Tell me why this is a land of confusion...

It's been forever since I've written anything here, and for a while my excuse was that I was too busy, then it was that I was too confused, and now, even though I'm both, I'm thinking this may help.

So to start with, I'm re-entering the dating world for the first time in a little over 10 years. (I'm considering the end of my previous dating about the time that my husband and I became exclusive and not including the nightmare of an evening that happened about 3 years ago as an actual date.) My shrink (of all people!) talked me into eHarmony because she felt that it would help me weed out some of the freaks. (Hah! You can tell she's never been on there!)

So despite my initial trepidation, I set up a profile and proceeded to receive communiques from gentleman after gentleman with handlebar mustaches whose pride and joy is their grandkids. Uh, yeah? Hello? Still wanting my own family here. I finally got an email from someone who is actually younger than me who seemed kind of interesting and I agreed to go on an actual date.

We followed all of the protocols -- met in a public place during the day -- and spent a couple of hours talking and watching some idiots make fools of themselves playing Rock Band. I managed to escape with a minimal amount of stranger-touching-me anxiety and both agreed that we had a good time. Since then, I've had a couple of really random text messages and that's it. In fact, I had one this morning. "Hey there." I happened to be getting ready for work when it arrived (at 7:50 in the morning) so my response was a little delayed, but since then? Nothing. Is this how people communicate these days? I'm tempted to think he's blowing me off, but if so, why does he keep texting? Gah!!!!!

So if that wasn't enough drama for someone whose most intense moment of the week is normally how badly I'll get my ass kicked in my karate class, I have an ex-boyfriend emailing me. He found me on Facebook, which wouldn't seem all that unusual except that he searched for me by my maiden name. Since it's (a) not really Smith and (b) long and hard to pronounce and spell, I'm guessing he really wanted to find me.

After we split up more than 15 years ago, I really, really hated him. I gradually came to realize that I was just as much to blame for my pain in that our relationship was 90% in my head. And we kept running into each other because our lives seem to be inexplicably intertwined. (We were both significantly impacted by the same college professor who is the brother of the guy who owns the bar where my husband worked.)

So now, we're emailing each other once or twice daily. Which was fine. That's definitely within my anti-social comfort level. Plus, because he knows what I've been through and vice versa, we're both aware of how broken we are in many ways. Then, today, he asked me out. Sort of. Again, I can't really tell. He's already asked me to go see The Watchmen with him but that was supposed to be because I'm the only other person he knows who has actually read the graphic novel. And he proposed at some point going to see Slum Dog since we're probably the only two people in North America who haven't seen it. But this morning, he suggested seeing Coraline. Tonight or tomorrow night. Yep, that's right, less than 24 hours notice. So that would suggest that it's NOT a date, right?

Fortunately (or not, I'm not sure!), I can't do either. I'm getting my ashes tonight, which I really need to do because I've given up red wine for Lent and I NEED to make it official. Tomorrow night, my niece is in town, who I haven't seen in a couple of months, and we're going to dinner.

So we'll see what, if anything happens, with either of these situations. Frankly, I'm just ready to get on a plane to go dig in Italy.