Kids, on Valentine’s Day in 2017, I found #LoveAtFirstBite with Dunkin Donuts…
Ok, fine, I fell in love with their quirky heart shaped offerings BUT I also experienced a resurgence of faith in the speed dating industry after attending the Dunkin Donuts ‘#LoveAtFirstBite speed dating event on Monday 13 February, 2017.
I know I said I’d NEVER attend another speed dating event after the disaster in 2015 but you know, hope springs eternal and come on, who can say not to donuts?
Here’s why the #LoveAtFirstBite experience rocked my dating world:
Men, men, me EVERYWHERE:
I “dated” nine men in the space of 40 minutes …the fact that there were so many guys for the first time at a speed dating event was heartening AND they were relatively good looking!
2. Talk to me, baby:
Behold the blessings of a good conversationalist! A few of them, like Ryan, the hot primary school teacher ( awww, he loves kids and giving back to the community!) made the five minutes allocated to getting to know each other fly by with their interesting anecdotes.
3. Keeping things sweet:
Look, I’d be lying if I said the real reason I was there was to potentially meet your father … because let’s be honest, I love sweet things and, donuts, like a lot!
Besides the romantic #LoveAtFirstBite deal Dunkin Donuts was running for Valentine’s Day, they kept us sweet all night with special editions of their famous product and ice coffee. My favourite was the Hazelnut flavour and the choc choc heart!
Did Cupid’s Arrow hit my voluptuous butt at the Dunkin Donuts event? Who knows … the point is, the evening gave me renewed faith in love, sugar and singledom and that, Kids, is all I needed to meet your father.
So it’s that time of year again and you find yourself Bridget Jonesing through life, do you stay at home and hide or do you celebrate?
As tempting as it is to stalk your crush’s profile for the umpteenth time…don’t do it for the love of your own sanity. You know that he knows that you’ve been watching. So put down the ice cream and step away from the computer or close the app on your phone. There is only one option for us single gals and that is to throw yourself a Big, Phat Party and celebrate! How? You ask. Here are my Top 10 survival tips for single gals on Valentine’s Day:
1. 50 Shades Darker – oh come on now let’s not be coy you’ve read all 3 books so go grab a group of your nearest and dearest gal pals and go watch the damn movie!
2. How about a good old fashion book club (*wink*wink*)? Discuss the 50 shades book with your girls whilst imbibing copious amounts of bubbly and discussing at great lengths why piercing blue eyed Ian Somerhalder was not cast as Mr Grey.
3. You know those 2 for one happy hour specials? Now you can have BOTH 🙂 Get your Carrie on! Yay you! (please don’t drive if you choose this option)
4. How about a Movie Marathon? Jacob and Edward vs Carrie Bradshaw ? Take your pick…or why not watch both…?
5. You know that ridiculous amount of money you would’ve blown on a romantic weekend away for two? How about that awesome pair of Manolos that you have been eyeing since well before christmas? Go BUY those damn HEELS!
6. Hop on to The Entertainer App and find a great spa deal for you and your BFF…or take the whole gaggle of girls. What could be more fun than being pampered with your friends?
7. Travelstart has some great domestic local flights for only R499 one way, so perhaps you should still take that weekend away for yourself! Enjoy the Dolce far niente….’the sweetness of doing nothing’ on your own weekend Eat, Pray, Love.
8. How about spending some time with your loved ones? Prepare a nice home cooked meal for your family, crack open that bottle you’ve been saving and share some good laughs.
9. Do something you’ve always wanted to do. That chocolate truffle making course? Abseiling off of Table Mountain (not me) ? Learning how to surf (maybe)… cute instructor included 😉 #Justsaying
10. Last but not least, most importantly, is make time for you. Don’t get so swept up in the day’s activities that you forget the greatest love of all is self love. Take time to nurture that with perhaps a quiet stroll on the beach to gather your thoughts. Or pen your thoughts in a journal. Create a Vision board of your goals, dreams and desires of where you see yourself in the next few years. Don’t be so hung up on not having a romantic partner that you lose sight of the most important person in your life……YOU!
There you have it ladies, whether you’re a Carrie or a Bridget wishing you a fantastic Valentine’s Day filled with Love!
Kids, I’ve educated you about the scary attributes of a Mr Overeager type before and truly, I thought that by 2016, I had put this type of man behind me…Alas, I had no such luck and not only did I run into his sort again, but I did so in the week leading up to Valentine’s Day!
10 February, 2016 …
Besides Merlin 39, I’d been going through a bit of a dating drought and so while there was an opportunity to attend another speed dating event, I wasn’t particularly into it either. Instead, I was focused on hanging out with your Spirit Mother at a Deadpool screening and feasting on chocolate until my heart and tummy burst.
Unexpectedly, I received a message from Dave, who was a part of the speed dating group. He was 42, looking for someone special and convinced that he’d previously met me at a speed dating event before.
Since I was sure we had in fact “dated”, I readily accepted his coffee date request and counted myself lucky that I had gone from having no Valentine’s Day plans to suddenly having plenty of them.
I gave Dave my number and we started texting back and forth to set a time and place (the Saturday at Red Sofa Café in Vredehoek).
At first, everything was going well – I smirked at his attempts to be flirtatious and had to reassure him several times that the age difference didn’t matter to me because it was just a f***ing coffee date. Soon, though, I wasn’t responding as readily because I was in back to back meetings and apparently Dave didn’t like being ignored.
Maybe I was more naïve than Ana in Fifty Shades but I thought a coffee date meant meeting someone in a coffee shop to have, well, coffee … So, when he offhandedly suggested hooking up after work Wednesday, I quickly shut him down with a “sorry, I have plans for tonight but looking forward to meeting you for a chat and coffee on Saturday!” text.
He got huffy and responded with “Wow…ok, sorry for taking up your time.” I ignored him because a) that wasn’t what I meant and b) I was busy for the f***ing love of the gods!
11 February, 2016 …
Kids, my job back then was talking to hundreds of thousands of people via my company’s social media channels which left me utterly depleted of any conversational skills so I wasn’t much of a texter in my personal life. I was very selective about whom I communicated with.
Which is apparently bad news for budding non-relationships … by the Thursday morning, I was getting slightly neurotic texts from Dave, going “Are we still on??? I didn’t hear from you.”
Dear sweet Mother of Dragons, trust me to find the one man in the entire goddamn Universe who wants to over communicate!
After reassuring him once again that yes, we were still meeting, no, I didn’t think he was too old (again!) and yes, I was looking for a relationship as much as he was, we left the conversation hanging.
In my mind, though, everything was settled – we were meeting on Saturday and we both knew what we wanted out of this so what more did we need to talk about until we saw each other, right?
12 February, 2016 …
F*** a f***ing zombie! Apparently a lot could go wrong because I woke up to the following text from Dave:
“”It’s clear you aren’t interested or that we’re very different. You’ve shown absolutely no interest. No desire to ask anything. You’re young. It’s clear our situations and experiences are very different.”
Now look, it takes a lot for me to get pissed off but this was just totally f***ing uncalled for! And he had sent the text before 8am and my first cup of coffee, for Pete’s sake!
So, taking a few calming breaths, I channelled my inner Khaleesi and let him feel the hot but calm fire of my temper by responding with:
“Good Morning Dave. I hope you are well. I am not much of a texter because I prefer getting to know someone in person. I am extremely busy, hence the silence. As much as you are accusing me of not asking you questions, you haven’t asked me anything either.
You keep mentioning the age thing, and to be quite honest, that’s your hang-up, not mine. If this is the way you treat all potential dates, I can understand why you’re not attached yet.
I am not looking for a neurotic partner who seems to crave attention every second so I think it’s best we part ways. Good luck with the dating!”
The asshole had the audacity to respond with:
“”At least I didn’t waste my time with someone who’s incredibly bitchy.”
Kids, I am not the girl who cries on Valentine’s Day weekend, bemoaning her single status and the fact that no one loves her but f*** it, this one got to me!
Luckily your Spirit Mom came to my rescue with a super awesome Galentine’s Day, cooling off at the Long Street Turkish Baths and marvelling at Ryan Reynolds’s uber hot butt cheeks in spandex as Deadpool.
Yeah, I didn’t have a heartthrob in my life but that didn’t mean I had to put up with the jackasses of this world either. Instead, I was blessed to have super weird and awesome friends and family who loved me anyway… and that is all that really matters.
Kids, you know I’m not a Valentine’s Day Grinch – the fact that you get heart-shaped pancakes, your Aunt Sam’s legendary chocolate cake AND tons of hugs and kisses every hour on the hour on February 14 every year is proof of that.
The fondness for the Day of Love was something I maintained throughout my twenties and usually being single on this date didn’t bother me but … occasionally, I needed to attend a speed dating event or a party of some sort to reassure myself and your grandmother that I wasn’t going to end up as a crazy dog lady ( what? I am allergic to cats!).
14 February 2012 …
A group of friends , which included Bryce ( yes, he of the Indecent Proposal fame) and I got dressed up to the nines to attend local radio station 5fm ‘s Love Sucks speed dating party at an underground club in the City Centre.
While the girls and Bryce were there to partake in the lock and key speed dating set-up, I was just along for the kickass DJs, free chocolate and good drinks – come on, a girl has to have her priorities straight, you know!
Wandering about, checking out the potentials and laughing at the pick-up-lines I was overhearing, I sauntered into the kissing booth section where I had spotted the rather yummy booth holder earlier.
At R10 a smooch, I was determined to have him lay one on me and be able to say that I had least had one kiss on Valentine’s Day. Unfortunately for me, he seemed to be out on a break to give those kissable lips a rest.
Slightly disappointed, I was about to leave and go shake my booty on the dancefloor when a pair of strong arms grabbed me around my waist from behind …
Now, usually I have a “”what the f*** do you think you’re doing?” reaction to this in normal nightclubbing situations but this was a singles ‘only Valentine’s Day party and I didn’t know which hottie might have found me so irresistible they simply had to touch me. This, being my life and all, of course meant Murphy’s Law kicked in and my mysterious Lothario was …
Bryce.
In what was a split second swing around, he had me facing him and kissing him so quickly, I couldn’t get a handle on my bearings!
Initially too stunned to know what was happening, I quickly pushed him away and was on the verge of smacking his presumptuous ass, when he burst out laughing and I realised he was quite drunk.
“Really, Bryce? Me turning you down at the staff party wasn’t bad enough, you now have to steal kisses from me too?” I asked him peevishly.
“What? You were going to be pay that Zac Efron wanna-be to kiss you … I am way more ridiculously good-looking, you should count yourself lucky!”, he answered with a wink.
Remembering how Bryce had actually used me at that long-ago staff party to hide the fact that he’d spent the night with our male co-worker and now seemed to be repeating this behaviour by drunkenly kissing me in front of witnesses seriously pissed me off!
By this time, the kissing booth operator had finally re-appeared so I shoved Bryce’s drunkard ass onto a nearby couch.
I marched over to the booth, handed over my R10 like a boss and kissed that fine specimen of man like the world was ending before heading out to join the hundreds of single, gyrating party goers for a dance fest of note.
The bright side? I got two Valentine’s Day kisses 😉
