My Loyal Dog

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Oops. I just found this unpublished post in my drafts. I think I wrote it in February or March of 2021? It makes me so much more grateful for my barn.

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The coyotes are loud tonight.

January was their real mating season, and they were crazy loud then, but tonight they’re especially noisy. I can hear them yowling and yipping on the back mountain. I used to find it beautiful to listen to, but now I’ve got the goats.

I don’t have quite enough land to warrant the way my neighbors would hate me if I got a livestock guardian dog, but I’ve got enough to worry about wildlife creeping onto our property.

We have the goats area fenced, but let’s be real- all it would do is stop the coyotes from dragging off one of the goats after they killed one. So, on nights like tonight, I sleep with my ears pricked and my boots ready by the door.

Sometime right before midnight, the coyotes break out in a chorus loud enough I can not only make out the individuals, but I swear I can hear the breaths they take in between each high-pitched call. I bolt out of bed and shove my legs in some jeans and my feet into cold boots. One quick swipe of the flashlight I keep by the coffee pot, and I’m out the door.

It sounds like they’re right outside my window, but I actually think they’re on the lower half of my property. Still, it’s way, way too close. I turn on my flashlight flash it over the hill and the yowling stops at once, except for one half-grown pup whose quavery call turns into a whine in the silence.

You can almost hear them waiting in the now-quiet, poised for flight but not yet gone. The air has a tense feel, although Reverie is still laying down, so it’s possible that’s just my imagination. Still, maybe it’s a sixth sense but I swear I can still feel the coyotes on our property.

Artemis is by my side, growling. Our backyard is fenced, and there’s a good three hundred feet beyond the gate before the land slopes down, so even if my gut is right, the pack is not nearly as close as they feel.

“Good girl,” I say, and she pricks her ears up at me, pleased. She growls again, and gives a deep, deep bark.

“Good girl,” I say again. She wags her tail twice, hard, so very pleased with herself. She stands beside me, hackles raised, and growls again. I feel like a scene from an Old Western. It’s just me and my trusty dog, standing guard beneath the full moon against a pack of varmints. I encourage Artemis again, and she takes a few bounces forward, barking deep and loud.

In the silence afterwards, I swear I can hear the coyotes mumble a cuss word and flee. We’re still in the backyard, so I know there’s no chance of her running off and actually coming into contact with a coyote, so I encourage her again. “Good girl. You tell ’em”

She barks deeply again, still growling, and she’s so very pleased to have this job. I’m proud of her, too. “Good girl. You go get ’em.” Her body stiffens, and she stares at me with electric tension. “That’s right. GO GET EM ARTEMIS!”

And she’s off, running full tilt, every line of her movement tense with explosive eagerness as she leaps forward and…..

Frantically searches the bushes for her ball. She’s determined to uncover it, convinced there’s a ball hiding in the foilage. She’s completely ignoring me now.

Oh thaaaaat’s right. “Go get it” in Lab-Speak means find your ball.

There is no more trusty sidekick. There is no more helpful growling. There is no more defending the homestead. There is only the invisible ball she is certain she’s going to sniff out, if only she can circle the tree and crash through the underbrush, one more time.

From further away, near the treeline, I hear the lone yip of that half grown coyote.

I swear it sounds like laughter.

On Dating

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There comes a time post-divorce when you heal enough to get a vague sense of curiosity.  They say there are plenty of fish in the sea. What do they look like? What kind are they? Is it as bad as they say?

I’m not sure what it says about me that I returned to dating for the same exact same  reason I crane my neck to look at roadkill, but I’m sure it says something.

Internet dating has always worked for me. After all, I don’t drink, I go to bed around 8:30 pm, and my weekdays are filled with work and kids, and my weekends are filled with, “Man, I don’t think I can let this farm chore be postponed even a second longer, I guess I better do it today.” Where else am I supposed to meet people, other than the internet?

Internet dating is also a pretty decent choice for someone with my social skills. I’m decent at carrying out a conversation when I have a keyboard under my fingers. I’m not so great at the real-life small talk thing.

Hi. Want to talk about horses? How about dairy goats? They once did a study and found that the scent women find most attractive is Good and Plenty mixed with cucumbers. Weird, huh? What’s red and bad for your teeth? A brick hahahaha. I’m thirsty. Do you like true crime documentaries? Hey, where are you going?

 

As I began to research I was amused to discover that OkCupid was still around. I briefly considered reviving my old profile from back in 2003/2004, but there was something depressing about that, so I decided to choose another site.

Only… only, it’s not like it was back in the early 2000s, where you chose from OkCupid (where the young folk went), or PlentyofFish (where the Christian folk went) or eHarmony (where the “I actually wanna get married” people went). Now?

Dude.  DUDE. There are SO MANY DATING SITES.

SO.

MANY.

OPTIONS.

Oh, sure, OkCupid, eHarmony, and PlentyofFish are still around, but so are a bazillion different others, and they all have their own private little niche.

What is it about people and creating niches, anyways?

Figuring out dating apps is a bit like trying to learn how to read those old ads for horses, back when you used to have a strict character limit. You guys remember the ones I’m talking about –  16hh OTTB chsnt H/J Gld…You had to know what you were looking for and understand the lingo before you could even start looking.

Who would have thought there would be such a steep learning curve for love?  And yet there was. You had to know what you wanted out of a relationship before you could even figure out how best to present yourself, and you had to create an account and figure out how best to market yourself before you could even look at who else was out there.

Did you want long-term commitment/marriage? You should probably choose eHarmony.  Everyone knows what Tinder is for, although I was surprised to discover that it has actually become a fairly popular dating site, not just an… errr, fairly popular “dating” site. Where you interested in speed-dating? Try Hinge.  Did you want more security as a woman? Try Bumble. How about long-term dating? Match. And so on, and so on. Each site had their own quirk.

Also, they all want you to swipe right if you like someone, which pretty much everyone knows and understands….

Except for my brain.

Every single time it mattered I ended up overthinking it too hard, and then panicked and swiped the wrong direction.

Oh, lordy, it’s a nazi axe murderer who is looking for a third in their open thruple, and that third needs to be diaper kink-friendly….  NOPE. Nope, nope, nope.  Not for me. I need to not swipe right. Don’t swipe right, Becky.  Left.  Swipe left. I definitely need to swipe left.Left, left, left…..

And then, like a horror film, my finger would slowly descend to left hand side of the cell phone screen, and swipe.

Do you know what happens when you put your fat, useless finger on the left-hand side of the screen and swipe?

Yeah, that’s right.  YOU SWIPE RIGHT.

The same thing happened with people I was legitimately interested in.

Hi, I’m the sexiest man alive, and I’m currently in the market for a single woman in her 40s with ADHD and a bunch of kids.  I breed Morgans and Andalusians and own properties all over the world. I’m looking to find someone to drink coffee, read books, pray, volunteer at soup kitchens, and admire beautiful horses.  If it develops into something more, that’d be great.  If it doesn’t, maybe I could just pay you to travel the world and ride my horses in exotic destinations….

And every single time I’d panic and swipe the wrong way, and “YOU MISSED A MATCH” would flash across the screen.

I suppose this is how it all starts.  One moment you’re young and hip and good with technology, and then the next thing you know, you’re talking about “the Google” and responding to Nigerian prince scams.

Technically speaking, if you swipe the wrong way it’s not a total loss.  Most of those places offer monthly memberships for a premium price, so you can go back through missed matches….But I hated the idea of it. It felt like a tax on me being stupid.

Plus, I wasn’t even sure I was ready to go on a date. The idea of dating had me lingering somewhere between nervous and nauseous. It felt too weird, and too soon. Mostly, I was just kind of playing around with the idea. Window shopping available men became my new evening hobby. I’d curl up on the couch after the kids were in bed, listen to the rain outside, and flip back and forth between a dating app and Zillow, happily browsing other people’s personal lives and personal homes.

Actually, internet dating and shopping for a house isn’t a bad comparison. When you first start looking for a house your list of needs is a mile long. I want a 2500 square foot single story ranch home with 3 bathrooms and 5 bedrooms, on 15 acres, under $200,000, with a barn and indoor arena and an in ground pool…

After a couple of months of looking at homes, and seeing the actual market availability, your needs become a little more…. reasonable.  “I’d like a house, with a bathroom, and it would be nice if the roof didn’t leak.”

I remember the first night I started looking through different profiles.  There was a person in a town about an hour away from me, and he had horrible serial killer eyes….except, I suppose, not really? If he really had serial killer eyes they’d probably be soft, and sweet, and approachable. After all, everyone knows that serial killers don’t actually look like serial killers…

I digress. How about this: he had the kind of eyes that looked like what you’d would imagine serial killer eyes to look like.  They were flat, and hard, and I’m pretty convinced that he was born without eyelids and had never blinked once in his entire life.  Every single vein in his body was sticking about 2 inches out of skin, like his blood was straining to escape his body.  He glared. Angrily. Plus, his neck was literally 100% the exact same size as his head.

I screenshot him and sent him to my friend.  “I should swipe right on him.  He looks friendly.”

“Oh, yeah, you definitely aren’t going to die going on that date.”

We both laughed, and I continued on.

But you know what?  A month or so later, the app became annoyed at how picky I was and started to recycle some of my old rejects through. CreepyEyes popped back up, and this time I briefly hesitated.  “Huh.  Not for me, but not so bad” was my thought, as I swiped him left… or rather, put my finger to the right, so I could swipe left, which resulted in us being paired, and me frantically trying to unmatch him.

And then a month later, when he came by again, I actually considered swiping right on purpose. “Oh, sure, he looks like he’d kill me… but you know, I don’t see too many red flags, aside from the fact I’d probably die….”

On the other hand, for all that I’m joking about other people’s profiles, do you have any idea how hard it is to write one of those things? It’s awkward as all get out, trying to brag on yourself without actually, you know, bragging on yourself.  It’s stressful creating a sales ad for your entire personality, asking people to pick you without seeming too needy.

In the end, like I always do, I decided to just go for blunt honesty.

I figured that was about as straightforward as I could get, and it seemed to work pretty well. Also, I was surprised at how easy the whole process was. There was no sudden onslaught of photos of male genitalia.  There were no inappropriate requests, beyond the one guy who said hello and then wanted me to drive an hour into the woods (out of cell phone reception) so he could cook me dinner. I’m sure he had nothing but the best of intentions, and while I do enjoy a nice homecooked meal, I’m sure you are all shocked to hear I didn’t take him up on his offer.  Gas is expensive, after all, and a single mom must be frugal.

Eventually, I decided to go out on my first date.