Views and trolls

OK, so I post this new picture on the dating site (in this case, a rather ironic name).

Personally (if I may offer a "personally") I don't think it's too bad.

I get around 150 guys viewing it -- or maybe guys viewing it multiple times. OR maybe it's the SAME person viewing it 150 times.

And about 50 winks -- mostly from trolls.

But only one man actually writes -- something like "I like your profile. You are sexy."

Well -- how does he know? Did he see something 149 other men didn't -- or did he mean to write the 27 year old in the next profile down?

Many of the men on this dating website my age want to date younger women. And they seem to spend months, even years, waiting for that 30 something to realize how incredibly virile they are. Executives, or guys with lots of money, often can actually date 20-somethings. Only I don't think it makes them very happy.

John Fowles does a wonderful job of describing this situation in a novel he wrote about 30 years ago -- about a movie producer and the starlet he's bedding. And not a hell of a lot has changed. Only in the novel...OK, I won't tell you what happens.

Apparently, from what I picked up in a recent NY Times story, men my age don't even like women their own age. But as I wrote a fellow ten years older than me: you might be missing the perfect woman your own age.

Knowing what I do about these men makes me wonder if dating is what I need to be doing.

Maybe I should take up curling, like my friend Allen.

Or fine sewing like my friend Salin (married friend Salin).

Or maybe I should try a few more craft brews.

Any advice?

Closeting the shingle

I think it's time, I said to a therapist friend last night. Then I stopped, a little anxious at my own daring. I think it's time, I said softly, to start thinking more about myself.

Duh! she said. Well, not in so many words.

Iwas still a little surprised. You see, I don't have a martyr's habits. I don't "sacrifice" myself for my kids -- and let everyone know. I don't deny myself the eye shadow, or the velvet jacket (on sale, of course). I buy milk chocolate and strong tea from England (dark comes from Trader Joes).

But, like many mothers, I tend to live in the shadow's of my kids crushes, academic successes, failures, jokes, friendships. Given the chance to hang out with my children or go out on a date, I'll almost invariably choose the kids.

Where does responsible parenting end and, eh, fear begin? Or cynicism? I've protected my children from any hint that there have been, for fleeting moments, men in my life. They don't need to be dragged into it, I reason. It's better that they know I'm here if they need me.

Easier to be the counselor, the confessor, the journalist, than the lover.

But I've got the sense that this might care have been as much for my sake, as it was for my children. Daring to imagine a relationship -- how do I start?

Senseless acts of violence

I wonder if my son, who is rather gentle and trusting, will begin to not trust girls.

After all, in the past four months a 16 year old girl hit him on the right ear, perforating it in 2 places.

Yesterday he was in the school cafetorium when a girl his own age, Clair, hit him on the forehead.

Why was Clair provoked? Because, apparently, Mr. C said he was thinking of inviting another girl to the Halloween dance.

Now Clair doesn't even like my Mr. C. She told the principal she doesn't know why she hit a boy she calls "boxhead."

Detention. It doesn't seem like she's being punished enough, but frankly, I could give a flying fig for Clair. It's the boy, chuckling with his friends, red mark on his forehead, dizzy in the nurses office, talking to the principal -- he matters to me.

As your kids grow, they spend more and more time away from you -- mostly beneficial, sometimes boring, and occasionally traumatic. Let this not have been one of the last.

Love and suffering in the life of a contemplative nun

http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/243204

Why aren't women happier?

Did you hear that women are less happy then men?

That's what a recent study says.

You'd think that with all of our choices, we'd be having more fun, but apparently more choices may provide more stress.

Also, married women are probably doing a bigger share of the domestic chores...and their job and childcare.

But that still doesn't completely explain it. The folks who led the study talked to single women, divorced women, and married women.

Maybe they didn't talk to nuns. I interviewed two today, enclosed behind grilles, and they seem pretty happy. I wonder what they might know that we don't.

For my readers

Has anyone here ever had a pro or a pal organize their stuff for them? Could them find anything after that?

My son says the house looks better than it ever has before, although there are still piles of paper, books, clothes and wire containers around -- from my sporadic attempts to make things cohere myself.

I'm stepping out in faith here to say that having a neater house will reduce my level of stress, too. Anybody have that experience?

I want to know there are a few disorganization addicts out there, too, like moi -- taking it one step at a time.

A man of breeding

When I was younger, I read a lot of Louis Auchincloss, that son of old New York wealth and standing who wrote about the repressed longings and moral conundrums of the moneyed class of New York. Well, how could he not, and how could I not?

My ex and I were privileged to be bookends in a memorial service yesterday at which Louis Auchincloss (still very much alive) might have found himself at home. If the WASP writer had been chronicling the Main Line and had penned happy endings, the Quaker meeting house memorial would have offered a lovely finale.

We had come together, some of us from very far away, to celebrate the life of a friend, father, co-worker, grandfather, World War II hero and postwar diplomat. His wife, who had invited me and my ex, sat ramrod straight as her children, now middle-aged told stories about their much loved father. His bravery during the War. How he'd fallen for his lovely co-worker at the Marshall Plan Paris offices. The places they'd seen together.

And the less concrete memories. His kindness. His humility. The love he had for children and grandchildren. The courage with which he faced his death. His wife had asked me and my ex not to be too religious, for her husband was not religious. But the service was filled with the themes of transcendence, mystery, departure, reunion. When it came time for N.'s 13-year old grandaughter to speak, she said, through tears, that her grandfather had never treated her differenlty because she was the youngest of the five.

It was by far one of the loveliest services I have ever attended. And as we left the reception, I pondered how good fortune, character, and a happy marriage helped mold N. into a man so profoundly mourned -- and celebrated. Breeding does not have a lot to do with bloodline, except maybe in horses. N. probably would have chuckled at the notion that pedigree counted for a lot. But he was truly lucky -- and we who knew him were blessed.