Sometimes a FAIL is really a SUCESS

I try not to write much about my dating life, or should I say sometimes nonexistent dating life, but this story is too good to pass up. The best way to tell the story is to explain the plan and then explain how it actually unfolded. The plan was something like this:

Take Friday off from work. Savannah girl* drives down and arrives around noon. She brings her two dogs so we decide a great way to introduce her dogs to my dog (Tucker) is taking them to the dog beach. After a successful play date at the dog beach we head back to my place, wash off the dogs and trade them out for a few longboards and hit the inlet for a fun surfing session (yes, Savannah girl surfs). Then we get cleaned up just in time to head out on the town for a nice dinner and then drinks at a local music venue. Saturday is left open for a variety of activties, but the real plan is to just keep it simple. Savannah girl heads back on Sunday.

Sounds easy enough, right???

Well, here's how it really unfolds.

Thursday evening a text message comes in from Savannah girl. It reads something like this:
"I just realized I have to doggy sit for a friend Saturday night so how 'bout I come down tonight, we have all day Friday and I head back Saturday afternoon? What do you think?"

I'm in the middle of a gold party, but since she is 3-hours away I'll be finished well before she arrives. "That's fine with me. This just means I get to see you sooner :-)" I reply.

Around 11 p.m. I call Savannah girl to see how her drive is going. She's tired and rightfully so as she's been up for about 18 hours at this point. She is a nurse and worked a 12-hour shift prior to heading out for her leap of faith dating adventure with me. One of dogs is carsick and throws up. Her car smells. I talk to her on the phone until she arrives around 1 a.m. Friday morning. We are both so "out-of-our-minds" tired at this point we introduce the dogs and go to sleep. The dogs sniff each others asses and try to hump each other briefly and seem to get along just fine.

Improvsed date weekend begins!

Saturday morning Savannah girl sleeps in for a while, but eventually wakes up. We cook a "Swedish pancake," which is basically a super unhealthy egg dish that hits your stomach like a rock, but it's definitely yummy! Savannah girl, who is really from Vermont, balks because I do NOT have any REAL maple syrup in my house. Hey, she's lucky I even have Aunt Jamima! I hardly ever eat anything that you put syrup on in the first place. So we leave the house in our pajamas to drive around the block to the farmers market. It's almost noon. Apparently since Florida is not anywhere near the land of REAL maple syrup the farmer's market only carries fresh honey. So we head to the nearest grocery store in our pajamas and find REAL maple syrup and I'll have to admit it does taste a hell of a lot better than Aunt Jamima!

Breakfast with Savannah girl = SUCCESS!

Time for the dog beach. Bruski, Papi and Tucker are loaded into the Jeep Wrangler and Savannah girl and I are off. First problem - it's high tide and the dog beach is underwater and crowded with too many people and dogs. Adding some local knowledge I suggest we walk down a few hundred yards further and it's less crowded and not underwater. Second problem - after 5 minutes of fun I notice a thunderstorm appearing out of no where and heading right for us! I tell Savannah girl that it's going to hit us in 5 minutes and it's a 10 minute walk back to the Jeep. We waterproof our cell phones and head back only to get absolutely soaked 5 minutes later. Savannah girl is laughing and we're carrying on about how brilliantly our date is going and basically being fools. The dogs are all giving us the WTF look. The best part you may ask? The Jeep has no top so we are forced to drive home in the rain.

Play Date at the Dog Beach = FAIL
Causulties = 1 lost tennis ball

As soon as we get back to my place the sun magically appears and the skies turn blue again. We trade the dogs out for surfboards and head to the NSB Inlet to catch some waves. Earlier in the day just before breakfast Savannah girl took two perscription allergy medicines along with a muscle relaxer. She had never done this before and obviously had NOT thought it through. The doctor told her to take the allergy medicines (one for indoor and one for outdoor allergies) at night before bed in case they make her drosey. She was in an accident several months ago and hurt her back, hence the reason for the muscle relaxers, which she thought would be helpful since we are planning to surf. She missed taking the allergy meds the night before since she didn't dare take them before driving down on such little sleep so why not just take them all at once? When she did this I thought, "man if that was me I'd be out like a hypernating bear," but everyone is different so who knows? Looking back at the experience and laughing about it, I love it because it's just the kind of mistake I usually make myself or have made in the past; something so crazy and innocent, but unlucky at the same time. Five minutes after we leave the house for the beach we are caught at the drawbridge. Savannah girls says, "Whoaaaa... man, I'm soooo tired all of a sudden." It's like the drugs are hitting her all at once. She's in a daze. We get to the inlet and I start to pull the surfboards off the rack. Savannah girls says, "I just need to lay down for a second." We lay down on beach towels and she's asleep within five minutes! I consider the situation. It's become quite overcast (she's not going to sunburn). We're in a safe area (she's not going to get run over by a car). Screw this I'm going surfing! I paddle out and surf for about 30 minutes before another, YES, another thunderstorm appears out of no where. The beach patrol clears the water. Savannah girl wakes up and just can't believe she has been out for about 40 minutes. She asks what the plan for tonight is and I offer to take her out some place nice or cook dinner at home. She jumps on the cooking dinner at home idea. She loves to cook at home and I'm completely stoked because I love to cook too! Then we get absolutely hammered by another thunderstorm. We duck into a grocery store to 1.) escape said thunderstorm and 2.) buy supplies for our planned dinner cooking date. The grocery store is absolutely freezing because we are both soaked like sailors in a hurricane.

Surfing date at the inlet = FAIL
Causualties = 1 drenched and short circuited garage door opener

Dinner goes well. It's chicken brocolli afredo and Savannah girl shows me how to make afredo from scratch, something I've never done. I make white sangria. We gorge ourselves and each drink a couple glasses of wine and then have some white sangria. After dinner we sit down on the couch and Savannah girl is again so tired it's almost as if she has been shot by a tranqulizer gun. I feel like an idiot for not realizing that the wine would intensify the allergy meds. She says she could take another nap. Thinking that another nap could help her get all those drugs out of her system and she might be better able to go out on the town, I think it's a good idea. She naps, I clean up the kitchen, the garage, feed my dog (I have to seperate him from the other dogs or he will not eat) and take a shower.

Cooking Dinner Date at Home = Partial FAIL (the food and time we spent making it was awesome)
Causulties = most of the white sangria went to waste.

An hour later she's up and we're chatting away on the couch, but she's really upset with the way she feels and the fact she can not do anything about it. It's obvious that going out to see a band play and drinking more alcohol is completely out of the question. I suggest we hang out and watch a movie. She makes it about 5 minutes into the movie and falls asleep again. I fall asleep about 20 minutes later and the night ends.

Night out on the town/improvised movie date = FAIL

Saturday morning arrives and we're both in great spirits! Savannah girl is back to her normal self, the dogs are hyper and stoked to be alive and we decide on taking them to the Spruce Creek Park (a forest with miles of jogging, horseback riding, hiking and mountain biking trails). We hike with the dogs for about an hour and enjoy the wilderness and make nice conversation. The dogs are worn out so we take them home.

Doggy date trail hiking = SUCCESS

Since we're both hot from the hike we try the surfing thing one more time, but this time I decide to use the pickup truck and not the exposed Jeep! It only took two thunderstroms to each me this lesson! The inlet is flat. I'm talking so flat it's just sad. It looks like Lake Atlantic! Despite the serious lack of swell, Savannah girl and I paddle out. Since there's really NO waves to surf we just paddle around, float next to each other, talk and enjoy the relaxing feel of gently floating on a surfboard several hundred yards out from shore. Just when all seems to be going well.... yup, another thunderstorm appears on the horizon and forces us to take shelter in the truck. We cruise the beach for a while as the thunderstorm pelts us with wind and rain. The conversation is good and we laugh about this and that, but it's about time for her to head back north.

Second attempt at surfing date = partial FAIL

Before heading home Savannah girl and I get some ice cream and I give her a kiss goodbye. We decide that despite the slew of epic FAILS we should meet up again soon. I'm impressed as absolutely nothing went as planned, but through it all Savannah girl took it with a grain of salt and actually had fun. Yes, she had FUN. I had fun just spending time with her and the fact that she had fun too makes me happy. So we'll see what kind of epic FAILS the future may hold, but honestly I don't see how the next time could go any more astray.

*I met Savannah girl several months ago when she came down with a mutual friend of ours for a visit. At the time I had another female friend staying with me for a week and she thought I was "with" her and I thought Savannah girl was seeing someone else as well. The true is it turns out that we are both single so I told her that I thought she was a good thing and seeing how I've let a lot of "good things" pass me by in life I didn't want to let her pass by so I convinced her that we should go out on a date.


UPDATE - Just a few hours after posting the above blog I receive a random text message from Savannah girl that reads, "I want to start off by saying I had fun Thurs and fri. But I just don't feel a "spark". I would rather be upfront and honest. I am going to NC this weekend."
How the hell could she feel any spark when she slept for an entire day. Seriously? SERIOUSLY, what would she have done if I visited her on a first date and overdosed on two allergy drugs, a muscle relaxers and an anti-depressant (to "lose weight"). Yes, that's right I didn't mention the other drugs she took all at once right in front of me since I really did like her, was giving her the benefit of a doubt and for fear she might Internet stalk me and find my blog. How the hell was I supposed to act or create a spark when faced with that kind of adversity? For what it's worth, I think there was something there between us, but some outside factor happened when she went home to cause her to shy away rather abruptly. Oh well, her loss. Just a few mintues ago I was telling my crazy story to a long time running friend of mine and she's already trying to hook me up with one of her other running/biking/triathalon friends that ironically has the same real name as Savannah girl. Life goes on...