there’s no hope of anyone helping me out.
Nope, I can’t take more work onto my shoulders. My kids would never see me. Not that they’d mind, probably, because while the cat is away the mice definitely play in this house. The last time I left them to their own devices and tried to do some work at home, the girls covered Sammy in greasy diaper rash ointment and then topped it off with talcum powder. They said they wanted to make him look like a ghost to practice their Halloween costumes. He looked like a ghost for the entire two hours it took me to wash it all off of him. That stuff sticks like nobody’s business, and its base is fish oil, so our bathroom and a couple of our towels still smell like anchovies.
I’m always torn when I catch the kids doing things like this. I can’t decide if it’s sibling love and the girls inviting Sammy to be a part of their games, or sibling torture with him as the easiest victim. I’ve fallen back on the theory that if it were the more vicious type of play, Sammy would let me know, and he never seems to mind, so I don’t get too upset about it. Besides, they did do a really fantastic job of covering every square inch of his skin. If he decides he wants to go out on Halloween as a ghost, I’ve got the costume part covered.
That’s a whole other thing I have to deal with. Halloween is just weeks away, and the kids are already harassing me about costumes. I jump on my keyboard and do a quick search on Amazon for potential ideas. There are at least fifty pages of options, so I close the window down and take a breath. Maybe I could get them to go as the Three Stooges. It would fit my life pretty perfectly. I write on a little notepad next to my computer to remind myself to ask the kids what they want to be so I can get the costumes in time.
I put the pen down and, once again, find myself staring at my search engine window. Where do I want to go from here?
A door opens and closes somewhere out beyond my office, interrupting my train of thought. I’m sad that Dev is gone, but I can hardly complain, since I’m the one who asked him to leave. I totally and completely suck at interacting with the opposite sex.
I bite my lip as I stare at the computer. It’s nuts that a near stranger leaving my house makes me so sad. Crazy. I seriously need to get a life.
It’s that thought that sparks my inspiration. I could go on a dating website. It doesn’t mean that I’m actually going to look for a date. Browsing is not the same as being desperate for a man. I could just see what’s out there, right?
I do a quick search and click on the first service that pops up. I assume if they’re on the top of the search results, they’re either spending a lot of money to be there or they’re really popular. That means there will be a lot more candidates to choose from, and having a greater pool of candidates sounds like a good idea. I click the mouse around the site, trying to get to the meat market area. Time for Momma to go shopping for some prime beef. Wakka wakka.
Unfortunately, it won’t let me search for anyone unless I have a profile started. Knowing what I know about marketing and getting website users to engage, I’m not surprised. They want you to stick around, and in order to do that, they ask for a little commitment.
I shrug. What the heck? What’s the big deal? I can just put up a little profile. No harm in that. I don’t have to make it public so people can see it. I’ll just use it to do a little surfing.
I start the process by giving my name. They promise to only reveal the first initial of my last name. W. Then I get to the part where they ask for a credit card. I’m wary about putting my financial details anywhere online, because being a computer engineer puts me in the perfect position to know how easily that information can be accessed by the wrong people.
I could take the time to test the vulnerabilities of this site to hackers, but why bother? I