Car-mically Speaking

Some time ago, I accepted that I have very bad karma in three areas: cars, computers and travel.  (The latter concerns going to and from places and should be distinguished from my fabulous vacation karma – once I get there, I’m golden.)  My computer karma is so bad that one of my colleagues, something of a computer expert, refuses to let me in his office for fear of what my being in breathing range of his computer would do to it.  Lately, however, it’s been my car karma that’s been trying to get me.

My car has needed a lot, recently, ranging from the expected (new tires, new batteries), to the less expected (new catalytic converter, new brakes, new sensors), and as I currently have a leak in my radiator which must be seen to in the very near future, the fun isn’t over.  So when I discovered that one of  those fairly new tires was flat this past weekend, it was a bit more annoying than it might usually have been.  Add to that that the guy from roadside service sent to change it couldn’t find some particular tool he needed (apparently it should live in my car but didn’t appear to be in residence at the moment), so he couldn’t help me, meaning that I then had to have it towed to a tire store … well, you get the picture.  I was fantasizing about living a car-free life again, the way I had in NYC.  Mind you, I live in DC, not NYC, where friends are scattered well beyond the range of the metro system, and where the grocery store, liquor store, and the theatre where I act are all too far away to walk.  Snapped back to reality, I was headed home with my new tire when I noticed a small metal piece in the center console.  Now I know little about cars, but I had no doubt that this was the piece the roadside service guy had needed.   What could I do but burst into laughter?

Later, I told my father about the tire and he asked, “Well, what would a new one cost?”  “A tire?”  “No,” he said, “a car”.  I stated that I don’t think a flat tire is a reason to replace a car.  He noted that the car is 12 years old and has needed a lot of work in recent months, which is certainly true, but, as I pointed out, it has relatively low mileage.  And then I realized why this conversation struck me as so silly.  This is the same man who, when I suggested that if he replaced his twenty-plus year-old mattress he might have less back pain and sleep better, he exclaimed, “You don’t throw out something just because it’s old and not perfect!  Are you going to throw me out, next?”  Again, I had to laugh.

Now I’m wondering if perhaps I haven’t found the answer.  No, I don’t expect my karma to magickally improve.  That radiator is still leaking and yesterday, the console cover broke when I opened it to pull the gas lever.  There’s no reason to assume that I won’t again spend 24 hours in an airport hotel while the airline brings another plane over from Ireland, or that the airlines will suddenly take me off the list of people whose luggage must always be lost.  What is happening, though, is that these things don’t annoy me the way they used to.  I’ve spent a lot of time laughing about the car.  I used the 24 hour layover to catch up on sleep and I’ve learned how to fly without checking bags.  Or I take the train.  So the question is, does it count as really bad karma if it’s not upsetting you?  And even if it does, do we gain good karma by dealing calmly with the bad karma?  And finally, what did I ever do to computers to make them hate me?

We Once Were Friends

This week, I "unfriended" someone on Facebook.  I'd never done that before.

As I would assume is the case for most people, I have an odd assortment of Facebook "friends".  Many are people who are dear friends in real life.  Some were close friends once but are now more like cherished acquaintances, and still others are people I barely remember but who, for whatever reason, wanted to stay in touch with me in this way.  I rarely refuse a friend request - only those from people I don't know at all, or those from clients are ignored.  I also rarely make a friend request.  As a result, I have good friends with whom I am in contact day-to-day but aren't Facebook friends and people I wouldn't recognize if we came face-to-face who are.  

This week I made the decision to eliminate someone from my life.

We used to be good pals.  We had each over for dinner, always went to each other's parties,  saw each other in plays, and got together for drinks or lunch regularly.  When she moved to Los Angeles, I made a point of seeing her when I went out there.  When she moved to Houston, I made sure I visited her when I was there to see my sister.  When she moved to Australia, I tried hard (and unsuccessfully) to find an affordable air fare so I could visit her there.  And when I finally got around to signing up for Facebook, she was one of the first to "friend me".  Good friends.

Although I try to pull up Facebook every day or so (mostly to try not to miss birthdays), I miss far more of my friends' posts than I ever manage to read.  So I'd go weeks without reading anything she wrote, but I began to notice other friends' rising discontent with her.  They began to grumble about how right-wing she had become, how intolerant of other views.  They talked about how greedy and bitter she seemed and blamed it on her life as the wife of a wealthy man.  This puzzled me.  She and I had talked for hundreds of hours over the years and I'd never noticed any of this.  She'd adopted a child from Russia and kept her low-paid occupation for a long while after marrying; surely she couldn't have also adopted tea-party values.  Could she?

Then I saw the vitriolic post about a recent Supreme Court decision and I knew she could.  I responded to it, querying with what she disagreed, pointing out various points that will benefit millions.  Her response was sarcastic, insulting, prejudiced and mean-spirited.  I read it twice, then unfriended her.

Ever since, I've felt mildly adrift.  If not for this forum that allows  everyone to voice every thought instantly and express opinions to be read by others before one has time to think them through, I might never have known that she and I have become so politically alienated.  I might have continued to view her as a dear, rarely-seen friend, without realizing that our values are now planets apart.  And though it could be nice, holding onto happy memories without facing new realities, unlike my former friend, I am neither afraid of change nor desirous of ignorance.  I've lost a friend.  One I loved.  But she was gone long before I knew if; Facebook just told me the truth.  Thank you, Facebook.

The Bright Side of Termination

Recently, a friend of mine left a therapy job and thus had to terminate with all her clients.  This reminded me of the last time I endured that and I dug up something I wrote at the time and decided to share it here.

After three and a half years of practicing psychotherapy with the chronically, severely mentally ill, I accepted a position at a military medical center in order to work with a more diverse population.  My first thought was of how this would help advance my career ... then reality hit!

In the mental health field, we describe those clients who have schizophrenia, bipolar I disorder, or the kind of long-term, disabling depression that causes clients to commit suicide as chronically, severely mentally ill.  Today I became aware of the challenges that lay ahead, primarily that of working with possibly higher-functioning clients than those I had been seeing.  But the PRESENT challenge was that my current clients must be "terminated," ending my relationship with each of them.  I was faced with the daunting process of ending not one, but thirty-odd relationships of varying intensities and durations.

Termination is a fact of life in therapy.  All clients terminate and it is, in fact, an important part of the therapeutic process.  One doesn't simply say, "Okay.  You're cured.  Have a nice life."  Instead, termination is a process, one that can take several weeks or even months, depending on the length of the therapy and the attachment the client has formed to the therapist.  Therapists who have the luxury of staying in one job long-term do terminate with all their clients, but they usually do so one at a time.  When a therapist leaves a job, however, he or she suddenly has to end all these relationships at once and the impact can be devastating, and not just for the clients.

A good start on my first day!  I went to the Day Program where our residential clients spend their days, and announced to them all, en masse, that I would be leaving.  (If one tells them individually, one is only able to tell one or two directly; the others will all have heard the news minutes after that first session ends.)  About 10-12 of the clients lined up to hug me and tell me how much they would miss me.  In this group was a woman who wasn't my client, but with whom I had often joked, and there was another woman who had recently joined the program and whom I didn't even know.  These clients are used to loss and they have all had a variety of therapists, so they handled the news well, even through their tears.

By late afternoon, I was feeling as though this wasn't going to be the horror show my therapist friends had painted.  Then Lucy* came in.  Lucy has been suicidal the entire three and a half years we've been working together.  She's never actually attempted suicide, though she's threatened, and I've never actually hospitalized her, though I've threatened.  Her official diagnosis is major depression, recurrent.  In reality, she has traces of a variety of "ills", including PTSD, anxiety, an eating disorder, and traits of four separate personality disorders,  She is a survivor of incest and physical and emotional abuse.  Lucy has trusted very few people in her life, but, slowly, she has come to trust me.  When I mentioned that she must "feel as though" I were abandoning her, she said, "No.  You are abandoning me."  Her sadness took, as I expected it to, the form of extreme anger.  She threatened to set my house on fire.  She wished aloud that I would be physically harmed in my new job so that I would have to return to her.  This was indeed the horror story that I'd heard it was.

And yet, over the next three or four weeks, my clients learned a great deal about themselves, their resiliency and their strength, and they taught me a great deal, too.  One of the tenants of therapy is that the clients never entirely lose a therapist.  They should be able to "feel" the therapist's presence and "hear" what the therapist would say in a given situation, long after the therapy ends.  What I had not realized was that I would carry my clients with me in much the same manner.

The next time I'm feeling as though I'm incapable of making a difference for a client, I'm going  to remember Martin.  Martin has had severe schizophrenia for decades and the medicines don't help him much.  He isn't delusional, that I've ever been able to ascertain, but he spends all his time with his "voices", which makes it impossible for him to focus on reality for more than a few seconds at a time.  When we began working together, at the end o every session, he would walk out of the room, closing the door, and turning out the light.  He wasn't able to retain my image once he was no longer facing me; he "forgot" that there was anyone left in the room.  After several months, he stopped turning out the light.  A victory!  When I told him I was leaving, he looked at me and whispered, "Shame."  Not only did he leave the light on, following our final session he shook my hand and told me he'd miss me.

No matter where I go, I don't think I'll shake the image of Sally, who had her first psychotic break when she was in college.  She is understandably angry at this illness that has stolen, or, at best, delayed many of her dreams, and she tends to take this anger out on those around her.  She challenged me at every turn.  Because she was a residential client, I had the ability to go find her and bring her to her sessions.  But that doesn't mean she came willingly.  She'd often refuse to come to my office; other times she'd spend her entire session facing the wall with a blanket pulled over her head; there were times when she'd spew out vulgarities aimed at me in a barrage of hostility.  Although I actually liked her in many ways, and cared a great deal for her, she also made me feel victimized and helpless more often than not.  I had no idea what to do with her.  I'd like to pretend that all my interventions were well-planned and that they were all designed with maximum therapeutic aid in mind.  They weren't.  I flew by the seat of my pants with her and sometimes, my interventions were as much to help me cope with my anger and frustration at her (my counter-transference) as they were to help her.  When I told her I was leaving, I thought there was the strong possibility that she would cheer.  Instead, she missed her next session.  When I ran into her a few days later, in the program's day-room, she confronted me and told me that she was angry with me for leaving.  This, from a client who is a master of passive-aggressiveness and downright meanness, but who had never, to my knowledge, appropriately confronted anyone with her anger before!  She came to her next session, sobbed the entire time, and talked, in heartbreaking detail, about all the myriad of things she'd gotten out of therapy.  In retrospect, I can see where my training "kicked in",  causing me to do things that actually were helpful for her, but I still feel like I was groping in the dark every step of the way.  The only thing I can take away from this is the belief that a strong degree of caring will be intuited by even the sickest client ... even when the counter-transference is negative.

By the end of my tenure at this program, I was emotionally exhausted and felt like I had nothing left to give to anyone.  So when Lucy came in, my last patient on my last day, I dreaded the session.  She was composed, however.  She told me that she planned to take my recommendation of another therapist since she trusted me to choose wisely for her.  She explained that she was still angry at me, but she understood my need to move on and she wished me well.  When we hugged good-bye, I knew I would miss her for a long time to come.

I've learned that my clients are almost always stronger than I know.  That they have reserves of compassion and empathy that we often don't provide them room to demonstrate; that all the insight and interpretations in the world won't help unless the therapeutic relationship is strong; that these relationships are two-ways streets and the clients usually give as much as they get.

I'm hoping that I stay at this next job for a long, long time, so that I don't have to endure another mass termination anytime soon, but I know that, when it happens, I'll continue to learn from my clients.  And I'll continue to miss them.

*All client names and details of their diagnosis/treatment have been changed.

City of a Thousand Stories

There are a lot of reasons to love life in a big city.  There are even more reasons to love life in the particular big city of New York.  Broadway (and off-), restaurants, sights, shopping ... and I did love them all.  But what I loved most was the constant sense that once I walked out of my front door in the morning, I had no idea what might happen between that moment and when I arrived home that night.

While there are slight variations, I generally know pretty much exactly what my day is going to be like every single day.  I know who I'll see, where I'll go, and what will happen there.  You might think this would make me happy.  But my life is a conundrum.  I'm the least spontaneous person alive.  I loathe spur-of-the-moment.  Yet I hate being bored or feeling like life is predictable.  And in NY, I could have both.  I planned my life out for two weeks.  There was no point in suggesting we get together in a week and a half; that was booked.  There was never an available evening earlier than two weeks hence.  This could, in a different place, make life quite predictable indeed.

In NY, though, from that moment when the front door closes behind you, you are never alone, and that brings with it a constant sense of adventure.  You're not alone walking down the sidewalk, or in the subway, or at the office, or in restaurants.  No one drives (no one except the very rich or the supremely car-addicted), so that "private time" is lost.  Take an empty elevator to your office?  Dream on!  Sit alone at a bar, nursing a drink?  Not happening!  No, you are around people at every moment.  And people are fascinating creatures.

Sometimes, they are fascinating in weird, creepy ways.  For instance, I was perusing the aisle at my local supermarket when a man sidled up to me and stopped, inches away.  This was a definite invasion of my personal space but, as a sophisticated, worldly New Yorker, I wouldn't dream of assuming it was meant that way.  He probably came from a different culture, so I turned to him, questioningly.  Different culture, my ass!  He leaned in another inch and whispered obscenities to me.  It always amazes me how many thoughts can zip through one's mind in the space of a second.  Mine dashed to how I tolerate this from construction workers on a daily basis (never mind all the "Fuck You's" I threw disdainfully over my shoulder at them) to how I would not tolerate it in MY supermarket.  So, calmly, I opened my mouth, let out a bloodcurdling scream, turned, and continued with my shopping.

There were also the lovely encounters.  I picked up a huge box at the post office and before I had time to dread lugging it the six blocks home, a nice guy offered to carry it home for me.  He dropped it with me at my front door, waved, and was gone.  In a similar vein, I spent an hour in a ticket line on my lunch hour and struck up a conversation with the guy behind me in line.  I mentioned that I planned to just grab a hot dog on my way back to work as I hadn't eaten and when I reached the head of the line, he suggested I wait for him and he'd buy me that hot dog.  And then proceeded to take me out to a very nice lunch.  He made not one inappropriate comment or suggestion, just thanked me for my company.

These interactions cause one to both develop good instincts about danger and to be wary, while simultaneously creating a comfort level with strangers.  The query, where to meet people, just never is heard.  One meets people everywhere.  I've gone out with men I met on the subway (a funny Russian guy), in the grocery store line (he was not so memorable), and in the Laundromat (not a keeper, but a nice guy).  There is always the possibility that a new friend - or more - is just around the next corner.

Last, there are the only-in-New-York experiences.  I'd been living there less than a year when one day I found myself being taken to lunch at La Cote Basque by an honest-to-god Russian Count.  Of course, he was on the other side of 90 at the time, but he was elegant, charming and kind.  He saw himself as a goodwill ambassador at my new job, and would always take new people to lunch to welcome them.  Of course, all I could think was, "I grew up with chickens in my backyard and now I'm having lunch with a Russian Count!"  I knew just how Shirley Maclaine felt when she sang "If They Could See Me Now".

I've done an interview for an early cable show, been invited abroad by a Dentist to the Stars whom I'd barely met, and dined in a penthouse apartment on Park Avenue.  I've walked down streets late at night where I feared for my life, and jostled with the crowds on the subway at 2:00 a.m.  I've eaten in the finest restaurants and at the lunch counter at Woolworths.  I've been to private parties at the Metropolitan Museum and in tiny Hell's Kitchen walk-ups.  I've felt every range of emotions known to humans while inhabiting that city of a million stories.  The one thing I never, ever was, was bored.  And the one thing life never was, was predictable.

Standing on my own two feet ... NOT

It started when I began noticing that my feet hurt in some of my shoes.  Not killer hurt,  but hurt.  So I casually mentioned it to my doctor, who, equally casually, diagnosed bunions and told me that surgery was the only cure.  He added that surgery would involve cutting out bone, breaking bones, putting screws in bone, and - worse - would mean 2-3 months of being completely off my feet, so I decided that surgery sounded like a silly idea; after all, I could just use the mind-over-matter approach and my feet would stop hurting, right?  I suppose I should have tried the mind-over-feet approach, as the former didn't work all that well.  Still, I managed to go along for quite a while without feeling the need to do anything drastic.

When I realized that not one single pair of shoes were actually comfortable anymore, not even my sneakers, and only one pair of bedroom slippers caused no pain, surgery stopped sounding so silly.

Naturally, if I were to go ahead and have this surgery, doing one foot at a time made no sense at all.  Okay, it would be nice to have one working foot, I suppose, but it would mean taking twice the time off work, just months apart, and having someone come in and help me not once but twice as one shouldn't really be left on one's own too much while on pain pills.

So I began planning.  A note here to military generals:  If one can successfully plan an operation of this type (pun intended), one can plan anything.  Got an invasion you need organized?  Maybe a take-over of a small country?  Just call me.  I can handle it.

First, the surgery had to be scheduled to suit my doctor, me, my job, my sister (who would come take care of me for a week), my friend who would move in after my sister left and this had to be done within the confines of my podiatrist's scheduling system (come in the month before you want it done and we'll schedule it for the following month ... and so one can't make actual plans until that date is established) - well, you get the picture.

Next, came the peripheries.  How to get my sister and me home from the surgery (she can't drive my car - a stick), how to get us back for re-bandaging several days later, how to get her to the airport to return home....  And the extras.  There was the need to stock up on things like prescription drugs and groceries, to prevent friends having to do much shopping for me.  I spent weeks accumulating enough toilet paper, cat litter and hand soap to fill a pantry.  Once things were in place, I began cooking.  I'd been told that the two things I wouldn't be able to do for myself for several weeks were drive (at least not my car) and cook.  Ergo, the latter had to be done in advance.

The first step was cleaning out the freezer.

After eating - er, eliminating - the majority of the contents, I was free to prepare for surgery.  Weekends became cooking marathons - big pots of this, huge casseroles of that - all packaged neatly and tucked into the corners of what had become a fairly empty freezer.

Ahhh.  All my stresses were over.  Now, all I needed was the pre-op "stuff" and I could curl up on the operating table with a good knock-out drug and emerge with happier feet.

Silly me!  All the pre-op blood work - check.  Good to go.  The pre-op EKG?  Not so much.  Turns out I was having atrial fibrillation, a nasty little disorder that can cause blood clots and resultant strokes.  Anesthesiologists, in particular, do not like to see this, I was told.  A week of beta-blockers later, a second EKG and ... nope.  Still no good.  Three days to surgery and it's a no-go.  The day before surgery, I saw a charming, extremely busy, avuncular cardiologist who fit me in thanks to some pleading from my wonderful primary care doc and got the go-ahead.  Naturally, this emergency dr. visit required me to cancel a couple of my own clients so I then got to go into work the day of surgery to care for them.  What is life without a little last minute stress?

But the day had arrived!  My sister and I drove a borrowed car to the surgery center, where they took me in early (!), taught me to use crutches, and found me the ugliest boots ever,

before hooking me up to wires and drips.

And now I'm a week post-surgery and ecstatic.  I've had no pain, in spite of having ditched the pain pills after the first three days, and I'm reasonably mobile on my crutches, as long as I don't have to go long distances or navigate stairs.  Spending the better part of a week in bed with the cats, my computer and a large stack of books is not an experience to be dissed.  Having one's sister bring food (and, post-pain pills, wine) three times a day is lovely.  Having her around was actually one of the best parts of the whole thing.  Wearing these boots for another month, plus - not so great, but I can handle it.  I have visions of the future to keep me going:

Duke of Jones

Anyone familiar with the stories of Eudora Welty knows that life in small Southern towns is quiet and placid on the outside and filled with drama and fascinating characters underneath.  So it was in the small Southern town from which I hailed.

There were the "normal" people who did - unusual things - such as the wealthy attorney who picked up soda cans from the side of the road so that he could turn them in and finance his next European jaunt, or the other attorney who wore berets to work and listened to bagpipe music all day long.  And there were the eccentrics, such as the man who walked around town, dressed entirely in black and carrying a guitar, going by the moniker "Johnny Cash"; he apparently hadn't figured out that the "original" Johnny Cash was a different race than he was.  And that he lived elsewhere and had made real money.

There were also the people who were simply larger than life.  They would have stood out anywhere, I've no doubt, but in a small, slow-moving town, they became legendary.  Duke was one of these. He didn't actually live in my small hometown - he lived 12 miles away in a much smaller town called Jones.  To put Jones in perspective, I once drove through the state with a close friend of mine from NY.  This friend, who is well aware of my allergy to small Southern towns, kept commenting as we drove through town after town, "I could live here.  You know,if I had a family, and was kind of settled down, I could live here".  When we got to Jones, he looked around and declared, "I couldn't live here."

We were in Jones to visit Duke  - the only reason for anyone who wasn't born there, to stop in Jones. But what a stop it was.  In this tiny backwater, Duke lived in a house which featured mahogany wood panelling in the library, immaculate gardens, and boasted peacocks who met us at the door.  Duke called himself a "country farmer", but he was well-educated, well-travelled, and beyond intelligent.  So my friend and I sat and talked to him about the types of subjects you just knew weren't often discussed in that town, enchanted.  Finally, I said that we had to leave, so Duke rose, took our glasses and walked to the bar.  He handed me another "glass" of wine (plastic cup) and one of beer to my friend.  My friend, flustered, noted that we really did have to go.  Duke looked at him and said, "Yes.  This is a roadie."  He then said, "No one is going to bother you for driving home drinking these, but if they do, just call me."  When we reached the car, my friend's comment was, of course, "I could live here."

Duke was an astute businessman and accumulated significant wealth.  He was also consistently generous, using numerous methods to ensure that the less fortunate citizens of Jones were cared for in many ways, such as buying bicycles for all the children in town.  But he clung to his  simple country farmer persona.  After all, such a persona does allow one to be underestimated, often when it counts.  And between this persona and his disdain for political correctness, he could, did, and enjoyed, ruffling the occasional aristocratic feather.

One of his sons has held prestigious and important jobs with some of the finest art museums in the country.  At a dinner honoring this son, held in Boston, Duke found himself seated by a female donor who was chatty.  She asked him, "Is it true that your son was educated at Oxford?"  "Why yes, ma'am, he was."  "And aren't you a farmer?"  "Yes, ma'am, I am."  "Where do you farm?"  "In Jones, Louisiana."  "Jones, Louisiana?  I've never been there."  His answer:  "They haven't missed you."  Undeterred, she continued, "Sending a son to Oxford must have cost a lot.  How did you afford it?"  Equally undeterred, Duke replied, "Well, ma'am, we had to sell a couple of slaves."  That ended the conversation.

Duke was always ready with a quick retort, an offer of food and drink, and a seemingly endless supply of fascinating stories.  What he didn't have was immortality and he died far too young.  He was in his 80's, which, for such a man, is far too young.

He left Jones a legacy that benefits its citizens and visitors on a daily basis.  Another son of his continues to live and farm there.  Annoyed by what he sees as a speeding ticket racket, he took matters into his own hands.  When you enter and when you leave Jones (about a mile apart), there is a huge sign with bright flashing lights announcing "SPEED TRAP.  SLOW DOWN."  My visiting friend asked me how on earth Duke's son was allowed to put up such signs without running afoul of the law.  Simple.  He owns the land that houses the signs.  Duke was proud.

Bad Bob

The subject matter of the e-mail caught me off-guard.  "Bob ____".  It was from a dear friend and generated an immediate disconnect.  "What the....  She doesn't know him!"  He is an ex of mine from about ten years ago.  It was a tough relationship.  I loved him very much and sometimes I thought he loved me but there was a lot of pain and we brought out the worst in each other.  Or at least he brought out the worst in me; I'm not sure what I brought out in him, but it wasn't what I wanted.

She and I chatted.  I tried to be as neutral as possible.  After all, it was a long time ago and he might be less self-absorbed now, more genuinely thoughtful.  She decided it would be weird to date a friend's ex and chose not to pursue anything with him and I was relieved.  Not because I didn't want her dating my ex, but because I didn't think this ex would be good for her.  (Or possibly anyone.)  But then again, it was a long time ago and he might be ... except he's not!

She wrote an account of their first date which is when it became clear that he has changed.  For the worse!  On their date, he was, frankly, creepy.  At least my first date with him wasn't icky.  He saved icky for later.

I'd placed an personal ad in the paper.  I was very specific about who I am and what I wanted, which I suspected wouldn't generate many responses but which I hoped would mean that any who did respond would be worth exploring.  This was how it turned out.  Only about ten men answered and I went out with nine of them.  They were all lovely men, men worth getting to know, only there wasn't a "connection" with any of them.  Until Bob.

Damnit, I'm a sucker for voices.  His voice on my answering machine was smooth and sexy and I was half-hooked, just by listening to it.  When I went to meet him, I kept looking at the people approaching the pub, hoping they weren't "him", and the one I wanted to be him, was.  Physically, totally my type!  (Okay, he dressed like he'd been cleaning out the attic in long shorts and an untucked button-down shirt but clothes can change.) And bright and interesting and quirky.  Yep, that "connection" was there.

After a chat over a glass of wine he asked if I'd like to see a place in the neighborhood he'd been talking about and I agreed.  He asked if it were okay if we stopped at his house to pick up his dog and walk him with us.  This seemed fine; kind of a sweet touch.  But that's when I got my first clue.  We walked to his house, a huge house in a very upscale part of DC and he went in (he invited me in, but I declined) to get the dog and change his shoes.  I, of course, was in nice heels, without another option, so when he came out in ratty tennis shoes, I began to have some doubts.  We walked through the poorly-lit streets into what seemed to be a park.  It was muddy, it was dark, and there was no one about.  I stopped, turned to him and said, in a half (just half) - teasing voice, "Just so you know - I left your name and phone number with a girlfriend and if I don't call her by 10:00, she'll send the police looking for me."

I didn't need the police.  We trudged up the muddy hill and sat on a bench so that he could throw an old, chewed-up tennis ball to the dog, over and over.  He apologized to me for not suggesting I throw the ball, thinking (correctly) that I wouldn't want to pick up the saliva-drenched muddy object.  The conversation was eclectic and great fun, the dog was well-behaved and my shoes needed serious cleaning but weren't ruined.  A little weird, but no ick.

It's probably good that he's gotten creepier up-front.  I think all men should come with a sign around their necks telling us what they're really like.  And if they won't wear a sign, their early behavior should give up clear clues.  His sign would read:  Bad Bob.