Oh where do I start?  Heading into winter has never been a favorite place for me, not since I lived in southern California, and all the world was warm.

But before I go any further, let me encourage you to visit my blog site, where the visuals and ambiance is a good deal more pleasant, and you can read this latest missile at your smiling leisure, not just as one more irritating email that you must get through.

Also, I then know that you have visited me, and are enjoying the stories I share.  Please understand….. I need this encouragement in my artistic endeavors, venturing through the entrails of my soul, and just for you!

OK…So…. The north offers tons of green, but all that’s dependant on lots of moisture, and the sun is often filtered by clouds and weather.  This year summer began mid July, and since third week in September it’s been going north-er.  As I count it, that’s Two Months of sun, two months for my sad little garden, two months to warm and store, before the howling winds hold me down for another half year.

This season brings deep longings for a warm fire and a cuddle buddy, and right now I have neither.  Oh, but don’t feel sorry for me, that is not my intention at all.  I have a cozy little hut, three warm blooded friends whose snores reassure me that I am not alone.  They don’t ask much, as long as they are fed, treated, stroked and given fond words of affection… not that different really, from a boyfriend.

Ok… speaking of boyfriends, I seem to remember  a bit ago that I was going to explore the Boys’ world of search and rejection.  Yes dear readers, I have done just that, and I return to let you know that it is just as bleak and confusing from their point of view as from this side of the pond.

The sad sighs most often heard are those of deception.  Seems women are fond of changing their age, and posting old pictures…. Before the fall, so to speak.

One fellow friend (I have a few now, and I do not write about them, as they are friends) tells me that when he met one for coffee, she had misled him by 15 years, and he was quite horrified to find that she was Surprised that he even noticed.

He, like me, has become sadly disillusioned by just a few months of explores, and is beginning to think it’s rather hopeless.  He talks of American women as opposed to the latin American ones, sadly stating that he does not feel important or valued here.  Seems American women, like that song from the seventies? eighties? Are aggressive, proud, critical, conniving, all those great adjectives that we hate to hear.

Am I ruined by my past?    …..Sad and angry from experiences that set me on a disillusioned  past path ?  Perhaps part of me is indeed.

Still, I enjoy manly men, and realize that we…. men and women….  are so different, much more so than I ever imagined, than I ever was taught.  The signs were there, but between Disney and fairy tales, I think we were set on a cruel and hopeless quest for a male that did not exist.  How did this fellow ever form himself in our culture anyway?

One of my fellow searchers keeps reminding me that They didn’t ask for their role anymore than we women did, which makes me think we’re all Victims (which is NOT my M.O., but makes me wonder who ?  where?  how?..)

Ok, so back to the feedback from my buddies in crime.  Another fellow said he’d gone on more than several ‘coffee dates’, and just never felt the spark.  They didn’t pick up on his references, didn’t laugh much.  He mentioned that when he cruised photos, he checked out the all important hair, as ‘old lady hair’ was a dead giveaway, and he stayed away from anything akin.

He also laughed in a sad sort of way, about how most of the profiles he perused were, as he put it, CookieCutter.  I think I mentioned those several responses to set questions like ‘do you like cooking, do you like live theatre, do you like to read, are you romantic, etc’, but he was saying that even their rap sheet felt like it was copied off some basic form they all used.

Love to cook, favorites are walks on the beach, sitting by the fire with a glass of wine, staying up talking til 2 in the morning, Sunday mornings in bed with the paper.

He did say that mine was refreshing, and had a bit of meat that he seldom found, and that was nice.   Too bad there wasn’t that magic that I was looking for, but I did find a good guy who is my friend.

Another began his first email to me with “Are you Nice?  Can you be Kind?”, and I realized here was someone who had really been hurt by deception, games, and thoughtless chatter that lead him to walk away quickly from some obvious flaws and indiscretions.

He actually told me that he’d had women talk a lot about their ex-es, whether they were cruel and abusive, or …. And this was sorta gross…. How they had the Best Sex Ever.  How much was a desire to just share, and how much was a challenge to an already deflated and discouraged man?  I asked him that, and he quickly reassured me that it was without a doubt,  manipulative.

But what would a woman hope to gain by this spilling of guts at such an early stage of relating?  I also wondered if this was her way of pushing him away, but I didn’t ask him this for obvious reasons.

So….. it’s a bloody battlefield out there.  Like I said up top at the beginning of all this.. It’s a War , and neither side quite knows what to do about it.