Open the Floodgates

[Coconut]

Things have been good with me, I still hang out with the singles group, but I've only been going to one meet-up every two weeks or so, most of the time I just hang out with friends from the group outside of "official" meet-ups. Going out with the group is fun, but constantly trying to get to know new people isn't as much fun as just hanging out with friends. I also joined a meditation meet-up group and it's fantastic. So much positive energy with that group, every time I go I leave feeling so rejuvenated.

I was starting to feel like dating was becoming an obsession with me, so I stopped trying to find someone to date and just started enjoying the people I was spending time with.

I've been spending a good amount of time with GG, I no longer have any romantic feelings towards her but we get along really well and I just enjoy hanging out with her. She knows that my Dad has passed and that my son is in FL, so she asked me to spend Fathers Day with her. We went kayaking on a river in town that I had never been on and then went out for Dinner. It was her first time kayaking and she did really well, the river we went on was really small (like 20 feet wide and most of it 1 or 2 feet deep) and there were a lot of obstacles (trees and rocks) and she only got hung up twice and didn't flip.

At one point I used my paddle to splash her with water, I accidently splashed way more water than I intended and soaked her; I immediately tensed and realized that it was because my ex would freak out on me if I had done that to her, but GG busted out laughing and immediately started splashing me back.. I don't think GG would of even cared if I had flipped her kayak (except it was too shallow), and I realized that I definitely want a girl that isn't afraid to just have fun, even if it means getting dirty.

I'm loving my house, I've been living in it for about 3 months now, and it fits me very well. I'm still learning to cook with gas, definitely a learning curve there because of how much hotter it is than an electric stove. My buddy who stayed over with his family last month showed me a trick, to stack the metal grates on top of each other to raise the pot further from the flame and that's really helped when you need less heat (even the lowest setting on the smallest burner would boil water, so simmering something was impossible). My biggest challenge is with the yard, it's almost 3/4 of an acre, it has lots of mature pine trees and a few oak trees, so with all the shade there are parts of the yard where grass doesn't grow. The previous owner also had a large section on the side of the back yard that was used as kind of like a flower bed, but it's like 20 feet wide and like 40 or 50 feet long (runs along neighbors fence) that has no grass and is growing a lot of weeds. It's a challenge to mow cause a lot of dirt blows up... anyway, I prefer a natural landscape to a manicured lawn, so I'm going to try and learn about naturescapes (I think is what is called). I'm not familiar with any of the plants that grow here in NC (I always used tropical plants back in FL), but I'm hoping to find some plants that I can use as groundcover over very large areas of the yard (just something to keep the weeds from growing).

My mom, brother, two nieces and my son are coming for a visit the week of 4th of July. I've gotten so used to living alone that the thought of having 5 other people there for a week is kind of stressful, but I'm really looking forward to the visit. My son will be heading off to College in about a month, so not sure If he will be coming up for anymore visits after this, it's more likely that he will go back home during breaks and I'll visit him down there, so I'm excited for him to at least get to see my place.

ok, need to get back to work, so that's all folks.. for now