This will strike some of you as very odd.  But I have been going to a medical intuitive since 2001.  Though, at that time I don’t think he even knew what an intuitive was.  He was an engineer who had divorced his wife and decided to learn acupuncture.

These days, because I have learned how to direct energy with my mind, in the same way he uses the needes, I go mostly for his intuitive services.  He asks questions and gets a yes or no.  Well, that’s how it started.  It’s become more refined now. 

So Derek was hurting the dog, that was true, but there was nothing sexual about it.  That’s how he trained her.  

He also got that it is beneficial to have him in my life.  But only more than slightly.  That’s how he asks, by degrees.  I hear the questions and I can see by the movement of his head if it’s a yes or no.  Apparently Derek resonates at betwee 3-400.  Steven said anything below 200 would be a concern.

So I guess as long as Bridget knows she is safe when he is around, because I will always be with her, I can relax about it.  No more training.  No more alone time.

I found out that’s how his dad “trained” him. 

I called him today to see why he wasn’t calling.  I wondered if he were at his parents,’ which would mean he’d be out of town until Sunday.  I knew he was leaving Thursday to visit his sister and her kids this weekend.  A girl from church offered to give him a ride as she was going to visit her parents in the same town.  This is the same girl who texted him on New Year’s Eve.  I read the email she sent him and it sounds like she’s pretty interested.  Let’s hope he is, too.

He says he’s not.  He says he’s home sick with the flu.  We talked about our broker — The guy called me this morning all hopped up, wanting me to buy a call on the S & P.  Dude, I have one — and we were lamenting the fact that we both suck as commodity traders, and that’s when he said he should just marry me.  He thinks my stocks will rebound and I will be rich.  I said, “You just want my dog.”  I forget what he said but he never missed a beat.

When I got up this morning I wanted to get out of the house so I went to this little neighboring town where I’d seen a cute coffee shop.  Two builders were at the next table.  The guy was retired but the woman, whose dad was a builder, was showing off the last house she’d turned.  I asked them if they knew of a good floor guy who knew how to install Marmoleum.  “Never heard of it,” they said. 

I had a guy come to the house, who sells it.  He does all the bids, and he said I’d have to redo the subflooring.  The total was going to be $4,000.  Derek’s guy would do it for $1,500 and just put down some stuff to make the floor even, some kind of goop.  He’s done two other floors for Derek, both Marmoleum.  But he’d make us move the island.  I just want this over with and him out of my house but for some reason he can’t get a hold of his friend. 

There has been no contact today.  This is the first Tuesday since I’ve known him that we haven’t talked, either in person or on the phone.  I’m thinking he drove his cat to his parents’, a three-hour drive. 

They have agreed to take the cat.  I erased the cat’s name out of paranoia.  The girl who was keeping the cat because Derek’s roommate said, “No” –It’s his house — gave it back yesterday.  She is moving.

His cousin is a computer genius and the first night he stayed for dinner he had his cousin hook him up.  The cousin was able to log into my computer (from his home) and get Derek linked somehow so that he could use his laptop here.  Today, I went into my Xanga settings and changed it so that if you comment it doesn’t email me.  Just in case.

On Tuesdays I volunteer at the hospital and Derek is usually alone here with the dog from 2:30 to 6:00.  I called my brother and told him of my concerns.  We decided that Mary, his mate, was going to stop by to use my sewing machine.  I posted a note on the door  that read:

“Mary, I need to leave for the hospital.  You can leave the key” — Then I crossed that out and wrote:  “ Keep it.”

I called at 4:30 and had my brother drive by.  He just lives around the corner.  Derek wasn’t here.  I stopped at the bar where I dance on Sunday nights and had a martini just now.  And I thought of all the men I have known and loved and how strange they all are.  What I am left with is how strange I am.

He arrived exactly at 10:00, when I’m supposed to be at recorder.  Good thing I was running late today.  I knew he was taking his cousin to the airport, and I just assumed he would wait until I got back around 11:30.  That he planned on coming in while I was gone and never called to discuss it when normally he calls me after his shower, you know, given the whole dog thing, it’s disturbing.

I put Bridget in the car, saying the neighbor had mentioned seeing her in their backyard.  It was a lie and I felt guilty but I needed an excuse.  I said, “This way you can get some ventilation and not worry about where the dog is.”  When I got home he questioned me more about what the neighbor said.  I think he didn’t believe me. 

He was still in that T-bond trade which he wanted to get out of today so we both kept a close eye on the market while he tried to paint.  You have no idea how much I am going to miss that.  He has just as good a feel for the pulse of the market as I do and it’s so easy to communicate with him.  If I didn’t have a dog I think I might have slept with him by now, in spite of the all the rational reasons I couldn’t. 

And to have someone to cook for and eat with has become somthing I need now.  My sister came over this afternoon and we made brownies.  Derek bummed a cigarette from her and had a brownie but for the most part he stayed over by the TV with his computer.  After a little while he got up and left.  Now it’s just me and the dog, and I don’t even think I’ll bother cooking dinner. 

Yesterday Derek brought his beloved cat by for me to meet.  When he saw that quilt laying over the big box my ceiling lights came in he wondered why.

“Bridget peed on it when you grabbed her snout last night.”

“I didn’t hurt her; I was just being playful.”

“Well, you’ve obviously been abusing her or she wouldn’t shake like that and pee on me.”

“Then how come she’s all over me the minute I walk in the door?”

“Because she knows you’re going to let her out.”

I’m sure you are all wondering if I have taken leave of my senses.  I am, too.  I wonder why I have attracted a guy who fascinates me, turns me on, is great fun, someone I would trust with my pin number but not my dog.  My women friends are saints but I keep attracting guys who aren’t. 

My brother’s girlfriend has been an astrologist for most of her adult life, and I consult her from time to time about the men I meet.  After looking at our two charts she says, “This was a fate thing.  You were bound to meet.” 

She was explicit about the limitations, and what she predicted has unfolded.  I wish I could remember how she described us then: 

“He struggles with some sort of disconnect between his mind and body, something he sees mirrored in you.  But you two have all these major” –I can’t remember what she calls them so I’ll use — “intersections where you oppose each other and that will cause you to bump heads.  You will learn from each other but it is to be nothing more.” 

“So, no romance?” I tried to sound like I was joking, given his age.

“Absolutely not.”

It was good advice, something  I’ve wanted to ignore on several occasions when he was being his best, charming self.  But the charts did not lie.  We are constantly coming at things from opposite ends, and the same chemistry that she called the “man/woman thing” makes those disagreements intense.

Most Sundays we have dinner together after my Spanish class and before I go dancing.  When he called I didn’t bring it up and neither did he.  Nor did we talk about the dog. 

I’ve decided she is not to go in the front yard.  At least not with him.  And I’m going to push to get these projects wrapped up so I won’t need him anymore.  I’ll say I’ve run out of money, which is true.  I’ll miss the trading tips, and I’ll miss him terribly, but it’s wrong to spend time with someone who makes Bridget tremble like that, though she does tremble at the drop of a hat.  And she does pee when my daughter yells at her.

Today I went to a long luncheon, all the way in Hillsboro.  I left Derek with the dog and instead of painting the kitchen ceiling he said he did some trading and took a nap.  When I got home the dog was running around in the front yard, which is not fenced.  He used to go out there to smoke cigarettes and I’d let her go, too, because I knew he’d keep an eye on her. Well, on New Year’s he quit smoking so now she goes out by herself.  He trained her to come back when he calls so I was sort of okay with it.  I’ve done it myself in the night or early morning when it’s dark and the neighbors can’t see her. 

Anyway, I went upstairs to get my overhaulls on and some sturdy hiking boots, gloves and protective glasses, because I wanted to play with my new chainsaw.  I lost a good portion of my favorite tree in the snow storm.  It’s right by the road and people were having to dodge the limb that fell almost into the street.  Someone strong moved it further back in the yard but it wasn’t Derek.  Maybe it was my brother. 

Derek ignored it and was against the idea of a chainsaw so I bought it when he wasn’t with me.  We went over the manual together and he came out to watch the first cut but he wanted no part of it.  He went back inside and watched the rest of his movie.  I would have thought he’d be all over that.

The dog was still outside while I was working.  I caught her going across the street so I yelled at her to “get over here.”  I went back to cutting the log when I noticed she was still sitting and staying, something Derek must have taught her.  I told her it was okay but then I caught her sneaking over to the neighbor’s so when she came back I made her sit and stay until I was done which was only about five more minutes.  Still, it was something I never thought she could do.

Derek seemed upset when I got home.  He was doing the dishes, something he does when he’s tense. He said it was because he fell asleep and didn’t get a stop-loss set up on his T-bond trade before the market closed.  After I came in from the front yard he cooked dinner while I had a glass of wine and watched.  I played the CD he brought over the first night we had dinner together but the mood was markedly different tonight.

He got ready to go work out and I settled in with a magazine and the dog on my lap.  I sprawl out in my recliner with a quilt so she doesn’t get those little white hairs all over me.  When he walked by us to get his computer off the coffee table she started shaking.  It wasn’t until I got up to get the phone that I realized she’d peed on me.  I don’t know what he does to her when I’m gone that she’s so scared of him.  He makes a big production of getting her to roll over and heel and trains her using treats.  But, usually, she doesn’t want to come to him.  She hovers by me and quivers. 

I think he uses these jaunts out in the front yard as leverage because the treats are running out and he knows I won’t buy more.  He says he doesn’t act any different around her when I’m gone but I’m not so sure. 

We watched the inauguration together.  Derek is a staunch republican and has refused to call him Obama until this morning.  It was Osama.  It used to make me crazy but there are so many ridiculous things about him that after a while you just shake your head.

We made it through Home Depot without a fight.  That happened in the car.  He gets me so riled up sometimes I’m just about brought to tears.  The next stop was Sherwin Williams.  He said I paid too much so we were returning the gallon. 

He painted in his undershirt and I tried not to look.  I made beef stew.  I’m trying to learn to cook without salt because Henry’s mother can’t have it.  Derek didn’t want me to put canned tomatoes in but I knew it would need the flavor.  He wants everything his way, whether it’s the color of my paint or the flavor of my stew.  I can’t even imagine what a nightmare it would be to live with him.

The woman who runs the cancer program I volunteer with owns a lavender farm.  She used to teach classes about what combination of herbs go with meat, fish, and poultry, and she’s going to bring me the handout. 

When I got home from the hospital he was just finishing up “cutting in” the primer along the edges of the ceiling in the kitchen and great room.  We tried the stew and it was bland.  So he took the arborio and salmon thing I’d made which was terrible and put a dollop in with the stew in his bowl.  He said it was good, which I found hard to believe.  I tried it and sure enough it was.  You couldn’t even taste the fish, just the corn.  It’s fun that he is eager to experiment with food.  That’s how I like to cook, too.

I think what makes everything all right, in the end, is the good communication.  What he doesn’t pick up from my body language he seems to be able to intuit.  I’ve caught him a few times now, reading my mind.

What happened was that his best friend’s wife, who is also Derek’s very close friend (she cuts his hair once a week, he likes it short) who has recently moved out, called him.  Her grandfather was going to be playing slide guitar and her mother was going to be singing at a place I used to frequent.  Now this could have been the guys’ thing he was talking about or it could have been a whole, new, last-minute thing.  Given that it was the woman and that his best friend wouldn’t have wanted to go, Derek may have had a last-minute change of plans. 

That was Saturday night.  Sunday I was leaving church when I saw him approaching with his parents.  We stopped, and his mother and I got to know each other a little.  We talked recipes. 

Yesterday morning he called me at the usual time, and when I was leaving for recorder, he was arriving.  We rolled down our windows, two houses up the street. 

“I bought you something.”

“You must feel guilty,” I said with a smirk.

“Don’t you want to see what it is?”  he reached over to the passsenger seat and pulled out a bottle of Joy.

“Aren’t you just about out?”

“I am.”

We exchanged a look and the moment felt intimate enough that I blew him a kiss.  Not with my hand, I just puckered.  But I drove off a little unnerved, wondering how inappropriate that was.

When I came home my dishes were done, and he was gone.

What I think happened is that he had something better come up.  The first change in plans happened the day of the party.  He said to make sure my phone was charged and on because I was going to be gone all day.  When I got there I called him to say phones had to be turned off and he said, “Why?”  There was so much noise in our building and I didn’t want to be rude so I said I couldn’t talk.  He said something I couldn’t understand so I hung up.  He sounded annoyed.

Once I was in my car on the way home I called but he didn’t pick up.  I changed clothes, did my hair and started to get nervous.  These people are serious Christians and they don’t drink.  Well, Derek does on occasion but his parents don’t.  I thought about going to get a drink before he picked me up but I didn’t want to be smelling like gin when I talked to his mother.  Then I remembered the almost-empty gallon of vodka my daughter left after their last party.  I gagged that down and waited for the phone to ring.

He was so sorry but it turned out his parent’s party was on Saturday, not Friday.  Still in Washington, working on his best friend’s rental house, he was chatty but I said it sounded like he was busy and got off. 

Saturday I had plans with the middle daughter, and he called while we were window shopping on 23rd.  The sun was out but it was still cold, and we were walking arm in arm to keep warm.  He said to call him back when I “had a minute.”  Nothing I’d ever heard him say.

Two hours later I called, and he said he still didn’t know for sure what time the party started, hadn’t gotten a hold of his parents yet.  Odd.  I thought I detected some reticence in his voice. He knew I had a concert that night but it wasn’t until 7:00 or 8:00, I couldn’t remember which, and the more I thought about it the more I liked the idea of eating and running. 

I called him back an hour later and said the concert was at 7:00, and I really wanted to go.  It was at the Unitarian Church, and I needed to mend some fences.  He said he was relieved, that he would have gone if I wanted to but that it wasn’t even starting until 8:00, that it was a surprise party.  His irritation at the later hour sounded overdone.  But his best friend was having a thing that he wanted to go to later that night that would have conflicted.  He made like it was a guys-night thing.

So I stop at the store because now I have to cook and I think, well, he’s still going to need dinner.  I had some salmon that he likes so I call him back.  Now he’s backtracking, saying if his parents throw a fit about it he might have to go to the party.  Not likely I think.

I’m getting out of the shower upstairs and I hear his voice.  He is outside my bedroom window on the phone.  I throw some clothes on, put a towel over my hair, and go see what he’s doing.  He’s sitting in front of the TV.

Were this the middle of a trading day it would be normal.  My house is his house I’m always telling him.  But under the circumstances I’m pissed.  I figure he wants dinner on his way to whatever he didn’t want to take me to.

Turns out he wanted to iron his good shirt.  He’s going to a concert, too.

After Thanksgiving Derek brought over some of his mother’s special salad, because he knew I liked cranberries.  It was so good and so different I asked if he could get me the recipe.  What he showed up with was a recipe book she’d made him for Christmas one year.  She’d handwritten all their family’s favorite recipes. 

We flipped through the three-ringed binder and he marked the ones he liked best, but the chocolate peanut butter pie was not in there.  When I told him to ask her about it he said, “Hey, my parents are coming into town this weekend for my uncle’s birthday.  You could come and ask her yourself.”

I think he spoke without thinking because he kind of laughed and added, “…if you don’t think that would be too weird.”

At the time I was glad he’d asked and was looking forward to meeting them.  He’s met all the girls, my brother and a sister, and his family knows he’s been working here and that we’ve been cooking together.  They know we’ve been trading commodities together and they know I’ve started going to their church.  He assured me they don’t think anything is weird about it. 

But then I started thinking how his mother might feel about me cooking her recipes with him or for him.  They’ve recently moved three hours away and he misses her.  He had been remodeling their house so they could get it sold and was practically living there.  Kinda like he’s doing here I guess. 

Our mutual friend was chiding me today, and I have to admit the whole thing does sound kinda kooky.  The party is at a restaurant, tomorrow night, and they know I’m coming.  It ought to be interesting.