My problem with men has been a special kind of shyness or social fear. I am afraid of sexual chemistry and behind it are my bad experiences. I know it makes me difficult to interpret, because I am not otherwise excessively shy. It often happens that men I am not interested in find me easier to approach than those that I find fascinating. It usually take time to trust and feel comfortable around them, but most men are not that patient and I can understand them.

It is hard to interpret a person, who is hiding behind the mask. Freezing of fear maybe interpreted as a turn down. I can understand this and I may even try to control my behaviour and smile more, but in the situation that I feel afraid and unsure, I am not totally in control of my reactions. The situation is hard to explain especially, if one is not sure about other persons feelings. Smile is much easier approach than telling other person that you are afraid to show them your feelings.

 (Sorry If the next part is repetitive, but I am still going through this issue).

The insecurity and fear raises partly from low self-esteem. When I am unsure of my personal attractiveness, it is hard to interpret male attention. Partly there is history of under age sexual harassment or even abuse and also repeated harassment in the adult age. The first time I was under school age and it was mild form of physical and more serious verbal abuse performed by older boy that had probably been subjected to some abuse himself. The second time I was in teens and it was group of older boys harassing me in the form of sexual propositions and comments of me.

The third time was really a sexual bullying by men of a group I had trusted and other men in responsibility I had trust even more talked it down, when I tried to explain the situation.  One of them made silly excuses and other one tried to pressure me to forgive and forget without getting any apology. Later I got out of one of the bullies that he had believed he had right to “educate” me, because he felt I was too straight-laced. The only comfort is that I was partly able to show him his error of judgement, although I did not trust him enough to open up totally.  Yet the situation made me feel like no man could be trusted and that put me totally off the men for a while.

I am not looking for a light-hearted relationship. Some times I hope that I would be, because it might be easier. I would not need to afraid that I am giving some sign of being easy woman and not to be taken seriously. I am also afraid that men could make fun of my feelings. It maybe due the fact that people (not only men) have made fun of my feelings before. It does not make the situation any easier. I am also afraid that if the man gets to know me better, he might get disappointed and abandon me. I am afraid of not being worthy of love, which can be probably trased back to my parents behaviour. Yet I am as much afraid of my own feelings as of the man I am interested in. I am afraid to become heart broken, while I know it is normal part of human life. Very few of us are lucky enough to be always happy.

I may sound pretty analytic right now, but right in the situation I am not able to tract the roots of my feelings. I am just feeling strange panic. I feel my learning curve of handling the situations, where I am strangely afraid, isn’t fast enough. The older I get, more difficult it seems to meet men I would really be interested in and less practice I will get. I feel stuck.

I am unofficially a God mother (- it will be official only after the babtism of course). The baby girl was born couple of weeks ago and after it we had a slight worry with her blood sugar levels, but now everything is fine. I am happy for them and part of me wants to throw a party and another part of me wants to pamper her to rots.

I was almost sure it was a boy, before it was born. Earlier during the pregnancy I was thinking it was a girl – I just had a feeling, but later I had almost convinced myself it would be a boy as its daddy thought it would be. I had almost bought a skull & bones pacifier (for a joke) cause I knew its daddy had asked for skull cloth nappies. But it was born to be a most beautiful little girl possible.

One of my collegues commented on me that somehting happens on the brains of women, when they see babies. I don’t know if that is true for them all, but for me it is I suppose. I am over the moon – and it is not even my niece nor my own daughter. The whole summer I we been feeling like there is some kind of population rush as it seems that every third woman you see (of fertile age) are pregnant. I was thinking I was little nutty, before I red an article that the maternity wards are in trouble as there are so many babies expected in the best holiday season. Everybody is working overtime.

And no wonder – just couple of years ago my cousine gave birth to her second about this time and now my friend too. Yet both of them was not so much planned as my cousine and her hubbie had given up the hope for another. And my friend and her hubbie had decided that one could come when it would come. They had counted that as neither of them is very young anymore, the baby might take some time. I just red about this few weeks ago as the researchers have found out that also male fertility slumps after they turn to 40s. So its not only women, who should get the babies early enough but also men should not leave it too late.

I’d love to get a baby of my own, but I just don’t think I am ready yet – and I don’t have that much time anymore.

While I feel like nothing has happened, during the time I was away from here, there has been those moments. First I’ve heard that I’ll be godmother. He/She should born one of these days. I like children and while not having any of my own godchild is a good substitute. I have felt little left out in fact, because many of my friends have had plenty of godkids. This is my first. Although one old friend (long time not seen) told me that she could have written the same story: for years no godchildren and then in the few years several. I wonder…

In June I was in my summer holiday. I visited Italy - went to the Gulf of Naples, in to the green island of Ischia. I travelled alone and some of my compatriot young women asked, how do I dare to travel alone to Italy. Now Italy I’ve never considered a problem – or at least not after my first visit. I can handle Italian men alright. Anyway I was pretty much left alone. Only one day I was wearing skirt and was asked for a ride, which I politely and smilingly denied. (Have to admit that it made my day. )

My friends have bought a house I visited in the end of my holiday. They moved away from the big city – mostly due the work, but at the same time were able to upgrade their living standards from small flat to own, although slightly older house. It was nice. I started to think about the possibility to remove me from the big city and moving to a cheaper and smaller town. Yes I am getting old.

There was even questionably romantic moment after I came back from my holiday. One evening after work I met an old acquaintance and we spoke couple of hours, while standing on the pavement and it was even slightly raining and we needed to move under the cover. It was nice, but afterwards I did not know what to make about it. He seemed keen to talk to me though. He asked me to spend time whit their group of people and I’ve intended to, but while it is already couple of weeks ago, I’ve not managed. Maybe I am so inefficient, because I am slightly baffled what to make about it. I wonder if I should not try make anything about it before I see it through.

This was again me-me-me post, most of you might not be at all interested. I just wrote it to update those friends I’ve made through the blogging world and who might have wondered what happened to me. One last thing: I am finally finished with this job (mentally – because it is permanent) and ready to find new one. I know I don’t want to jump for first (and maybe worst) possibility, so I am looking for a long process. But I feel it is necessary.

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?

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.

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.

Now Ms. Potter was not just a writer of sweet children’s literature, but also a respected female scientist. Her paper on germination of spores was presented by her uncle in Linnea Society that later apologized of her treatment. Still most people don’t know about this side of hers. At the same time she draw pictures of funny animals wearing pastel clothes and there is no inclination that she took it any less seriously.

Ms. Potter was not afraid in a need to be taken seriously of expressing her imagination, which I also wish to be true of me. I’ve often has felt that I have to hide my creativity to be taken seriously. Alongside whit  my intelligence there is also the creative side of me that I’ve been hiding a lot and have tried to use only in “serious” matters.

Now Ms. Potter was able to draw talking, dressed up, pastel coloured animals. At that time - and still today – there are not many things that would be considered by serious people more silly. Yet she was a serious scientist   -  a botanist, as well.

At the time, when scientist world was mainly closed of women, she studied mushrooms (fungi). She was first to propose the today well known fact that lichens were a symbiosis of fungi and algae. She was widely respected as an expert mycologist.

On the other hand her paper of spore germination was defended by her uncle, because women did not have access to scientific debates. The Royal Society also denied her a publication of at least one of her papers. Although all the male opposition she did not give up.

She did not marry to the convenience of her family regardless of all the pressure she got and she was ready to marry out of her class irrespective of all the opposition. She was also able to wait as long as it took to find a right kind of person to her, although this ment that she could not get children of her own I believe she would have wished for. For best part of her life she was in fact a spinster and married only at the older age. She was a strong and emotionally independent woman, I would wish to be. Yet she was a lady.

Although she was played in the film by rather strikingly beautiful Ms. Zellweger, in real life she looked rather plain. Yet she was not driven to despair in a society that valued female beauty almost as much as ours.

One of my over-coat buttons got loose couple of weeks ago. It seems to reflect everything that is going wrong at my life at the moment. I seem to not be able to handle such a minor things as sewing my button, which I by the way can do perfectly well.

The problem is not that I could not, but that I don’t seem to be able address the problematic issue. In the morning I decide to do it to day and in the evening I notice that I’ve not done it again and that I am too tired to start. And yet again one more day has gone. And days float past me like dreamy swans.

This is strange, because lately my mood have clearly lifted of the long foggy season. I feel hopeful and loving my life (most of the time). I am not nervous nor distress like I used to be still at autumn. I feel generally happy, occasionally joyful. Yet it seems overly hard to tackle everyday issues.

Part of the problem is that we have most stressful time of the year at work. The other part of the problem is that I seem to be processing my past and especially past associating whit my relationships and men in heavy processing. You might think it would be depressing, but in fact I feel the process is liberating and unburdening. Yet it takes quite a much of my mental and emotional capacity.

Plus to everything else I got committed for these casual studies whit my friend, where there is a social pressure to do it properly as she want us to work together as a small group. And I’d love it, if only I had more time to concentrate in it. At the moment I feel guilty if I do it and I feel guilty if I don’t .

The problem of being single is there that I am not able to get help from someone at home (and I am too shame to ask some outsider). The benefit of being couple is that you could get help, when you’re having too much trouble. Yet this might be just seeing the greener grass on the other side of the fence thus idealising the steady relationships. Truth in my parents relationship was quite different in fact.

Somebody searched for Valentines day and Spinster. Due to it and because I am in the very different mood than I was year ago (solemly against this kind of forced celebrating that creates angst among single people) I intend to celebrate my Valentines alone whit rich chocolate and a good book – something sweetly and emotionally romantic.

I intend to dream about the guy I’d loved to have, but don’t and not feel a bit bitter of being alone. It is better not to think what your missing and rahter dream about what you could have. This is my philopsophy of the Valentines 2008, take it or leave it.

Which brought to my mind this crazy dream I’ve been having lately about a shop that would sell chocolate and romantics (books and films) and which would be perfect place to shop for this kind of events as well as rainy days. I’ve been developing the concept in my head for a while, but as I am very bad of butting things in action nothing is propably going to come out of it.

And I have to admit: today I am happy. I am not envious, nor bitter. Maybe that is some progress.

We went to see the movie (My Blueberry Nights) whit my friend, who did not like it that much, because she said it is not likely to get such a handsome guy anymore (Jude Law) and thought it cheesy. I had seen it more like a story of love and lost – and journey of getting over. (Of course the Hollywood stars are pretty - they are not real life).

I’ve been thinking about that moment and that comment and wondering does it show our different inclinations towards the relationships.

I am a romantic – have been so long I can remember and have not yet stopped being. I am a dreamer. Maybe my hopes and dreamers are unrealistic and maybe my friend is more realistic, but I wonder if she has became a bit bitter and cynical. But is it better to be realistic or hopeful?

The last year (2007) was intended to be a year of relationship processing. I wanted to use this blog as my method of personal therapeutic writing. I partly forgot it and wrote anyway. Maybe it is time to return to the key issue here. Is there something wrong in me, because I’ve not yet mated? Should I just be content of staying single?

The Male sweat is supposed to make women more relaxed and less anxious. The fact is male smell tames us. It makes women more relaxed. I’ve been wondering if these is the reason spinsters get little tense towards older age. I don’t think it is so much about sexual activity, because female sexual drive is not so high. Of course there are exceptions of this rule, but they’re just that exceptions.  It is more about other things we are missing.

My feelings toward my own spinsterhood are fluctuating along the time. Occasionally I am anxious, other times content and some occasions even hopeful. As all women I feel fat and ugly, especially around the certain time of the month. It makes me slightly blue.

There are also maternal instincts hitting over. Another friend of mine is expecting a baby. She is close friend of mine and find my self in waiting. I have noticed that I look knitting models in the magazines and think about knitting something to him or her. I find myself looking for the baby books and thinking about educating this one. I would love to become a godmother, but I believe that there are many other great candidates for godparents, so nothing is sure. But it doesn’t matter as the baby’s mother is like a sister to me.

The truth still is that while I am more and more settled in my role as a spinster that even my mother has now acknowledged and as I am wondering if I ever would be a good mother to children, my maternal instincts are still alive. I’d love to be baking a blueberry pie (or in here bilberry pie) for kids, whether my own or ‘borrowed’.