how do i love thee? let me count the ways...

it could be inferred that i don't like men. this is far from true. i think sometimes i have a basic misunderstanding of men, but that is true for most women. i, at least, struggle to see life through a man's eyes. but lest i be accused of man-bashing, let me just counter my sometimes-disappointments with some great features of the all the men i have loved before.

1) they are strong. they pick things up. and carry them. and open them. and move them about.

2) and with those strong arms they hug me.

3) they are rational. their minds are less clouded with emotional helter-skelter & PMS & whatnot. this is of course precluding their absolute irrationality when it comes to women and sex, but other than that, when they are clear headed, men think logically.

4) they like to please women. a lot. well. and are willing to learn what it takes to do that.

5) men are willing to work hard to support a family and do so even if they don't want to. because they know they are needed. which is #6.

6) good men like to be needed. and gees, it is great to need a great man for stuff.

7) men appreciate a beautiful woman. and let her know it. or rather, can't hide it. even when they should.

8) men do what needs to be done whether they feel like it or not. duty. code of honor. all that jazz.

9) men are the other half of what it takes to make babies.

10) men are loving and kind to women they love.

there, do you feel better about my little list? (i like lists. i'm a listy sort of person.) i do. i like men even better now. if that were possible. after all, if i did not like them so much, why would i waste so much time writing about them?!

the ties that bind

i'm sure i've ranted on this in the past, but i'll say it again. one of the most difficult things about being single is the attachment process. being the sort of person who gets attached at some level to most people that i care about, it is an ongoing and sometimes emotionally exhausting process of 1) deciding who to attach to / detach from, and 2) carry off said process.

there comes a point where you grow up enough to not cry over every little breakup & just go, well, it's not meant to be. next.

then there are the people you've been single with for 10 years and there's some history there and you just have to muddle through it the best way you can. and some part of you just wants to find a home and stop having to say goodbye over and over again...

view from the other side

check out this blog from a guy's perspective. damn. sometimes you're glad you're a girl. sucks to sit around and wait, but at least you can breathe while you're doing it...

sheep in wolf's clothing?

somebody wrote to me lately & observed that the guys i date aren't in tip-top shape. well, that's not what he said, but the point is, why don't i date up to my standards? is the ultimate question that comes out of that. it's a good question.

(annoying view of palm tree interrupts inappropriately)

for one thing i do date good people. but i don't write about them because sometimes they know i have a website and could read about themselves. i've gotten myself in trouble this way once or twice before.

hence, i write about strangers.

secondly, how does one know which of these strangers one should date and try to convert into the first group where they cannot be written about? i've been trying to figure out for years how to date good men. it's not like it's written in their foreheads like the mark of the beast. "i am a good man." rather one has to wade through tons of b.s. that is nicely couched in dinners, drinks, compliments, flowers, and generally spend a lot of time trying to figure out who is good and who isn't.

so i read through guys' profiles on dating sites & sadly end up judging through pictures. how shallow that is. but since a lot of them look like convicts in their pictures, it makes it a bit easier to assume they're not a good guy.

how do i pick a good guy to even go on a first date with? i still don't know.

date update

i went on a date this week with a lawyer/car racer from yahoo. unfortunately i disappointed him. (can that be possible?!) i guess the fact that i had shorter hair than my picture or perhaps looked different upset him. i can understand that to some extent. however, the picture i have posted was taken only last year so it's not intentional deception. besides i asked one of my guy friends if guys would care about hair being shorter & he said no. guess he was wrong. time to fire my hairdresser (who screwed up my hair in the first place!)

anyhow, i had a nice talk with him over dinner, but it was regretful. i was checking off things like on a list & that's just not good. hopefully he won't read this! anyhow, he was a veggie, which oddly enough, i objected to! perhaps because the minute i ordered salmon he got this look on his face. dammit if you want to date a veggie, ask before hand!

then there were some other turnoffs, like the discussion about the sodium content in veggie meat being 90% of your daily requirement for sodium. who the hell cares. gees.

so mr. lawyer/racer is going to continue to be very single until he stops fantisizing about life as he wishes it were & accepts how it is. which leads me to wondering if i should update my picture after all. who knows. who cares.

on the good side, he looked much better than his picture and he had a cute smile which he rarely displayed. and he was a good conversationalist. about himself. if i didn't say something there was dead silence. the only question he asked me all night was "what do you do?" which he already knew. oh, and the other thing? he was complaining about how hard it was to be a man & conform to the cigar-smoking, scotch-drinking, strip-club-visiting, golf-playing requirements of manhood.

his parting comments to me? in fitting with his anti-masculine sentiments. he says..."so you have my e-mail address. e-mail me and we'll do dinner again sometime."

saturday mornings for a single girl

if i'm not going to church, i love to do what i do best on saturday mornings...everything that i like!

this morning i slept late, got myself a nice hot cup of coffee (with ghiradelli's chocolate in it) and settled down to read birds & blooms magazine in the sun & dream of country living. then i did my spa day things. now as i let my spa treatments settle in, i'm sitting down with another good book...a favorite from college: vice & virtue in everyday life.

nothing like a good refresher on ethics to get one's weekend started. this was one of my favorite books in college/grad school. the other two being macroeconomics (including the study of the welfare system which was totally fascinating) and in grad school management theory cases.

today i'm going to decide whether or not i'm kantian or utilitarian in views & practice. i'm sure you can't wait to hear which way i swing...

later on today we're going to the park & the over to see friends in the country. all in all, will be a fun day in the sun day. hmmm...speaking of sun, maybe i should sail again this year. it looks awfully tempting looking out of my window at work at sailing in the harbor.

and many more

birthdays that is. 35th birthday, coming right up...

happy birthday to me!

it's raining men, hallelujah

ever since i decided that to get more love, i have to give more love (and this is not in the 70s kind of way), i seem to be attracting love like a magnet.

in the "who's new" section of my life i have a date on tuesday with a guy off yahoo personals, some lawyer who does auto racing on the side.

in the "who's out" section of my life, i have a funny story about a guy who i was writing to on yahoo for months. a gyn-oncologist who works like a dog, as he puts it. since the dog-days of summer are coming up, that doesn't appeal to me too much. but in any case, he wrote well. and seems, that's all he did. after writing to me for months (god only knows why i wrote back that long) he decided it was time to get back with his ex girlfriend again. so fine, bubye. then i saw him on the site again a couple months later & decided to see what was up. no more ex? so i wrote to him. he wrote aimlessly again once or twice, and then since he doesn't have the cahunas to meet me, decides that he is "planning" and i quote, to date some girl exclusively and therefore won't be able to meet me. in my head i wrote back the following response: "dear workaholic doctor, that's good that you wouldn't want to meet me because you are planning to date someone. it protected me from cheating on my soon-to-be-husband, which i plan to meet and marry in the next couple years or so. i'm so glad you protected both of us from throwing ourselves at each other in the coffee shop and engaging in wild sex, and dishonoring those we are planning to date at some point in the future."

in the "who's still on section" two of my buds are keeping in touch, more than usual, and it's awesome. i wouldn't mind a little more of the touch, but it's a little hard across a dozen states.

in the "who's on first, what's on second & i dunno's on third" section, is a friend who i've gone out with a few times but can't figure out what he actually thinks. that seems to work ok for me too, so seems we'll leave it right with the bases loaded & no one knowing what the hell is going on. much like the world series last year.

and of course, in the "you can't touch this section" there is a new guy at work who is to die for.


all of which is useless of course, me still being single and all, but very entertaining and whatnot, leaving endless possibilities for nothing to happen.

it's all about the love

sometimes you have certain friends of whom you are not sure why you have them. you can count on 10 short but talented violin-playing fingers the number of times they annoy you. and then you can count on 10 sexy red-polished toes all the great things about them. (if you're my friend, i'm kidding, i really don't do this.) but oddly enough, the more they annoy you, the more attractive they become over time until you start to see their annoyance as endearing quirks about them.

in the midst of all the counting though, there are times when you know without a doubt why they are your friends: they speak to you like no one else can. either because others don't care, they don't dare, or they're just not observant enough to see through you. it's those moments that you forget all about annoyances and just feel the love of your friends.

sometimes speaking the truth in love is the best quality a friend can ever share with you.

not meaning to be mean

oh the misunderstandings that arise between genders when men and women try to communicate. right now i am in the midst of three misunderstandings. one that will likely cost me ever meeting someone, another that is making "trouble" between me and a longtime friend, and the third, one that could have cost me a friendship, which seems to at the moment be back on track.

i don't tend to be the kindest person or one who beats around the bush trying to find the nicest way to talk to the bush. it's not something i ever heard my parents do nor that i know how instinctively. i tend to say exactly what i mean, which is sometimes just that (mean), because i don't know how to ask for what i need in a nice way.

anyhow, if one were to look at communication as a utilitarian feature, which it usually is, with the intent of delivering one piece of intended information to another person who can receive it with the same intent in which it was originally packaged, then i fall far short of success. which means i need to change how i communicate.

how does one negotiate change? or communicate intent?

there are three things good about my current troubles:

1) i am communicating much more to have gotten into this many problems.

2) those guys who know where my intent really lies will manage somehow to muddle through the communication part with me until we come to some understanding. the man who does that best will be the man i will marry. the one who hears my intent, regardless of my words, because sometimes it just doesn't come out right, no matter how hard i try. and the one who will respond back, sharing his intent, no matter how it all comes out. at least it is reciprocal.

3) all the guys who are my friends have forgiven me at one time or another for being a bitch, just as i have forgiven them for being jerks. what counts is are we actively changing for the better and treating each better every day?

i guess the key to success is to keep on trying...if you're both talking, at least you're still having the conversation...

doc love

have you boys ever read doc love? i'm a big fan of his. an ya know what? he really does know women well. so read up. it's not only entertaining, you might learn a thingy or two.