I called an old friend and ex beau last night to be cheered up after an emotional day of having to kick the latest guy to the curb.
"Speak louder," my friend said over the telephone. "If you're going to do this mature dating you're going to have to learn to talk louder."
I laughed, but it is sadly true.
If getting old isn't for sissies, then dating at a mature age is surely only for survivors. It pretty much sucks.
The latest one was crowding me. He's looking for a lifetime relationship. Been there and done that and right now I just want companionship and some fun.
The one before him thought I was getting too attached. Before that, the boyfriend thought my house would be a nice place to move into. ohno.
At my age, the dating pool is shallow and aging rapidly. How do I tell them that I helped one man die and I don't want to have to do it again?
It took my husband five years to die from lung cancer. I was there for him every step of the way. Every day. It was a hard, hard five years of my life and I did it willingly because I wanted him to enjoy every day he had left. But it is not something I would recommend if you have a choice on the front end. It takes strength and patience and all your time. And no matter how much you think you are prepared for the end, you are not.
My friend Cheryl says I should just get another dog and forget men.
There's merit in that thought. But dogs die too, you know.

Social networking forms a community. And when things turn as bad as they did Thursday night, you need a little help from your friends.
I'm writing this on Friday, my column deadline. So I don't know what will happen tonight with the Rangers, even though we know now as we are reading this.
But I'm writing about that roller-coaster ride we all took Thursday night, complete with the moment the thing went off the tracks at the end.
Part of the time I sat in my recliner and worried. Part of the time I paced in front of the TV and muttered and cursed.
Sometimes I muted the sound, and for the last inning I put a blanket over my head.
I spent a lot of time on Facebook, of course. That's where my friends were waiting and watching the game with me. And cheering. And cursing. And crying.
And then doing it all all over again.
Here is a sampling of our get-to-gether when things started going bad:
Tracy: I quit.
(nine others like this)
Debbie: Nah, ya don't.
DeAnn: Not yet!
Mike: Still quitting?
Melissa: Quitters never win, booger.
Jesse: Tracy never quits. He's just reloading.
Tracy: I'm back.
(19 others like this)

Steve: I can't take this
Snow: I hate this!
Jennifer: Ug, this is killing me.
Ronda: I'm seriously going to have a heartache.

Scott: One strike away and he throws it over the heart of the plate!
David: wtf?
Katrina: omg! Where's the Tums?
Me: Forget the Tums. Where's the tequilla?
(six other people like this.)

Katy: that was a bit heart-wrenching, but I've got faith
Jim: UN BLANKING BELIEVABLE! %##@@**&!

Robyn: Seriously, am I expected to be at work tomorrow?
Missy: One strike away. Has Feliz been watching Romo?
Monica: Woop!
Jessica: That's how baseball go. Thanks, Josh!

Me: I'm going to hell for dropping the F-bomb 40 times in the last hour
(13 people like this)
Colleen: It's OK, Donna. God is a Rangers fan.
Sherry: %$**##@!
Brian: I'm two F-bombs ahead of you. I'll save you a seat.

Dirk: Sports can be so cruel. Gotta fogt about this one quick.
Tracy: Great closer my a..
(Ten people like this)

So here it is Sunday, and we know that we lost the world series. I don't know about the rest of you, but I just sat in a stupor and watched. I had no emotion left. Thursday night was the game we lost. And we knew. That game took the heart out of us. That game took the heart out of our guys. Friday night was the game that never should have been.
At least we have basketball and the Mavs
Oh wait....
Well, we have football and the Cowboys
Uh,
Well, we have next year and the Rangers. And third time's the charm!

I have a bone to pick with Mr. Webster.
Now any editor will tell you that I am not the world's greatest speller. Kieth Shelton once wrote on my evaluation "can't spell cat," and Mike Trimble still reminds me that I once spelled the plural of Jet ski "jet skies."
But some words I always spell correctly because it was drummed into me in journalism school. You know, commonly misspelled words that reporters should never fall victim to.
One of those words was pompon. No, not poupon. That's a mustard. Pompon. The things you wave at football games at any opportunity. I have a pompon for the Mean Green and I wave it endlessly given the slightest opportunity.
I wrote about my pompons a couple of weeks ago and was surprised to see when the column was published that some enterprising editor had changed the spelling to pompoms. I was horrified. What's the use of spelling a word correctly if an editor is going to change it and make it wrong.
Turns out that pompom is now the preferred spelling.
Who knew? Editors, that's who.
The explanation - so many people spelled it that way that it became word spelling law.
Now that's just wrong!
That's like saying that so many people run red lights that going through a red is preferred to stopping. Wrong!
As for me, I will continue to spell pompon in the old, yes, correct way and make them change it if they dare. No editor worth his salt would cower before a mere reporter with tradition and right on her side.
Especially one who writes about "jet skies."

OK, so I ate the Baby Ruth bar.
It totally blows my diet to smithereens. That chocolate and the caramel and those peanuts are probably inside me right now, duking it out with the nugat to determine which of them is going to land on my thighs and how much belly fat they can glob on.
It was just one Baby Ruth, for Pete's sake. I ate it. OK? I admit it. I ate the frickin' candy bar.
That should suck up some of the calories, that admission. But you and I both know it won't. Even as I write this in a sorry damage control effort, I can feel my butt bulging up and my ankles growing.
I've been on this latest diet for weeks now, and I've seen some results. I messaged my friend Cheryl last week - I HAVE A MIDRIFF! And it was true.
It seems like there is something perverse in me that gets nervous when I start losing and plots to stop progress. Something inside my head wants me to stay overweight.
Why is that? Why would I have a three-inch long diet bar for lunch and fried chicken for dinner? Why did I eat the Baby Ruth?
I'm going to sleep on that and let the psychoanalyst fairy sprinkle some magic dust on it and see what happens. There could be a deeply buried psychological reason for my indiscretion. Lust came into play. Sensual pleasure beckoned and set off some hidden reaction in my brain. Atoms collided. Neurons ignited. Futons formed complicated chemical reactions that led to chocolate desire.
OK. Cut the BS and admit it.
Forgive me, oh Medifast gods, for I have sinned. And I loved it.

I've known for years that I was geographically challenged, but I sure get tired of it. I always think I know how to get from point A to point B, and often I've taken the trip hundreds of times. But way too often I find myself somewhere between points X and Y with no idea how I got there and less idea of how to get back. There are no maps in my head. None. My car gets me to work every morning all by itself, and I can get many places from the office. But it's tiring to drive to the office to head on a trip to Gainesville, for instance.
Today i returned from a visit in Mount Pleasant via I30 to US380. But there's construction, and the highway gods decided it would be funny for me to miss that very important turn. Next thing I knew I was in Rockwall.
Now I have nothing against Rockwall. I'm sure it's a very nice place to live.
Friggin' Rockwall! I never wanted to be in Roakwall and I was certain it was not on the way from Mount Pleasant to Denton.
So I headed in a northerly direction and after a few hundred miles I found myself in Farmersville - on US 380 headed west - and back to Denton.
I may have had a lucid moment today, but I doubt it.

They say Internet dating is the most popular form of meeting people nowadays and it sure does beat hanging around in bars, though I never had the nerve to do any of that anyway.
But it's weird. Sort of like catalog shopping. You flip though and look at all the pictures and when something catches your eye you stop and read the description. If it sounds enticing enough you may send off for it.
There are a few differences, of course. One, the product may not want you. Often that happens. Imagine ordering a blue sweater with lace on the collar. Then you get a message. The blue sweater isn't interested in you! What did I ever do to that sweater? you think. I might be just the body that sweater needs to show off to best advantage. But no, the sweater doesn't want you.
That hurts. Sweater rejection. Damn. So you cry a little bit and then you pick up the catalog and flip through it some more. Ah, here's a green sweater that is actually nicer than the blue one! You never really liked the blue one anyway and you can't wait to meet the green one.
You meet. You try it on. You think it's a nice fit, really comfy and it looks great on you. You really hit it off - laughed all evening. Then you get the message. The green sweater thinks you're nice but not really the shoulders it was hoping to caress.
Damn.
You don't get warm but you still have to pay the price.

It's morning and I barely slept.
All my critters decided to share the bed with me and they kept rooting me over the edge. It's a king-sized bed, for goodness sake. How come there's no room for me?
I wonder what will happen on my glamorous beat today? One day this week I was summoned to Bolivar to smell a dead cow. The lady insisted. A neighbor had dragged his dead cow right up to his fence next to the road and allowed it to rot there. It was horrid for everyone passing by, she said, and I don't doubt it.
That cow was clearly most sincerly dead.
Oh yeah, Oz again.
Turns out there is no law against allowing a dead animal to putrify on your own property. Who knew?

So here I am in a fairly lucid moment sitting at my computer having created a blog with no real idea of what I am doing.
I know I want to have fun. I know I want to make people laugh or cry or think about things in a new, slightly cracked way.
I know I want to create a place where smiles are the norm and sunshine reigns and frowns are forbidden. Maybe that place is Oz. Maybe it doesn't exist. But maybe it can exist, here in one of my more lucid moments, just us, picking life apart and reassembling it to make more sense.
I'm a senior citizen, a crazy teen, I'm ageless. I'm excited every day to feel life, to taste it, to hold it in my hands and mold it into something elegant and bold.
This is not your weekly Donna Fielder column, my friends. This is tastier, zestier, richer in color and free of those bothersome editors who won't let me write certain words in a family oriented newspaper.
Will you follow me down that yellow brick road?
The man behind the curtain, I hear, is naked.