He was a little bit awkward. Wasn’t crazy about him, but he didn’t drive me nuts either. We kind of tried to meet up again, but I got really busy with school about to start and moving my little sister to Utah. We never connected again – and I’m ok with that.

I opened an Okcupid account, a Plenty of Fish account, a free trial on Match, and then later I also downloaded Tinder

Turtle cheesecake – this one was an interesting one (and most recent). He messaged me on POF on a Sunday night, and by Monday he had asked for my number and to get a drink after work. This was right after I had decided to give up for a while, but I JaponГ©s hembra figured why the heck not? We talked for over 2 hours over burgers and beers. He came on pretty strong – texting me really sweet things, always complimenting me. Of course, I bought into it all and fell pretty hard. By the next Monday I had received a “good morning sweetie” text from him and then it was silent. I was pretty confused – this guy went from being all cutesy-texting-flattery 3 or 4 times a day to barely responding to my messages. When I finally called him out on it, he had admitted that he tends to move things pretty quickly and was scared if I found out about the “skeletons in the closet” (his words, not mine) that I wouldn’t want to be friends either. And that was all he wanted right now – to be just friends. Needless to say, I was incredibly confused and felt like I got slapped in the face.

There you have it! In case you lost count, that’s 15 first dates – in less than a year. Yikes. But like my mom says, you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your Prince Charming. I guess for now, I’ll just keep kissing…

I was constantly updating my mother about the different guys – they said what?

I’ll let you in on a little secret – I was 23 years old and had never gone on a date. I was really good at being the 3rd wheel. Or 5th wheel. I was actually the 11th wheel once. But “Claire” and “boyfriend” were never used in the same sentence. To be honest, I never felt pretty enough to date – who would be interested in me if I wasn’t interested in me? But with my new body and newfound self confidence, I decided it was time for something new.

So last fall, I decided to try online dating. And in true Claire style, I didn’t just do 1 site. Online dating sometimes gets a bad rap, but I figured that I was decently normal so there had to be some other decently normal people out there…right? I was partially right. I met some good ones, don’t get me wrong. But I also met some real doozies.

! She thought I should start a blog. She thought people would love to hear about the dating escapades of a 24 year old living with her parents in the middle of nowhere.

I’m not so sure. But I’m willing to give it a shot. And if not, it’s a great way to document this for my future kids. Because that’s what I tell myself after each experience:

So I decided to write down all of the dates I’ve been on so far. I’ve changed their names to names of desserts. Because desserts are so much more fun to think about. And I present them to you as: