Golden Girls...a true life event

PSA: There will be some people who read this post that will disagree with my choices during the Corona pandemic.

I’d be willing to bet that 2020 has not started out the way the majority of people thought it would. I know it hasn’t for me. At the start of this year I had some BIG things planned for 2020 that have now been put on hold. Boo. As many of you may know, I started working from home permanently February 1st - where is my home you ask?... yeah — I moved back home to Kentucky to live with my parents and younger siblings for a bit. That was never in my “plan” for my future, but I needed to make some changes in my life and living at home would give me the opportunity to figure out how drastic of a change was needed.

As you all know most of the country went on lock down towards the end of March. This wasn’t too much of a change from my daily routine except for the fact that now I was sharing the WiFi with my mom, dad, sister, and brother during the day. One day I casually mentioned to my dad that we should just go to our cabin in northern Wisconsin, you know just to REALLY social distance ourselves. To my surprise, within the next hour my dad had spoken to two of his sisters and wanted to know how soon I could have my bags packed and in the car. Wait, what?!? We are leaving today? I at least thought I had a couple days to pack or wrap my head around it - but my dad had other plans. He says “I only need 20 minutes, is that enough time?!” Heck no, but I can be ready to leave tomorrow at 2p - I just needed to make sure that our drive wouldn’t interfere with my work hours. We made it to my aunts house the next night! 8 hours, 4 states, and ONLY 1 stop to eat, pee, gas up, and stretch our legs. Each state line we approached we knew there was a chance that we would get either turned around or at a minimum stopped and questioned. Don't worry, we were prepared, we had our stories straight as to why we were travelling. In all seriousness, we brought masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, and really limited our interaction with people.

The family cabin was built in the 40’s and needed some TLC since it is not a year round house. So for my dad, who has always wanted to fix up the cabin, this was perfect timing, he could actually spend sometime working on "the list". My dad left for the lake and I stayed with my aunt. Over the next couple of days my other aunt drove in from Virginia to help with the list of projects. Another aunt heard of all the fun and decided she couldn’t miss this — so now 3 of my aunts and I are all rooming together in this quarantine! (Yes, I have a lot of aunts!)

You may know that I have a love/hate relationship with online dating, dating apps, or whatever you want to call them. Typically I have them downloaded for a week or two and then I delete them for six months because I just get so frustrated. Late one Thursday night I decided what the heck, let’s see what fish are swimming in Wisconsin - who knows maybe I’ll find a good one. So I download the app, create my profile, struggle with what to write in my bio, settle on something just so I have some text, and begin swiping on the fellas. I swipe right on a couple of potentials (right is good, left is yuck) and decide to call it a night. The next day, Friday, I had taken off of work so I could drive to the cabin to help my dad install a new floor in the kitchen and bathroom. One of my favorite things about the cabin is the lack of cell phone service, there is no sending/receiving texts or phone calls unless you stand in the front room on your left foot and touch the window with your right hand...ha ha! Sometimes I wish I was kidding. Over the weekend, we installed the floor in the kitchen and the bathroom, a new toilet with dual flush (this is mega exciting), and sink. The lake was expecting 10-14 inches of snow on Monday, so we packed up all our stuff and began our trip back to my aunts on Sunday. I call out the days here so you know just how much time has passed.

One of the apps I use is Bumble, on Bumble if we match the girl has 24 hours to message the fella before our connection expires. If it expires we must match again - however the fellas do have one chance a day to extend the connection for an additional 24 hours. Bringing the total to a whopping 48 hour window, for the connection to happen. Let’s think back.. I left Friday morning and was without cell service until late Sunday night, so depending on when I matched with someone, my opportunity was gone. Out of habit I log onto Facebook and notice I have a friend request from someone I don’t know - he lives in New Mexico. I think to myself, that’s random - better not add him he could be a creeper and move on to check my Facebook messages - I hate red notifications on my screen. Here is where I discover that I have one unread message from my friend request. Puzzled I open the message and being to read - “Hey Meghan! Cute smile by the way 🙂 So I know you don’t know me yet but I’m Ben from Oshkosh, WI and I matched with you on Bumble the other day, and after extending your time to respond you didn’t respond and disappeared forever, so this is a last ditch effort. I usually don’t do this but reading your bio got me interested. I was surprised I even found you on Facebook but when I looked up Meghan in Monroeville, Alabama you were the first to pop up.” Ha ha if he only knew how small Monroeville was it would not shock him!

I keep reading to discover that I don’t think it’s creepy that he “found” me, I actually think it’s kinda cute. Feels nice to have someone want to meet you so they put in the extra effort! At the end of his message he mentions that he stumbled upon my blog and found himself reading the dating posts - "hopefully I don't end up as a blog post (ha ha we shall see about that Mr. Quarantine) One thing I’ve never been good at is hiding my emotions - one look and my face tells your exactly how I am feeling. Sitting on my aunts floor, my spot for "puzzle time", my aunts look over and notice that I have this silly grin on my face and begin to probe - what are you doing over there you look like you are up to something... I can’t contain my excitement so I blurt it out, I tell them everything. It was so cute they were all interested yet cautious at the same time! As Ben and I continued to chat back and forth, my aunts requested periodic updates!

It is such a wild experience dating with your aunts! I feel like I was living in a real life episode of the Golden Girls! (a dream come true) except replacing Sophia with a much younger version, me. The topic of meeting in person comes up quickly with Ben (I am always happy too meet early on - I mean, what's the point of dragging out meeting each other, at least there will be no questions left unanswered.) Two of my aunts were very excited and couldn't wait for me to meet him and report back...the other, well she was a bit more hesitant. (I don't think it helped that a couple nights before we watched a Dateline about a girl being murdered.) Eeeek. You'd be surprise what you can find on the internet if you know where to look and my aunts...they know where to look!

The pressure. Dating is such a strange thing - identifying characteristics you think you want in your future partner, refining that each and every time you date, hoping that one day you will cross paths with the one that has most of the qualities. Finding someone you think is an option only to discover they have quirks, then you think "is this something I can live with for the rest of my life" - does he slurp his soup too loud, does his cologne make me sneeze, do we have similar interests, will he dance with me in the kitchen?! Just a lot to consider.

As there are lots of things to consider once you're on the date - there are some things to consider before you even make it that far. Sitting around chatting about the what if's - one of my aunts suggest that they go on the date WITH me, you know just in case I needed an "escape" or to be rescued. We tossed around the idea of them walking around the park, keeping a safe distance and all I could imagine is Ben and I walking and "accidentally" crossing paths with my aunts and hearing "cough, cough, Meghan 6ft apart". ha ha. There was no way I was letting that happen, I would NOT be able to be myself if I knew that my aunts were close by - I know me and I know that I would not be able to keep a straight face, I would end up having to introduce everyone and I was NOT ready for that. Maybe I should have them drop me off and pick me up...is that weird? After a lot of discussion, the 4 of us finally agreed that I should meet him...ALONE.

We decided to meet at 4:00 on Thursday at a park where my uncle was the Ranger for many years, a place that was familiar to me and felt safe for all of us. That Thursday was like any other day, I woke up and attended my first meeting and then proceeded to work all day. I had a manager meeting from 3-3:30, which should leave plenty of time to get myself together - change out of my yoga pants and put on a little mascara to make me feel human again, and arrive at the park by 4p. During that meeting the team discovered that we could change our video backgrounds, resulting in the first 15 minutes spent laughing and gabbing, which was much needed. About 3:45 one of my aunts comes upstairs, notices that I am on a call, gives me a look and taps her finger on her wrist reminding me that I have a date --what she didn't realize was my video was ON! Everyone on the call beings to pester me asking me what am I late for, I was dying laughing...this is too good! My aunt panicked as she realized that my video was on, she scampered down the stairs, meanwhile, I tried my hardest to finish the meeting as if nothing had happened...but, I had tears in my eyes - this was priceless. Each minute the meeting went over the more I started to panic - I don't like being late...especially for a first date. Finally, I ended up texting Ben to let him know I was going to be about 15 minutes late.

The moment the call was over I changed my clothes, threw some mascara on and started for the door. Before leaving we did a check - did I have my mask, pepper spray, gloves, hat, and was there a way for them to track me? We thought about it for a second and decided that the best way would be to use the 'Share location' on the iPhone, I quickly shared my location one of my aunts and out the door I went. I meet Ben in the parking lot and we begin our trail date - the conversation was easy and enjoyable. We talked about everything from our parents job, our current situations, hobbies, our favorite past times, the places we've live, our siblings, the conversation never really had any awkward pauses - which is great for a first date. One trail led to another and the next thing you know we are on the Ice Age Trail (a trail that goes across Wisconsin), I later found out that we ended up walking a little over 3 miles. When we made it back to the parking lot neither of us were sure when the next time we would see each other again, but we were both interested in doing so. We hugged and parted ways.

As soon as I got back into the car I checked my phone to find that I had multiple messages from my aunts...one at 4:30 "Are you OK?" and one at 7:30 "Where are you?" - I replied with a simple selfie and drove home. I enter the kitchen and the interrogation begins! "How was it? You were gone for so long, what did you do? How far did you walk? Did you know you were almost to the Walmart parking lot? You had us worried, 3 hours is too long." I warmed up the orange chicken and took my place at the table. The date was a great one if you compare it to the last couple ones I've been on - he was a nice guy that loves to travel and has crossed off a lot of places that are on my bucket list. I was giddy. Could this be the start of something good and new? During this conversation is where I learned that my aunts were actually tracking me on my phone - watching the whole time. (How lucky am I to have such great family!) At one point there was a little freak out as the app showed me in the middle of the lake. "Did they decide to go for a swim? Did he throw her in the lake? What the heck is happening?" Moments later the GPS updated and my little dot moved back to the trail. Dot Meghan kept moving further and further down the trail, they were worried I was lost and were ready to come and pick us up and drive us back to the parking lot! Gosh I love these ladies - can you imagine the suspense these gals were under while I was out having a great date? Ben and I messaged a little bit before bed, but nothing too exciting to report.

The next morning we exchanged a couple pleasantry messages and then I got THE message. "So...I was going to ask you yesterday but I didn't want to get into a political debate., I am just curious so I gotta ask. What are your thoughts on Trump? How he is handling the situation? Do you support him? etc? Sorry I don't like to debate politics and whatever but I'm just curious as to where you stand with him. Hopefully, you don't take this the wrong way and understand. Just curious, that is all." Here I would like to point out that on the date he mentioned that he was "not really into politics" so this was a bit weird to receive. I pondered over my response before typing my thoughts, hit send and IMMEDIATELY thought..."this is it, this is what is going to end this before it even started". I wait and wait and wait for a response and still nothing. 5 hours go by and I finally receive a response...I start reading the text and at the bottom of the bubble there is a ...> so I select the message to discover that he has written a book. I did not know that you could send messages that long - figured there was some kind of limit...now I don't think there is. This text went on and on about how he hates Trump and all the decisions he is making....yadda, yadda, yadda.

Now, I know that everyone is entitled to their own political views and I encourage people to form their own opinions and be as involved or not as involved in politics as YOU want to be. However, do I think it is a bit much to go on a rampage in a text message where the recipient is someone you've met once? ABSOLUTELY. (Please don't get me wrong in thinking that I am not aware of what is happening in the political world, I am fully aware, but I don't really enjoy debating it with others. Your opinion is just that, your opinion and nothing I am going to say is going to change that.) Unsure of how to respond to that book of a text message I scurry downstairs to ask my aunts. We finally decide that we think its best to respond with something light-hearted just to get the conversation going again and avoid getting into a debate. "Oh boy, that was a lot" was the last text message I ever sent to Bumble Ben.

What a tragic story...girl meets boy, they go on a long enjoyable walk, ends with a political debate. NOT. There are so many good things about this story that they ultimately outweigh the bad! I got to go on a "good if not great" date that reminded me there are still great SINGLE men out there, I learned that I can count on my aunts to basically complete background checks with very little information, the laughs that I had with my aunts was priceless, and it broke up quarantine a bit!

Although it didn't end up like any of us hoped, I am so thankful for Bumble Ben. The time I got to spend with my aunts was priceless - As you know I am almost 31 so I can officially say that the older I get the more important quality time means to me. I will spend countless hours travelling either driving across the country for flying across the globe as long as there is a promise of quality time. Spending time together with family and friends has always meant more to me than gifts - although, it is nice to get a gift every now and again!

Tell me about a situation where the outcome didn't go as planned, what are some of the good things that happened? Did you make a new friend, discover something new, find a new band or author? What happened during quarantine that gave you life?