It’s Sorta Like The French Lieutenant’s Woman

Remember that book by John Fowles, or the movie adapted by Harold Pinter with Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons? The French Lieutenant’s Woman was a very long story written by a great writer about the story within a story. I read it in college and recall there was a lot of jumping around. See the movie, it makes more sense.

You probably don’t have a clue what I am talking about and honestly the analogy made a lot more sense before I typed it out but bear with me (I actually had to Google that phrase, I’m never sure if it’s bare with me or bear with me. I know bare with me means to get naked with me but how does one become a bear with other people?).

This is why I haven’t been able to put out a decent post lately, my mind is off in all kinds of directions.

Continue to bear with me, I will get there.

Anyway, a few months ago I wrote a post called Boyfriend or Blog. I basically told the world that it was time for me to meet a guy and start dating again. I had a few prerequisites however, such as the guy needed to know about computers and accept my need to blog. I said I needed a geek who was okay with me blasting our relationship all over the internet.

Now if you are a believer in The Secret you will be pleased to know that by posting that piece I indeed met a guy who fit that description. Of course blasting my desire to meet a guy to the whole world probably had something to do with it. But still, I put it out there no matter how firmly my tongue was planted in my cheek, and someone responded.

Just one, but still, one is all that is needed. And I’m not all that choosy anymore. Seriously, go look in the comments and you can see the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

So James and I started conversing through my comments, he was even grilled by a few readers. Eventually, they decided he was okay for me to date and we took our courtship to gmail. Not long after that, and because both of us tend to talk a lot and the emails were getting way to long, we moved to phone conversations.

Which is where the relationship has been ever since.

We’ve actually set up several first meetings but for different reasons that first date has been canceled, at least four times now.

We were supposed to go out last weekend, all of our kids from previous marriages (and there are a lot of previous marriages between the two of us) were with their other parent. So there was a lot of pressure on this date, at least from my perspective.

It’s been a while since I dated so I needed to do a few things to prepare myself. I got a hair cut and actually had some things waxed. Not that thing, I can use something like this for that. I went shopping for something to wear, since I didn’t think it best to make that first impression in sweat pants and ripped t-shirt. I actually considered wearing a dress but I don’t own any dresses except one of my wedding dresses and the dress I wear to all the funerals I’ve been going to lately.

See that last paragraph? That is the story within the story, or the blog post within the blog post. I considered that paragraph last week and decided that there were a couple of spots that could be easily monetized. I actually contacted the PR people at Proctor and Gamble and told them about my story and where I planned on linking to their product. I asked if they wanted to sponsor the post. They politely declined, said it wasn’t there policy to compensate bloggers for editorial coverage, and then sent me all kinds of information on the product to include in my post. I was not going home empty handed, I just couldn’t. I asked if they had any of the bikini kits they could send me so I could have a giveaway for my readers. Because dammit, someone is going to get something if I am going to give away a prime spot in a blog post that is way too long and all over the place. So they sent me two kits. One of which I am going to keep and the other I am going to giveaway but I don’t know how yet.

I think it was JD from I Do Things who coined the phrase “it’s not worth doing if you can’t blog about it” or she’s the one who says it all the time, not sure which, but it doesn’t matter because it is still true.

Luckily for me James is just as deeply devoted to Web 2.0 as I am and sees the marketing potential in this relationship. You see, James is about to become a published author, a real one, not just a self publishing author, not that there is anything wrong with that. His first book is due out next March so we’ve been trying to figure out a way to capitalize on that. Okay, he doesn’t need to capitalize on it, I do. But, whatever.

I saw this article and thought the possibilities were endless. I even sent the link to James which was kinda risky because it talks about marriage and we haven’t even met. But James likes marriage so he wasn’t scared off.

So, if there are any restaurants in the St. Paul/ Minneapolis area that would like to sponsor our first date please leave a comment. And by sponsor I mean give us the works for free, there will be blogging about it after the fact. Neither one of us is picky but neither of us likes liver and onions and James has issues with onion rings. Okay, James might be a little picky. We’re open to activities too so if you own a paint ball place or something fun like that please let me know.

Stay tuned readers, I’m going to get this relationship sponsored and you get to read all about it.