So, once I got rolling, it seemed a little bit weird, that I should be spontaneously cooking her up some stuff. And in the end, really? I recall that it takes me a long time to cook. I think I whipped up what we ate in like 3 hours -- and though it was decent, it really was nowhere near as delicious as it would have been if I'd taken my usual approach to such things, which probably would have made preparation closer to 5-6 hours. And as far as it goes, no -- I don't think you'd necessarily be able to tell it took me that long. It undoubtedly would not take some others the same amount of time to come up with the same results. But then, like I say -- it's not like cooking is something I do alot.

Also about the dinner? Well y'know, CG is actually the only person I've actually tried entertaining at my place, since I moved in. So when I was shopping for the basic stuff, I also bought a few other things -- this was like a Saturday-night after-work shopping trip technically for just one meal, and it ended up running me for like nearly a hundred bucks. Which reminded me that I am, in fact, still rather on the poor student side of things, which is oddly about the first time that's occurred to me since I met up with CG.

Another random fact about me that I think I hadn't mentioned? I'm hardly a big shot, but it's really rather hard for me to be a cheapskate when I'm socializing. Really, fewer things seem tackier and more of a buzzkill than people who begin squabbling and haggling over a bill when it comes -- or, for that matter, the people who feel the need to get out pens, papers, and charts to figure out exactly who owes what right down to the last eaten french fry. Which I guess is why I've little sympathy for those who complain about the prices at our club -- for myself, the only surefire way I know not to spend more money than I should is to simply not go out. Once I'm there, I'd much rather focus on who I'm with and on enjoying myself than on how much I'm spending.

But as I say: It occurred to me while shopping that really nothing has changed with the me-being-poor thing, despite spending so much time with CG. So I dunno -- I suppose I either make a deliberate effort not to spend money on her, or I wait till I'm evicted to point out the flaw in doing so quite so freely.

**************

Hm. See, I guess what I was getting at there is that I'm really kind of willfully irresponsible when it comes to financial stuff -- it's only when the bills start rolling through the mail that it really occurs to me that I should slow down. But CG is even worse, she's like one of my sisters and a few friends I've known: Can't even trust themselves to have a checking account, because they'd just screw it up. So I think that, being relative and all, she thinks I'm not a mess when it comes to finance. Ah, the rose colored-glasses of new love...

The break above, btw, is because CG called me as she was heading back to her work office. (Had I mentioned that I finally got DSL back? I know, I was just bitching about money, but being reliably connected ends up being hella timesaver, which in turns allows me to be more efficient with some other important stuff, like school and such. Anyhow, I can get a phone call and still stay online. Livin' the high life here, kids.) I was glad to hear from her, because we hadn't seen each other since Tuesday night ...

I hate to be a bit of a cliche here, but honestly I think I'm getting a little scared myself at how much CG and I seem to dig each other. Because pretty much from the start, we've had this kind of frame where it wouldn't be just a casual thing, but a potential kids/home/growing-old-together thing. And it's weird, because while everything still feels quite new it also seems inevitable that that's where we're headed, if we're to be together.

Like, one of our issues had been that, when she met me again, she was still in kind of a mourning period for some other thing that had not worked out -- actually, by "some other thing", I mean the first time in her life that she actually thought that she was in love with someone -- despite the fact that she'd been married for several years some years ago.

Well, after dinner Sunday I wrote her this kind of plaintive email wondering if we were okay -- you know, whatever "we" are? -- which apparently was the impetus for her to finally call up this other guy and figure out once and for all that they have no chance together. So on the one hand, that's a good -- really, my ego can hardly grasp that you might withhold your heart from me in reserve for someone else as anything at all acceptable in the first place.

On the other? Okay, well that's a good too, except in the panicky-committment department. Because she does tell me how all she could think when she met me again was how, if she hadn't met this other guy all these months before, she would have just fallen head over heels for me. And I'd guess that finally telling him he can stuff it is the clearing of the way for doing that to not be so inherentely confusing.

On the other hand, in that same conversation, she tells me how she never wants to meet Lesbian Best Friend -- who, you know, I'd just started kind of hanging with again, in the past couple weeks. Who also has a girlfriend who she seems absolutely crazy about, and vice versa. In fact, she's with the first girl I've seen her with, in all the years I've known her, that I can actually imagine being good for her. So rock on for LBF, right?

The problem? My having talked about LBF to CG pretty much as I've talked to you guys about her. That is, I've been straighforward about the kind of screw-up sexual thing LBF and I had going on for a while, and how that played into my not having hung out with her as much for all this time. And I suppose I do see how very odd all that could seem, but it's irrelevant is LBF and I are both in love with other women now, right?

Yeah ... if you were my "other woman", d'ya think you could be cool with LBF? Seems like CG needed some reassurance that I was not, in fact, still in love with her. (When, you know, I really never was -- despite the fact that the only way that most people had to explain how close LBF and I have been was to theorize that we were in love. We weren't -- we were just very, very close friends, who eventually ended up falling into bed together a lot.) But, tho (with schoolwork still pressing) I'm not going to swim through my archives to find exactly where, I'm pretty sure it was here -- within only the last several months -- that it actually occurred to me that I had to realistically consider the thing with LBF as my last "relationship".

I'm saying, I only ever thought of us as friends, she only ever did, and anyone around us only ever knew us as friends. But, as I tend to kind of use these pages as mental catharsis and reflection, I realized in writing here that, however unsusual, this actually should be considered my last relationship -- since, as far as I could imagine, it would still be going on now if I hadn't stopped hanging out with her. (But see, yet again -- that's where I was so pumped that LBF has a cool girlfriend -- it should eliminate any chance of any kind of that complication in the future.)

But yeah, lemme ask a question as I tend to do ... and I really am curious, because it really never occurred to me in all the time I was writing about LBF: So if you're a girl who meets some guy who seems really cool and all, and he tells you his last relationship was with a lesbian -- would you just have to have a bit of an issue about it?

CG tells me she hasn't mentioned LBF to her friends, because she knows what their response will be: "What the fuck?!?"

See, it's really just kind of hard for me to see it as necessarily so weird -- which makes sense since, after all, I'm the one who did it. I guess.

But yeah, in short she got rid of the only potential bid for her heart that could compete with mine, and so wanted reassurance about apparently the only girl I've mentioned that she thinks could compete for her with mine.

Can I just say this about that, tho?

Hetero-sex notwithstanding, she's a freaking lesbian. I really think that kinda removes her from the competition list.

Of course, the other aspect of all this that needed to be addressed was whether or not the thing with LBF was indicative of my preference for relationships that inherently could not work -- you know, the old "fear of commitment" dig. Well. In answer to that, with all honesty, I could only say this: CG has me hanging out with her brothers and sisters, her friends. I would have met her parents earlier this week if I hadn't had more pressing matters. She talks about having kids, discusses parenting perspectives with me. And apparently she's been eyeing up houses for their affordability, beauty, and size-appropriateness for a family.

If I could just speak from the male side of things for a moment, here? If you're dating a guy and you're talking about all that? I don't really think you need to inquire too deep as far as that guy's desire or willingness to commit. Honestly? The simple fact of his not having already run screaming in the other direction should be testimony enough on how he feels. IMHO, at least.