Well, we sacrificed the pinata yesterday. It turned out pretty darn good if I do say so myself. The best compliment came when I overheard one of the mothers say, "looks like you had to buy the pinata this year." Hah, I told you it looked good. She approached me later about a possible commission. Hmm, we'll see.

Anyway, the party was fun. It was nice to see family and friends that I haven't seen in a while. Of course, as a single person there's always a down-side of seeing family and friends that you haven't seen in while. I'm referring to "The Question."

If you're married for any length of time you probably don't remember how this works, though you may be unwittingly be putting your friends through the trauma of "The Question." You see, for some reason in our society, being unmarried is apparently seen as an enormous oddity. A horrible, disfiguring oddity. This hideous, unnatural state apparently necessitates "The Question." Specifically, "are you seeing anyone?"

Of course, most people will shut up about it after a few follow up questions. But not everyone. And certainly not my sister's neighbor lady. Oh no! A dyed in the wool, Janesville resident, she just couldn't get OVER my singleness. I suppose it would be difficult for a forty-five year old grandmother to imagine such a thing. Since she didn't know me well, her first question was if I had any children. I gave my standard (slightly passive aggressive) answer, which was to say, "no, I'm not married." I love this response, because around here, the two really have nothing to do with each other.

From there it went downhill. The whole third degree. Every question I answered, and every explanation I gave was met with another question.
Q: Not married, well how old ARE you?
A: 35.

Q: And you haven't met anyone?
A: Well, I date quite a bit, but it seems that people in Janesville tend to get married young, which makes it kind of a hard place to find an eligible bachelor.

Q: Well, how many years have you been in town?
A: (Uggh). Well about 7 or 8 years.

Q: So you were in your twenties when you moved here . . . ?
A: Ahh, yeah, I guess so.

Q: What do you do in your free time?
A: I've got a great bunch of friends at my present job, and some from my former job, we have a great time.

Q: Oh . . . are these friends single?
A: Ahh, yeah, for the most part they are. You see a lot of them are from are transplants from other cities -- cities where it's not that unusual to be single.

Q: Oh, well maybe you could get married to one of them?
A: yeah, maybe not.

All this information was apparently entered, and cross-referenced into her internal database of single men. After pondering for a while, she sought me out from across the party (believe me, I was trying to stay away). She said she had the perfect guy for me. She proceeded to tell me about a guy that was living in Michigan, was sort of a "big guy," was balding, and overall "not that great looking," -- but a really nice guy. Perfect, just what I'm looking for, a long distance relationship with a fat ugly bald guy! Hmmm. . . . sounds really tempting, but maybe I'll pass.

I had someone else at the party make a similar offer about a guy that works 75 to 80 hours a week at his brother's pizza restaurant, and was by no means a "10" as far as "looks" go -- but a really nice guy.

Jeez, what the hell is up with this? I'm neither hideous looking, nor am I desperate to be married. Why do people insist on treating me like one of Marge Simpson's sisters?

Furthermore, this calls into question the descriptions that so called "friends" are giving to perfect strangers. Is this the best that these people could come up with? Are my friends out there describing me as a short, dumpy chick with bad hair, who's not at all attractive -- but really nice? If that's the case, I can do without the advertising campaign.

Okay, sorry for the rant. For the most part, I do appreciate the blind dates and "accidental" meetings arranged by my friends and coworkers. To date, these have been well intentioned and thoughtful attempts at introducing two like-minded individuals. In short, they are in direct contrast to the neighbor lady's expectation that I would jump at the chance to date someone I had nothing in common with, other than being single past the age of 33.

Oh yeah. Did I mention that I had a couple drinks at the party? Yeah, well I gave permission for my phone number to be turned over to the pizza restaurant guy. It might be okay though, I heard was really nice!

Everybody sing, "I'm looking for a real love baby, a real love baby. . . "