random thoughts by jaime lee

Well it's been some time since I wrote on this here blog. I've been in Nashville recording and then in Maine, both admiring and recoiling from nature. I spent some time in Rangley and it was beautiful there and believe it or not, I actually forgot that places like that existed, unspoilt by Walmart and McDonald's.

I've decided in the interest of keeping up the writing juices that I'll just write little snippets here and there, however random or short, just to keep things flowing. That is after all the point of a blog, I guess (and really this blog is so random anyway, who of my five readers would notice the difference)? :)

I'm done with Christian Cafe and good riddance to that! Thanks for following my ridiculous journey through online dating. In the end, it's still just Jesus and I but I think that's a good thing. I recently read this book called "The Shack" and it was soooo compelling, I found myself falling even deeper in love with Jesus. I was pondering spending eternity with Jesus and my husband (whoever that's going to be) and I found myself thinking that three is a crowd and to my surprise, my preference was to have more alone time with Jesus. Hah! I won't be showing this blog post to my future husband.

So here it is Friday night and I'm exhausted. I went downstairs to give my elderly landlords the rent and we chit-chatted. Recently I had a few friends over to celebrate my friend Denise's fantastic performance in "Love's Fire." I had to carry one of her props into the house, a huge wedding dress in a white plastic bag. I cleared the doorway but my landlady had already seen the bag and questioned my two guy friends as to what I was carrying. Well Liam and Justin are quick and they responded that it was a wedding dress and that I was getting married in short order and something along the lines of they needed only to decide who would marry me by running a relay around the block. My landlords were laughing about this tonight and I said, "Well, we don't have to worry about me getting married for a while. Always the wedding singer..." To which my landlord said, "Your day will come. After all, you're just a kid." The latter was so comforting. As a child, if someone says, "you're just a kid", it's such a huge insult, a capital offense if you will. But as a weary adult that hasn't figured everything out yet, it's so reassuring to hear that there's still time and answers to come. Time has such a huge impact on perception.

Well friends, I'm off to watch Psych! This is the first time in half a year, that I've remembered to watch TV and I'm really looking forward to sitting on my broken couch and melting my brain a little.

instant pain in the ass

Okay, so Christian Cafe has this annoying feature, called 'instant messaging.' I know, I know, everyone has instant messaging but this is different. When it asks you if you want an incoming instant message, it doesn't tell you who it's from. You have to accept the invitation and then you see the picture and the screen name. First of all, that's not nearly enough for me to go on, to decide if I want to talk to someone electronically for 10 minutes. That's 10 minutes I'll never get back. Secondly, it's just AWKWARD and it hits you out of nowhere. It's like getting a knock at your door, when you weren't expecting anyone and then you look through the peep hole to see who it is and they're covering the peep hole with their finger. What is that?!

I swore I wouldn't cry

So recently I had to break up with my therapist because she doesn't like Christians. Well, that's not true, she just doesn't like God or Jesus. Do I have to have a Christian therapist you might ask? I don't think so; I mean I don't even know if any of my other therapists were Christian or Jewish or athiest. But there in lies the point; I had no idea. This one however, made it perfectly clear early on, that she didn't like God, or the idea of Him. Well this made things awkward. It's sort of like when you're talking to a friend and you have a mutual friend who that person had a fall-out with. You find yourself not wanting to bring up that mutual friend's name because you don't want the friend in front of you to be uncomfortable. So it was rough, but I had to let her go.

I went to see a pastor at my church and that was really helpful and also exhausting. My pastor is like Oprah, in that I swore I wouldn't cry and yet five minutes into our session, I'm letting out snot-spilling sobs, hiccups and all. But I slept like the dead that night and I felt a lot better the next day.

My old therapist called me today and wants to meet with me one more time. I'm not sure what that's about but I've always had trouble breaking up with people, so I agreed to see her one more time. I'll let you know how it goes.

Christian Cafe dot C'MON

And the saga of Christian Singles Disease continues, as I enter my third week on Christian Cafe.com. Or as I'm starting to call it Christian Cafe, dot C'MON!! Are you serious? Are you for reals?! (Yes, I said 'reals' with an 's'). I sent messages to 8 Christian men that were my age, seemed to be 'my type' etc. They haven't even read the message yet! They're just sitting there 'unread.' Are those fake profiles? We all know that's happened to me before on Match.com (see my earlier post "Mr. Darcy").

Here's my latest beef. So for those of you who aren't Christian, you may or may not know that Christians often refer to each other as 'brothers and sisters in Christ.' Like my friend Jonathan or my friend Paul, they're my brothers in Christ. And it's nice to think that I have so many brothers and sisters in Christ out there, that I don't even know about. But when I'm shopping for a husband, why would you refer to yourself as my "brother in Christ?" I'm getting these messages from guys and they're all, "Blessings, your brother in Christ." Dude!! If you want me to evaluate you as someone I might sleep with, please hold off on refering to yourself as my BROTHER! Eewww!!! Ewwwww!!!!!! Eew.

shake it

Usually when you're trying to get something electronic to 'work', whether it's a vending machine or a computer, shaking it, is not a viable option. Whatever Outkast says, shaking isn't actually good for Polaroid pictures either. However they've recently designed Ipods that will skip to the next track, if you shake them. Amazing! If you're holding your Ipod, instead of scrolling or pressing a button, you just give a little flick of your wrist and the next song on your playlist will start. What if you could answer your phone by shaking your head?

My friend Nick and I were discussing my dependence on communication technology, as opposed to his blessed independence from it. This was actually one of the contributing factors that lead to Nick and I breaking up and becoming just friends.

He went on to say that if we were ever to date again, he would do things differently. He said that he'd have a special phone just for me, like how in movies there's a hot red phone in the oval office that must be answered each and every time it rings because every phone call on that line is of the utmost importance. I shared this with my young charges that I care for and they took it one step further, suggesting that the perfect boyfriend would have the cell phone installed into his ear canal and could answer my call with just a flick of his head and a 'hello'. Why didn't I think of that?

Our pastor brought up a radical idea today, when we were talking about the Sabbath and taking one day a week to rest. He suggested giving our computer or any other technology that marks a normal day, a rest too. Um, WHOA! To do that, I'd have to throw a tarp over my keyboard, not do any blogging, bury my phone (which has internet now too) and surgically remove my Ipod earbuds. What am I supposed to do then? Go outside and enjoy nature? How very 'sturbridge village.'

I do think it's important though to have some 'organic' down time, if you will. And many of us Americans, have trouble doing this. Is it because we're afraid we're going to 'miss something.' Is it that same part of us that didn't want to go to bed as a child because we thought the adults would have a party after we went to sleep? My friend Georgia suggested that perhaps it's because we don't want to be alone with our thoughts. A worthy thought indeed! I wonder how many times I've prolonged suffering by avoiding dealing with things in my head and distracting myself with other things, that have nothing to do with me and my life?

By the way, speaking of distracting time-sucks, I ended up signing up for a full month of Christian Cafe so I'll be sending more updates on that as well.

I think one day next week, I'm going to try and give up one piece of technology. Or maybe I'll just give up Facebook.

crusty christian singles

Okay my title is a little mean and I'm exaggerating slightly but only slightly! Seriously, the majority of men that write me are 45 and over. I even got a message from a 55 year old. Um, what the duece?!! Am I in a parallel universe? I mean people think I'm 22 to look at me and who approaches me? 40 and 50 somethings. Calgon, take me the heck away.

The other thing that I'm encountering are men giving me a sermon. One guy went to great lengths to say why Jesus loved me. This guy doesn't even know me! And of course Jesus loves me; I knew that! Another guy wrote me a short novel, asking me all kinds of philosophical questions. Or at least, I think he did. He was 55 and I only scanned the contents of the message out of morbid curiosity.

I had made a decision not to search and message guys but just to respond to ones that message me. But after the recent string of men that are 20 years my senior or more, I decided to do a search and see if there are in fact, men on this site that are my age. Much to my chagrin, there are. Mind you, they're not viewing my profile as far as I can tell but they are out there and they're actually cute. Apparently, they don't think I'm cute. Maybe I scared them with my "I'm not a virgin" disclaimer.

Okay, I've heard from a couple cute guys that are my age. That's literally 2 out of 100 plus...I know, I know, I'm only looking for 1. But to quote Charlotte from Sex in the City, "I've been dating for 15 years and I'm exhausted, where is he?!"

the only time I like sports

Is when I get to sing. Here's me singing the National Anthem at Harvard Stadium for the Boston Breakers, Boston's Pro Women's Soccer team. There were 4200 people there, though it looked a lot less since the stadium (the oldest Stadium in the country) seats 18,000. You can't see me because they wouldn't allow anyone to get that close to the players (I'm standing right in front of the two teams). But you can hear them announce my name, right before I sing. You'll have to turn up the volume as high as it can go. Before you watch the video, turn off the music player on the right hand side of this blog. Enjoy!