the twists and turns and the unexpected changes.
It’s a wonderful time after all.
Besides, even with two strong legs, Jon ain’t much of a dancer.
She impressed me even then. Twenty-two-years-old and fresh out of Yale, Marie Colvin came to me looking for her first journalism job. As New Jersey state editor for United Press International, I hired her on the spot. I knew greatness when I saw it.
Marie, who served as a war correspondent for The Sunday Times of London, was killed yesterday during a shelling of the Syrian city of Homs, possibly the most dangerous place on earth right now. She was 56. The besieged citizens of Homs had cheered her arrival and that of photojournalist, Remi Ochlik, hoping that their horrific stories would finally appear on the world stage. Sadly, Ochlik was also killed.
No stranger to danger and seemingly having little fear, Marie was recognizable for the eye patch she wore. She had been covering the atrocities in Sri Lanka when in 2001 a grenade attack took out her left eye. Even an injury such as this did not deter Marie from her mission to report on the “real” events, no matter how dangerous. Many of the comments I’ve read online about her death say when one puts oneself in harm’s way like this, one has to accept the consequences. No one forced her to go into a war zone, they say, as if somehow this makes her death and others like hers, more acceptable.
I wish I could feel that way, too, but instead I keep picturing this beautiful, brilliant young woman sitting at the computer in our small bureau tucked inside the Trenton Times building.
She often worked the 6:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. shift at UPI and always greeted me with a smile. No hour was too early for her, no story too dull or too difficult. I knew I could always count on Marie to handle everything assigned to her with professionalism and enthusiasm.
All journalists survive on caffeine and Marie was no exception. She was so dependent on coffee that the first thing she did every morning was fill a king size mug of coffee and take it into the shower with her.
She was laid back, acting calm under wire service deadlines and breaking news and bringing serenity to a frenetic newsroom. Even her personal life had a peaceful quality to it. She’d tell me stories about her large family with whom she was so close. Working one Christmas Eve day I asked her if she had finished her Christmas shopping. “I haven’t started yet,” she replied. “Marie, you get off at 3:30, have to catch a train to New York and the stores close at 6 p.m., how will you get it done? It’s not possible!” In her usual modest, self-assured manner, she told me, “I will.”
The next day I saw her at work and asked how many gifts she had managed to buy before the stores closed. “All of them,” she told me. “There was never any doubt.”
The truth is I had no doubt either.
In a world that values knowledge, awareness and a free press, we have lost one of the very best. My deepest sympathies go out to her family.
It’s Valentine’s Day and if you’re a man it’s the one day all year you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Forget to send flowers and she’ll think you’re not romantic. Send them and she’ll wonder why they aren’t a dozen long stem roses.
Buy a box of candy and she’ll find the receipt. You know, the one that also lists shaving cream and deodorant. Don’t buy candy and she’ll think you’re hinting that she needs to go on a diet.
Chose a card because you like the picture and she’ll be disappointed in the sentiment. Is it for the “Love of my Life” or “My Special Someone” or so generic she’ll wonder if you meant to give it to your elderly neighbor.
Ignore her requests for you to do nothing as in NOT A THING on this holiday and well, lots of luck tomorrow.
Like I said, damned if you do and damned if you don’t. So how can I help? By suggesting that you do whatever it takes to show her she is the most important person in your life. Hopefully, you know her well enough to know what that means. Do that, and then some more.
Besides finding the appropriate gift; definitely think sexy lingerie, a cashmere sweater or jewelry (she can tell her friends and coworkers about these or better yet show them), this holiday also demands a meal, one for which you’re responsible. Is there a romantic dinner for two planned for tonight or for this weekend? Is there a wonderful home cooked meal (by you, of course) with candles, wine and a decadent dessert? Or are you coming in from work, dropping the grocery store bouquet of flowers on the kitchen counter and saying, “What’s for dinner?” Uh. Not tonight.
So if you’re reading this blog at your desk and thinking you have plenty of time to take care of Valentine’s Day, please step away from the computer. The Hallmark store already has a line, the flower shop is running out of roses and pretty soon Burger King will be the only place left that doesn’t require a reservation.
I wish you a very Happy Valentine’s Day, and good luck!
I have a pet peeve that apparently annoys no one but me. It has to do with the amount of space people leave between them and the person in line in front of them. Inside the bank, the post office or the Dunkin Donuts, the guy in front of me always seems to stand a good six feet behind the customer who is currently being waited on. It’s as if he is fearful of eavesdropping on a confession. Right, I tell the coffee shop cashier my deepest secrets. Don’t you?
“Move UP!” I want to scream. “He’s ordering a large coffee with cream and one sugar, not planning a hostile takeover!”
For years I have observed only men doing this. Women appear much more comfortable cozying up to the stranger standing in front or behind them. A couple of feet of space is more than enough. They don’t act like the male customers at CVS, for example, who allow so much wasted space between them and the person at the counter that I could push four shopping carts – ear to ear – through the space. And this reminds me. I really hate when this happens and I invariably get pushed back down an aisle, where I find myself staring at on-sale Christmas candy. Come on. You know I’m weak.
But lately, I have found that women have begun developing the same habit, backing off from the person in line in front of them, as though they forgot to bathe. Frequently, they are so preoccupied texting or talking on their cell phones that they are completely oblivious to the cavernous spaces they create.
Does anyone else see the irony in all of this? With social media, cell phones, and cameras on every inanimate and animate object, we already have zero privacy. So why do we suddenly feel the need to create a force field around us when we are actually WITH other human beings.
We hold onto our little personal acreage like squatters, forcing the person behind the counter to yell across the room, “Can I help the next in line?”
I hate this part, too. I don’t want to yell from my otherworldly location, “Make that a double caramel latte with vanilla and non-fat.” Whose business is it to judge me on my breakfast drink? Hah, a double caramel latte with syrup and she bothers with skim milk! I can actually hear the snickers.
Well, I would, if I weren’t standing so far away.
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