The anxiety provoking,  “what are you doing New Year’s Eve” question is right up there, for some, with “got a Valentine’s Day plan?”

No need to expound on the reasons, if you are nodding in agreement you know why.

And, of course, spending the time with your friends and family, sending off a card (candy optional), or popping a bottle of champagne, while very viable options, doesn’t quite do it, does it?

Lie.

Rather than being met with that soulful eye look, the slightly averted eyes, the mumbled tsk tsk, really, lie.

I’m off to Paris. Whisked away for a mystery road trip. Being wined and dined at Bouley, Per Se, Wendy’s.

In the meanwhile, you can begin vigorously planning for St. Patrick’s Day, no angst, no worries, no problem, unless you simply don’t look good in green.

An 'on line find your honey baby sweetie' Color Code Test?

A fifteen minute test that will give me a life-changing personal insight? Determine that I am a yellow, white, blue or red and then I will have real insights into my actions and how I relate to other personalities? 

And heretofore I based my entire being on thinking I am an autumn.

What will they think of next?

It must be pretty competitive out there, getting new members to sign up in 'find your honey baby sweetie' land. I, for one, would have preferred a gift with purchase…maybe some face cream, but I suppose, if they thought of this, they decided it just wasn't compelling enough. And, really, what would they have given the other female members?

I'm here to suggest that they offer the Kuder Preference Test. (For those not in the know, it's a test for career assessment and career planning).

So, if finding love, color coded or otherwise is challenging, perhaps a new career option isn't a bad second runner up plan.

New to the ‘honey baby sweetie’ on line dating world?

It shows.

But you’ll learn, if the adage of old dogs new tricks is true.

In the meantime, here are a few things that you might want to internalize before you continue down the path toward eternal bliss.

Holding someone captive for a 45 minute soliloquy is fine if you are in your therapist’s office. They, after all, get paid. During a getting to know you meet and greet, not so much.

Empathy is a very attractive trait. “I understand, I see, I know, I’ve been there.” Expecting to hear those utterances after two, or more, tales of woe is probably pushing the envelop. Pick one. Bad divorce(s) or rotten kid(s). Not both.

Listen for breathing. If it is very very rhythmic chances are they have fallen asleep. If that is the case, best maneuver would be to, depending where this meet and greet is happening, either hang up, get the check, simply slip out.

A second go around is probably off the table anyhow.

Cute, isn’t she? Makes you smile. At least it made me smile, when a friend sent it to me.

I don’t imagine, however, that it elicited quite the same response from the “meet your on line hopeful honey baby sweetie fellow” my friend had sent it to in response to his request for a full body photo. Amend that, for a recent, full body photo.

While Tom had Renee at Hello, apparently for the rest of the mating, dating, forever and ever crowd, the requirements are much more exacting.

“How did he make the request, and maintain some semblance of delicacy in doing so?” I asked. He wrote, she offered, “I normally don’t reply to emails with only one photo posted. Not that I get a flood of emails or that I consider myself a trophy. Just that that criterion has been a fairly reliable guide in the past—one which I have ignored to my great loss (of, time, travel and expenditure”).

Needless to say, she didn’t hear back from him.

Can’t really fault him for his request. Consider, really, the time, travel and expenditure consequences.

I did ask her how many hopefuls she responded to that either had no picture posted, or whose picture was, oh, how does one put this gracefully, scary? She agreed, somewhat sheepishly, that her shallow button was easily pressed, and regardless of the accompanying wonderfully written prose, she was apt to hit the delete, delete, and move onto the next.

He’s vindicated.

So now what?

Is it really the overworked, overused, beaten into submission request for chemistry at play here?

How’s about this branch of the science?

I think all the on line seekers of beauty and truth should take classes in the art of Alchemy. They can, if they are clever enough, learn how to transmute (like that word?) the base metals (hopefuls) into a more valuable and precious metal (a date) with a flick of a wand and some magical incantations. No photos required.

Larry David, of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Seinfeld fame (in case you have been in a cave for the last decade) has a philosophy about this ‘let’s make a plan’ that most of us, I believe, would adopt if we dared.

Take, for example, this exchange.  “How’s about we get together?” Larry’s response would include the “why bother? We don’t really want to, we will email back and forth, ultimately make a date and then with certainty break it. So, no…let’s not.”

The rest of us make the date.

In the on line meet your honey, baby, sweetie world, making a plan takes herculean efforts. It’s rather an odd phenomenon as the goal of the on line meet your honey baby sweetie world is, oh my, to meet someone. If the act of having a date actually does occur, it is usually set up to happen as a drive by. A second scenario is a beverage of some sort, but preferably not something hot, as the time it takes to actually be able to swallow said liquid may be way more time than one wishes to devote to this activity. The third possible scenario is to plan a date and have dinner. This maneuver, I have come to learn, is usually made by the dating uninitiated. It is something they quickly realize they will never do again. See plan A.

One could adopt the electrician, plumber, contractor way of making a plan. You simply don’t call back. Alternatively, there is the cable or appliance repair person maneuver, which is to give it a day part window. “I’ll be over to pick you up between 12 and 6.

That works for you, doesn’t it?”

I love these studies. Really I do.

It appears, according to the Pew Research Center, based on Census Data, “men are increasingly likely to marry women with more education and income than they have.”

That is, for the 30 to 44 year old crowd.

So then, the study goes on to report, younger women, better educated, earn good money, marry, have a lower divorce rate and happier unions. And this survey was not done in Stepford land.

Another study, had decidely different statistics. How’s this, to make you sit up and take notice, men live longer if they marry a younger woman. “His chances of dying early are cut by a fifth if their bride is between 15 and 17 years their junior. Premature death is reduced by 11 percent.”

Women, the study suggests, don’t seem to fair as well. She has a 30 percent chance of dying early when wedded to a guy 15 to 17 years her junior.

The moral to this story?

If she hasn’t met her honey baby sweetie by the time she’s in her 40’s she can choose one of these second time around older guys. The diaper duty she thought she might have missed will, sooner than later, be part of her daily activity. Too bad.

If, however, she waits a decade or so longer, she can find herself a sweet young thing. While possibly shortening her life expectancy somewhat, she, arguably, will be prepared to meet her maker with a huge smile on her face.

Alrighty then…ready for a quiz?

Can you quote a Confucian analect?

Who or what might Occam refer to?

Which author wrote …” but in contentment I still feel the need for some imperishable bliss”?

Stumped? Googled for clues? Swore you’d never need to know the answers to stuff like this after your SAT’s or GMAT’s?

Want to know where I got these ditties from?

I’ve come across them on the meet your honey, baby, sweetie on line dating sites. You had thought, perhaps, that the one and only reason you are meandering through the myriad of profiles is to find your soul mate.

That used to be the reason.

A more sensible, practical and, it appears, an ultimately more satisfying reason is the opportunity to test your intellectual mettle …You read a particular profile, they have made a literary reference, can you figure it out, remember who might have said it, retrieve the information as to “where do I know that from…??”

And furthermore, once you retrieve the information, can you, demonstrating wit and style, write a pithy comeback acknowledging that you, perhaps one of the few, got the reference?

Or do as both Emily and I do… Immortalize them and their questions on a blog.

A British humorist, Howard Jacobson, is my new favorite pundit. Wickedly irreverant and funny. My two favorite flavors.

It is his contention that “Love You, Love You” should be said only “in the arms of the person you love romantically, erotically, madly, deeply. And even then not quite so often as it would seem from watching bed scenes on television and in movies…”

He goes on to tell the macabre tale of “Laura Lundquist and Elizabeth Barrow, aged 98 and 100 respectively, who were residents of Brandon Woods nursing home situated near Bliss Corner-I kid you not- Massachusetts. They had shared a room for a year. According to nursing home staff they acted like sisters, walking everywhere together, taking lunch together, and each saying to the other, “Goodnight, I love you” before turning out the lights and going beddy bye-byes. Love you. Love you. And then guess what happened? In the tradition of the best macabre story-telling, but here’s a hint-It involves a plastic bag.”

Okay, so maybe that’s a tad on the “c’mon, she was a crazy old coot” register. Agreed. But the idea that we utter these words, on a daily basis, to one another does not guarantee that we actually might really, deeply, and honestly mean them.

What to do?  Should “love you” be met with, “are you sure?” Not a recipe for hearing further sweet murmuring words anytime soon.

And I, at this particular moment in time, being devoid of a truly, madly, passionately romantic interest, would miss hearing those words. So, as long as you’re not slightly unhinged, I just want to tell you, love you.

At least that seems to be Nancy Meyer's intention in most of her more recent films.

Something's Gotta Give, Baby Boom, The remake of Father of The Bride, It's Complicated, all have the requisite successful female, love on the loose, love reworked, happilyish ever after. The women, Diane Keaton (clearly the poster girl for these roles) and Meryl Streep (who came to her age appropriate senses, after her romp in Mamma Mia) are the women we want to be.

I particularly admire that Nancy's heroines appear to be unbotoxed, uncollagened, and nonliposucked. Or, alternatively, the magic of filters is at work. 

But the real thing I covet in her films is not the homage to the middle aged, or how happy the endings end, it's wanting to have, as my very own, her set designer.

The near perfect (out there on the east end) beach house. The Vermont money pit, (but it does come with Sam Shepard), the perfect Californian home for Steve Martin and Diane Keaton to hold the wedding of their daughters' dreams. Want to take a wild stab at the budget for, oh I don't know, the flowers? Think about it, those kleig lights give off an enormous amount of heat during filming. Could they have been fake? Horrors ! Never.

I imagine if there was a citywide blackout, I would manage to root around and find, oh I don't know, maybe a dozen misshapen nubby looking candles. Never quite clear why I save them after having them burn down to half their beginning size, they are dutifully put back into drawers never to be seen again. 

So how come, when the blackout (or some semblance of prolonged darkness) occurred in Diane Keaton's beach house, she was able to light her entire (possibly 300 to 400 sq foot) kitchen with perfect, assorted sized white candles. I ask you, where does one keep such a stash?

If there is a sequel, and I really hope there is, it isn't to find out whether or not Meryl Streep and Steve Martin become a dynamic duo. It's to see what the extension and renovation of her kitchen looks like. 

Agree?

It seems to me the requirements of perfection in the dating world expand far beyond one’s physical attributes, and encompass sharing the exact same tastes in books, movies, theater and recreation.

A recipe for imperfection.

Unless, of course, you are dating yourself.

Okay, clearly, there has to be some crossover in order to have more to talk about then breakfast cereal choices. For the record I am a Special K kinda gal. So movies, books and theater are quickly accessed to fall within the same interest level in order to proceed to the concept of heaven, met your match, get me off this dating site, bliss.

Until you get around to the recreational activities conversation.

Hunting and gathering? Only in the supermarket. Having a Hell’s Angel moment on the back of your Harley? Unlikely. Heli skiing? Drop me from a hovering propellered craft and pick me and all my body parts up a few hours later. Sure. Trekking in Bhutan, a week at an Ashram…

So I ask you, doesn’t anyone shop anymore?