Ditzy Witchy Vixen

dispatch #120

Monday . . .

I’m the kind of person who likes to be told frequently how well I’m doing. Yes. I think that officially that sort of person is called a needy bitch. Is it a gendered thing? Hmm... what are men called who like accolades from morning until night? I know men like that – the autocrat of the American empire for instance. But is there a label? There must be one. Wow! I just went onto Urban Dictionary to see what they say and it is so sexist and blatantly so. I don’t remember UD being that way before. Has the world changed? It really made me feel sick. I’m not a needy bitch because I refuse that gendered slur. I’m a fully autonomous strong woman who likes feedback occasionally. I still haven’t found out what a needy man is called. Probably things that are emasculated – like whiny bitch, pussy etc... I suddenly feel like I’ve had enough of the whole game. I do not like it. Not one bit. I just looked into how the urban dictionary is created – it is crowd sourced information so yes it is possible I never ran into this kind of shit before. Just read about it some more and will never go on it again – horrifically racist and sexist.

Okay, back to the drawing board.

Now I can’t even remember why I started my dispatch with this statement.

Maybe I’m a ditz. Also a gendered slur.

Men are never ditzes. They are stupid maybe, hare-brained, foolish, but not ditzy.

Women are needy bitches. They are hysterical. They are ditzy. They are princesses. They are hags or crones or bags. They are harpies. They are shrill or giddy. They are witches and pussys and bimbos. They are gold-diggers and battle-axes and shrews. They are viragoes, vixens, and termagants. They are cat ladies and Karens and floozies. They are feminazis and bilge bunnies and queen bees. They are cougars and foxes and dogs and cows. They are hens and brood mares. They are sluts and trophy wives and tarts and whores. They are nasty women. Or maybe what the marmalade perp meant is ‘women are inherently nasty.’ Yes. That must be it.

I self-identify as a witchy giddy vixen. And both a battle-axe and a pussy.

Enough for today. Now this bitch is going to hang out some laundry and do a few more gendered things (although truly it usually the fella that does the laundry in this house but he is away and needs must).

Tuesday . . .

Today I’m neither needy nor bitchy. Just getting on with things. I have a friend coming this afternoon who hasn’t been here so I’ve been tidying up some and making a dinner for she is staying. I’m looking forward to an easy afternoon and evening of catching up. She is an artist and we always have lots to talk about.

I’m in this weird stasis with starting or working on a new novel. I don’t quite like the one I have 60 thousand words on – it isn’t a waste, I will get to it, but it isn’t firing me up the way I need to be right now. So I thought I’d start a new one but there wasn’t anything there. I looked around at other starts of novels I have on the computer to see if any of them would enthuse me properly, but no. To give you an idea of the way I work – I do not know where anything is going when I start – I’m just a near-blind traveller. I have two Nell Munro books in various stages but I’m quite sure I don’t want to work on them right now – I do not want to be hanging out with cops in Labrador. I have a finished mystery set in Peggy’s Cove The Rock Walker, but it is finished and I want new. I have another one 3/4s done with the same protagonist called Earth Bound. I will do something with it probably but not right now. I have the one I thought I’d continue on (working title is Catch and Release) but again – it isn’t filling me with joy right now. I have two young adult books – one finished – Bright Angel and one about a third of the way through called Raptured. Also a way old one called True that is finished but not up to what I want it to be. And my play Oh Well. So today I was poking around again and I saw this file called The Cradle of Lin’s Awakening. Bingo! I clicked on it – there was about 700 words – I didn’t recognize anything in it. I do not remember the title or one thing about when I started it. Zip. I love it. It is just what I want. There’s a woman named Lin in a strange predicament that she doesn’t know how she got into. Yay. I’ve got it up to a thousand words and I could keep going but I won’t. I’ll dive in tomorrow after we pick the fella up at the airport.

Here’s a photo of me from 3 years ago today. Can you see in my face that my friends are still alive? That Bella is by my side? That I only have one book out? That I don’t even know what strength training really involves?

Wednesday . . .

The fella is home and if I missed him this much after four days how is two months going to go? A friend picked him up for me as my chest is still quite sore and if I coughed or sneezed I’d drive into the ditch or worse. This is slow to heal.

Yesterday my pal and I discussed how it is meeting men in these times. It hasn’t been great for her but she more or less doesn’t care. Quite happy being on her own. Having known me for a long time she is aware of the various things I got up to to find a suitable mate. I thought that might make an interesting entry here so if you’re up to it here goes. If you’re not just step over this part.

In Pursuit of Love

When I was around 38 I left the partner I’d lived with for about seven years. My kids had grown and left home and I was quite prepared to stay and try and work out some of our difficulties, but he wasn’t and so off I set to the big city. This was the first time I’d ever lived on my own in my life. I left my parents for my first husband and had two kids with him. After that marriage ended I lived with my kids and friends and family in various arrangements and then met the man who became my second husband and finally this third fellow who I did not marry. So I was in a little apartment in the city that friends in Chester kept as a pied a terre and rented to me at a very reasonable rate. I had never had a bath that I didn’t have to preface with ‘I’m going to have a nice long bath – anyone have anything they need to do in the bathroom speak up.” I liked it. At the same time I wasn’t happy to not be in partnership. I appear to be designed for that configuration and while I am quite sure now, at the age of 74, that I don’t think I’d be bothered to find another partner should my dear fella leave, at 38 my desire for a full on mate was very strong. Here are the things I tried between 38 and 50 when I met Ron and got off the carousel.

1. I asked friends to set me up. How did that work? Not at all. Only one person complied (thank you Susan W.) and that guy was far more interested in the teenage daughter of a mutual friend who came to the set-up dinner than he was in me. Bullet averted. My other friends made it clear that I was far too difficult to shop for and I was on my own.

2. Church. In this case the Buddhist one I went to. I did have a few dates and one guy that I went out with for half a year or so, but he wanted a family and that shop was closed for me.

3. Personal ads in the Globe & Mail newspaper. I read them weekly and laughed at how many guys liked to go for long walks on the beach, hooting to my friends that I never saw one man by himself on any beach or trail I’d been on. So I didn’t answer them but I put one in and saw one guy from it. He was in the armed forces and lived in New Brunswick so I think we were somewhat doomed – not enough interest to overcome the distance. As well I think he was after something else.

4. A group ad in the Globe & Mail. A group of us (five women and one man) put an ad in the G&M saying we were looking for dates. We called ourselves the Intrepids. We had a mail box they could send the responses to and we got about 80 replies. We saved them up and all went to the one man’s office and ordered a big Chinese meal (it was above The Great Wall of China restaurant) and read every response out loud. None of us women went on so much as one date. Most of us were put off (horrified?) by the men who claimed they were ‘clean’. Ugh. I almost had a date with a guy from the valley who was into antiques but we argued about the right place to meet so that went nowhere. Incidentally the one man in our cadre had several long liaisons with at least three of the women responders. Oh well. He was notably less picky than we were.

5. The SMINGLE – two friends of mine and myself (two women and one man) decided to hold a party – the idea for it was taken from The Slaves of New York, the idea being that each of us would invite three or four single people we knew and they would each invite a single person they knew but weren’t interested in for themselves. We called it a Smingle (singles mingle) and the Daily News did a story on us. I think a couple of people had a few dates from it but I did not. Fun though.

6. I joined a dating service that was a newsletter featuring different people and you mailed letters to them through the service. It was supposed to be for scientists but I decided to try it as I was a health professional so thought that worked. I started up a correspondence with a lovely guy who was an arachnologist who worked for the Smithsonian in Washington. I was willing to overcome the distance thing but he wasn’t. No blame there.

7. A sort of friend, sort of frenemy tells me that I should make a long list of the attributes I want in a man. I do. MANifesting.

8. Finally I enter the world of internet dating. Please understand it wasn’t a thing when I started this search for true love. My first venture was on some service I don’t remember. I did not have the ability to upload a photograph but others did I guess. Most of the possibilities I connected with were only interested in flirting online it seemed. Frankly I think a whole load of them were married. But that is just my paranoia speaking I’m sure. No I’m not. In that first foray I did manage to meet a guy that I sort of dated for a little while. I knew early on that we weren’t a good match but I persisted nonetheless. We went to the Magdalene Islands the weekend after 9/11. He wasn’t a bad guy but we were obviously after different experiences. So then I gave up. All along many of my friends would tell me that I should give up. Supposedly my needy (there’s that word again) self was too apparent. But to be clear I was giving up on the internet side of it. For awhile.

9. I married myself. Cha cha changes – turn and meet the stranger. Yes. I was going to Jamaica with a couple of friends to run a workshop and decided to think of partnership in a different way. Rob Brezney’s Free Will Astrology column ran in The Coast and he’d boosted the idea of group marriages or shaking up the convention somehow and I transposed that to thinking why not marry myself. That would be a radical move. So after the workshop was over I enlisted my friends to witness my wedding to myself. I did it at the beautiful little cove in Port Antonio and flung a crystal heart into the brink while singing a Little Feet song Willin’ . It was a beautiful celebration of fully embracing my single state. I even have a wedding photo.

10. At a Transactional Analysis Conference I attended a workshop on neuro-linguistic programming. I volunteered to take part as a client. In this particular method I had to come up with a story and then use other participants to take on different characters. I also had to set up the story line so that we moved through the story from left to right. I became Crow Woman and I was looking for Otter Man. The point being that when I met a good fit for me I’d recognize him. Sounds crazy but wait a minute.

11. A friend who considers himself a shaman tells me to use the internet dating site called LavaLife. I tell him I’m done with that stuff. He uses his woo woo voice and I agree reluctantly to give it a whirl. I load up my profile (again no photo – too hard for me to figure out) and then I see various people. If I want to connect with any it will cost me 10 American bucks. My sister is visiting and she spots this guy she thinks might be good. He has no photo up either. He lives by the ocean and loves sailing and canoeing. He has two kids half the time (7 and 9). He is a carpenter. I spend my hard-earned cash and we start sending emails or whatever they were back then in the dark ages. Then we phone each other on the telephone. After a few weeks of this we decide to meet as he says ‘we haven’t met until we see each other’. I like that. We agree to go for a walk at the Dingle Tower. I take my dog Hoagy. We meet and it is okay. He seems nice but I’m pretty sure not my cup of tea. He seems equally unimpressed but we decide to keep on to see how it goes. On our next date we go out for a long canoe ride and picnic. Still no fireworks. At home later I decide to do a little self-therapy. “How has it worked out for you in the past with men you felt fireworks with?” says therapist Jan. “Uh, not so great.” Done. About six weeks later we are a couple. One night I look at him and realize that the shape of his head is the same as an otter. He lives by the sea. He is in and out of the water. He is Otter Man! I think I say this out loud.

Two things to note: The list I made up was very accurate to the guy I got.

If we hadn’t met online and knew for a fact that each of us was looking for a long term relationship we probably wouldn’t have pressed on past our mutual low key feeling.

Otter Man aka the fella and I have been together 24 years next month. No fireworks but plenty of heat and lots of honey.

Thursday . . .

It is a beautiful warm day and everything seems to be popping blossom-wise. Our plum tree, of which I’ve talked about a few times here, is starting to blossom. Gadzooks it is so wonderful. The muscle or muscles I pulled on my chest might be slightly better but not a whole lot. I’m trying to be patient but my eldest got me 15 lb. weights for Mother’s Day (he knows my heart) and it is going to take me weeks to work up to them now. Tonight the fella and I are going to hear a choir concert that our friend Sherri is in. They are going to sing King of the Road, my father’s signature song. I’m so looking forward to it.

When you read this it will be two weeks to my book launch. Huzzah!

And then the fella will be leaving for two months leaving me bereft in the garden. I will survive.

oh and the hummingbirds are back.