let's start at the very beginning

I've been trying to write this post for at least a week now, but I always end up stuck.  I think a little part of me is afraid that if I write it down to share with people, it will go away, or get ruined, or collapse in on itself. It's not really a big deal yet in practicality, but at the same time, it's a very big deal.

Three dates.  In my last post I wrote about having had a first date that went well, with plans for a second. Well, the second one happened, and then a third.

I "met" him via POF a couple of months ago.  We chatted intermittently on the site, but he treated the messages more like IMs, always very short and conversational, so we never got a lot of content exchanged. He seemed nice, but didn't stand out in any way.  At some point in December, he asked for my number for the purpose of sending me a picture of a turkducken he was cooking, just because.  Thus began our text relationship, and suddenly he had personality, and a sense of humor, and he made me legitimately laugh.  I never even got the picture of that turkducken finished product btw.  ;-)

Anyway, when I was home for Christmas we were still texting, and he kept sending me the most hilarious little things, and I found myself more interested in talking to him.  We kept talking more and more, and by NY's Eve we were talking basically consistently through the day and evening.  We finally made plans to meet up on Friday, January 3rd due to a last minute scheduling change.  He has a 13-year old daughter who he usually has on the weekends, but she was unable to come that weekend, so he asked me out.  I told him my college football team had their bowl game that night, so we met at a sports bar to watch the game.

First impressions:  He was cute, looked like his pictures.  Six foot tall, blonde hair, fair skin like me.  The game was fun, and it lasted forever.  Conversation was pretty good, and I was attracted to him.  Not the kind of attraction I'd had with Artboy right off the bat, but the pleasant kind of attraction.  At the end of the night we hugged goodbye and went our separate ways.  Some hijinks ensued after we separated...his car got stuck in the snow.  I went back to help, but he got out right when I got back near him.  I headed home again, and one exit down from where I'd gotten the first time, he called again..his tire was flat.  Some luck!  I drove back to where he was, and he changed the tire by the glow of my headlights.  He thanked me profusely, apologized, bemoaned what a horrible first impression this was.  I joked and said that obviously it wasn't his fault, and that all it told me was that he liked fast, impractical cars (he drives a Mustang).  On my way home he texted me and again thanked me profusely and told me I was amazing.  He said he owed me and that he'd come out my way next time.  For the record, it was 1 am and 14 degrees out when all this happened.  Even if he'd been a D-bag I probably would have gone back to make sure he got everything squared away!

So that was date #1.  We soon made plans for the following Friday (his daughter is in a school musical and he wasn't getting her until Saturday that weekend due to rehearsals).  As promised, he came out my way. We met at my apartment and then went to dinner.  We saw "American Hustle" afterwards, and then I invited him in.  I wanted more time with him, and in spite of my hopes that a dark movie theater would embolden him, he didn't try to hold my hand or anything during the movie.

Inside we talked for about 20 minutes before I turned on the TV just for background noise.  CSI was on, and I absently mentioned this really silly episode as the only one I really remembered.  Lo and behold, it was that very episode on that night, so we watched it and laughed at the silliness of the storyline (It was called "Fur and Loathing" if that gives you any indication!).  It was nice to just sit next to him and laugh and loosen up a bit.  After the episode ended I was talking about something when he randomly kissed me.  Yay!

He's an excellent kisser, and we kissed for awhile, but it was very chaste.  I teased him about not holding my hand in the movie, and he told me that he hadn't wanted to be too forward and ruin it.  I thought that was very sweet, and it reminded me that just because a guy doesn't try to jump me on the first or second date, it doesn't mean he doesn't like me.  In fact, it can also mean the contrary.

He finally left to go home about 2:15 am.  It was raining, and another detail:  He lives in a town about an hour and 15 minutes away from me.  FIGURES!!  He works much closer, but he owns a townhouse about 20 minutes past where I lived with the Angry Ex.   After he left I was literally swirling with butterflies.  I think I did some serious dancing in my bedroom to music that was too loud in my headphones for my own good.

We continued to talk all the time.  From morning until before bedtime, never running out of things to say.  I marveled at this because honestly?  I feel smothered very easily, and I wasn't feeling it here.  He told me that weekend that he wanted to see me again, and since he had his daughter the coming weekend, asked if a weeknight would work.  We decided on this past thursday.

Thursday we met in the middle again.  We had dinner, and then walked around outside in the cold night air for a bit.  Everything around us was closed in the area we were in, so out of desperation for somewhere warm to go, we seriously went to Wegman's (a nice grocery store) and went upstairs to their dining area. We spent the next two hours on a wicker couch just talking and laughing about so many random things.  We were the only ones up there aside from a meandering cleaning person who was eyeing us to make sure we didn't get up to any funny business. We held hands, we flirted, he stole a couple of innocent kisses. Something that on the surface sounds so lame was actually kind of amazing and fun.

We finally left shortly before the store closed at midnight.  We kissed in the parking garage between our two cars for awhile, and it was such blissful agony...to finally be able to kiss him like I wanted to again, but to know that we were still in public, and that I had to go.  We finally, finally separated, but wow, was it difficult.

I left that parking garage feeling so many different things, but mostly just HAPPY.  Excited.  Full of good feelings about something dating related for the first time in so long.

We're going out again tomorrow night.  Did I mention that he texted me and asked me about doing something Monday WHILE I was on my way to see him Thursday night?  And that while we were on that wicker couch, we decided that next weekend I'm going out to where he lives to see him on Saturday night?

Yeah.  Three dates down.  Two more on the books.

I have way more to say about this.  I've decided that in the interest of this post not getting too stupidly long, I'm going to contain it to the factual events as they occurred, and I'll do another post for everything else.  So concludes the long overdue, long percolating, butterfly-inducing update.

** Still thinking of what I want to call him on here.  ;-)