Pointers for Men on Online Dating

Dear Men,

Now, everyone can't date me, that's obvious. Although I am a whole lotta woman, I only have so much to go around. And while I am still on the hunt for a worthy opponent, I have some tips for the rest of you....

1) Photos

Okay, this is an easy one. Good facial front photos, preferably smiling, laughing, or showing me how you will really look. Grim faces need not apply. Neither do hats, single eyes, backs of heads or group shots of guys that are all cuter than you. I will only want to date you to meet your much hotter friends. If you do not know if your friends are hotter than you, ask your ex-girlfriend. She will tell you.

Please do not have the visable tear marks on a photo with an old girlfriend, use photoshop or some other graphics package to erase her away. Tear marks are tacky.

1a) Photos with children or pets

A candid photo of you and your niece, nephew, neighbor, etc is fine. A staged photo of you and your grown child is not okay. Children should always be well placed, smiling or laughing, and you should be too. A family portrait with your ex-wife's face scratched out is not acceptable.

A candid photo of you and your animal is fine. Dogs are allowed to be napping or panting with their mouth open (it should look like they are smiling). Iguanas, Lizards, pot bellied pigs and other such "exotic" animals are allowed to be on your chest, arms or back-- or on the ground near you, displaying human like qualities or have funny hats, clothing or moustaches on them.

Cats are allowed to be in the picture, but cannot be the entire picture.
Cats are not allowed to be dressed up for any reason.
If fact, unless there is no other option, remove all cat pictures.

Staged pictures of you and your animals, i.e. at Sears Family Portraits, is wrong wrong wrong unless it is for irony. However to get the full effect of the irony, please have tatoos, piercings, buddy holly glasses or a shaved head, and also understand what irony is. Otherwise, it is just a family portrait of you and your sad life for the world to see.

Never, I repeat, never have any photos where you are wearing make-up. This means you no clowns, no mimes, no goth and no drag. This means no photos of costume parties. I really don't care how hot you looked in your ex-girlfriends clothes. If I wanted to date a hot looking chick, I would. I don't care that your goth makeup expresses how you feel on the inside. Grow up, cut your hair, get a job with health insurance and slap on a happy face like the rest of us.

2) "About Me" format

Please make sure your "about me" is spell checked. The easiest way to do this is write it in Word and hit the checkmark labelled ABC. That's spell check.

Please do not do ALL CAPS. ALL CAPS TELLS ME THAT YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE A COMPUTER OR THAT YOU ARE REALLY REALLY EXCITED ABOUT SOMETHING AND WANT TO YELL IT AT ME. I don't do yelling. Ever. Not in crowded bars, not at sporting events, never.

Please use sentence case, and NoT ThOsE hIp HoP LetTerS. That is just dumb. also you are not ee cummings. Please, I cannot stress it enough, use sentence case and correct punctuation.

2a) "About Me" content

Okay men. Tell me what you are all about. I mean really tell me who you will be when you answer the phone, take me for a cup of coffee or out to dinner. Because if you say that you like doing the Times crossword puzzle, I expect that you know how to read and spell. If you say you like riding your motorcycle on weekends, I expect you to have a license and a helmet. If you say you like watching sports, I expect football, baseball, basketball, soccer, not ice skating or curling. If you say you like tinkering around the house, I expect you know how to fix shit.

I also expect you to laugh at jokes, answer the phone when it rings, turn off your phone during dinner and pay attention to traffic signals. These are just human qualities.

If you are a specific type of stereotype-- like a Jersey boy, a biker, a native New Yorker, from da Bronx, from another country, etc-- let me know. Before I get you on the phone and your accent makes you sound like an asshole.

Everyone likes to cuddle. Everyone likes to spend quiet nights at home with their loved ones. Tell me who the heck you are. Not who you want to be. Because I will end up liking who you want to be, and be disappointed with who you are. You are not auditioning for a part. I am not a casting director. I do have a casting couch, but that is a whole other story.

3) Answer all the questions

Men, answer all the questions. All of them. Not some of them. And answer the question asked. If the profile asks, "What is something else you would like me to know?" and you respond "No"-- well that implies you are either foreign and didn't get the syntax, or you are lazy and can't be bothered. The first one, that's forgivable. The second one, not so much.

Now men, go out into that big brave world and find your queen. Or your princess. Or whatever it is that you are looking for, because I can tell you from experience, there's a shoe for every foot. Even the ex-cop, cross-dressing trekkie found someone.

Best Regards,

Big Girl, Big City.

Amazing

In love with love.

After session with TK, I took care of myself; went to the pub down the road and had a cider, pulled out my journal and wrote. Profound experience for me. This is what came up.

Gratitude, joy and love. I love you over and over again. And I don't have to turn it into anything, I don't have to make it something it is not, I don't have to obsess about it, turn it into a relationship, wonder why or what he is thinking, I can just love. Right now, just love and let love in. Be loved. Really be loved-- not for who I think I have to be, but for who I am. Who I can be, who I am under it all, who I am over it all.

I don't think I have felt this much joy in quite some time. I feel beautiful and glorious and so happy. Just from expressing love.

I have always been one to take the love I feel and dissect it into something else, what does it mean, what box can I put it into. And really, it's just love. It doesn't morph into a relationship nor into an obsession, it doesn't take the shape of a boyfriend or a child, it doesn't move into another realm. It is like a giant rainbow cloud of love that is hovering right above me and in me.

I will hang onto this feeling. I will hang on until it needs to leave me, and I can make room for something else.

I love my life right now. Today I am clear and confident. The universe is showing me abundance.

Peace and love.

Not (for) the Weak

"In a 1969 survey of physicians, obese patients were described as "weak-willed," "ugly," "awkward," and "self-indulgent." In a more recent physician survey, one of three doctors said they respond negatively to obesity, behind three other diagnostic/social categories: drug addiction, alcoholism, and mental illness. A comparable study found that two-thirds of doctors believe obese patients lack self-control, and 39 percent feel they are lazy. Two studies of nurses showed similar results. "

Reading these words tears well up in my eyes. In 1969 my mom was 21. She was getting married and was excited to start her life. She had spent the last four years on diet pills that had her lose weight and kept her weight low. She never said she was skinny, but my mom on her wedding day was about a size 6 or 8. She would be on these diet pills throughout my childhood.

My mom had moments of thin during my childhood. I don't remember those too well, those were the worst moments for me. She and dad started going to the gym when I was about 8 or 9. I put on a significant amount of weight during this time. Stealing food from the cupboard, eating non-food (like butter and raw sugar and cake mix), hiding food in my closet, under my bed. My mom made Keith a different lunch that mine on occasion. Mom didn't let me have Chocodiles, Keith always had them in his lunch. He would come into my room and let me have one. I usually had to pay him or he would use it against me later on.

I remember sitting in the back of the Mustang waiting for mom to get out of the diet doctor's office. To get a perscription, her diet pills perscription. Years later I tried to end it all with these pills, but all that happened was that my arms went numb. Too stupid to even do that right. I waited all night to see if that was it, if this could be it. It wasn't.

There were so many things left unsaid.

The candy under the front seat of her car that Keith and I would eat. In later years, I would do the same thing, eating meals before I would go home to eat a meal, whatever I was feeling to be pushed down. Hide the evidence, throw trash on the side of the road. Get rid of it. I now can ask myself what the issue is, and not eat over it. I may not get a resolve, but I am present to the behavior.

The sound of the bottles in the trash in the morning. Wine jugs. Green Gallo wine jugs, one a night. I can't stand the smell of it in the trash now-- if I happen to drink wine, I will immediately take the bottle out of the house when I am done.

The afternoon naps that mom took-- that were really a time for her to eat quietly in her room. I interrupted her feast one afternoon. I thought it was like tea time. It was only for her. Not for me. I think I keep waiting to be invited in. To share that secret with her. To be loved. I would stand outside her door and listen to things being unwrapped. Chips, cookies, crackers, soda bottles being opened. I would quietly try the door, but it was locked. Locked out, not good enough. Not invited to the party. Lingering at her door, hoping that she would find me there and in her sweet sweet voice say "Kimmie, do you want to take a nap on mommy's bed?" Yes yes yes.

In 1969, she was ready to start her life. Someone told her somehere that she was lazy and ugly, and she has been living with that for years. It brings tears to my eyes. She told me that I was lazy and unmotivated. I wonder if she would have said that if I was skinny. My mother is far from lazy, I am far from lazy. Everything she learned I learned. She learned how to sneak food, I learned how to sneak food. She learned to keep it all under control I learned how to keep it under control-- using charm and grace and charm and grace and charm and grace and maybe just maybe no one will ask, no one will know, no one will care that I hate myself.

That I hate myself, I hate my body, I feel like I am not worthy of living and it hurts. Because of my weight. Because of this weight. And it's scary when I come right down to it. Because I would never say that to another human being, that they are not worthy to live because of their weight. I am so much more than that and for me, that's all that's there.

I keep looking for something that will answer it all. But there is nothing. I learned how to make everything easy for everyone else.

That crap is over with. Me first, me fucking first.

I mourn for the little girl not invited to the tea party. I mourn for the mother that can't control what she is doing. I mourn for the teenager that was just sad, so so sad, underneath a big smile and a song. I mourn for myself at 8, stealing food. Getting caught. Crying crocodile tears. Why didn't anyone sit down with that little girl and say "I love you, and anything you want you can have. What is it that you really want?", rather than the yelling and the locks and the "go to your room".

Mom,
I never want to go to my room again. Never fucking again. I am not playing this unspoken game anymore. I am not doing anything different than what I have learned from you. I am now a grown up, and I can take responsibility for my own stuff. I'm not sure the 8 year old wants to forgive you, the 8 year old just wants her mom to love her. Unconditionally. And not try to make her into something she's not. The 8 year old wants to get mad, and get even. That 8 year old want to be heard. She wants someone to pay attention to her. She wants you to prove to her that you are trustworthy, and that you will love her no matter what.
The 8 year old wants you to say you are sorry and mean it. Really mean it. And not do it again. Ever. You will love her. You will love that fat, food stealing 8 year old because she learned from you. And I will love her because she is me.

I am scared that I will never be able to be normal. I am afraid that I have lost ever chance there is for me to thin. Even with surgery I will have skin that looks deflated.

I am so scared that I will always feel this way, and no amount of work will change anything. I am afraid I will never stop crying over this.

I'm not weak. I've made myself so fucking powerful that I am a walking mountain. I give that up to be vulnerable.

This hurts. Like being filleted. I think I am crazy and over emotional. I didn't leave my house this weekend. But I don't care. I did the work on me. Meditated, yoga'ed and worked out. I ate well balanced meals. I listened to myself and wrote a lot in my journals. And thought. Thought alot. I have so much to say. I don't know if anyone wants to listen, but I must be heard.

Pink Nailpolish

This isn't about pink nailpolish. Its just what was on the end of my fingers when I was typing it.....

Talked to Krismas tonight. She is so smart, so lovely, so kind. I am proud of being a non-smoker too.

We talked about the lessons to be learned from having great men in our lives, even if it is not a relationship that is one of serious relationship. That doesn't make sense. Okay, having a relationship with a man you trust that has no sex invloved. There, that's better.

What are the lessons to learn-- trust. Trust is a huge one for me. Trust trust trust. Being with someone, open enough to trust him. I have to find out all the information on him-- but there is nothing to find out. He is who he tells me he is. There is nothing. Just love.

I gave myself a spiritual hug today. Work with TK. Trust trust trust. I hate it. I love it. I want to turn myself inside out with fear and anxiety, and take a long walk in the woods with TK to have him teach me whatever he knows. He's meant to be some kind of breakthrough for me-- and it sucks because I would feel better being vulnerable with a woman. Not a guy-- and a cute guy at that. I can't even look him in the eye sometimes. The good news is that when I can, I dont feel like punching him. Which is a significant improvement.

So what to do. Let him continue dis-arming me, peeling layer and layer back from what I have created myself to be. To become me. Or that me inside. And take walks in the woods. Or at least, take walks in the woods metaphorically. Discover, wander and uncover. Love myself along the way, treat myself lovingly.

I can't expect someone else to carry me and him at the same time. I'll support my weight, and support him too when necessary, but neither of us will carry our collective load all the time.

When I choose to open up to a relationship, omigod, watch out. It will be a beautiful nightmare, saturated in love and promise and trust. Hopefully some great sex too. But one step at a time, one step at a time.