Idle chit-chat

209.2 (not bad after a late dinner out last night)

My friend C was kind enough to accompany me on an emergency shopping trip yesterday after work. We bought a cute outfit for me to wear on tomorrow night's date, complete with jewelry and shoes. Too cool. I hate to shop, and I also am not good at knowing what flatters me, so someone always has to go with me.

Guess who called me "just to chat" while I was shopping? MM. It was great to hear from him, but on another level, I was a bit surprised. . . . because calling to chat is not something he does. He'll call to schedule a date, and occasionally we'll end up chatting, or he'll call because he has something specific to tell me. But he's never before called because "I was bored and I was thinking of you." Hmmm. I ended up calling him back on the drive home a couple of hours later and we had a nice, benign talk.

I ought not to read too much into his phone call. But I will say this: it demonstrates that he is thinking of me (more often?), and he is feeling OK with reaching out to me when he wants to. That's OK.

I really think things between MM and me are going well. Goodness knows what the next few weeks/months will bring as we continue to get to know each other, but our relationship is great right now, in my opinion. At least from my perspective, we have passed the phase where there is any uncertainty about whether he'll be asking me out on another date. I know from week to week that we'll be seeing each other. I love being with him and look forward to the time we spend together; at the same time, things are pretty chill and I have plenty of time to spend with my friends or alone. I am not obsessing about him all the time. Sure, I think of him a lot (no shit, I blog about him nearly every day), but our "arrangement" has allowed me to maintain some mental/emotional distance from him. And that's a good thing. As I've mentioned before, I've had a penchant for falling too fast for men. I am seeking to remedy that by my approach to this relationship.

I'm glad it's Friday! J and I are having dinner tonight, and I'm looking forward to it. It seems like a long time since he and I sat down for a good chat. Of course, I talk to him on the phone regularly--we usually talk once or twice a week--but it's been over a month since we had one of our marathon dinners. I love that we can hang out talking about all kinds of random stuff for hours. I really do adore him--in a completely platonic way. Well, it'll never be 100% platonic for me. . . . but 99%. LOL

My workload is going to be increasing dramatically in the near future. My firm is small--only 7 full-time attorneys, including the partners--and one of the attorneys is leaving at the end of next week. I've been re-assigned to 10 of his cases, and that's just from one of the partners; there may be more cases coming from the other two.

I'm glad because I have felt under-utilized the past few months and have been a little worried about not having enough work and not billing enough hours. With this guy leaving the firm, I will probably have more work than I know what to do with. Which will actually be a good thing to me. Things couldn't have gone on as they've been indefinitely. The firm is only paying me the salary they pay in return for my billing clients, after all.

The weather here has been so lovely this week! I love this time of year, when the daytime highs are staying under 90 and there's just a little chill in the air in the mornings. Spring is like this here, too, but I think I like fall better because I appreciate this weather more when it's coming on the heels of the long, hot summer.

TGIF!