Oh, absolutely.

Whenever I start to feel like I've shed the weight of the past 42 years, I feel that familiar tug and realize I'm still dragging quite the wagon cart behind me. I'm not close to the finish line yet, but I have made some really good progress, so I'm okay with where I'm at.

I'm also told I think too much, but I haven't really decided if that is true or not.

NEVER!

While I occasionally feel a bit guilty for having the World's Most Adorable Dog all to myself, I really can't afford to take her on the worldwide adoration tour she deserves, and I'm not willing to part from her.

So.

Plastic spoons at twenty paces?

No worries...I'll try to smiley face more, to add "tone of voice" to my replies. I was just trying to be safe with where I posted my narrative, didn't want to run afoul of the rules.

Sorry, I quit reading your post after you said "I didn't read that..."

Exactly; it's just like the way navygirl denies that she's continuously coming on to me, staring at me with those alluring eyes, teasing me with those costumes from my favorite fandoms, telling me stories of how we could dance for hours, cheek to chest...

It's not nice of her to play with my heart like that. We simply live too far away, and she knows it. I think I'm like a toy to her, something to do when she gets bored...

Whoa...you had a coffee pot maker, and you just gave it away?

Think of all the coffee pots you could sell...surely that thing would have paid for itself?

Calling me a writer...makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside!

I thought it was too explicit to be in Dating, guess I've been overruled.

Hey, thanks, Leigh! It came to me pretty quick when I tried to describe myself..."I'm this, but I'm that, and I'm this, but I'm that...wait...all I am doing is contradicting myself over and over..."

I'm pretty happy with Mingle so far...I quit the other sites, and like the scumbag scammer sites they are, two of them sent me messages claiming someone wanted to meet me. Yeah, right...months of nothing, now all of a sudden, two completely different sites, which I quit within minutes of each other, have members that want to meet me. I'll send them more money right now!

Here, you have the forums, and you have the opportunity to reveal more of yourself than you do anywhere else.

Most importantly, really key features are free here, and you never get that anywhere else. Try finding out if someone has looked at your profile on another site...or try responding to an interest, and all you get are billing information pages.

My rule is to tell people first that I will not keep a secret if I believe it will cause harm to anyone, including themselves. Beyond that, I'm perfectly capable of keeping secrets, and I keep them forever or until they are no longer secrets.

I take people at their word; if they tell me they want me to keep a secret, then I do. I just pretend their secret doesn't matter, that it is not important, a useless piece of information because I can do nothing with it, and it becomes super easy to keep it.

Once it becomes public knowledge, though, I spill.

The distance that separates us is both a blessing and a curse; how badly I want to wrap you in my arms and show you that you are worthy of love, that you're quite a catch, actually, and **** your brains out because we both need that release, too. I want us to have live conversations, firing ideas and observations and crazy thoughts back and forth as they pop in our heads, sharing little details of our day, for both of us to have that rewarding sensation of being able to spend time with someone who "gets" us. I want us to engage in all the sexual, sensual, affectionate physical play that is so vital to our health, to have that spontaneity and freedom to change a conversation about shitty drivers we saw that day into a hands-down-each-other's-pants makeout session in the kitchen that gets interrupted so that we can finish fixing dinner, and we just add it to the fuel for the fire later that night, when we **** each other's brains out again, and maybe again, then probably again again. I want us to spend evenings together where you talk on the phone with a friend while Boy sits next to me on the couch and we go over his homework, and he knows the warmth and security of being loved by both a mother and a father for no other reason than because he is a living human being and deserves nothing less. One morning you might help Girl with her hair, and she'd feel valued, and she'd know her feelings matter for no other reason than because she is a living human being, too. Boy would grow up knowing how to be a man, and Girl would grow up knowing how to be a woman, and both would know what love really is, and they'd share it, they'd give it and receive it, and they would be happy, and give and share that, too.

And it is a blessing, because as much as I'd want all the above, I also want to be free, to indulge in my heebie-jeebie, spine shivering impulse to run the **** away from any kind of serious relationship where I could get hurt, to never again feel the fear of someone else's opinion of me, to feel the aching ****ing hunger of wanting to be accepted, totally completely unequivocally accepted for who I am, **** and sweat and stink and all. A blessing because I know I would be compelled to rub my shittiest moods, my worst personality traits, my most unattractive features in your face, to confirm my fear that you'd be repulsed, that you hate me too, that anyone who sees the real me would revile me as much as I do on my bad days. A blessing because this ugliness knows no depths, no sacred ground, no neutral territory; I'd eventually be shitty to Girl and Boy, to let them know, too, that I'm not worthy of their love, that they should be better, smarter, tougher than to be hurt by a guy like me, to make me a father figure, because look how selfish I am, look how mean I am, look how scared I am of being hurt.

And then we'd hate each other, we'd hate that we ever exposed our weakest sides to each other, hate that we'd seen each other naked, hate that we ever allowed ourselves to be so vulnerable, dropped all of our inhibitions and allowed the other to touch all of our pleasure zones, orgasmed wildly and spectacularly because we completely trusted the other with our innermost secrets of our errogeny, and now we want those secrets back, because **** you, you were never worth the trust I gave you, you lying, miserable piece of ****. And the cycle would begin again, the self-loathing, the hypercritical introspection, the acting out of our worst impulses with people we barely know in a wild, wounded animal way to distract ourselves from the pain. We'd drink, we'd ****, we'd do things we know are bad for us, because we'd feel bad, we'd believe we were bad, and that we deserved to live down in the pig ****, covered in filth and debased by even the lowliest of animals, and we'd die a little bit more.

So, instead, we'll engage in this somewhat safer exchange of thoughts, of fantasies, of nightmares, we'll share the best and the worst of each other, we'll see all the great things the other has to offer while cutting our own insides open and pinning them down on wax, gagging on the smell of formaldehyde and decay as we sadistically vivisect our very own souls. Perhaps we'll learn about ourselves this way, come away from each exchange as a slightly better person, the truth setting us free from the guilt and the pain we heap upon ourselves, for nothing evil can live long in the bright light of the truth. We hack at our emotional cancer with crude implements, cutting it out and tossing it on the ground with little regard for the healthy cells and no anesthesia, preferring to sit on the improvised surgical slab bloody, scarred and deeply wounded but finally free of infection.

And, in a better world, we'd come back together then, we'd wash and bandage each other's wounds, we would be nurse and doctor, parent and child, we'd love each other because we're human beings, and how much more do we really need to have in common, to want to help each other survive this world? We would love platonically, compassion and empathy guiding our actions until we were healthy, in mind and body. With healthy mind and bodies, we'd regard each other anew; residing in our new temples, our glorious carbon based soul casings, I would say "I am alive" and you would say "I am alive", and we would then desire to show each other what those words mean, to celebrate the overflowing bounty of ****ing wonderful that seems to be bursting out from every single one of our cells. "I am amazing", I would say, and I want to show you why...and you'd say "I am amazing", and you'd want to show me why, and from then on, we would do just that. We'd **** with our words to each other, we'd **** with glances and touches, little considerations we give each other, our every act would be an intimate one, our ridiculously perfect lives one long orgasm from that day forward.

Then we'd probably ****ing wake up, realized we'd drooled on the keyboard again, wipe our face on our sleeve as we shuffled to our own beds entirely too late, and we'd be incredibly sad for a few minutes until we started to drift off to sleep, when we'd catch the dream before it got away again, and we'd smile a little smile and feel warm inside again.

One of the best human traits is the desire to help one another. Someone wise once said "never attribute to malice what is more easily explained by laziness or ignorance".

People don't give advice because they hate you and think you need to be taught how to handle these things. They do it because they think you are asking for their help.

Have you tried starting the conversation with "Hey, would you mind if I just vented for a bit? I don't really want you to help me solve a problem, I just want to blow off some steam; maybe this has happened to you, too"?

Why didn't I answer my phone? Because it is my phone; it belongs to me, so I use it for things that I want, not what everyone else wants. Just because everyone carries a phone these days doesn't mean you're entitled to talk to whoever you call, whenever you call them.

It so happens that I had a cat curled up on one leg, and a dog curled up on the other, and if I reached for my phone, one or both would wake up and get down, and we're all so cozy I just didn't think it was worth it.

What profile? One over-the-shoulder camera-phone pic, the bare minimum of information and nothing to go on.

But isn't my Dinky adorable? Don't you want to rub and pet my Dinky?

No?

Oh well. Guess I'll sit at home and play with my Dinky all alone.

I grew up on a farm, we always had pets, all kinds of dogs and cats, usually big dog and barn cats.

Now that my kids are pretty much grown, I suddenly find this little dog, and it is like raising a baby all over again. She can't communicate with words, she depends on me to feed her and take care of her bathroom needs (at least, if I want to have some say in where she takes care of them, I do!) and she loves to snuggle and sleep.

She was my secret for the longest time...big, tough construction worker keeping a little dog...but I decided to bring her to work with me so she'd stop getting so anxious when I left. All the guys at work love her...she's just the happiest little dog in the world and she loves everybody.

It would be hard not to love her...she clearly adores people, wants nothing more in the world than to be near her people, in their laps or on their bed.

I think I'm a better person for having her around; I may have taken her off the streets, but she's made me smile so often I think I'm in her debt.

It was an attempt at some light-hearted humor, but it has clearly fallen flat, and now I'm forever labeled "creepy cares-too-much-about-dog,-thinks-its-a-human-child guy".

Oh well. Dinky will always be happy to see me.

Is there someone for everyone? Well, I don't know, but, I've heard...

Tommy's love was Becky.

Oh please...Leia was such a hussy, and talk about your Daddy issues! Let's not even mention that Leia played Han against her OWN BROTHER! She gets all the credit for trying to rescue Han from carbonite, when it was all of Han's friends, Chewbacca, Luke, R2-D2, C3PO and even Lando who put their lives on the line to free Han. So what, Leia has to wear a metal bikini and play eye candy for Jabba! She somehow suffers more? What about the droids, that were given to Jabba like so much property? No one ever considers their commitment to Han's freedom.

No, Han is indeed THE MAN, but the only reason he falls for Leia? Hello! How many other women did you see in that galaxy far, far away?