Luv u 2," I type out in response to my youngest's last text.

I can't believe she's in college already. It seems like just yesterday she was cutting her first tooth on the remote control.

The screen times out and I come to the conclusion that that's really going to be the last thing I hear from her for awhile. I slip my phone back in my pocket and try to remind myself it's perfectly normal to only hear from an 18 year old daughter who just moved into her first dorm room when she needs money.

Doesn't ease the twinge though. That feeling that I'm losing my kids.

Now that they're both over 18 they don't have to visit anymore. No more court-appointed visitation on weekends that they'd rather spend with their boyfriends or just plain friends, eating fast food and watching movies and going to games and doing all the same shit I did with them but, of course, it's not the same when you do it with Dad.

It's not the same when you have to do it with Dad.

I get it. I really do. I remember when I was that age, high school. Full of hormones and fearless about the future, and the last damn thing in the world I wanted to do was to spend weekends at home with the 'rents.

Let alone get flown 2 states over to do it with a dad you've only seen every other weekend since you were 8...or 5 in Dani's case.

I never did remarry after their mom and I split up. I dated here and there. Not gonna pretend I didn't consider the idea of finding a woman who'd keep my bed warm, keep my kitchen stocked, help me raise the kids I never got to see enough of...maybe help me make a couple more.

It would have been nice to get a second shot at the married with kids thing. Find a good partner who was willing to stick by me even when I might get a bit challenging. A woman who'd make a good wife and a good mother. Someone who would have given me a chance to find out what it's like to raise children that don't have to be picked up at the airport every other Friday evening and dropped off there again every Sunday afternoon.

Yeah. I dated. Did my fair share of shopping around.

Maybe I'm gun-shy after my first marriage went south or maybe I really never managed to find a woman who checked off all the little boxes on my list. Either way-- here I am, all these years later with an empty bed, an empty house, and dare I say, feeling kinda empty-hearted to boot.

That's probably how, in the space of the time it took me to walk back into the house and grab a beer from the fridge, I find myself thumbing through the results of my latest internet search for love.

I do it every so often; end up reactivating some old online dating profile just to see what the choices are, or looking to see what new dating sites have sprung up since the last time I swore I was done with the fast food delivery mentality that the younger generation has about dating.

Tonight I'm feeling lonely and a mite sorry for myself. I can tell because the search terms I just looked up aren't the usual "dating" words. No. What I'm scrolling through as the last of the orange-red sunset fades to blue outside and the temps inside the house start to drop low enough for me to start thinking about stoking up the fire for the night, is a lot of websites about where I can find a wife.

Seems about right for this time of year.

Days are getting shorter, nights are getting colder, the kids are back in school-- although I won't be seeing them every other weekend anymore. Knowing I don't even have a few days a month of Dani sitting by the fire with her phone in her hand and rolling her eyes at me when I make her watch a movie with me just makes the early September air in the empty living room that much cooler.

I glance at snippets of websites as I scroll; mail order brides from around the world. Beautiful women want to meet me now. My fated mate is waiting. Meet my perfect match...I find myself laughing at the tag lines and catch phrases.

These websites are so damn cliche. I'm scared to death to click on half of 'em for fear of picking up some sort of computer virus on my phone or worse-- getting myself put on some sort of government watch list for sex trafficking.

Setting the phone on the end table next to my recliner, I decide it's cold enough to get the fire going again. This time of year I let it die down during the day when the sun still warms the house up and I'm still spending most of the daylight hours outside, but this old place is still heated by the fireplace so by the time it's dark out, it's time to get the fire going again.

Once I've got a new fire rebuilt from the hot coals that were hiding under the cool ash of last night's fire, I relax back into the chair and pick up my phone.

I've already forgotten about what I'd been looking up just 10 minutes ago. I was just going to do a quick email check and then grab the tv remote and see what kind of nonsense I could waste my night on. So seeing the list of results promising "young," "nubile," "hot," "virgin," and my favorite, "cum thirsty," girls who want nothing more in life than to become my wife, jars my memory and yanks another guffaw from my chest.

That sarcastic chuckle dies in my throat when my eyes land on a line of text that doesn't fit in with all the other mail order bride offerings, "...better suited to finding your next partner than you yourself..."

The snippet from the site looks to be less ad and more article and my curiosity gets the better of me. I click on the link and find myself on the website of one Raven Swann. The link takes me directly to a page of testimonials from several couples crediting this Raven Swann for their happiness.

The quote that piqued my interest is from some high falutin' "human behavior" specialist with a string of letters after his name starting with PhD. I don't have a clue what the other ones mean, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out this guy's got more college degrees than my entire home town.

I skim through the paragraph that talks about how arranged marriages worked back in the day and why it's an "ideal paradigm for human pair bonding" that we oughta still be putting "into practical application to this day."

The guy uses a lot of silver dollar words to basically say that if people still let their closest friends and relatives pick their spouse for them, that they'd be happier and stay married longer.

I may not have a fancy college education to help me with the big words, but I get the gist of it well enough. The thing that really gets my attention is the pictures of all the couples and families on the page under the psycho-babble. Every photo is accompanied by a letter to this Raven talking about how happy they are and thanking Raven for getting them together.

There's tons of these couples.

I frown. Most of 'em are just kids. Young, attractive, they look like toothpaste commercials. All walks of life though, that's for sure, and every one of 'em looking at each other like they're starstruck.

Kinda chokes me up, seeing all these people in love like that. No way these are just paid models from some stock photo site. You can't fake the kind of love I'm seeing in these pictures.

Some of the pictures show families-- the happy couples with the children these marriages produced.

I keep scrolling. I keep scrolling and I keep reading and I realize that a whole lot of these pictures are years old. If I click on the link to expand the testimonials I get taken to an entire page dedicated just to that couple. There's the full story, sometimes more updates, and pictures. Lots of pictures. Engagement photos, wedding photos, birth announcements, first teeth, first steps, first days of school, first dates, graduation photos-- shit! Who is this Raven and how long have they been doing this?

I click out of Josh and Caitlyn's page of family photos and back to the main testimonial gallery. I'm about to go back to the top of the page and look for more information when the couple below Josh and Caitlyn catches my eye.

A glimpse of gray hair makes me scroll farther down. The next couple is older, looks to be in their 60s. Their bio says they were 64 an 61 when Raven set them up.

A little more scrolling and I find lots more couples that aren't in their damn 20s.

So maybe this Raven guy can work with us geezers after all.

By the time I make my way back to the about Raven page and find myself staring an attractive woman who doesn't look any where near the mid 40s her bio claims her to be, I'm not only surprised to find out that Raven is a woman-- I'd kinda been picturing some sort of new agey Native American dude wearing linen pajamas and a puka shell necklace-- but I'm also a lot more interested in her services than I'd care to admit just yet.