tradition

this morning i did a wash & enjoyed the beautiful outdoors. it really is gorgeous outside, warm, sunny & with beautiful fall leaves. i also enjoyed having all the washers and dryers work & generally the sound of the machines humming. washing is a very happy-sounding event. very cozy.

anyhow. single people have our traditions too. and sometimes they are quite cozy. doing a wash on sunday morning when the laundromat is still empty, watching the people go by on the street on the way to brunch, playing in the little park while the clothes wash (which includes riding on the springy-snail), saying hey to the laundromat people. it's all kinda cool when you've been doing it for a while. and you are a local. and it's a tradition. it all works.

i'll be comin' down the mountain...

whoohoo. i'm going skiing with my ski buds again for the 3rd year in a row. how cool is that. :) looks like will be 4 of us singletons and one set of smug marrieds. my newly married friend asked if i had any s.o.'s to bring along and gee i felt like a winner. when that happens--i have an s.o.--i'll put out an APB & no one will miss the news in a 10-friend radius.

seems like there is something to this blowing off guys bit...

i just got a call yesterday from my best friend in elementary school who located my 7th-grade crush, tim, who i blew off for noble reasons like bell-choir, choir, orchestra, string group, Mugar's orchestra, private lessons, practicing, and generally being too busy to date him. then i've regretted it ever since. he is now happily married with two boys, a captain in El Dorado fire dept. in CA, and probably off fighting the fires there. i was looking for him this morning on the news, just in case he showed up looking sexy and haggard.

and i'll be...here he is. don't even recognize him with the mustache...haven't seen a picture of him in 25 years.

well, timothy noel cordero, this bud's for you.

gender rolls

sometimes i think it must suck to be a man. this morning on the train i wanted a seat that another guy wanted. i wasn't sure but i thought so. i asked him if he was going to sit there and he said no. so i sat down. he immediately looked for another seat and sat down. i knew he'd grudgingly given up that seat for me.

it must suck to be a guy and know that every time you take a seat away from a woman you're a jerk. likewise, i felt like a jerk this morning for taking a seat he clearly wanted. but that's the way it is: that's the roles we play.

and they start young. did i mention that a few weeks ago a 7-year old boy gave up his seat for me. and you know what? i sat down and said thank you, very pleased, and slid into my new seat as easily as i slid into my role of preferred seating...

ya can't get blood out of a stone

i think my current frustration in my dating life is my continued dating of guys who don't know what they want. i'm going on enough dates to make anyone happy, but as usual, the people that like me, i don't like, and the people i like don't know what they want.

there's only so long that you can date people before you figure out if it's them or you that's the problem. one of my very smart and very intuitive exes who knows me well told me recently there's nothing wrong with me that isn't wrong with anyone else (well, not in those words, but you get the point). meaning: it's them.

now that i see they're not settling down with anyone else other than me either, i'm more inclined to think he's right. anyhow, one always likes people that tell you you're normal. so i like that kind of thinking.

so now that i know it's not me: my next move is clear. stop dating these people!

and then...how do i know that they belong to the secret club called: I Really Don't Want To Date Anyone, I'm Just Messing Around

whistlin' dixie

yesterday i walked out into the hallway & this guy was coming out of the bathroom. whistling. and as i walked by, in the middle of his tune he did the oh-so-familiar wheee---wheeeoooooooo. i was smiling to myself but i didn't want to encourage such improper behavior, so i didn't turn around. when he noticed i didn't do anything, he then began to try with limited success to incorporate that phrase into his already lame concerto, turning his tune into a Theme and Variations on a Sexy Whistle.

swf seeing gswmwlrgjank (good-looking single white male with labrador retriever, good job and no kids)

so today i want to draft a letter to one of my cosmo bachelors. this will be very hard as lots of women will write to them. so i want my letter to stand out, yet be appealing in a cute but intelligent way. here goes.

"hi. i think you're very cute."

duh. ya think.

"Hello _____, I am a SWF living in Boston who likes the Red Sox"

no. can't do that. he'll feel sorry for me.

"Hello _____, I live in Boston, land of baked beans."

hell no! air freshener please.

"Hi ____, I saw your picture in Cosmo."

...which is why this e-mail was set up.

this is harder than it looks!

"Hi ______, I've been reading Cosmo for 10 years..."

...and i'm as old as your mother and i have no life.

"Hi ______, my name is ______."

name doesn't matter. only my picture matters.


"Hi _____, I've attached my picture for my review. Check it out and see if you're interested in talking to me. If you are, please read on..."

...my salary requirements are.

HOW IN GOD's GREEN EARTH DO GUYS WRITE TO GIRLS? Damn, this is hard. thank goodness i'm a woman.

i'll have to think about this some more. what good text goes with my face?

ahh!!

"Hi ________, I'm a _______ (description goes here) who loves nature, traveling, any sport that involves water, and ______ (music). The reason I wrote to you is because I liked your frog-catching. My favorite memories of growing up were exploring all the fields and streams with my black pony and white dog, hatching caterpillars into monarchs, building treehouses, and finding garter snakes. Now I live in the city and wear garter hose. No I'm kidding. But someday soon I plan to a place in the country again where I can swim in the pond and squish my toes in the mud every day."

...now let's settle down and have some kids in that place in the country. works for me. ;)

here i don't come to save the day

a brave prince from down under has arrived as i'd dreamed and hoped. while i've been pouting in my little imaginary castle, dreaming of handsome good-looking warriors who'd spirit me away and save me from the evil one-eyed-one-legged-one-armed-one-headed dragon, he has fought off scores of imaginary dragons, plunged into the abyss of the unknown, braved the firewalls and...sent me an e-mail!

[dramatic pause for effect]

but, alas! i am still here in my castle. something must be wrong with my fantasy. i'll have to check & see where it broke...

i'll take a whole ba(t)ch of those right over there...

one of the best things about being single is that...

i can write to any of the bachelors featured in this month's cosmo! and being the smartish sort of good-looking blond i am, i have a decent chance of them writing me back.

hmmm. who will i write to? how about mr. west virginia, mr. alabama, mr. wisconsin, mr. arkansas. that'll do for starters.

damn, sometimes life is sweet.

now, what do i say to them...?

ignorance is bliss

so i'm a bright one. i make this site about being single and then can't write about my dates because of course, they either know i keep a website or they can find out by looking up my name online.

that said, who really cares about the actual dates i'm having anyhow? isn't the whole point to portray how it IS to be single (and unfortunately, only when i feel like writing, not when i feel good and happy and not-like-writing)?

anyhow, happily, dating is a part of life, but not the whole.

...life is bigger, bigger than you, and you are not me...

lonely in paradise

sometimes, in fact quite often, it's very lonely being single. you pretend to yourself that if you weren't single you wouldn't be lonely. which you then remember is a lot of b.s. because your mind then polls all your past relationships and flags those where you where indeed lonely, trying to convince you things are fine the way they are.

well, if it's fine the way it is, why do we human's have this lonely/relationship itch that we just have to scratch? apparently we're NOT supposed to feel alone. at least more than x% of the time, whatever value x has to each of us individually. as though there is this warning that goes off and says "Attention: You are feeling lonely. Please do something about it." much like the door lady in the car, though not with "The door is a jar? No kidding. Does Toyota know this?" pun to think to yourself.

independent people also tend to be more lonely i think because we tend to have a greater resistance to listening to our Attention warnings. Yesterday is a prime example.

where i work we have free passes to the acquarium, and yesterday our company went over at lunch. i was happy because i'd been wanting to go for a while, but not by myself. what happened? i ended up walking around by myself! i just didn't seem to fit in with any of the groups and i have a greater need to absorb information at my own pace than i do to stick with a group. so at one point i was wiping a tear from my eye and saying to myself, i waited all this time to see these things with people and here i am alone watching the penguins! so i promptly found a group to look at things with and stuck with them until i felt annoyed enough to go off on my own again.

finally i decided to end my predicament by hanging out with our cute resident bachelor who was also looking around alone. that turned out quite well. we watched myrtle the turtle together.

who, incidentally, also seems to live alone.

today's post: sexy

there are times when you want to smack guys on the street for acting like construction workers. and i don't mean in a kissy-kissy way. then there are other times when you do mean in a kissy-kissy way...(if you don't believe this is true, check out the latest issue of cosmo or glamour or something like that where a mother pushing a stroller misses the whistles that used to annoy her so much).

this morning i wore my new hot (i.e. low cut, tight, flare, pinstripe) jeans to work as i was coordinator for lee denim day at my office. and damn, i looked good. but the metro guy at the t-stop really made me feel it. when i walked by he said, damn, great pants. i said "THANK you! :)" he said "they're really sexy." i said TY at least 2 more times. cuz ya know what? he was right, damn it! and good for him for telling things like they are. i felt great all day.

now, for those of you moralistic women who aren't reading this but would yell at me for encouraging such behavior, let me just point out for the record: he was only stating the obvious. ;) and he didn't use the word sexy until he heard i liked the first part. in any case, this is a moment when it's great to be single. i ain't got no man to worry about me taking that compliment for all it's worth. sweet.

now, for those women i was also talking about, if he'd said that on a day when i DIDN'T have great pants on, then he should be smacked for sure.

boys, there is a diff. and we know it. when we look hot & you tell us, that's cool. when we don't & you tell us, you sound like the idiot in the north end the other saturday night who said "you look really pretty. can i have a dollar?" ain't none of that gonna get a lady anything but pissed off.