Has anyone seen my brain?

I don’t dwell on the missteps of my past, but I do have two very big regrets.

I’m sorry that I didn’t buy that cute little $1 million two-bedroom cottage around the block when my neighbor couldn’t give it away for $300,000. And I’m so incredibly sorry that I didn’t invest in 3M, maker of Post-its, because if I knew back then that I’d have to rely on those colorful sticky papers to remember things instead of my middle-aged brain, I would be a multimillionaire.

A forgetful one, true, but still …

My mind has begun to fail me in the most unusual ways. It often takes me a half a day to remember what I ordered for dinner at D’Angelos just two days ago, but I can remember every word to Don McLean’s “American Pie.”

What exactly is that about?

Lately, I’ve been feeling a lot like Marina, the heroine of “The Madonnas of Leningrad,” whose mind is slowly losing a battle with Alzheimer’s, but she can recall every detail of the paintings in Leningrad’s famous Hermitage museum and where they hung.

I am trying to negotiate the art of dating with a midlife brain. If you’re in a monogamous relationship, it’s no problem. But if you’re trying to play the field as I am, it can often be about as surreal as a Dali painting.

Sean and I were having a playful, leisurely morning after a playful, if slightly more energetic night. It seemed a good time to have “a talk.” Nothing serious, mind you — just a clarification of a conversation we’d had a week or so before that I’d been mulling over. Something about the “women you just sleep with” and the “women you date.”

It’s important to know which category one’s in.

“Babe, remember a few days ago we were talking about …” I started, keeping it casual, nonaccusatory and inclusive. Hey, I’ve been around men long enough to know how to kill a dialog before it even starts.

I watched as his face transformed from playful to serious and back to playful. “No, I don’t because I never said that,” he said, as he ran his hand lightly down my back and then gently smacked my butt. “Must have been one of your other guys.”

Ouch! Even though we both date others and aren’t in a committed, monogamous relationship, being confronted with an in-your-face promiscuous reality still stings.

But even worse than the ouch factor — he might have been right! One of the “other guys” might have indeed said that. No matter how careful I try to be about remembering who grew up in Philly and who in Long Beach, who has three siblings and who has two, whose ex is on Prozac and whose sister is on Zoloft, I make mistakes. Often.

The midlife brain is ripe for creating misunderstanding and utter befuddlement. It forgets things. It confuses things. It loses things.

And if you don’t have a long-standing supportive, loving network — like a husband or a committed partner — you are all alone.

I remember when my mother got her midlife brain. Objects, places and people became replaced by one word: Thing.

“Honey, can you bring the thing to me?”

“Mom, what thing?”

“You know, the thing, the thing.”

Because repeating “thing” will somehow make it clearer ...

But that was back in the days when kids were polite to their elders.

Now that I’ve morphed into a version of my mother and “thing” is increasingly slipping into my vocabulary, Trent, my 14-year-old, isn’t quite as understanding.

“Trent, honey, can you please bring the thing to me?”

“Get the friggin’ ‘thing’ yourself. I’m not your slave. I don’t even know what the heck you’re talking about. Can’t you speak English?”

So much for my long-standing supportive, loving network.

When I threw myself into the online dating world after my divorce and put my profile up on a few sites at one time, I knew I couldn’t rely on my brain alone to keep Mr. Larkspur separate from Mr. Novato and Mr. San Francisco.

At first, I printed out each man’s complete profile and carried around the three or four with whom I’d be in contact that day.

That worked OK for a while — although it practically filled a briefcase — until I got an unexpected call on my lunch hour one day.

“Hey, Kat. How are you?

“Um, good. How are you, um …?”

“Bobby. Great. You know, I really liked chatting with you. I think we should get together and take that bike ride this weekend. You game?”

My mind raced as I tried to figure out, who was Bobby? The 45-year old never-married techie from Corte Madera who looked kinda cute, or the 51-year-old-still-bitter-over-his-divorce musician from Fairfax? I hadn’t brought his dossier with me to work!

That’s when I knew I needed to carry a little bit about each guy with me at all times. So, just like in grade school, I created little crib sheets with a few basic but essential facts. Name, age, single/divorced, kids/no kids, activities, cute/not so cute. I bundled them up, alphabetized, in a rubber band and plopped them in my purse … until I switched from the heavy black leather winter purse to the creamy woven summer purse and the bundle was left at home.

Clearly, I needed help.

I needed technology.

I needed Excel. Yeah, I know it’s a spreadsheet program for businesses but I had some business, too. The business of love.

So I drove to Best Buy to check out the latest gadgets that would help me. After more than an hour of comparing the pros and cons of the BlackBerry versus the Palm versus the Treo, I left with the new Amy Winehouse CD and a frazzled brain — the very reason I needed a stupid PDA!

And then I thought, this is crazy. I’m not going to spend $400 to keep my mind and my men in order. Either my brain was going to have to get with the program, or my men were going to have to get with my brain and repeat themselves. Maybe they’d see my absentmindedness as a bit endearing.

Or perhaps I needed to date much older guys who were struggling with memory issues of their own.

When I got home, exhausted, my cell phone rang.

It was Sean.

“Hey. You know, you were right.”

“I was? See! Um, about what?”

“About women and dating and sex. I remember something like that.”

“You do?” I said, feeling a tad smug.

“Yeah.”

“And …?”

“Date.”

I had no idea what he was talking about but it seemed like the right answer. So I wrote “Date!!!” in big letters on a hot pink Post-it and stuck it on that thing that’s in my bedroom.

Gee, I wonder where he’s taking me …

You don't know Jack (or Kat)

Sometimes when you catch a glimpse of yourself as viewed through someone else's filter, you have to wonder whose reality is the real one — theirs or yours?

I was over a friend's house recently, catching up and enjoying the slide show of the pictures she took of the backpacking trip she, her husband and another couple took in Utah's Bryce Canyon National Park.

The photos were amazing, and they reminded my of my wonderful backpacking trip there some 22 years ago.

"You backpacked in Bryce?" she asked me, astonished.
"Yeah. Didn't I ever tell you that?"
"No, and I just can't even imagine you carrying around a 50-pound pack and roughing it. I mean, I've never even seen you without your stilettos and mascara on!"

I laughed along with her, but something inside me was annoyed. I was a big backpacker and camper back in my teens and 20s. How could she only know the fussy girlie side of me?

But the more i thought about it, the more I realized she'd only known me as the Mrs. to Rob, and his idea of roughing it was having to stay in a Motel 6. Rob hadn't backpacked or camped since he was a Boy Scout, and when we married, I gave up that part of me, too. He didn't ask or tell me to; I did it because he wasn't all that interested in it and, as much as I was, I was more interested in him. When Trent was born, I figured at some point we'd start going on family camping trips because boys love that stuff, right? But it never happened, and eventually my backpack, tent and sleeping bag made their way into the Goodwill donation bins.

When Rob and I divorced, I realized that I really missed that part of me. I love my weekly hikes and bike rides and occasional canoeing and kayaking trips, but I want to reclaim the more outdoorsy "me," too. And I know now that whomever I eventually partner with, if that ever happens, will want to backpack and camp with me — or will at least support my desire to do it on my own or with my friends.

Now, I know that loving and living with someone means all sorts of compromises and adjustments. Nothing wrong with that. But I know many people who have either given up something they love to do, or a part of themselves that they love, to be with their partner, but .. is that the way it has to be? Do you have to lose a part of yourself to become part of a couple?

What have you given up for love?

When parting's not so sweet

I’ve had enough romantic breakups to know that they’re never really easy or all that kind, even if at some point you can get past things and become “friends.”

But a few breakups have happened lately in such an unsettling way — and I don’t mean Britney’s famous text message to her then-hubby, K-Fed — that I’m wondering if we’re on to a new trend.

The “I’m Going to Spend a Weekend Romancing You and Then I’m Going to Dump You” breakup.

It happened first to Jennifer. She met Carl, a fortysomething dad who lives in Healdsburg. A few of us headed up to Wine Country for a day of wine-tasting, and there he was — all dimples and smiles and crystal blue eyes that clearly were focused on Jennifer and Jennifer only.

We all chatted until it was time to head back on the highway, and he gave her his e-mail address. “Write me,” he told her.

She didn’t waste too much time before e-mailing him, and they had a few flirty exchanges and phone calls before she invited him to spend the weekend.

It was even more romantic than she had hoped — they had so much in common — and she started to get gushy. “I think I could fall in love with him,” she told me, all starry-eyed.

“You barely know him,” I counseled her, like the mom that I am. “Take it slowly, so you don’t confuse lust with love.”

When she had to call on a client not too far from Healdsburg, she told him she’s be in his ’hood, and he asked her to spend the weekend with him. It was just as magical as the first time.

Until it was time for her to leave.

Carl suddenly got quiet.

“What’s up?” Jennifer asked, as her glowy mood changed to one of confusion.

“Well, I don’t know how to tell you this but, I don’t think we’re right for each other,” Carl said.

“When did you feel like that?” Jennifer said, holding back the tears.

“I’ve felt like that for a while now.”

“But you still invited me to come here?”

Carl was silent. Jennifer left, hurt and questioning how someone could ask a woman to spend the weekend with him when he knew he wasn’t into her. Well, unless it was just about the sex.

Anna had a similar experience, but she and John had been seeing each other for a few months. He took his profile off the online dating site; she did, too. He was the one calling her, just to chat and to make plans to see each other.

Here is a good man, Anna told us — kind, courteous, interesting, smart, sexy as could be and honest.
So she was stunned and hurt when he called her Monday from a Phoenix business trip — after a wonderful weekend together during which he cooked her a fabulous meal and they never left his bed for very long — to tell her that he was breaking it off.

“But why?” she asked.

“I’ve been thinking about it for the last week, and I don’t think we’re a good match.”

“The last week? Then what was this weekend about?”

Anna was fuming. She felt so betrayed. And rightfully so.

She and Jennifer saw their weekends as an indication that things were deepening in their relationships, while the men were either getting in one last booty call before dumping them or were trying to sort out their feelings.

I’ve always thought that there isn’t a good way to breakup, but I suppose there can be a better way — certainly better than being hurtful, deceptive or downright cruel.

One friend told me that when he and a former lover split, they approached it this way: they realized they didn’t have the same ideas of what their future looked like, and even though they weren’t heading in the same direction, that did not negate the genuine love and friendship that they had together. That’s not to say that it still wasn’t a painful breakup — it was — just that it’s easier to absorb when you acknowledge the truth. Sometimes we try so hard to make a relationship be what we want it to be, that we’re not really seeing it for what it is.

I can’t say that’s what happened a few years ago when I spent a weekend with Olivier Martinez — well, it wasn’t really Olivier, just Jean Claude, a look-alike French businessman in town for the week — but we definitely had different expectations.

We met at the Clift, where Mia, Jennifer and I were enjoying post-theater martinis.

He entered the bar, my pulse raced and my jaw dropped.

“Oh my!” I gushed to them. “I think Olivier Martinez just walked in!”

And then, from across the room ... he smiled at me. I smiled back, and the next thing I knew, he was standing next to me.

Jean Claude and I spent the rest of the night chatting. I was fascinated by his tales of what single life is like in Paris. I was eager to show him my city, so we made plans to get together Friday.

Friday spilled into Saturday, and we had a great time exploring the city, strolling SFMOMA, eating, talking, laughing. He was charming, smart, sweet and just so darn cute. But ... I wasn’t sexually attracted to him, try as I might, and I found myself just going through the motions. I think we was too sweet.

But, hey, he lives in Paris, I live here — it’s just a fling, I thought.

We kept in touch by e-mail, and when he came back to San Francisco a few months later, we met for lunch. But when he suggested we get together that night, I had to tell him the truth — we weren’t clicking sexually, so let’s just be friends.

Basically, I dumped him.

I’m not saying that the men who wooed Anna and Jennifer weren’t sexually attracted to them. I don’t know. But maybe they needed a few days “living” together before they could really figure out what was — or wasn’t — clicking for them.

That’s OK, but I still think there must have been a better way to handle sharing that with Anna and Jennifer.

Way before her romantic weekend fiasco, Jennifer had asked me why I never spend an entire weekend with a man.

As much as I like the idea of a romantic two-day rendezvous, I haven’t had one since Jean Claude. I’m too busy, I convince myself. I’ve got to catch up on all those things that I don’t get to do working full time — bills, housecleaning, yard work, errands — and my mom duties, too.

But perhaps the real reason is something much more subconscious — I just don’t want to get dumped!