Ok, fine...I'll start a blog.

After having been married for 21 years, this year has been my first year as a single woman since I married my ex-husband in 1989.  I've been dating...a lot.  And many of the stories I've told my friends at school have gotten the response, "Oh my gosh...are you writing all of this down?" Several people have told me that I needed to blog about my experiences as a 47-year-old woman attempting to navigate life as as single person.  I'm certainly having my share of dating adventures.  I guess I'll share some of them here.

So here I am with today's chapter in the dating life of relatively intelligent, reasonably attractive, single woman who happens to be a school librarian.

I got a call from "Sean" last night. (I think what I'll do is change the names to protect the innocent, but keep the first initial the same so I can sort of keep track of who these guys are.)  We'd emailed back and forth a couple of times this week, and we'd looked at one another's profiles on Match.com a few times. I'd emailed him my phone number, and we finally chatted last night about 11 pm. (I'll save the reason it was so late until another time.)

We had a great talk. He's smart - graduate degree from a college I can't remember.  He's attractive - pictures show a 50ish guy, fit, dark hair and mustache/goatee, 5' 10ish. He's successful - owns his own marketing company and sent me a link to his company website...very impressive. He's been divorced a reasonable amount of time - about 4 years. A Google search for his name revealed no "U.S. vs. Sean" cases in his past, and his LinkedIn/Facebook/MySpace all seem to sync with who he represents himself to be.

We made plans to meet for dinner tonight at 7 at a place in Kennesaw that he goes to a lot - his "favorite place," he said.

This morning, he sent me an email with an attachment of about 20 pictures. I tried to open the pics on my Blackberry, but only the first two would open.  My Mac wouldn't open them either, so I didn't get a chance to look at them until I came in to work this afternoon.

When I got to work, I opened the pictures and began to scroll through them.  There were some pictures of his very handsome son and his beautiful daughter in law.  There were pictures of his adorable grandchildren - twins. 

And then came picture #10.  It was a picture of Sean in his Halloween costume. He'd mentioned it to me last night - he'd gone dressed as a priest. I've seen priest and nun costumes on Halloween forever, and lots of derivations of those costumes (chainsaw priest, pregnant nun, etc.) Sean's costume was different, though. There was a stuffed figure of a small boy - like a scarecrow without the straw. The stuffed figure was wearing jeans, tennis shoes, a long-sleeved shirt, and a baseball hat turned backwards.

And Sean had attached this small boy to his priest costume in such a way that it appeared the small boy was performing fellatio on Sean.  Sean was grinning, and he had his hand on the boy's head.

I became sick to my stomach looking at that picture.

I sent him an email, telling him that I'd just been able to open the pictures and that I just wouldn't be able to meet him. I said, "I'm sorry...I'm not a stick in the mud, and I know you meant it to be funny. But I just can't find the humor in it. Again I'm so sorry, but I guess we're just too different and I won't be able to meet you."

Sigh.

Another chapter in the dating life of the Lively Librarian Looking for Love.