Taxidermy Labrador??

So I had a Match date on Saturday, the first one in a while. In fact I can't remember the last one, I think it may have been with the bloke who made my stomach churn by dipping the fork he was eating from into the wide neck of the ketchup bottle repeatedly!! Ugh!! Yup I think he was the last one. I did get a few winks and a couple of messages, but I was in San Diego for a week and then my parents were in town and I was just too busy to pay too much attention to it. I find I have fits and starts where the online dating thing is concerned, although I'm trying to be more consistent with it.

Anyway Saturday's date sounded a bit more promising based on the emails we'd exchanged. He's a doctor - the girls were all "ooooh a doctor," but I don't think dating doctors is all it's cracked up to be since they are usually up to their eyeballs in debt and if I am going to date a poor man I tend to favour the artistic type - who used to lead tours to remote bits of Acacia National Park. He sounded promisingly outdoorsy on paper and I was quite looking forward to meeting him.

I'd suggested grabbing a coffee and taking a walk in the park, casual-like for a first meeting, and he responded that that would be nice and asked if I was interested in taking his dog for a walk. Now I love a dog, and this one was particularly nice; a very well behaved Border Collie mix, I was more than happy to take him for a walk, but it turned out to be a bad move on my part because my date was very distracted as a result, continually throwing his dog - which he had off the leash in Central Park at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon - a Frisbee and talking back to the people maintaining the park, when a couple of them told him his dog should be on a leash. If I am honest I found him to be a bit on the disrespectful side to the park workers - "It's not like they can do anything about it," he complained, "they just like to throw their weight around, but they have no power to give me a ticket." - and wondered about being on the receiving end of his attitude.

Hmmmm!!

I'm also a law abiding sort and could completely see the park workers' point about the dog being on the leash, even though the dog was incredibly sweet and very obedient. We cut the date short anyway as it started to pour with rain almost as soon as we met and after 45 minutes my jeans were drenched to my knees. "I'm going to literally have to take a rain-check," I told him.

"Yeah, it's not great, sorry about that."

"Oh no problem, it's not your fault, you don't control the weather. Anyway it was nice to meet you," I told him shaking his hand.

That was Saturday and it's now Thursday and I haven't sent him an email and he hasn't reached out to me and so I don't think a longer date is in our future, which I'm more than okay about. Not to jump to a quick judgment, but my gut just says we're not compatible and I'm pretty sure he was about as interested in me as I was in him. I also felt as if I got a glimpse into an aspect of his personality in his defiant response to the park workers regarding his unleashed dog that did not sit so well with me. He also had a fairly disinterested vibe. I'd made an effort to ask him about his work and interests outside of his job, I always do, which is probably why I often get asked out on second dates when I had an awful time, but the effort wasn't really reciprocated. "I really enjoyed our date" they often say, "shall we go out again?" and I always think "Of course you enjoyed the date, you spent two hours talking about YOURSELF." Give me strength, a bit of give and take please!! Of course if a guy was hot I'd totally go on a second date, self absorbed or not, I'm shallow that way.

Anyway I'm trying to hang on in there with the online dating/dating in general, but it's by the skin of my teeth at the moment. It's a good thing I re-subscribed to Match in September and still have 5-months to go otherwise I would be cancelling. I'm really questioning whether I am bothered about being in a relationship at all? Yesterday on OKCupid I was listed as a favorite of a man in South Dakota with a No Country For Old Men haircut who looks like he is sat holding a taxidermy Labrador. "That dog's legs are awfully straight," said Megan when I showed her the photo. I was too perturbed by it to click through to the site see the larger image and check whether the Labrador was indeed stuffed and also...South Dakota....1500 MILES AWAY!!! 1500 MILES!!! This is only the latest in a relatively long list of men from far and away who have approached me online. Off the top of my head I can remember hearing from a man in Idaho, two men from North Carolina, two from Canada and one from Switzerland who, despite my lack of response, sent me a note trying to meet up with me - and no doubt many other women - when he was in New York for a week long vacation.

Um...no!!

Seriously???