Post 81: The Writer and the Web (not the worldwide kind)

Post 81:  The Writer and the Web (not the worldwide kind)

Yeah, more poetry...strange...must be someone influencing me.....here it goes..

The day he flew
My life changed forever
And I found her
Though she did not fall deeply

Released from the web
to which I had clung
Already woven, enthralled, trapped?
For 3 years...
How many spider years is one human year?

Now 3 years later, I've unraveled its throes
The spider moved on
The writer has too - forward into her fourth four-blanket winter woes 

Post 80: Frustrating Funeral

Post 80: Frustrating Funeral

This post has nothing to do with sex, but maybe everything to do with no sex. If I got as many invitations to dates as I did to go to the shiva, I'd have an amazing dating schedule.  I attended the funeral and shiva of an acquaintance who lost her battle with cancer.  She wasn't a close friend, but I was in touch with her and visited her and the people whom I met through her are close friends to this day.  I won't write her name here as I change the people and identifying factors.  Despite my respect for Jewish tradition, I just about verbally attacked the Rabbi who showed up at the shiva.  He did not know the age or reason for the death but tried to comfort the family members and friends there by saying that G-d created everything for a reason. There is even a reason for weeds (and moquitoes, and cockroaches, I thought.)  But I didn't want to upset the household.  It wasn't my daughter/aunt/sister who died.  But I wanted to ask him, what is the USE of a cancer cell.  What does it give the people or animals on this earth, other than some income for oncologists and lab researchers?  I'm sure this has been asked before and "believers" are supposed to take the leap of faith and think that there was a reason for her premature death and a purpose for the cancer to strike.  Twice....



Well, I don't buy it.  The only thing her death did is for us to put things into perspective...and the only thing I could come up was anger, in this poem.  It's a little childish, a little angry, but that's how this writer feels:


The only thing I know
Is that when I go
I do not want to suffer so
I want to glow until the end
Don't want to show illness to my friends
Just sing and dance and make them laugh
Until they write my epitaph

So why are people so in shock?
Did they ever think to call or knock?
Denying what was going on
Until they reached the cemetary gate
Then apologizing on Facebook, when it was too late.

But denial is human
And human means you're alive
Not for me to judge as I survive
This world of hurdles, high and low
And this writer knows nothing, that's what I know.

Column 79: September Boy Blues

Column 79: September Boy Blues

The new school year has started and the Jewish high holidays are approaching. On the one hand, people are looking to hook up because they are fed up of everyone in their family asking them when they are getting married, having kids, etc. On the other hand, the commitment shy ones run away when something good comes their way. So what was I thinking? As I told you int he last column, Yaniv is a bachelor and the chances of him having a real relationship were not high from day one. Still, he has turned out to be a fun male friend to have around, and a friend with benefits if I do so desire, and can find a place and time. That's kind of complicated when you are in a non committed physical relationship, but there are solutions to everything when it comes to matters of the heart, or hormones, as the case may be.

Today, you can order a computer built according to your needs - memory, operating system, speed, size. You can get the best sum of the parts and therefore control that you know what you're getting right from the start. But in a man, this isn't (yet) possible, and what you see is not always what you get.

So Yaniv came and went, disappointed me by not showing up to a play I was in, not calling and then calling. I played it cool so he wouldn't feel pressured, and that worked well, until I realized I needed more and deserved to be with someone who at least communicated a bit better. Turns out, like many men his age who have never been married, that he doesn't want to take the relationship to the next step and isn't sure what he wants. Fine, we'll be friends (great, just what I need, another single male friend) and I planned a great, fun filled weekend of hiking, food, and music, not taking him into account. He did attend some of the activities but he went as an individual, not as my partner or date. I did want to have another kid after my divorce, but I don't need one in his mid-forties. It was a nice experience, but he has gone to my collection of intelligent, fun, talented, men, who are simply not boyfriend material. I wish I could take the parts that I cherish with me to my next computer, rather, boyfriend.

So for a guy who can't send a simple text message to say whether or not he is showing up at a picnic, Yaniv suddenly calls me yesterday, at work, to tell me about a discount coupon for renting a car during the holidays. The deal was so attractive, I was thrilled.

This writer doesn't have a boyfriend with whom to spend the Jewish New Year, but she has wheels!

Post 78: Mourning has broken (but will my heart break too?)

Post 78: Mourning has broken (but will my heart break?)

I have a statue that I bought for myself of a man embracing a woman from behind. I find this statue particular romantic, not because I think men should support women financially or that a woman can't stand up straight without the help of a man, but because this image represents the positive sides of a man, strength as opposed to dominance, leadership, as opposed to control.

Likewise the woman in this image reminds me of serenity in her submission, as opposed to passivity, trust vs. dependency, pleasure vs. being unable to be by yourself, togetherness, as opposed to neediness.

This type of couple is so lacking in my day-to-day life. I find myself playing father and mother, and sometimes just tired of having to do everything by myself. With so much of the financial and emotional weight on my shoulder, it's no wonder I dream of a partner to lift me up a bit, BUT only in the metaphoric, positive sense of the word. I have a few "rules" regarding dating. I will not date a smoker. I will not date a bachelor. I will DEFINITELY not date a bachelor who wants biological kids. And I don't date men who are interested in my friends. And a few more rules, I'm sure.

Then something happened.

My son broke the statue, collected most of the pieces and glued it back with superglue. One or two pieces of the perfect statue remained missing. But guess what happened? The couple remained embracing, standing upright. The couple crumbled to pieces but remained intact after a third party (in this case, my son) glued them back together.

With their missing parts, they were still working. They didn't have to break up! And you know what, he didn't even leave her for a thinner, younger statue.

Shortly after the statue incident, I told my son that the 11 month old mourning period for my father had passed. Morning has broken, Cat Stevens sings.....oh, that morning...in this case Mourning has Broken....and with it comes a new era.

First thing I did was started to dance again...one day I came back from a dance class and a man tried to pick me up on the street on the way back from the bus. He was kind of cute, divorced with a 13 year old, educated, employed, and had a nice car too.

But he was a smoker. He called me the next day, but I declined. I'll keep him on the backburner for my divorced smoking friends.

Then out of the blue, from a popular Jewish dating site, popped out a divorced man who does NOT want biological children and is willing to meet women older than him. We met, and he was nice enough, intelligent enough and moderately attractive enough, but I found our conversations heavy and stagnant, like a married couple who has been together for years and doesn't know how to communicate. Instead they bicker and criticize. I gave him the "good luck line" and ended the "potential". Some potentials need to stay unharnessed.'

The same week, my friend's exboyfriend started asking me to go on walks with him in order to improve his English. I think his motivation seriously IS English, but I have other people I'd rather walk with!

During the same period, I went out to a picnic of 38+ single people. My friend Amalie told me it was a good opportunity to meet men our age. We met two guys in their 40s and had a really nice time laughing together over a beer and salad...the change didn't work out evenly and one of the guys ended up owing me aprox.7 dollars. The two guys took Amalie's phone number and I went to sleep. Alone.

But the problem was, my magnet friend, Amalie wasn't at all attracted to the guy without the money. I'll call him Yaniv for now. But she insisted that he call me to return the 7 dollars. And that's how Yaniv and I got to be friends. A non-smoker, albeit a bachelor!! OFF LIMITS as a boyfriend, so no pressure. With no pressure, a couple may be able to stay together even with some missing parts.

So when there is no pressure and no expectations, things flow....and that is how this writer found herself breaking her own rules but having fun doing it.

This writer hopes Yaniv will not drop her for his dream of spending nights with a pile of dirty diapers (at least not yet!)

Post 77: Why is one of my best friends swimming in my pond?

Post 77: Why is one of my best friends swimming in my pond?

In one of the episodes of “Sex and the City”, Carrie Bradshaw (then in her mid to late 30s) comes to a party with her then boyfriend Aleksander Petrovsky, probably in his 50s, divorced, with a grown daughter and doesn’t want more children of his own. Carrie’s boss at the time is also in her 50s and laments the lack of men her age. She asks Carrie why she is swimming in her (very small) pond.

In theory, my pond should be very large. Divorced men with children who do not want more children of their own. However if they are non-smokers, that is a must for me, and if they are musicians, that is simply a huge plus.

Since the big breakup more than two years ago, I’ve been hanging out with people of all ages, but many of them 5-15 years younger than me. Of the musician friends, only one is divorced and he has always been polite but rather cold to me. However, I’ve noticed that the women he dates are tall and thin. Matti himself is not very attractive but he is divorced with kids, and around my age.

Therefore, you could imagine my surprise when a close friend of mine started to date him. I am actually very happy for her, but she wants children of her own and has just broken up with someone herself. That means SHE needs the time to heal on her own and it’s my turn for a boyfriend. This is my third cold winter without a boyfriend and she has not even gone the whole winter without one.

And she’s not a musician.

I do wish her all the luck, because, as I said, I was not attracted to that guy in the first place....

Another friend, never married, is also dating a divorced man with a child. I've never met him so it's not like he chose her over me, but still...

both of them are swimming in my pond.

In an ideal world, men who have never been married would go out with single women; divorced guys would go out with divorced women, widows with widowers and newly separated with newly separated.

The only parallelism I see is married people having affairs with other married people.

This writer will probably end up with a single guy 20 years older than her who smokes and isn’t a musician. Or will she?