He has the cutest....dog...

I recently admitted to myself that I wasn’t going to meet Mr. Right in any of the impossibly romantic scenarios I’d always imagined. Obviously we’ve long surpassed the chances of Mr. Right being my high school or college sweetheart. And that fantasy where my car breaks down and some hottie with a medical degree and a mechanical hobby pulls up behind me and fixes my car and subsequently proposes after he sweeps me off my feet is obviously never going to happen. First of all cars are far more reliable than they are portrayed to be in romance novels and when they do break down, the reality is that you call AAA and sit there for 2 hours in the sweltering heat and if someone does pull over to help you, he’s missing several teeth or he calls you “little missy.” And since I really hate jogging, I’m kind of putting my own wrench in that scenario where I twist my ankle on the trail and the same hottie with a medical degree stops to help me limp back to my car and by the time we get there he’s madly in love with me. So, my car’s not breaking down on the campus of a medical school of hotties in need of lovin’ and I’m not jogging in July heat in the southeast and it appears that men don’t just come knocking on my door to get a glimpse of me. I know, shocking!

As a result, I’ve decided to dip my toe into the online dating pool. This isn’t the first time I’ve done this, however in previous experiences I’ve found that like the gene pool, someone should add more chlorine to the online dating pool. I still haven’t found the site where they pair up women that are college educated, career-oriented, financially stable, and successful with men deserving of such women. I have found plenty of sights where men living below the poverty line in mom and dad’s basement proudly display their GED on the wall and send me emails that say “your pretty” and “Theirs a lot more to me than you can read on my profile.” Yeah there is – there’s some proof that you shouldn’t have passed your GED if you can’t get the your/you’re their/there thing straight.

I’ve also found that online there seems to be a warped sense of reality. I didn’t specify the body type I’m looking for but I’ve noticed that people that indicate that they’re “a few extra pounds” have a different definition of “few” or “pounds” than I do. One guy looked like he may have eaten an entire civilization. Darling, that’s not a few extra pounds. And I understand a woman describing herself as curvy but what exactly is a “curvy” guy? Where are these curves exactly? What was wrong with “stocky” or “heavyset”?

All that aside, here’s my biggest problem. I’ve gotten several emails already. However, I realized that I’m responding to the guys with the cutest dogs in their pictures. Wait… Am I looking for a date or a dog? Maybe I’ve just assumed that if a dog likes him then he must be a good person. However, I’ve poked a hole in that theory too. The homeless guy that used to panhandle outside of the O’s games when I lived in Baltimore had a dog and I wouldn’t date him (but I would have taken his dog home). Am I just assuming that someone that has room for a dog in their life has a big heart? Well, let’s face it, dogs don’t come with a lot of baggage. They don’t complain about sleeping on the floor. They get excited over rawhide. I’m going to be a little more difficult to please at times. I mean, if you show up on my birthday with rawhide, we’re going to have issues. I obviously want these guys for their dogs. This is not how to get a dog.

A normal person would (have never ventured down the online dating road in the quest for canine companionship to begin with) go get herself a dog. She’d bond with it, love it, and then see how she felt about continuing the quest with online dating. The problem is that my schedule is so un-dog-friendly. A couple nights a week I don’t get home until after 10. I have a couple cats and they really love me. That should be enough. But a date would be nice and if I’m weighing my options, I may as well give a few brownie points to the guys with cute dogs.