Erin’s Neighborhood

I love the diet cherry limeade at Sonic. Unfortunately there are no Sonics near me in Seattle, but I did learn of one in Portland and one in Salem.  This should work out well as I visit Oregon frequently.  

Last weekend I was visiting Oregon and decided to stop and get a diet cherry limeade on my drive between Portland and Eugene. What I didn’t realize is that the Sonic Gods apparently don’t like it when I visit.  The last time I visited Oregon Erin, Kelsey and I ended up on a wild limeade chase all over Beaverton and Hillsboro. We did eventually find Sonic and did get some tasty drinks… and nasty food.  When I tried to stop at the Sonic in Salem I got stuck in an hour long drive-up trap.  

The Salem Sonic has the most impractical set up I’ve ever seen. To get to the little car-hop stations and the drive-up window you have to go though a one-way traffic loop around the building.  It seems like this would be ok… but essentially the folks that choose the car-hop stations are trapped by the never ending drive-up line.  The drive-up line gets backed up because of standoffs with cars trying to pull out of the car-hop stations. It was insane.

Anyway, an hour latter I did finally get my diet cherry limeade.   To be honest…I think it was worth it – really do love diet cherry limeade.

So… now that I am self-employed and mostly working out of my house, I find the need to get out and be around people occasionally.  Luckily I live in the Seattle area and have access to literally hundreds of coffee shops with Wi-Fi.   The easy access to Wi-Fi also comes in hand on days like today when I’m house-sitting for a friend that does not have high speed internet.

As my friend does not have internet access… and I have a lot of work to do on my current consulting project… I have to find someplace to get online.  Fortunately I’m house-sitting in a neighborhood with a plethora of Tully’s. Tully’s is great because they have good coffee, and free Wi-Fi.  I started my day at a Tully’s in Issaquah.  This was a great working place for the first few hours of my day. My problem becomes that I start to feel bad for hanging out there all day after only buying one cup of coffee. I realize I shouldn’t feel bad because the coffee cost as much as some of my clothes…  However, I do start to feel weird, so I leave after three hours or so. 

So, I leave my first Tully’s of the day and head to Redmond. I’m not going to Redmond to find another Tully’s.  I’m going there to meet my dear friend Dawn for lunch. She just got engaged, so we have something exciting to talk about. Lunch is good, but we spend more time then we intend, and I realize I have to get online as fast as I can and start working again.  I don’t have time to get anyplace, so I grab my laptop bag out of my car and head to a Tully’s a few blocks from the restaurant we were eating at.  

I order my second cup of coffee for the day and start to do the nonchalant glance around for an outlet.  [This is the routine I do every time I go to a coffee shop to work. I don’t want to be obvious, but the reality is that my laptop is two years old (that’s 110 in laptop years).  Because of her advance age she just can’t hold a charge like she used to. The poor thing does so much better if she can be plugged in all the time… I try to accommodate this, as I count on her to finance my coffee habit.]  This Tully’s is not like the cookie cutter strip mall ones I’ve been patronizing. There are not outlets every three feet to accommodate the laptoppers.  As I wait for my grande - non-fat – half-caf - vanilla latte, I do one last, but much more obvious, search for an outlet.  I can’t find one, but there are two tables in a hallway like area. One of the tables is empty, and at the other is a guy working on a laptop.  I assume that he must have is laptop plugged in so I get my drink and head to the table near his. I search all over.  I practically crawl under the table… but cannot find an outlet.  I give up and decide that I can work for about an hour before I’ll have to leave and go find someplace else to login… and have third coffee of the day.

I’m now working fast and furiously… not knowing how long my beloved laptop will last without being plugged in. after about fifteen or twenty minutes I see movement in front of me, so I look up.  I see the guy sitting at the table near me doing the outlet search. When he notices that I’ve looked up he asks if I know of any outlets. I have to say that I don’t… and add in that I’m trying to work fast because my battery isn’t going to last much longer. This makes him smile… and his smile makes my face heat up.  I can actually feel how red I must be.

After my table neighbor searches for a while he finds an outlet though a little doorway near my table. He offers it to me, because it’s so close. Again I feel my face heat up. [Ok… so what the heck is happening to me? I’m not shy.  I like to talk to strangers. I don’t get nervous often and when I do I usually like to just push though it.  When did I start blushing uncontrollably just because a reasonably attractive guy speaks to me? He wasn’t even flirting… he was just speaking.]  I continue to work for about 10 more minutes before my low battery indicator pops up.  With my face starting to heat up again I unpack my power cord and plug in my laptop.   As I’m plugging in my table neighbor unpacks his power cord too. He asks if he can just plug in for a second at my table.  He explains that he is going to run to a nearby store and will be right back, and wants to know if I can keep an eye on his laptop.  I say sure. Hopping that if he leaves maybe my face would go back to normal body temperature.

He is only gone for a short time. When he returns he sits down at my table and introduces himself as Mike. I introduce myself. He asks if I mind if he hangs out for a while and checks his email. I say sure… as I feel my face return to its unnatural volcanic temperature.  In the hopes that my face wouldn’t melt off from my unnatural blushing experience I become freakishly focused on my work.  Mike must have thought I was on the verge of curing cancer… I was very focused and didn’t respond to any of his cute expressions.  We go on like this for an hour or so. Mike being cute and animated and me being freaky, won’t look up from her computer or stop typing girl.

Finally he starts to pack up and I look up. He says “have a great weekend” with a nice smile. I say “thanks! You too!” as a flush of red moves from my neck to my ears as each word escapes my mouth.  He says “I hope I see you around!” I say “yea.”    Yea… couldn’t I have at least squeaked out “Me too” or “that would be great”.  As Mike walks out I have a flash of my morning.  OMG…. I forgot that I had woken up with my left eye swollen shut.  This happens to me some times. I’m allergic to all kinds of random and unknown things, so it’s not unusual for me to swell up, or get a rash.  I now realize that my unexplainable blushing was me subconsciously being embarrassed of my swollen eye. To be honest I have to say I look like a train wreck today. I didn’t wash my hair. I have on no make up, and my left eye is swollen and a little crusty.  My face is heating up just thinking about how I look today…. I’m so embarrassed.

The Original Bad Date Story 

I met him at my best friends wedding. I was looking lovely in a skintight silver dress. Ok, not so much lovely as frightening, but when your best friend gets married to the man she loves you’ll wear what makes her happy even if that mean squeezing yourself into a dress that is completely inappropriate for you size and shape.  He was about 5’11’’ medium build with short curly black hair, a very neatly trimmed mustache and wire rimmed glasses. He was wearing a navy-blue suit with a white shirt, and striped tie. He’s the kind of guy you walk past on the street and never notice. But, at this wedding he was animated, and funny. This made his plainness seem almost charming.

As the evenings events drew to a close this guy and I found ourselves chatting. We discovered that we lived in the same city just a few miles apart. This guy, let’s call him Mark, was a little older then the guys I usually go out with, but he seemed nice so when he asked if we could get together and gave me his number I thought it might be nice to go on a date with him. Little did I know the weirdness was about to begin.

Mark left the reception and the insanity started.

First, the groom came up to me and said “I see you met my uncle Mark.” Uncle Mark…I had been flirting with my best friends husbands uncle? Yes indeed I had. Although I found this a little disturbing, I decided I could live with this small amount of weirdness.

Second, I talked to Mark’s sister. To truly appreciate this you have to visualize the sister (and please keep in mind this person has just become my best friend’s mother-in-law). This woman is maybe five feet tall and at least three feet wide. She wore a flowered dress that skimmed her ankles with knee-hi socks and black tennis shoes. Her long dark greasy hair had silver streaks and hung halfway down her back. I am a complete contract to this woman. I am five ten with wild curly hair, and was wearing a skintight silver bridesmaid dress. Marks sister, let’s call her Bertha asked me if I was planning on going out with her brother. Before I could answer she was telling me I’ll only break his heart and should stay away from him.

So, now I have no choice but to go on a date with this guy. His sister all but double dog dared me to.

About a week passes and I call Mark. After a few more calls we plan to meet for dinner and a movie. This seems harmless…what could possible go wrong? Well, let me tell you what happened the day of the date.  

10:00 am-Mark calls and says he is going to pick me up. Without a single thought to the subject I agree to this and give him my address. (This was my first mistake, ok second. The first was agreeing to go out with him. Ok, maybe wearing the sliver bridesmaids dress was the first. Well, let’s just say I have really bad judgment. And make way too many mistakes to keep track of which came first.) He decides he will pick me up at 7pm.

6:30 pm-Mark shows up at my door. He is thirty minutes early! What the hell was he thinking? He’s lucky I was dressed or, maybe I was lucky I was dressed. Because I seriously doubt he would have minded me answering the door in nothing but a smile. As I recover from the shock of his early arrival I notice what this guy was wearing. He had on wrinkly, faded, blue cotton pants with an elastic waist that were about four inches too short. This provided a lovely view of his white socks and black tennis shoes. The buttons of his gray and pink striped shirt strained against his gut allowing me to see his white undershirt through the gaps. While taking all this in I realized that his hair was a mess and he had not shaven.

I know you’re thinking that I should have made some excuse and got out of the date at this point, but we’ve already established that I have really bad judgment. So, the date happens.

7:00 pm-We arrive at the restaurant. I make polite small talk and pray to god that I don’t see anyone I know.

7:20 pm-We are seated. As I’m looking at the menu Mark says “I’ll pay for dinner and the movie, you have to pick up anything else.” Please note that he asked me out, he picked the restaurant, and the movie. I just smiled. We order our dinners and the waitress served our salads. It was at this point that I realized how long and shaggy this guy’s mustache was. It was really discussing how food was getting tangled up in the hairs.

8:00 pm- Dinner is served and I find out way too much information about Mark. I’ve already lost my appetite, so I’m moving my food around my plate with my fork while Mark babbles on about the women he’s dated. At this point I totally stopped listening and started to just node my head and smile every few minutes. 

9:00 pm- Dinner is finally over. I think I scared the waitress when she asked if we wanted desert and I yelled “NO!” Mark picked up the check and grumbled under his breath about the price. I watched him count out his money and lay it down on the table. The bastard only left a $2 tip. I was so humiliated. Our waitress had been really nice and I had yelled at her, not to mention that she also had to look at the food in Mark’s mustache. I realize I can not live with this. As we walked to the car I said I had to go to the bathroom, and that I’ll meet him at the car. I run back in the restaurant, find our waitress, slip her five, and apologize for snapping at her. I try and think up some cleaver lie about being a social worker and the guy I was with has some social disabilities and this was a supervised outing to see if he could go out on his own. I can’t come up with a good lie fast enough so I head back to the car. 

At this point you have to be thinking I could have faked a stomachache and had him take me home. But, my poor judgment kicks in and we’re off to the movies.

9:10 pm-We arrive at the theater. Luckily my date had pre-purchased the movie tickets (how board do you have to be to pre-purchase movie tickets to a movie that been out for several weeks, and is getting bad reviews).  We go into the theater, which is practically empty, and Mark selects seats in the third row.  I suggest that we might want to move back a few rows. This does not go over well. Mark has to sit in the third row sixth seat in.

I know, I know. I see it now, but I really did not get that this guy was obsessive compulsive. Again my bad judgment prevails and I stay seated in a dark room with a crazy man.

9:20 pm-The movie starts. I sat with my arms crossed so there would be no attempted hand holding and thought I would have 90 minutes of quite. I could not have been more wrong. This man laughed loudly at everything and talked back to the characters on the screen. I wanted to die. People in the back of the theater yelled at him asking him to stop.  This progressed into the actual throwing of popcorn at him. This did not deter him in any way.

10:50 pm- The movie is over!  This must mean the date is over! No, it’s not. We get in the car and Mark starts heading the opposite direction as my house and declared we’re going to coffee. I tell him I’ve had a long day and I would like to go home. He informed me I would feel better after coffee, and that he still had a lot of things he would like to tell me. Oh my god. This date felt like it would never end.

11:05 pm-We arrive at Starbucks. Mark orders a Mocha and I order a Latte. He then tugged on my purse strap and reminded me that I have to pay for this. He then picks a table and asks me to wait for our coffees.

11:15 pm- Mark shares the history of his mental illness. I learned about his stay in a mental hospital, his medication, about how he can’t use public restrooms and various other facts that have scared me for life.

12:10 am-We are actually on our way to my house. This horrible date is almost over. Well, at least that’s what I was thinking on the drive home.

12:25 am- Mark pulls into my driveway. I have never been so happy to be home in my life. I was out of the car and unlocking my door waving good by when he jumped out of the car with my left over dinner in his hands and pushed past me into my house, though the dinning room and into the kitchen. While he is doing this he’s saying he wants to put it away for me. The crazy man is now in my house. He puts my food in the refrigerator and makes his way into the living room and sits down. I’m still standing in the doorway with my keys in my hands. I sit down in a chair across from him. He begins to talk and never stops. He goes on and on for what seems like hours. He talks about is childhood, living with is parents until he was 30, living with his sister, getting his first apartment at 35 and more about his mental illness.

01:30 am- I stand up and tell him he has to leave. I think I may have shouted this, I’m not really sure; my brain was completely numb at this point. Then in a softer tone I explain that I have plans with my sister the next day and really need to get some sleep, which mean he absolutely must leave. I push him towards the door and steer him out onto the front porch. I was standing in the doorway saying good night and he was half way out to his car when it happened. He turned around and said loudly “I’m going to go for it” and started walking back towards me. Holly crap this guy was going to try and kiss me. This is the guy who still had food in his mustache from dinner. I froze. I was in a complete state of panic. Mark approached me with his arms open, threw them around me and squeezed me tight. It was only a hug…