True Confessions: It had to happen sooner or later...

I know the commercials on TV say different but I have my doubts about the success rate one might expect at hook-up places like Match.com and EHarmony.com and GitYerselfANewBoyfriend.com or whatever they're called. I base my skepticism not ONLY on a number of nightmarishly weird stories I've been told but also on a couple of personal experiences. Yes, I will admit to God and my children, ONE TIME I posted some basic stats on a local website of similar purpose and within 24 hours had snagged me a real live looney-tune that insisted I was NOT NICE and PEPLE LIKE YOU SHOULDN THINK YOR SO GRATE.

Well now. I'll be honest with you. I don't think I'm any grater than any other peple but I do have my standards and one of them is, I don't meet guys for coffee or anything else when their first email to me mentions A) probation B) living with my mom and C) foot fungus, not necessarily in that order. Call me crazy but in Debbie's Book of Dating Do's and Do Not's that's a lineup that gets you a quick sliding trip right off my dance card. If that makes me not nice, so be it. I'm not nice. I've been single again for a long time now. If I have to run a gauntlet of similar lovely available fellows to MAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYBE run into that special someone...........as my favorite buddy in New York would say.......................ehhhh, fehgitaboutit. I just don't think the internet is a good place to meet men.

I DO however, think it's a GREAT place to meet friends and by the way, did anyone wonder if I was ever going to get to the point? Grab the handrails, people. We have arrived. My point is, I've met some great friends on the internet and one of them sent me this real nice little award today:



Isn't that fun? Becca lives in Alaska. We've never met in person but we read one another's blogs. This little award is special to me because I think of myself as something of an anomaly amongst her long list of favorite blogging buddies, nearly all of which best I can tell, know their way around a needle and thread. They're a crafty group of girls, stitching projects that would simply amaze you and amaze me for sure as I literally do not sew anything beyond a button and then only when forced to by the potential for inappropriately exposed body parts. WHY she reads my blog, I do not know but she does. On my little world map down at the verrrrrry bottom of my blog, if you click on the map, you will see an ever-growing red dot up there in Alaska. Yup, that's my buddy Becca, faithfully reading and every now and then chiming in with a comment to say hello.

I have some confessions to make. I had intended to take these tales to my grave with me but so-honored by Becca on this day, I just feel like I need to cleanse myself perchance she is under the false assumption that I can sew. If she's going to love me, she's got to love me for who I am and for who I'm not. And I'm not good at sewing. Evidence:

8th Grade Homemaking Class, 35 students in an overcrowded room which makes it possible to look busy and get lost in the intense work of a sea of students when Mrs. Peterson walks the room, checking out the progress of each sewing project. We worked on those projects for three weeks, me in a state of total daze and confusion, flying under the radar until the final week when the wandering Mrs. Peterson paused by my sewing machine, adjusted her glasses and all of a sudden in a grand gesture threw her hand to her chest as if that might prevent the heart attack that she was about to have. Yes, I had stitched up the center seam of the culottes (I think you call them "skorts" now...) that I was making so that the only way one could walk would be to keep ones legs tightly together and shuffle along since the legs were sewn tightly together like some kind of fabric binoculars. Mrs. Peterson gasped. I wailed. The principal called my mother. It was ugly. Ugly ugly UGLY with a capital UG.

21 years old. First full-time job. I notice the hem coming out of the skirt I planned to wear. Not owning a needle and thread I stapled the 10-12 inch expanse of unraveling hem, quite proud of myself that the staples barely showed, thanks to a wild, peasant fabric print. Somewhere around noon I swiveled in my desk chair to retrieve something from a file cabinet, dislodged one of the staples into my backside causing me to jump out of my chair, throw a manual that landed on a co-workers desk, dumping her coffee all over her typewriter (yeah this was a hundred years ago) and down the front of her dress. The staple was still lodged in my butt.

I give blankets to all my nieces and nephews. They are tied with knots. Seriously. I can't sew. Even back when I could see the hole in a needle to thread it, that's all the further I could go without getting into serious trouble. God knows I tried but my darts were concave and it only went downhill from there. I'm an artist but I CAN. NOT. SEW.

Thank you for loving me anyway, Becca! Someone might want to know how I found Becca's blog in the first place, since she lives wayyyyy up there in Alaska. Simple. I love turtles. They are my weakness. Visit her blog (listed on the right side of this page) and you'll see what I mean. You'll also find my friend Stacey's blog from her new home in Brora, Scotland and one written by a great guy named Matt who lives in LA. He doesn't even know we're friends, but I check in on he and his little baby girl Maddy every single week and have their names on the little prayer list I keep by the sink in my kitchen.

The internet makes the world a smaller, cozier place.
But I'm still not having coffee with a guy who picked up foot fungus in the pen.