I’ve been wondering whether to write about this or not. In a way it feels indiscreet - on the other hand I don’t intend to publish any names. First there was a guy, who looked for tall girls in Wales. Then some one looked for big women, whatever that meant.  

A little while ago I was proposed through my comments - and the guy has not even seen me, ever. I mean: all I have is the old painting that does not even look like me. I could look horrible. He sent three comments to me, all linked to his web page. I am not sure if it was some short of hoax, yet at least part of his comments seemed honest. I would have loved to publish them, but they would have needed some censor, which I don’t like to do. So I totally left them out. Maybe he just liked about my writing.

I’ll be never desperate enough to accept a stranger I’ve never met. This is not a dating service or a bait I use to lure man. I am just sharing my honest and some times awkward thought about being single women in the thirties and wishing to find some one. I do my dating business elsewhere and I prefer to keep them separate, as this is an outlet of my feelings.

I love comments - please do leave them, whatever they are, but don’t ask me to marry you.

Twice a year there is these crazy shopping fair in the local sophisticated department store. It is packed full of people, who try to buy quality stuff on sale. I hate the overcrowding, like most people, but there are some attractions I feel I cannot avoid.

First there is always quality DVDs on sale. Secondly you can get the cheapest way to get cinema tickets in town. Third you can buy good food in sales prices. Oh, oh and then there are almost free mags and paperbacks.

So I have generated my own shopping strategy. First I go to the book store and then I go to the department store side from up till down. First the most important: the tickets, then the DVDs and lastly the food. That was my tour around. Usually I also shop some fashion - but at the moment I feel fat, I need to loose some weight and there is no point of buying anything else than shoes - which I by the way checked on my way down.

So this evening I’ve been watching the first season of Ugly Betty and reading some food blogs, which is a strange hobby of mine. I try to find recipes, I’d love to try and then print them as pdf’s with my pdf-printer. My hands hurt, when I arrived home bags full of Puttanesca sauce, which by the way is lovely. It is full of small olives and big capers.

I’ve been on a quite holiday thinking of my life and how I live it. Sometimes it is good to stop and check where one is going. Why do you think they arrange all the shopping events on the run? Why not threw them around?

No Prada for this Spinster. (Oh Now I was boring).

This question surprised me. I had never thought about taking care of myself as a woman (you guys can replace it with man if you like). It was in a book, where it was part of the section about identity. I seldom think about taking care of myself anyway. I posed this question to my girl friends and according their reactions, they were as baffled as I was.

The question was like opening a new window of thought. I at least believed I was seeing a totally new dimension here and trough it looking my life differently. Although I was not that sure what the question meant exactly. What would it be like to take care of my femininity?

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot, how people often talk about masculinity and mean strength (both physical and mental) and talk about femininity and mean sensitivity and empathy. It is like women and men equally would not posses both groups of qualities. Not all men like wrestling and not all women hate it. Not all men hate ballet and not all women love it.

When I was in high school I was good with computers and occasionally even better than the guys in the course. I was the only girl. We could process with the computer programming course as we best wished. While boys ran forward as fast as they could - I spend a lot of time making my programs also look OK, instead of just working. When they got stacked some where our teacher asked me to skip few easier problems and try the ones they could not manage.

When I left first from the exam after checking my answers twice, all the guys stared at me and after we got the result one of them was sent to ask mine. I felt like a freak. I did better than them. I was not a proper girl, because I was able to process higher mathematics (like my computer teacher told his wife, who again told my mum).

It only came to my mind later that I approached my task differently than guys, even if my abilities seemed above them. On the other hand there were not many in the course that were good at maths and science. After the high school I shook maths and science off myself and head off to political sciences, part as a rebellion and part as avoiding some imaginative stigma. Maybe it is this why I do have hard time understanding transgender. I feel vulnerable myself.

Now how do I take care of myself as a woman? Occasionally I wear skirt and that is for my own pleasure and not to please men. I enjoy wearing skirts, especially those long ones that are not very sexy, but feel as a weight on the ankle and make me feel like woman. I was my hair with a shampoo that supposedly brightens the dark blond colour. I bought myself tulips just before Easter. It is difficult to tell. So how do you take care of yourself as man / woman?

He is legally man, he has beard. His wife had hysterectomy (removing uterus) due to endrometriosis and cannot get pregnant. According to his own story, he just stopped taking testosterone to be able to get pregnant, without needing no help of artificial hormones nor fertility drugs to aid her (his) pregnancy. Got lost? I almost did.

It took them one year to get access to sperm bank, because so many doctors / medical stuff felt uneasy to treat them. He told to the Advocate they needed to resort to home insemination, where the wife was aiding him. Most of the wives family don’t even know him being transgender. And here I thought that you need to be sterile to be able to legally change gender - but apparently you don’t. So now this guy is first “man” to pregnant. He sees himself as his own surrogate.

So knowing all this, would you date a transgender?

Read more: Labour of Love by Advocate.com or She is pregnant, but she is a man by stuff.co.nz or Is the story of a pregnant man legit? By Katu

Just before the Easter I suddenly got plenty of traffic from strange source called rsd-nation. It was a male discussion forum and the writer linked to “Too picky or too shy” - and commented: “Does this mean that getting rejected is not always our fault? YES! “. Did you guys really think that women are some kind of robots that if you press the right buttons you always get “yes”?

The women can have past wounds and insecurities you have nothing to do with. Often it is about the right timing, the right mood and about nice guy. There are plenty of us, who don’t like men coming to us too heavily. “I saw you and you seem nice and I wanted to talk to you and get to know you. Can I sit here and talk with you?” would sound great to me. Much better and more honest than any lame flattery. So don’t tell me I am beautiful or mysterious or any that kind of rubbish.

What ever you do, don’t just push there, because you’re too afraid of actually asking me. That does not seem nice and in fact it feels distressing for me. It is not respectful and makes me feel used somehow and I want to run. That single move probably blew your changes with me totally. Nothing is so unbecoming than strange man rubbing or pushing himself on me. Believe me, I know.

I would really recommend that instead of using huge amount of money for these guys, who just teach you player tactics, you ask some women (who your not that much interested in and just friends with) how they think women like to be approached and treated. They will probably be happy to help some man to treat the ladies in his life better as long as they don’t have crush on you.

You should remember that there is no tactic working for every women in all occasions. Women can be occasionally moody, which you should know, if you have ever been in relationship with one. Some women, like me, also have past wounds and are insecure of them selves. No man has ever moved slow enough for me and been actually moving some where. Yet most of the women would probably want it faster than me. My point here is to slow down, if the reaction is not what you looked for instead of pushing more, which is the mistake most men do.

You should also consider that almost one third of the women get harassed as children and it is a light form of child abuse. It leaves some scars. So many women, especially many of those pretty ones do have problems with their past. They’ve learned unhealthy coping skills. Many of them probably feel (I’ve heard one of my friends especially complaining about this) that men come after them just because they are beautiful. The beauty knows that hanging her on his arm raises the guys status in the eyes of other men. It is not that flattering, when you think about it.

Others like me feel the line about the great beauty to be fake, when you say it, because we don’t often feel so beautiful. The problem is we can feel that way even if you really mean it. So your honesty might be brought to question, even if you were sincere. So don’t pay too much attention on the female beauty in the beginning in spite of how beautiful she is. Later, when we already trust in you, it is nice compliment as all the women like to look beautiful in the eyes of their men. It is a little female vanity.

He wants you to skip important meeting to be with him. She needs to talk to you in the middle of the night. He wants you to grow longer hair. She is whining every time (and that is not often) you want to spend night out with pals.

One of the clear signs of emotional manipulation, abusive relationships and manipulative personalities is insistence of needing to prove your love. There are all kind of sick tests of love people can be put through. In as normal relationship respect and faithfulness is enough and they don’t need to be tested.

In this unhealthy relationship you’re constantly tested, whether your fill their limitless need of love. Of course you cannot, because your not their parent nor god. These people try to use you to fill up the holes that were left unfilled while they were kids. The saddest cases in the world, hollow and very lonely. Yet they can only be cured, if they admit it is their problem and not others. Instead they blame others for their insecurity and lack of necessary love.

The reasonable test for love is everyday consideration, respect and faithfulness. The true love forgives the failures daily and does not behave like a jobsworth. It does not sacrifice unreasonable nor expect others to sacrifice themselves. Nor does it play martyr, if something goes wrong or it needs to admit its own fault. It is forgiving, forgetting and excusing.

I find that unlike many single women claim to do, I enjoy talking about pregnancy, baby slings, different kind of diapers, prams and how and where baby should sleep. As I told before I feel even closer connection to my friend now that she is pregnant.

My friend is bigger now, although her weight is more evenly distributed than in most pregnant women and one might not be so sure, if one would not have seen her before. She says she does not need to use maternity pants and clothes yet, although she has been using tunics for while already.

Touch the tummy? No I have not felt the baby kicking and would not try to touch her stomach, if she will not offer (probably wont). It would be interesting, but not something I think I want to push. I wonder will people really try to touch pregnant women’s stomachs - probably not in our culture. She has told me that she has already felt for a while some movements.

This has also made me think about children myself - you also might have noticed it, when I freaked about the menopause thing. Men are so lucky as they don’t have to worry of the things like that.

Just an year ago I wrote about not being in a hurry to become mother. Last weekend I found myself panicking about potential menopause. I know it was silly and it probably has not started yet, but my curses were light and I was quite warm (although I wore plenty of clothing) and some how it came to my mind that it might have begun.

It made me check my priorities. It is totally different not to want become mother now - than not to want to become mother ever. Yes I do want to become mother and after last weekends shock: rather sooner than later if possible. I also don’t believe in becoming mother by myself. There are several reasons most important being that I unfashionably believe that children need their father as well their mother and also I don’t somehow believe I could manage it just by myself. I think I need the support of the partner -  the father.

I’ve always consider the adoption and fostering as an option. Suddenly I do want to have at least one of my own. I want to be pregnant and carry my child. I am more and more aware of the fact that there is not that much time, even if my mom got last of us about five years older than I’m now.

Yet I am truly scared of running in trouble by picking a man too fast, as I am afraid my mom did. I know that in the end he loved my dad, but they had serious problems due his lack of consideration. I don’t want to get married with an irresponsible man. I also don’t want just to pick a good man - I want to fall in love with him. I don’t want to do any cold blooded decision. I don’t want to choose a man just as an instrument of getting child.

It all started, when I red from the Dr. Phil’s page that men are biologically destined to be selfish. Men often complain about women being greedy, but the real life studies shows that men use more money to their own convenience (like nice gadgets), while women usually invest towards home and family. Women also do most of the house work (the so called men’s jobs do take usually quite a little time in average).

Females just invest more for their families than men do and I’ve always consider this is due the up bringing. I was taught to sweet, pleasing and caring.

Some men consider that because they work and wife stays at home (investing her time and career for taking care of his kids), she should live with what he gives. Yet I’ve always considered this being learned attitude.

Now some one comes and tells me that this is a biological fact and they can not (and if you read between the lines: should not) change. Than made me angry.

The anger is rooted in my past, I know. I always felt cheap in my childhood, when my dad vetoed on his bringing money to the family as a reason, why we had to do as he pleased. I’ve always wanted to find a guy to whom money mattered less. This made me afraid I could not…

Suddenly after writing this I don’t feel cranky no more, as I know what it was about. Some times it is good to dig a little.

I filled in a questionnaire on partnership issues. There were some questions that made me think. Both me and my sister have emotional relationship issues - although we have reacted in different ways towards our childhood. 

I wonder what impact does parents union have on our view of relationship. It is in the end what we’ve experienced when we were growing up. We might have seen something of the unions of our uncles and aunts, maybe also of our grandparents and cousins, or we might not, depending how open our family is. Yet there are usually few other role models as people don’t show their true self towards outsiders.

The marriage one has spent longest part is usually the parents union, until your own continues longer. It is the one you have closest look in. It is something one considers the norm. Even if as children we propably don’t understand the deep waters of the union. Yet every other model, however more common in society, is merely something else. We might like to go along with the norm or rebell against it.

It has been studied that people, who’s parents have divorced are more likely to divorce than those who’s parent havent. Daughters of the alcoholic often find themselves married with a bottle. Also violence exposes to further violence as one has not been ablet to build proper guard against it. Yet also good things of the parents marriage might materialise, like the experience of getting over the hard times and respect towards your partner. People are looking for the model of their parents in good and bad.

The other significant role model is the media. Yet it is hardly the best possible model. Just look at the day time soap, where the story is kept up by continuously changing couples and partners - cheating and seduction. It might make us unconciously feel that the life around us is similar. 

Yet people are usually more loyal and their life more boring and ordinary than we expect. The problem is we are not often able to honestly dig in the other peoples unions. Due this we only have vague and often false idea of what is happening inside of them. The sorrows as well as joys of them are usually mystery for us.

So the only model we saw almost honestly and often painfully clearly is our parents union. We know what happened, how it happened and how both parties reacted. Yet even there our view is not impartial : we learned to take sides, whether we wanted or not. Our view of it is not as unemotional and clear as many of us would want to think.