insomnia and obsession ensue.

CRAP!!!

On Wednesday, Miss J was able to come by to visit, and she happened to be around during the scheduled yakking with the unchristened fellow.  I had better christen him.  I shall use one of his favourite words: Mr. Arbitrage.  This may change, depending on what else about him I find out that demands to be acknowledged in his alias.

Anyhoo, Miss J took a nap on my bed while I talked to Mr. Arbitrage for around two hours … again.

Miss J and I rode out to her and Mr. Steadfast’s place, and on the way there, she said, "Stop being so anxious!  This is exciting.  It’s okay to feel excited."

So here’s the confession.  I haven’t actually met him yet.  I met him online.  The funny thing is, we both posted our profiles on a dating service thing around the same day.  My post was initially a joke.  I was doing it in response to Ms. Spur posting a profile of her own.  I had absolutely no expectations.  During the first three days I got the inevitable "Hey you’re sexy let’s do it" kind of notes.  But I also had one good little chat with a 40-year-old guy about George Eliot, and even found myself recommending "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" to a computer programmer in California.  I started to leave some random, funny notes on people’s profiles, just to break the monotony of their days.

Then around day three, I found Mr. Arbitrage’s profile.  I wrote him a funny little note about how if we breeded, we could harvest our children’s hair to sell mops.  I wasn’t expecting a reply.  He replied (though he admits now it took him a while to decide to; apparently my profile "scared" him!).  The exchanges sort of snowballed because we kept discovering that the other was interested in Stuff.  You know, like, I do astronomy homework for fun, and he likes to look at his red blood cells under a microscope.

We admitted tonight (over the phone) that we had both gone digging through the other’s websites, and he said he had found a picture of me eating a popsicle at my Oma’s old house.  That made me nervous.  Those pictures from last summer show me at my full width, as it were – I had just graduated, and two years of intense schooling had not left me feeling very fit or attractive.  However, he still seems happy to talk to me.  Hopefully if/when we meet in person he’ll not be taken aback.

Something funny happened.

I was listening to Ms. Spur’s copy of the Wedding Singer soundtrack, and digging around in Mr. Arbitrage’s old photos, and I came across a short video of him in Hawaii.  I downloaded it and just as it began (with no audio), Adam Sandler started to sing "Grow Old With You."  It was like a scene in a movie.  Part of me was entranced and part of me was standing outside of all this, scoffing.

Oh, yeah.  I did a shared recital tonight, my students and a cello teacher’s students, and it was a good time.  My kids did actually better than I had anticipated.  One girl probably practiced more this week than she has all year, because she didn’t want a repeat of what happened at the last recital, when she had a huge memory glitch.  I was pleasantly stunned by how prepared she was.

… He wanted to meet up with me on Thursday, when I was downtown hanging out with the twins; but I hadn’t checked his message, and therefore didn’t have to deal with that possibility.  A good thing, because I was considerably more anxious that day.  Today when I saw his note that he would be up till 11:45 and that I could call anytime before then, I reached for the phone quite calmly and settled immediately into a fun yak with him.  Neither of us mentioned the e-mail exchange where I told him, "I think maybe we should put off meeting until after our trips."  (I’m going to Montreal, he’s going to Hawaii next week … )  "Because, if I meet you, and I really, really like you, that would suck!  By which I mean, I wouldn’t want to drive Montreal friends crazy by talking about Mr. Arbitrage all the time, or whining to use their computers."  He had responded via e-mail to this by saying something like "I understand, we can postpone our meeting till after we get back."

I should sleep.  Teaching tomorrow.

This morning, after only five hours, I showed up at the music school atypically early, and had the baby class all set up before Trooper even arrived.  She came in and found me at the window staring outside.

I am all surprise.

Part of me is expecting the whole thing to collapse as soon as he sees me.

Then again, tonight we did talk about probability fields and electrons and other mysticisms.