Good Luck

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One hour to New Year's Eve and I don't feel a bit sentimental. I don't feel like I'm missing any parties and I am certainly glad to be off the roads.


My promise to myself to file all of my 2011 papers before 2012 seems to be hanging out with my promise to go to the gym every day. 


My New Year's Resolutions are repeating themselves and my immediate concern for the new year is that I remember to write the correct year on my checks. 


There's a limit to how many years I can go with no one special to kiss at midnight before I relegate the whole celebration to another "couples only" event designed to keep the singles out of sight. Oh. But if there IS a singles new years eve party that I would ever choose to go to, it is designed as yet another opportunity to make us half a couple. 


In Israel, thank goodness, it isn't a holiday. One reprieve from the onslaught of holidays. 


So here we go again. I'll wake up at my usual time to go to work tomorrow.  If I remember, just before 7am, I'll change the channel to a US news station to get my annual I-used-to-live-in-America fix of the ball dropping in Times Square. I'll smile for a few minutes and say that looks like fun. 


A lot of "good luck in the new year" go around and a lot of good wishes, but business as usual. 

Unfortunately, I have developed an aversion to Good Lucks. 

For me they are usually tagged onto replies on dating sites:  "Thanks, but no thanks, but Hey, good luck to you!".


Shoot me now.
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Pass the Petri Dish

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Nothing is going on. The highlight of my week is that I mistook a urinary tract infection for a heightened state of arousal. 


I have decided to attribute the infection to the one time I used the jacuzzi at the sports club. I have no idea if that is even remotely possible as a cause, but it gives me a perfect excuse not to use it again.  


While most people would rather lounge in a jacuzzi than swim laps, I prefer the latter. 
In the pool I become a champion for half an hour. I am a graceful swimmer and I know that when swimming, my body fogets its recent foray into middle age. In a jacuzzi, I have to pretend that I am not grosssed out by the overly hairly sharing their space with me. 


So I stake out my lane and swim almost non-stop for half an hour, taking a moment every so often to knowingly renew the slather of saliva in my goggles,  betraying only the fact that I was too cheap to buy the antifog ones. 


I lean against the wall at the end of my laps and look around, keenly aware that from the vantage point of being half submerged, I am as as svelte as the rest of them. 


And then I get out.


As I climb up the heinously skinny ladder I am shocked into reality that I am neither svelte nor a real athlete,  and if I had any doubts, I try to wrap a towel around me, but suffice with covering my butt. 


Once, I found a window of opportunity when there were no men in the jacuzzi who would watch me waddle my way from the pool's edge to the jacuzzi's edge. There was no one  in the warm bubbly water, no one crouched at the perfect eye level to watch my thighs jiggle ahead of me down the jacuzzi steps. So I lowered myself with the grace of a rhino into this reservoir of bacteria and positioned myself strategically against a jet of water. 


And a week later I have a urinary tract infection. 


You do the math. 
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A Play in Three Acts

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Scene 1: Olden Times (circa before internet).

• Girl holds out hope for a week that Boy from blind date arranged by meddling aunts is interested. 
• Boy not calling.
• Girl calls Boy.
• Boy not answering. 
• Girl spends additional week justifying why. 
• Girl runs out of justifications.
• One ton of bricks falls on girls head.
• Boy makes his point that he is not interested.
• Girl goes on with her life. 
• Disappointment Factor: 1 Boy over Two Weeks

Scene 2: Present Day.

• Girl drinks coffee in front of computer.
• Girl logs onto 5 internet dating sites. 
• Girl sends messages to 7 attractive Boys.
• Girl makes second cup of coffee.
• Girl notices that 7 Boys have looked at her profile.
• Girl notices that 7 Boys have logged out.
• Girl notices that her inbox is empty.
• Girl is sorry she didn't buy ice cream.
• Disappointment Factor: 7 Boys over 10 Minutes

Closing Scene: Future

• Girl in urban all night mini market paying for kitty litter and various sundries. Girl  goes back for ice cream and meets Boy of her dreams in the freezer section.
• Girl knew that loyalty to Ben and Jerry's would eventually pay off.

No question that the sheer number of disappointments is the price of the sheer number of opportunites. 

For now, I just hope that if cyberspace doesn't offer (true) love, I'll eventually find my Boy  in the freezer section.  At least he'll be well preserved.

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