The week before my birthday mother was ill. And, although she was not demanding her care took more time than I normally provided. The poor woman could not lift her head up off her pillow. I had to spoon feed her and monitor her insulin levels and blood pressure every couple hours instead of twice each day. Plus, I wasn't sleeping very well. You know how you listen in your sleep for your newborn? Well, I was doing the same but for my eighty-four year old mother.

I was usually full of energy but by mid week I was beginning to physically slow to a crawl.

My children were coming for my birthday celebration on Sunday but when each one called to check on their grandmother, absolutely no one was picking up on my less than subtle hints that the house needed to be cleaned, laundry finished and that the flower bed by the side door needed some attention. To my kids I was super woman, I could handle it all. In reality I wasn't a super woman I was simply a woman who was over taxed and over extended. And a woman vein enough not to want the birthday pictures to be of yard debris and smudged windows. By Saturday my fanny was kicked, totally.

Sunday morning I still had a few last minute things to do before my daughter arrived with salmon, shrimp, stuffed mushrooms and our families award wining cream cheese pie. And, too, before everyone arrived I needed to look like someone interested in a celebration. So, I slipped into a tub of hot infused water for a good soak and that is where I had my epiphany. I did not realize it at the time but that epiphany would be responsible for taking my life in a new direction filled with every emotion known to man.

Actually, it took a few days to wrap my mind around the epiphany of that moment. It took a few more days to realize my nemesis wasn't sadness, it was loneliness. It did not matter how busy I had kept myself I had emotionally shut down as a woman and this needed to be fixed. In other words I needed a man in my life. I needed to get back out there, toss my bra into the ring with all the other over sixty set searching for, dare I say it, love. I spent my days as a dutiful daughter and hands on grandmother. My life honestly didn't leave a lot of time for dating. But, I figured no man was going to knock on my door and ask me out, I'd need to go to where the men were. And the men were on the Internet! How did I know this? Advertisements, of course!