Well, I’m back from two weeks of communal summer-camp living in Maine. Yesterday I went grocery shopping, turned on the stove and vacuumed for the first time since mid-June. I also ate two spoonfuls of peanut butter right out of the jar–which is, sadly, what qualifies as reckless abandon for me these days.

So now it’s Monday morning after a long vacation and everywhere I turn, the message is writ large: Today is the first day of the rest of your life! Only, it’s the first day for at least the third time since R left (which I guess makes it the third day of the rest of my life? I don’t know how that works.)

The first first day of the rest of my life was the one after R moved out. I awoke with a weary, yet hopeful feeling. The months leading to his departure were polluted and painful, so there was a huge sense of relief just to be done with that phase. I could start over, make a new beginning and apply other sunny, optimistic cliches to my future!

The second first day was when I turned the big 4-5 last September. I threw myself a party for the first time ever, served pink prosecco and received a pile of encouraging “You go, girl!” type birthday cards. About a month after solidly hitting middle age, I joined a dating site–and if you’ve been reading, you know how that unfolded.

Now I’m back from Maine, where I overcame some major fears (driving alone, teaching, throwing myself out of a tree, to name a few) and stability of any kind seems more elusive than ever. Yeah, yeah, it’s great to have new and transformative experiences, but this constant making lemonade from lemons is getting old.

Here’s what’s at the top of my current to-do list:

1. Find a job.
2. Find love.

I hate Mondays.

Fortunately, the demise of my 8-week affair with D didn’t leave me shattered like the end of my 16-year marriage did; in fact, it had a galvanizing effect. My fling with D successfully re-routed me, at least in terms of re-introducing me to my feminine power and that kind of thing. You could say I was suddenly man-hungry (but please don’t say it because it sounds dumb.) I definitely craved male attention and used it to soothe my still-smarting separated ego.

Dating became an all-consuming hobby, the dating website a Netflix queue of constant, ever-renewing possibility. I didn’t actually go on that many dates–maybe 7 over the course of 4 or 5 months–but I engaged in a bunch of email exchanges and a few phone calls. Call it armchair dating, if you will (will you?)

Some days my inbox overflowed with messages from interested men and some I found interesting. At first, I thought it was only polite to respond to anyone who emailed me, but over time I became more selective and clicked “delete” with impunity.

I deleted anyone who didn’t provide a photo or whose photo depicted a grossly muscular and/or heavily tattooed guy, usually shirtless, washing or leaning against a Trans Am. I tried not to instantly write off guys from Staten Island or Parsippany, but my ingrained snobbery won out.

A few men were clearly too good to be true, like a surgeon who spoke 5 languages, wrote children’s books and looked like Javier Bardem. Delete. Too many exclamation points in one email? Delete. Eighteen photos of his King Charles spaniel? Delete. Picture of himself wearing a goofy hat or costume of any sort? Delete. Delete. Delete.

There seemed to be no way around the word easygoing, however, so I let that one go; I was taken with one guy for a few weeks, but I lost interest because he ended every email with “Happy Wednesday, March the 11th!!” or “Have a great Saturday April 3rd!” (I don’t know, was I too harsh?) Another guy was funny and charming via email, but freaked me out when he started to suggest names for the children he saw in our future.

I graduated to the phone-call stage with a few men and met a handful in person. One-third of those I mentally ruled out within five minutes (one looked a little like Hugh Jackman in his photos, and a lot like Eugene Levy in Best in Show in person; another wore a Pink Floyd t-shirt to dinner and when I asked him if he was a fan of that band, he flatly answered “No.” He also ordered himself two Coca-Colas at once–what is that about?)

And two notes to self:

1. It’s a bummer, but sometimes a guy who seems fascinating on paper is actually achingly dull in person. Stop trying to convince yourself otherwise.
2. Don’t be outraged when someone essentially stalks you after one date, considering that you behaved like a tramp/tart/floozy/ho. What were you thinking, Christina?

But the dating endeavor wasn’t a total bust. I met some smart, interesting men and I went on some thoroughly fun dates; for one reason or another, though, the requisite chemistry has thus far proven elusive.

So that takes us roughly from February to the present, as far as my dating life is concerned. My subscription to the website expires in about two weeks. I assume I will revisit man-hungriness at some point. For now, blogging is my new all-consuming hobby.

So where was I? Oh, right, D’s. He and I spent a lot of time over the next few weeks alternately forming a mutual-admiration society and driving each other crazy.

He proved to be just as quirky, intense and difficult as I initially suspected. Allow me to count the ways (btw, he knows I’m writing this, so don’t worry that I’m dissing him behind his back. Believe me, he likes the attention):

• He is all for reckless abandon as long as you use a coaster and don’t step on his rug with your shoes.
• In pretty much every situation, he likes to decide what will happen, when it will happen, and how it will happen (some would call this behavior controlling.)
• He is enormously vain and his bathroom is filled with a plethora of mysterious metrosexual potions ( Plethora is one of his favorite words, but don’t hold that against him.)
• Aside from the Fresca/vodka concoction he consumes regularly, he is vehemently anti-carbohydrate; this is especially frustrating at about 11pm, when you really, really want some Haagen-Dazs and all you can find is turkey salami.
• He thinks he’s funnier than I am, which is not funny–or true. Our debate on this matter turned into a shouting match of  “I’m funnier!” “No, I’m funnier!!” (I know, we’re both insane.) Then we settled down and shared a protein bar.

And that’s the tip of the “quirky, difficult” iceberg. However, he also did things that redeemed his impossibleness to some degree:

• He lavished me with compliments, frequently calling me  “hot,” “leggy,” and “brilliant,” as well as a “babe” and a “goddess”–and, sheesh, how do you tear yourself away from that, I ask you?
• He makes excellent omelets, even though you can’t have toast with them.
• He is the least-smelly man I have ever known (see potions, above.)
• He made a little video dedicating a waterfall to me; it was funny and sweet.
• He’s a fan of e.e. cummings and Charles Bukowski and often read their poems to me over the phone.

And now that I have devoted–what, five posts to this guy?!–it’s time to bid him farewell. He goes down in history as the perfect rebound guy for me, but I hope it’s clear that a steady diet of him would have sent me to an early grave. One thing I never felt around him was calm.

After a couple of months, things drifted into a friends-with-benefits type of arrangement and then into friends-sans-benefits.

In fact, D stopped by the other day and we had tea in my backyard. It was almost like having a tame cup of coffee with a nice man.  Almost.

This seems like a good time to take a little break from the D saga so I can talk about something really exciting: books (c’mon, don’t give me a hard time. I warned you I was a word geek.)

I’ve always loved reading, but mostly for purposes of entertainment, education, or edification. During those months when separation was imminent, though, I clung to books like lifelines. No more snickering at the self-help genre for me; as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no cynics facing marital dissolution. The “relationships” shelf at my local bookseller is currently depleted.

It’s funny (but not necessarily “ha-ha” funny) how the titles I’ve read represent a chronology of the past couple of years. First came the shiny, hopeful, you-can-save-your-marriage books like The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, which sports a giant wedding ring on its cover. I read it and left it on R’s bedside table. He said he’d get to it just as soon as he was done with  Remembrance of Things Past and then Kristin Lavransdatter.

Once I realized I was the only one reading the marriage-saving books, I chucked them and bought When Things Fall Apart, by Pema Chodron. She talks about not resisting change and pain, but instead embracing them in a Buddhist/Zen kind of way (got big points with my spiritual yoga friend for having this one lying around). I liked the concept a lot, but surrendering to the beauty of agony was not where I was at just yet. So I ordered a few from the “ok-now-it’s-an-emergency” category. Their covers tend to be bright yellow or fire-engine red with lettering in all caps and no time for illustrations. These include Divorce Busting and The Divorce Remedy, along with How One of You Can Bring the Two of You Together. They offer lots of solo stealth techniques, which are interesting in theory, but didn’t work for me; kept those in my closet (R was reading Trollope’s The Barchester Chronicles at that point.)

When R moved out, I went for a few workbook-style books, including Divorce and New Beginnings, which has a helpful custody planner in the back, and The Good Divorce, which, oxymoronic as it sounds, does a good job of making divorce seem like something to which we should all aspire. By then, R had taken his literary tomes with him and his bedside table was all mine.

Around when I joined the dating site, I added Mars and Venus Starting Over and Mom, There’s a Man in the Kitchen and He’s Wearing Your Robe: The Single Mother’s Guide to Dating Well without Parenting Poorly. I hid those from the girls, who really did not need to know what I was up to.

Now, it seems, I’ve come full circle. I’m reading American Wife. But this time, it’s fiction.