Timing. Timing. Timing.

Right now, I'm a woman with no home -- wandering between the purgatory of not entirely moved in/not entirely moved out. The facelift isn't finished at the new place, but the old place is slowly migrating over. I split my time between the two.

Unfortunately, life moves on without my permission. People expect to drop by. They must be fed. The fact that you have no shelter to offer them is irrelevant. (All my parents have visited copiously in recent weeks.)

Socializing does not stop.

Boys keep asking me out, and the temptation is to say No, give me a week and I'll be all settled ..... then I notice how extravagantly tall some of them are and I reconsider. I already got burned in January by not gettin' while the gettin' was good and Bobby Donuts disappeared , only to turn up a week later Drinking-for-Charity with the girl who had enough sense to say Yes when he asked her out. (I am still mad about that.)

On the other hand, where do they pick me up? Where do I live? There is no operating kitchen. "May I offer you some raw meat and an Ale 8?"

As my gay husband points out, our lives are based on the ILLUSION of spontaneity and unpreparedness (while neither one of us is capable of either).

What on earth do I put in the fridge of a largely empty house that doesn't seem contrived? I've asked this several times lately.

There were a LOT of recommendations.

Chef Tom's response was "chic, or homey?" My answer was "Marxist." His instant return text was: "pellegrino, white wine, a good block of cheese, Mexican coke, baquette strewn haphazardly on the counter, thrown there as if bored with it."

Yes. I  have been able to plausibly pretend that's how the new and empty kitchen looks --- just as soon as I threw away the moldy pitcher of Sangria leftover from Easter (triple bagged and hidden at the bottom of the Herbie) -- which comprised the entire contents of the fridge before it was staged, aside from the Ale 8 (for the interns) and raw meat (that's mine).

Beverages? It was agreed that Beer's more butch, but I don't drink it so I don't know what to buy. I think I have interns who buy PBR, but I'm pretty sure they're being Ironic... I don't know what the proletariat drinks, and I am the proletariat. (I know it's not Crystal Lite. Not if you ask my mother.) There's copious amounts of bourbon, but it just doesn't seem quite ... casual enough. Most everybody who drinks bourbon drinks it like they mean it.

Chef Tom added, "Maybe a cured meat of some kind...as if an unplanned picnic on the Left Bank could occur."

I typically don't even let a prospective gentleman caller see where I live for months, much less mid-move, but sometimes it's unavoidable, and it's one of those insane game-changers where the chaos and accidental intimacy somehow vaults you past first date straight to the fourth month of living together. Underwear on the floor. Three stages of drying laundry stretched across two bathrooms. It's savage really.

It's been so overwhelming, I've barely had a spare second to even write any of this up -- for every date I've actually mentioned, there've been half dozen that have had to go unremarked (in fairness, I usually stop after first dates, before the material gets very entertaining)-- which, everybody has agreed, is a good thing.

As one of my girlfriends observed, at some length, "Don't blogiterate these guys prematurely!" When I point out that they're not avid readers and that I purposely keep it vague, she accused me of poking the word "Lucky" in the eye Three Stooges style, adding, "they will FIND your blog. Their GRANDMOTHERS will find your blog. And unless you start writing in Farsi about endangered marine mammals, you need to remember: it's the Internet, NOT an encrypted C.I.A. file."

In my experience, it's all a negotiation -- better begun early than late. My willingness to negotiate increases in direct proportion to the hotness of the prospect, along with the depth of my affection and/or attraction. If I'm not getting material, I must be getting something  better in return. Like, snow shoveling in the winter.... lawn mowing in the summer... Herbies hauled to the Curb.... that kinda thing. I am more shockingly easy than one might imagine.