The Love of My Life

When I went through a divorce in July of 2002, I was quite done with marriage. I was not bitter about men, I just figured that I was done. I had been married twice had lived with someone once, had five children and four grandchildren, and was simply done. It was time to focus on my career, which had gone into the toilet when the divorce started.

When the divorce started, I had been living in a 4-bedroom house in Irvine. My two oldest children had moved out. Because of some allegations that my ex-husband made, I had to send Travis to live in Monterrey with Stephanie, and Justice and Tristan were primarily living with their dad.

I didn't have any advertising going at the time because at the same time that the divorce started, I found out that the guy from whom I was getting referrals for my family law cases had been cheating me. I moved out of his office without notice.

About 6 months after the divorce started, I was playing bingo online. This is how I passed the time while I was working on the few cases I had left. I was absolutely NOT looking for anyone.

However, one night when I was playing bingo, I met this guy with whom I started talking. I don't remember how we started talking. I think it actually started with 3 of us who were playing, but I remember thinking that this one guy was pretty smart.

For 30 days, this guy and I emailed/IM'd/telephoned eachother, and I thought I had fallen madly in love. However, on the 30th day after I met him, he suddenly became an asshole. He went from being really nice and sweet and friendly to acting as if I was taking up all of his time and was being bothersome.

I was so depressed. Here I had met someone, without planning for it, had fallen in love, and suddenly he was a jerk. I remember laying my head down on my desk, feeling so bereft, wondering what had happened.

But then I had an idea! Maybe love wasn't over after all!

I remembered hearing about dating websites, so I decided to join a few. I figured it would be a great way to distract me from the pain of this guy being an asshole. I met some very nice guys, and a few jerks. The best site was AmericanSingles.

On AmericanSingles, I wrote the following in the area where you are supposed to write what you are looking for in a mate: Must be 6'0" or taller, Must be Pisces, Cancer, (there were two other signs that are compatible with Cancer but I can't remember them right now), Must be within 10 lbs. of ideal body weight, and must be ADHD.

The reason I wanted the guy to have ADHD was because I have ADHD. I have been in relationships where I do stupid ADHD-type things, and people say, "How could you do that?" or "How could you say that?" or "How could you forget that?" I wanted to find someone who would understand.

There were many guys who wrote to ask me: What is ADHD? I figured that if they had to ask, they didn't know what it was.

So shortly after I posted my "ad", I changed it to "Must have 150 I.Q. or better." I had done research and found out that a high I.Q. is related to ADHD. I figured if I met someone with a high I.Q., he would probably also have ADHD.

However, this backfired on me somewhat. Guys started writing to me as if I thought I thought I was "so smart." Guys would write and point out that I had spelled a word wrong, or something. It was pretty interesting.

On day 11 after I posted my profile, Tom wrote to me to give me sh*t, too, about how smart I must think I was, but he was being much nicer about it than other guys had been. Later, he told me that he was just going to put me gently in my place. :-)

Because Tom was being nice about my profile, this gave me the opportunity to explain why I was looking for a guy with a 150 I.Q. When I explained that I was looking for someone with ADHD, he said that his son had ADHD and he understood what it was.

Tom lived in Texas, though, and I lived in California. I knew, through the hundreds of emails that we exchanged in the first couple of weeks, that I could fall in love with him. So I changed my profile to also add, "Must live within 60 miles of Santa Ana." I had planned on terminating the relationship with Tom so that we wouldn't fall in love.

Too late. I fell in love with him. I drove out to see him within a few weeks of meeting him via email. For 2 1/2 years, I drove/flew to see him for a week a month. When my law practice started growing, he moved out here to help me with it, but he made me marry him first. He said that there was no way he was quitting his job as an engineer with a big company without making sure marriage was in place. lol.

We have now been married for 2 1/2 years. Three years this coming May. I'm still glad I married him.

We're not having any babies (fake sigh here). After 30 years (for me) and 23 years (for him) of having babies, both of us are done. Well, as Tom says, we aren't having babies unless divine intervention is involved. He took care of the cause of that a while ago.

Sometimes, when I am feeling soooo in love with Tom, I say, "Let's have a baby!" And he says, "Okay, let's!"

But I know he's being facetious or something. I'm not being facetious, but at least it's a feeling that lasts only for the moment.

(By the way, it's interesting that he fulfilled all the requirements that I was seeking: He's 6 feet tall, within 10 lbs. of ideal weight, he's a pisces, and he was diagnosed with ADD when he took my challenge and went to a doctor to see if he was, and the doctor said yes, he was!)



Tom let me take his picture so that I could post it with this blog. But I didn't like this picture. His mouth looks crooked.



So I took another one, but this time he wasn't going to smile for the camera. He had already smiled once, and he was done. But I didn't like this picture either.



So I took another picture. Keep in mind that I am leaning over way in front of his huge 32 inch monitor trying to take his picture, so he's trying to see around me as I keep snapping photos. In other words, I'm in his way. I didn't like this picture either. Something about the angle of his face. He looks like an engineer.



And I don't like this picture, either. Something about the way I must have moved when I snapped it makes his face look too long.



I think someone has had just about enough. It's a good thing that I like the way this one came out. :-)