From Single To Insta-Family: A Disgusting Tale of True Love, Part 2

 So summer swept up...I spent mornings meditating on the dock, afternoons working and going out for walks and runs in the forest, and evenings writing and reading and star-gazing on the dock. It was, all at once, incredibly relaxing and incredibly jam-packed.

And kind of boring. And more than a little isolating.

When I would start to feel like a fundamentalist Mormon stuck on the compound, I would meet up with my old friend Adam for a happy hour or late night drink at the Angry Minnow. Adam was originally from Hayward, and we had been friends since I had first come to the area, back when I was twenty-one. He spent his winters down in Austin, TX, though, and only came up for the good seasons (summer and fall) to run the Wine Cave at The Pavilion (one of the coolest places in Hayward, and probably in all of Wisconsin). And while drinks or social outings with him were a spot of relief in the long string of sunny days at the cabin, it wasn't enough. I was starting to get bored...and as I knew from the last time I lived up there, when I get bored, nothing good seems to happen.

So I took a barista job at a little local coffeeshop called Mooselips. Like Mooselips, my position changed and morphed depending on the day or night - during the day, when it was a coffeeshop, I was a barista. During the night, when it morphed into a martini lounge and upscale eatery, I was either a hostess, waitress, or bartender. It was good for me, to be social again, and I started to meet a lot of really great people. I also started to find a lot of really great opportunities when it came to my work with social media and copywriting and other long-held dreams. Opportunities I didn't want to pass up.

So at the end of summer, I decided to move into the Adventure Loft with Adam, who was also staying through the fall and possibly the beginning on winter. Through Adam, I started to meet a lot of different and interesting people. I initially met Rugged Wilderness Outdoorsman (more on him later) earlier in the summer, but started running into him more often now that I was going out more around town. I also started to hang out with a group of friends who were closer to my and Adam's age. One of them was a guy I knew from parties back in the early days (for those of you in the know, the character of Johnny from Holiday Chick is loosely - emphasis on loosely - based on him).

Around this time, I started emailing fairly regularly (which, for me, means about once a week if we're all lucky) with the guy who friended me on Facebook after noticing my absence on OkCupid. His name was Chris. We began to trade emails back and forth about a film short he was working on - there was a role he thought I might be like to take on - and I spilled that I wasn't going to be moving home to Minneapolis quite just yet. His reaction made it clear that our Facebook friendship and email correspondence wasn't wholly friendship-based, but since we were at a sort of impasse, we just kept emailing and Facebooking each other. His emails were super funny and his Facebook stuff was all kinds of nerdy and fun, and once, after seeing a status update of mine that mentioned I wasn't feeling well, he sent me a slew of videos so I could be entertained while I was laid up in bed. And it was easy...I am the same way with emails as I am with my regular writing - I read it over about billion times to make sure every sentence reads exactly how I want it to (which is exhausting, and could be the main reason why I take so long to reply back to emails...my response has to be perfect!). But with Chris, there was this sense that I didn't have to do that. Whether it was because I didn't really think this was going anywhere (or at least, not for a while...like I said, I wasn't going to do that thing, anymore, where I was expected to drive down to the cities to meet up with some guy because he couldn't be bothered to find Hayward on a map. Not that I thought in the least that Chris was like that, but, based on past experience, I knew better than to expect a face-time resolution until I moved back down to the TC) or because he just had this knack of making me feel comfortable at ease, it was just...fun. And easy. And fun.

Unlike another romantic entanglement I was finding myself in. During the beginning of fall, I began sort-of seeing the guy I used to know from parties back in the day. He was all shades of devastatingly hot, and he was smart and funny and progressive-minded and kind. And while we had a really great time together, I was starting to see that he was definitely not the kind of partner I was trying to manifest when I did my Soulmate Secret stuff. He was the epitome of the great guy who is going to be really great either in five more years or with another girl. In this case, it happened to be another girl (which was kind of awesome, to tell the truth. They are definitely all shades of crazy for one another, and it was actually a pretty sweet end to everything).

And, as it happens, when one door closes, a window opens. This window just happened to be Rugged Wilderness Outdoorsman.

Everyone who knows me well knows that for YEARS I've been a total sucker for the rugged outdoor type. The whole manly-poet-living-off-the-land thing just totally takes me down, every. single. time. And this guy - I'll just use his name, Brad, since it's not secret - was that. Brad is a world-record-holding Musky fly fisherman (because why wouldn't he be, right?). He's about ten years older than I am, incredibly charming, wonderfully intelligent, and just a delight to be around. Since meeting him for the first time, he had stayed on my radar. Once I started working at Mooselips and moved into the town of Hayward, we started crossing paths a bit more, and it was just ridiculous, you guys: I am not the smooth and seductive type, especially when it comes to men. But I would see Brad in the room and would suddenly find myself walking by him and being all "Heeeeey Braaad..." in a low and husky voice as I sauntered by. Like Kathleen Turner had just entered my body and took over for me, knowing that I would never be able to seal the deal on my own.

On Halloween weekend, Brad hosted his annual Musky Ball at Boulder Lodge. Adam and I had already made plans to either go out that night at the Seeley Saloon or see what action was happening in Hayward. But the scene was boring and dead, so on a whim, we decided to drive out to the lodge for the Ball.

And it honestly turned out to be one of the funnest nights of my life. Boulder Lodge is this beautiful Northwoods hideaway, built out of pine and stone, and Brad had hired this amazing bluegrass stomping band to play, so the atmosphere for a glorious fall night was set, and it was definitely a party. And, for any single girls who love the rugged outdoor type, this is where you want to be - the lodge was packed with ridiculously handsome outdoorsman, young and old (I'm actually thinking of taking a group of women up there next fall for it...kind of like a guided adventure tour for the city woman who loves Northwoods outdoorsmen. Email me if you'd like to sign up). There were tons of friends there, new and old, and everyone was drinking and dancing (a lot, on both counts). And then, of course, there was Brad.

The night kind of swooned into a blur of dancing and flirting and "hey, we should go out sometime." The very next day, he emailed me to see if I would like to go out together sometime. I was getting closer, you guys! I seriously sat up in bed (I was not feeling well the next day...must have been the flu, yeah?) and thought to myself that even if Brad turned out to not be the person I was looking for, this type of behavior was exactly the kind of thing that I was looking to attract, and so that was totally something, right? Progress! It feels so good when it happens...

And it seemed perfect. I remembered, with perfect clarity, making jokes with my friend Dave earlier that summer about my hermit existence up north and him ribbing me about how I would probably meet a rugged outdoorsman and never come back home again. And I mean, c'mon. Me, the total sucker for the type, and then suddenly there he is, and not only do we have this ridiculous chemistry, but he's actually smart and interesting and swoon-worthy with the way he just goes after what he wants? I wasn't making any declarative statements just yet, but if I had been a betting woman, I would've been (albeit slowly) sliding my chips to the winning spot on this one.

As it happens, though, that very same week I also got an email from Chris, asking if he could come up to Hayward to take me out on a date. 

And that's the end of Part II. Look for Part III, coming soon to a blog (this blog. The one you're reading right now. This one) near you!

<-- Part I

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