Mom! What are YOU doing here?

My theory is this:

My mother's influence is freaking everywhere. No, seriously. You don't believe me?

When I signed up for eSchmarmony, yea, those many moons ago, I was encouraged to set reasonable restrictions on my matches, one being the physical distance between my match and me. This did seemed reasonable. After all, I'd just broken up with/been dumped by a man who lived 781 miles away from me, and the biggest part of the problem between us, he whined, was my unwillingness to move there and be with him. Selfish cow that I am.

Strangely enough, most of my relationships have included some physical distance. I'm not entirely sure what this says about me, but with some serious self-analysis, I'm sure I can come up with something. [Note to self: serious thought, next week.]

The people at eSchmarmony really tried to follow my requirements. Almost all of my matches live within a 120-mile radius. Then today, all of a sudden, I received my daily barrage of matches [AKA Guys Who Will Not Reply To My Guided Communication Attempts] and every single [ha!] one of them...was from Spokane.

That's right. SPOKANE. The Hub of the Inland Empire. The location of the Bloomsday race. Center of the Lilac Festival. And....home to my parents. Esther's place.

Mom has been trying to get me to move back to Spokane for decades, darlingest. The list of bribes included college, a car, a house, a job, a PUPPY. That's right. She is ruthless, I tell you. Completely devoid of ruth. And now, despite her inability to operate a DVD player [no, I'm not kidding] Mom has evidently manipulated the computer files of eSchmarmony.

I feel an unwilling respect for her right now. Damn it.