I can't look... but I must... but I can't

Leaha reminded me that tomorrow is Thursday. What's wrong with Thursday? It's the day the Georgia Straight comes out - with it, my little ditty about BMMWH (Boy My Mother Would Hate) and now I'm thinking that for starters I find a new place to sit in church, like not on the left side, and two pray no one has paid any attention to me, or three, that good Church going folks don't read the I Saw You section- oh who am I kidding everyone who reads the Straight does and even worse this is the kind of Church where folks read the Straight - damn it that's why I'm there. So on that note - I think I should go brunette - haven't been one since I was 14, a decade plus as a red head, I can change for a month and pray like most men he's got serious memory issues when it comes to aesthetics... or just suck it up, and in the process remind myself that this is why girls shouldn't do stuff like this - we're suppose to wait and make the guy feel like his soy eggnog just went all weird in his tummy. And could someone remind me why I'm not listening to myself - um hello no dating until January 09 - why on Earth am I even putting myself out there... someone want to answer that? Oh wait I think Kelly answers that - all this silly - like, lust, love business melts your brain - those little butterflies have laid eggs in my cerebral cortex or something like that.

Am I Crazy?

Likely due to too much Damien Rice, another late night and my new toothpaste - I don't want to be single. And I don't know aside from reverting to my old bitter self - how I'm going to willingly be single for the next year plus - I know time moves on and if your not looking it makes it easier - but still. And I know Leaha is going toothpaste? I bought this new toothpaste - it's green tea and mint and gosh darn it - it makes me want to rush out and kiss the first man I can tackle or more accurately and ladylike I should say seduce.... so Leaha it's all yours, I'm going to London Drugs tomorrow and getting my Rembrandt stuff again - though apparently that stuff is suppose to have the same effect if you've seen their ads. I can't deal with the stress of the toothpaste... jeez, the toothpaste is even getting in the way of me being happily single. You know you're crazy when... though to be honest Damien is not helping one bit - love him though... Night, morning or whathaveyou

Warning - The Following Blog Maybe the Result of the Full Moon

Or my brain melting under the new stress of the semester. I haven't quite figured it out.

Regardless my loving brother came to my TVless rescue last week when he recommend a website to watch any TV show I wanted. Of course I didn't go straight for the Bones and Grey's shows I missed last year, I went for the tried and true - watched already Buffy - yes another wonderful tidbit, I was a closet Buffy fan - watched it mostly for Spike but whatever that's probably too much information. I digress, I've seen the majority of the last season, and especially the last few episodes, so when I loaded the 2nd to last (?) episode last night, I knew what I was getting - mushiness. Yes, for whatever reason my estrogen took the lead and I ended up watching an entire 40minute mush-a-thon between the love/hate twosome Buffy and Spike. Why? Why is it that women torture ourselves with movies like the Lakehouse - a completely incomprehensible plot when you think about it - but whatever? I would love to be able to rationalize it as the full moon messing with my estrogen, or too much in the way of soy or something, but I think there are greater issues - like I am aware that despite all my fears - and there are a large number when it comes to dating/relationships I'm tired of being single and yet I am not prepared to settle - I told Leaha today - heartbreak is a guarantee but why would you knowingly enter a relationship where that will be the outcome by ignoring your non-negotiable - we all have them, we may not have a list but we have non-negotiable - be them non-smoker, childless, non-divorced etc - not saying that those are mine - I've got mine. But this isn't what I'm getting at - and I am trying to get at something. Why are women programed for all the lusty romantic stuff when our male counterparts aren't and even worse why do we seek it out when we know that it just makes us feel awful in the end?

Enough of the questions, I promised Leaha this wouldn't just become questions... but these questions have been drawn to the surface as I try to truly process this whole online business. Fundamentally it goes against the feminist in me - I know that when I stop and think about it - I am just as offended at the idea that I could be looking at someone for the purposes of attraction as someone would be me. I am aware that some of you know why that I feel this way due to experiences in my life - I realize it's not necessarily normal. In that many women don't feel that being looked at is offensive or to be thought of in any romantic/lustful context should be considered horrible. I however do, again to reiterate I don't look at you like that, so don't look at me like that. However, isn't this whole online thing breaking that mantra? Is it? I've come to this point time and again, and I stand here again and Joel you're probably thankful you don't have to deal with me - but it's the same thing - I can't see it being worth the jump. There is this perverse part of my brain that says pull the plug on all of it, buy Simone deBeauvoir's book, and a download some Sex in the City episodes and you'll pull through this - single on the other end and it doesn't matter because singledom isn't a determination of your worth. And then I think about the image burned into my recent memory of Spike just holding Buffy watching her sleep and all I can think is damn it! I want that. I need community in that sense, honest intimacy with someone else. Bah, it's a mess and much as I would like to blame the male gaze or my own stupid cinematic choices I can't. So what now? Is it going to take someone pulling me over the cliff I can't seem to jump off of? Or am I just going to stand here forever detrimentally/damagingly dreaming of what it could be like?

Hodge-podge

Moving has started the inner monologue or whatever you want to call this increased thought process. Looking at pictures, deciding if the wallpaper from the orphanage bathroom is really something I want to keep. I now have two large boxes of paper recycling, cardboard etc and three large boxes of stuff to give away - so if you are interested in all my MCAT stuff from Kaplan you can have it - personally I'm tempted to burn it. I also have box of textbooks I haven't been able to sell - if you wondering about the title on the blue one it's Theoretical Inorganic Chemistry very useful for transitional metals theory, although it's old. All this remembering has made me feel lonely - I was talking to Dr. Sara about this, and while Cheryl grumbles when I bemoan singledom, it isn't the fact that I'm single that's an issue there are just nights or even days when you feel like your life has this void. Fundamentally we are interactive, and need interaction despite what we would like to hold on to - and this whole moving transition is the removal of an interaction knowing that there maybe very little to fill it. The flip side being there is very little to distract from the gaps, holes in this developing self.

I started this blog with the hopes that I would be able to write my way through a growth period - knowing full well that I need to come to grips with being 25 and nowhere close to what I thought I would, like moving. I was sure I would be married before it would happen again, I guess I'm learning nothing is sure - there are no guarantees...

On to the other side of the stuff going on in my brain - I was reading the Business section of today's newspaper, the main article was talking about Elizabeth Arden's/Britney Spear's fragrance's appropriation of a BC firm's marketing slogan. This firm sells t-shirts and products from which 1 dollar goes to the charity of your choice. Okay, this smells of the GAP's AIDS fundraiser where being "charitable" became a fashion statement while increasing GAP profits. Explain how a product price doubles - like their jeans but the donation price is a pittance? It frustrates me, as many things do, when there are organizations that donate the majority of their funds i.e. http://www.bloodwatermission.com/ granted they are a Christian organization, so if you have a problem with it - then go with Oxfam or another related organization. There are hundreds of reputable organizations working outside of the consumerist culture - so while you do buy your free-trade organic coffee or what have you from Starbucks consider other firms, local and more grassroots - like Ethical Bean from Vancouver- their Family Blend donates to Adoption Services of BC, not to mention they are carbon neutral... speaking of coffee I need another cup of their Folk Festival blend - smells like chocolate.

As well this discussion of Dobson et. al - leadership is a very defined role within Scripture, and yes leadership is of importance. But the key note is that it is to be Godly leadership - and a concern with mega churches, capitalism and a complete ignorance of true need in N. America right now is not that. Concerns should be with the health - physical first, spiritual second and economic dead last of the population - in that there is an obesity epidemic - we over eat to fill the voids - and yet we do nothing to address those issue - poor living conditions, inadequate access to education and health care. The success of the white middle America has come on the backs of everyone else - be them the poor, the Migrant workers or the African American population. We've missed that the first shall be last, and the last first in our grapple for the biggest portion of the pie. The other aspect to leadership is a population that must be able to discern false prophets - I don't know if I am prepared to go as far as saying Dobson is, but he's sure pushing the envelope. 1 Peter 2: 3 (NIV) "In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up." In addition the focus on wealth/capitalism is a clear throughout the Scriptures. I am not without fault - but the first step here is acknowledging and then making the small but meaningful steps towards change. The first meaningful step is for our population to grab a hold of their faith - and start thinking and learning for themselves.

This is all your fault Joel...

Note: Sarcasm in use... as it normally is, and it has been edited to clarify.

It started when you managed to prove to me that all men aren't scum bags out to get what they can however they can get it. And it would have all been wonderful, except for your thing for red heads, (and yes, there were other reasons etc) and then we parted ways. I was left without my movie and chatting buddy, and you replaced me with your new online dating girlfriend - who I'm sure is lovely, seriously. So what now, after months of you being tired of my bemoaning singlehood, men in my life and all that I have to concede I have a bigger issue on my hands. And Joel it is all your fault. If you had never planted the seed of online anything in my head I would not be dealing with a crossroads, a very issue of hmm, what is this? Or more accurately how do I use this site, properly when everyone is strewn across N. America? In the end is it just a way to meet a friend?

I've met X, why not just keep him out of this right, give him privacy before he gets hauled across the type of this site later on - like all the other men in my life, honestly I'm not sure if he'd be offended or not. Anyways, a sustainable/organic farmer boy, who appreciates classic science fiction, amongst other things we've managed to discuss in essay long emails. But I sensed a hesitation in the last one, and rightfully so.

So in general with this whole online business, while I'm an all or nothing girl when it comes to honesty and all that - it can be all to easy to pour it all out in type and not consider that those words may never leave your lips, at least not so edited and constructed. I find myself wondering, do the spaces in between mater - both land and personal? It's not like I'm trying to define the conversation, nor am I using this as a venue to start that conversation - let me be clear about that. It's just that an friendly conversation, but where are the borders? Does it ever have to, have borders if it's a friendship? If it isn't just that when or where does that conversation take place. It struck me when Cheryl commented that who knows how many people are talking like this to other people at the same time? And then I remember back to you Joel, and our months of talking, your patience to warm me up to the idea I had been trying to avoid. You proved people can't talk like this for a long period of time without some kind of emotional investment. Even worse is to invest without any idea of what would happen, then the two worlds literally collide, and implode.

For the record, yes it was mutual - but yes, we were in the long run not compatible and from your current situation I we can both agree you're better off, right?

A single perspective on weddings....

While weddings are not marriages, all I've seen and been through in the last few weeks has made me wonder if we've missed the point, or if my single view is just that - the view of a single individual, as well as my view being held by just me, and no other member of this population would agree with me. Being a maid of honor, has become nothing like I thought it would be for various reasons, but those aside. I've found the greatest issue is I've been continually confronted with the statements "when I do mine" and such like and yet as we've seen and know, and I know if I'm honest those statements are worthless. Not so much in that I will change my mind, more so that there will be no "big day." Dealing with all these plans and its insanity has been the self really tough love I needed to banish the one last remaining thread that had been the snag in my life. My life has been directed along a path that does not provide for or in many respect require/need a partner. Sure marriage is a wonderful thing, life partnership and yadda yadda. But marriage is not an indicator of your value to the world in general, your value to your friends, you own determination of self worth, it does not make life better or worse, easier or harder, it does not make getting out of bed all the more grand. Life without a vintage piece of metal and gem should not belittle who I am or where I am going. Pop culture may have told me so, but it also has shown me via endless hours on myspace and blogs that what I'm looking for doesn't exist and as So You Think You Can Dance has proved, while partnering may be difficult - you get to the end and save yourself - determine your direction always independent of a partner - it's you and you alone. And is that not life? Sure some may say that's stubborn or selfish but in the end I think would be more stubborn/selfish to have a wedding knowing you can't have a marriage.