Juliet, I'd do the stars with you anytime. -Romeo and Juliet/Dire Straits

I feel a sinus infection/sore throat/ear infection coming on. NO ME GUSTA!

So, last night we all decided that we were going to have The Biggest Loser: Family Edition going on with my pop's side of the family. The dad, step mom, step sister, brother in law and I are all going to see who has the biggest percentage weight loss by my birthday, 7/11. We're all throwing money in the pot and whoever wins, gets the cash.

I have GOT to get rid of this damn weight. It's ridiculous. I need to start doing some kind of physical activity and that'll help it come off, plus not eating like I'm trying to feed a set of octuplets growing inside me would be good too.

I'm so excited about this weekend. I have the kiddos and I think we're going to go to a hockey game on Friday and then Saturday we're going bowling. Bachelor Man and maybe his girls will be joining us. Holy shit. Can we say "cluster fuck"?

Speaking of Bachelor Man, the Bro-in-law was talking to him on the phone the other night and was asking what he was up to. Jerm (Bachelor Man) said that he was coming over to my place and BIL was like, well you can come over for a beer before, but I doubt that'll be happening. Jerm was like, nah, I'll come hang out... later... I just have tunnel vision right now.

I had to give him shit for that, but I was also uber-flattered by it. I am digging him hardcore, man. His personality is just awesome... While I'm not saying that I'm in loooooooove with him, whenever it does hit that point and I'm ready to let my heart go, I will pin the moment on when I fell for him to the night that we started talking about Degrassi and realized he was some kind of Degrassi savant.

Sans Crazy Dave, the guys that I have dated post M have been pretty kick ass to hang out with, regardless of how they might have ended.

How I don't know what I should do with my hands when I talk to you. How you don't know where you should look, so you look at my hands. -Pamphleteer

I should really make our meetings more frequent.

It's a snow day outside. Huzzah!

I'm so burnt out on school and realize that I have less than a third of my hours to get but I feel like there is no. end. in. sight. and I am over it. The salon is slow and if I have to do one more gah damn thing on a mannequin I will scream. Thus, I am embracing snow day even if it means being holed up with the children folk who apparently snorted lines of crack when I wasn't looking and are indulging in their new favorite hobby of tattling. Woooooooooooooo!

In other news...

Bachelor Man and I are getting along very well. We had a fabulous first date at a lovely restaurant and have proceeded to hang out every night since then, except for Friday when I went to go see the Randy Rogers Band.

It seems this is how I roll with relationships. Just thrust myself full on in there.

He's been around the kids minimally still. He comes over either right before they go to bed, right after they go to bed or when M has them. Last night he was over watching a movie with me and C woke up. Normally, if that happens late at night I'll just shut it down and go lay down in bed with C, but I couldn't so much do that. I got C out of his crib and put him on the couch with the two of us. I was laying in Bachelor Man's lap and C laid all his blankets on my lap and burrowed in.

Dating with kids is so odd. I can't help but look at a little moment like that and wonder if this will be the guy that will be a main male figure in the kids' lives. Will this be the guy that helps A learn how to ride a bike? That will teach C how to drum (he's a drummer)? That will meet A's first date at the door and tell him to have A back by midnight? That will teach C how to shave or give him "the talk" before his first date with a girl?

I know it's only a month in, but I'm tired of pursuing relationships with people and giving them my heart and then things falling through after I'm already in it. I'm not saying that I'm looking for Number 2, but if I'm gonna date someone, I at least want to be semi-sure that I would be okay with them being in my kids' lives for a substantial period of time.

Meh, I'm just enjoying it for right now. He's much more on my level personality/interest wise than my past endeavors. Once again, we shall see...

My kids are so freakin adorable. A just walked in here wearing her Sleeping Beauty dress and told me she was sorry she was late because her dance was taking too long. Then she wanted to show me her "prince" who just happens to be C. C is just following her around as she keeps his ass in line. Hilarious. A also apparently got fed up with M's unusual chattiness last weekend that she told him "for the love of God will you please be quiet." Have no clue where she got that from...

I need to go on a diet like Fo' Real. My winter coat keeps expanding and I'm not doing a damn thing to stop it, which needs to change, otherwise summer is not going to be pretty.

So, it looks like I'll be making a move out to my pop's in March. I haven't quite yet broached that subject with the moms, but I feel that this will be the best for everyone involved. I'm pretty excited actually. I can not believe how wonderful it's been since Daddy's come back in my life.

How long can you pray and still not see a change? I faithfully remain. -Faithfully Remain/Ben Harper

I just watched the most retarded movie ever, "Wedding Daze", but it made me get a big "what if" in my mind. The two main characters decide on a whim to get married after a spontaneous proposal from the lead male within seconds of meeting the lead female.

The completely illogical, spontaneous side of me wants to just go get married to the next dude that I click with during introductions. Honestly, if I didn't have kids, it wouldn't be so hard to imagine myself doing that. At this point in my life, I feel like marriage is such a crap shoot anyway.

I mean, M and I looked good on paper, but in reality... not so much.

I invested my emotions in BB and Mr Man and wound up getting royally screwed on both of those.

Guess I'm just a little on the bitter side when it comes to relationships. Mr Man messed with me more than I initially thought. I miss him. I miss curling up in bed with him. I miss talking about random crap together. I miss being able to text him my random thoughts throughout the day. Ugh... so frustrating. I feel like I just got written off and yet, I can't help thinking that last Valentine's Day I was having dinner at Wall Street and then going to Jaguar's with him. That was the BEST V-Day ever.

I have a date on Thursday with my brother in law's buddy. He just turned 34, has two girls (6 and 8), a good job... Here's the kicker though, while he has been in relationships (he was with his baby mama until a year or so ago, they never got married) he has never formally courted a girl. Which means, this will be his first formal first date. Oh Em Gee.

Like, seriously? I honestly can not do anything the easy way. I can't just find a normal dude, with a normal dating history, with no kids or if he has kids, manages to have a normal relationship with baby mama, with a good job, with no mental problems, who manages to act like a grown ass man. I guess when you start dating guys that are older then you start dating people that are prone to have a bit more of a "history" than guys in their younger 20s.

My BIL assures me that Bachelor Man is a good guy and I'm sure he is, but Jesus Christ... I was also M's first formal relationship and look at how well that one turned out.

I'm just rolling with it and right now we're just hanging out as friends. I think the most physical contact we've had is me patting him on the leg after the Superbowl because the Colts lost. Should be interesting...

Put down your sword and crown / Come lay with me on the ground - Moth's Wings / Passion Pit

Oh life... you are one confusing mother.

Things with Mr Man are... complicated? I got so used to spending so much time with him over the Christmas holidays, which I should've known wasn't going to be par for the course. I didn't have the kids, I didn't have school, the oil field pretty much shuts down...

Anyhow, January rolled around and life got back to normal and I've seen Mr Man twice since the Monday after New Year's. Once for about an hour on a Monday night, then last weekend when we went to the rodeo with my dad and step mom and C.

I talked to him about it... it's not that he's checking out, he's just got a lot of shit to do. He's kind of a big deal at the office and that means that people depend on him, which equals lots of pressure. In theory, I understand all that. And I've tried to stop being the needy girl, but it's getting a little bit old. Especially when I don't know if I'll see him this weekend since I have the kids... (he tends to be scarce during my weekends with my kids... even though I hang out with him no prob when he has his kids), he's supposed to go to Houston for some marketing conference thing next weekend and then I'm going to Ft Stockton the weekend after that... so yeah... that's three weekends without anything?

I understand he's busy. I understand he has work commitments. I just want him to think enough of me that he sets aside time for me because he wants to. I don't want to just be the excess baggage that gets thrown to the side whenever work and his kids start taking up more of his free time. I don't want to be the backburner girl... I want to be a priority. I don't need him to drop everything for me, but... shit...

I feel like I'm letting him have the best of both worlds. He gets to go about his business without worrying about me, but at the same time knows that if he were to text me today and ask to come over tonight, I'd say yes... no problem. Personally, I think I deserve more than that.

Then... there's M. Oh M. He wants another chance so badly I can taste it. After being out in the dating world for about a year, I'm starting to wonder if that isn't such a bad idea after all. Honestly, if M moved down here and finished school/got a job (preferably both) and got his mental shit straightened out... I think things could actually work. Maybe... I dunno.

Maybe I'm just so jaded on the dating scene that I'm going back to my safety. I know M loves me more than anything in the world and that at one point in time I felt the same, so how hard could it be to get back to that point?

GAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

I think I just need to quit the dating thing for awhile and concentrate on the kids and I. I really haven't been single this whole past year and perhaps I need to figure out what I really want/need instead of just jumping from guy to guy.

I also think M needs to go out and experience different relationships before he just decides I'm the shit. It would devastate me if we did wind up getting back together (which is a far far far cry from actually happening) and then 15 years down the road he's like Oh wow... there's other women out there.

I also probably need my period to just go ahead and start because these hormones are a-ragin' and they are making me slightly emotional/crazy.

"Should I give up or should I just keeping chasing pavements even if it leads nowhere?" -Adele

I've decided I'm for sure dating Mr Man. The question that I do not know the answer to is if it's exclusive or non exclusive. Honestly, I would rather just play ignorant and believe that we are exclusive and never have to actually have the conversation.

Saturday we went shooting and then went to this benefit for a woman whose husband had been killed by a drunk driver and then hung out and watched football and sat in the hot tub for about 8 hours.

I enjoy the time I spend with Mr Man immensely. I have feelings for him, but I feel like this whatever-it-is is progressing at a much more comfortable rate then it was with Crazy D and BB. We go on dates, have fun, text when we have something to say and there's no drama. I kind of like where things are right now.

E-Spang thinks I'm in a fantasy relationship. The fact that he hasn't met my kids and I've spent all of 5 minutes around his negates any significance between Mr Man and I. She thinks we should throw real world time in there to make it real.

This is where I run into a conundrum.

At this point, I do not feel it necessary to introduce the kids to Mr Man or to spend lots of Q.T. with his kids. I don't feel that we're at the level of seriousness. When do you reach that point though? The more time I spend with Mr Man and the more we learn about each other, the more I like him. It's only logical to think that if things keep progressing as they do, I'm eventually going to fall in love with him.

So... say I fall in love with him, the kids get introduced and he pulls a BB and decides he can't hack it with the kids. What then?

On the flip side of that is, so you start off each relationship with kids being introduced immediately and you basically start off playing "one big happy family" from the beginning and everyone gets attached. What happens when you break up?

I just don't think it's healthy for the kids to meet every guy I date. I guess it's just a risk I'm going to have to take in the dating world that some people are going to love me, but not the rest of the package, some people are going to love me and the idea of the package, but not the reality of it... and a special few will love me and the rest of the package.

I'd rather prefer to get my heart broken later down the road, then to subject my kids to getting let down if something doesn't work out with someone that they've formed an attachment to. They're already going through that with their dad and I just... I can't do that again. I probably won't ever be 100% sure that someone is "The One"... but I want to be as close to that as possible before I let them have the privilege of meeting my kids.

So, here's the deal. I'm gonna roll with this Mr Man deal. I'm not going to force this relationship to be serious faster than it should. I'm gonna concentrate on getting done with school and getting the divorce finalized (Nov 3 is the final hearing!!!!!!!!!!!!) and getting the kids and I settled. Maybe Mr Man and I will become something more serious. Maybe it'll work out that the first guy that I dated post marriage will be Lucky #2 and I won't ever have to enter the dating world again. Maybe Mr Man is nothing but a temporary distraction. Maybe Mr Man and I will fall madly in love but the extra baggage on both sides is just too much. I don't know... there's a shit load of maybes. The point is, I'm happy right now and I don't really see any reason to rock the boat.

I know this, it's a hell of a lot harder to date as a single parent then it is just as a single.