Page 5 of Mom-Com
A car door slamming woke me from my dreamless slumber. Since my kids were with their father this weekend, I’d cozied up in my bed last night with a good Hallmark movie and didn’t set an alarm. Pure heaven to sleep as long as I wanted—minus the car door slamming—waking to the sun streaming through my sheer curtains. The week had flown by with the kids back to school and everyone finally getting work done now that the holidays were over. A few extra hours of sleep was just what I needed.
I threw back the covers and stretched, finding my slippers by the bed. It was cold still in Southern California in January and the tile floor was freezing in the mornings. Shuffling into the kitchen to get my first cup of coffee brewing, I peered out the window and saw an unfamiliar car out front. It was parked between my house and the new next-door neighbor.
Feeling like a busybody, I went over to the window in the front living room and peeked through the blinds. A tall brunette stood by the car, her arms folded and an irritated expression on her face. Then my tall neighbor came down the walkway with his son practically jumping out of his shoes. I’d learned earlier this week that the little boy went to my kids’ school. This exact scene played out every other weekend in my life for the last two years, so I recognized it for what it was: a divorced parent hand-off.
That reminded me. I needed to bake some cookies this weekend and take the kids over tomorrow night after their dad dropped them back home. We needed to introduce ourselves to the new neighbors. I searched for a Post-it note in the kitchen and wrote it down on my to-do list. That was the only way I’d remember. I had Post-it notes all over the house, decorating every surface like a demented Pottery Barn catalog. Grabbing my coffee, I moved back to the front window for more free entertainment.
My neighbor walked back up the walkway after his ex’s car drove away. He had that familiar slump to his shoulders. Poor guy. I didn’t know how fresh his split was, but it was hard at first to see them leave. Don’t get me wrong, I still missed my kids when they were with their father, but I was also enjoying the perks. Like sleeping in on a Saturday morning with no one but myself to get ready.
My gaze trailed absentmindedly over his pressed slacks and dark cranberry sweater. His outfit could have been worn by an eighty-year-old for all the fashion sense it exuded, but his strong jawline and gorgeous dark hair kept him in a decidedly younger age bracket.
I tilted my head, seeing him from a different angle. Yep, with a trendier outfit on, he could look quite dashing. Handsome, actually, if you dug the moody professor type.
He was confuzzling. Who wore slacks and a sweater like that so early on a Saturday morning? I usually met my ex at the door with my pajamas and yesterday’s hair in a messy bun. I’d briefly considered sprucing myself up early on and showing him what he gave up, but quickly decided that would take far too much effort that was better spent finding my Prince Charming. This guy? He was really taking things to the next level if he was trying to impress his ex.
I went to sip my coffee and found my mug empty. Time to stop snooping on my neighbor, get another cup of coffee, and get started on what was one of my favorite pastimes. Saturday mornings were for yard sales! Since my left hand was busy holding my mug, I was forced to do a one-handed jazz hands motion there by myself in my kitchen. My kids weren’t there to groan at my mom-moves, so I really put some muscle into it. I absolutely loved finding deals. Plus, I fully believed that one man’s trash was another man’s treasure. Or in this case, woman’s.
Rushing through my routine—after all, it was Saturday, how fancy did I need to be—I was out the door in record time. No sign of my single neighbor, but then again, I wasn’t exactly looking for him either.
By the time I’d made it to my third yard sale in a ten-mile radius of my house, I was about to call it a day. I’d found an old book I’d always wanted to read, a Disney princess ornament I didn’t have already, and a sterling silver nut cracker. Like an actual tool that would crack nuts, not a red soldier. Figured I might need a nut cracker if I went on any more dates. Get it? Nut cracker? I snorted to myself as I got out of the car and perused the offerings at the front. That was a pretty bad joke, I admit, but then again, my dates had been pretty bad jokes too.
This yard sale sported a lot of furniture, but I really didn’t need any of that. I was about to leave in defeat when I spotted a tall stack of old magazines. A small smile lit my face when I saw they were Prevention magazines I remembered reading when I visited my grandparents’ house as a small child. I flipped through the one at the top and then the second one. A title of an article caught my eye and I scrambled to get back to the right page.
The sounds of the people milling about faded away and all I saw were the wordsFifty Ways to Find a Husband.I scanned the list like a kid at the donut counter. I devoured each one and wanted to take a screen shot to reference back. Then I realized the ridiculousness of that statement as this was paper and ink, written long before smartphones or even desktop computers.
Instead, I dug in my pocket and found the quarter I needed to buy the magazine, which I realized was highway robbery for an old magazine, but desperate times and all that. Once I’d paid, I hustled to my car and slid inside to read in private.
“Hot damn, Ms. Sanders. You’re an angel,” I whispered to the empty car, in awe of the drops of wisdom this woman had imparted to the world before I was even born. Okay, wisdom might be pushing it. I mean, she had some interesting ones that were more comical than wise.
Learn to paint...set up an easel outside of an engineering school.
I was all for thinking outside the box, but that one didn’t even make sense. Could you imagine if I tried that in today’s era? I’d probably be arrested for trespassing or given a psych evaluation.
Dropping the handkerchief still works.
Say what now? That one would probably need to be modified. Maybe dropping a pen or something would work better. Hell, I didn’t even own a handkerchief, so a pen would have to do.
That thought stopped me up short. I raised my head and blinked, taking in the world around me. What was I thinking? Was I actually considering attempting these fifty ways to find a husband?
“You’ve lost it now, Lily-Marie.” I laid the magazine down on the passenger seat and started the car. I needed to pull my head out of the 1950s and get real. A modern woman didn’t find a man by turning into a simpering airhead and playing these games. Did she?
I pulled away from the curb and hung a left to head back home, my mind swirling. I’d been trying the dating apps, which according to Gabby and quite a few of my single coworkers, were supposed to be the number one way to find a match. And so far all that had netted me was a headache and a solo trip to the adult toy store.
Those weren’t the men I wanted. I needed a man to sweep me off my feet like they did in the movies or romance novels. A man who could fix my car, provide for our family, and rock my world at night when the kids went to bed. Those kinds of men didn’t seem to be on dating apps.
So maybe Gabby was wrong. Maybe my coworkers were wrong.
Maybe what I needed was some old-fashioned advice from Loni Sanders, circa 1959.
Couldn’t be any worse than the men I’d met through Kinder, that was for damn sure. By the time I swung into my driveway, I’d convinced myself to give the list a shot. Maybe not all fifty ways, but at least a few. At the very worst, there was no harm in it, right?
So, I slid into a chair at my kitchen table with the Prevention magazine and my spiral notebook side by side and laid out a plan. Some of the fifty were flat-out ridiculous and I would skip over them.
Go to a football game and get lost.
I scrunched up my nose. Who gets lost at a football game? Better to streak across the football field in my birthday suit. Nowthatwas more likely to win myself some husband potential! Then I remembered the twenty pounds I kept meaning to lose and I tossed the idea aside in favor of less revealing things. Also, I didn’t want to get arrested. That would be a bad thing to have to inform my young children of. Sorry to miss your play, darlings, but Mom’s in the slammer.
Take up golf.
