Last night I gave the personals on Craigslist another try. This morning I had the following in my email inbox.

hi there just wanted to say i am thinknig you are prob. a pretty cool woman...just a bit of advice.... do u really think any guy would end up being a person who either read all that or even cares....its more like the 50 reasons why yo will never get married....sorry hun just thought u would appreciate it ... i can spell and who knows maybe you would like being up north in front of a fire after a great dinner and some wine ..then again maybe thats reason 34 why u wanna be alone who knows... ciao james

Pretty vicious little backhanded compliment post. It's strange that someone would take the time to post something like that to a complete stranger. It could be a very upsetting post. (In my case it's a bit stupid cause I said in my ad that I was divorced, therefor, "never" getting married doesn't apply to me).

I had also written that I was discouraged with dating. Maybe that made me a bigger, easier target for a guy like this, someone who just wants to hurt people. These kind of people look for the easy targets.

Anyway, if that is the caliber of man out there I'm much happier and better off staying single.

PS- This is my original post to Craigslist. I don't think I was asking all that much, far from 50 things.

Coffee Date in the Beaches

Brunette, blue eyed, 5'4", plus sized woman. To keep it short and simple and upfront. I do not want to meet men who are married or a lot younger than I am. I would like to find a guy to meet for coffee, have a conversation with and make plans for a second get together if we have fun. Please be someone who can have a conversation, have something to talk about, have things you are interested in.

I'm not hard to please. I'd like a guy taller than I am. I work as a writer so really sloppy spelling, punctuation and grammar bug me. General things like good grooming are expected. Although I'm not very dressy myself I love a man in a suit, there's just something about that crisp, clean cut look. Suits are not required but I won't run screaming if you show up in one. Be warned I am not a card carrying member of the lipstick of the month club, I just like being me, naked face and all.

I like urban exploration (looking around abandoned buildings and farm houses, etc.), writing, reading (science fiction, horror and mysteries if they are interesting and not gruesome, and non-fiction). I'm teaching myself web design and cartooning, slowly. I have been known to make my own ASCII art. Someone interested in Paganism would be nice but not essential. (I don't worship the devil or talk to ghosts, it's a nature religion). I enjoy sewing, crochet and quilting, not very often but I do like them. I like art, culture and history too.

This is probably too long now. I've been feeling discouraged about meeting someone but I am an optimistic type of person. I smile often and easily. It would be great to meet a man who has things in common with me but I'm not looking for a male clone of myself. I really enjoy conversation and hearing about new ideas and opinions.

I do have a photo but I'm not adding it here. Too many people look at this as a catalogue and forget the people posting here are real.

I took my post down from the personals. I don't need to set myself up for people who want to be nasty. Let them find a dog to kick, an old lady to push into traffic or whatever it is people like that do when they are away from the easy pickings on Craigslist.

This came from Skye (an online friend) who was tagged with this kind of touchy feely thing.

Tell me 1 piece of information about yourself that I really should never know.

I'm not wearing any underwear right now.

Tell me 2 colors that you would never ever ever wear.

Puke green and puke yellow. I wear every colour so this was a silly question.

Tell me 3 things that you love to eat.

Cheesecake, ice cream and barely cooked steak.

Tell me 4 things that you would never ever serve to a guest at your dinner table.

Crawling caterpillars, cow eyes, plastic furniture or human beings (not living ones anyway).

Tell me 5 things that you keep forgetting to buy from the supermarket.

Nothing I can think of, I usually make a list ahead of time.

Tell me 6 things about the autumn that you love.

• It's cool after summer which is too hot.
• I like the way Autumn is spelled, so many people forget how to spell words with silent letters.
• Leaves, all the colours: green, red, burgundy, yellow, gold, orange and so on.
• Kids go back to school and we have the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition) not to mention all the Fall Fairs and Festivals in towns all over Ontario.
• Someone said October is a lucky/ good month for me. I'm not sure why.
• My nephew and my sister both have birthdays in the Fall and it's the time for Halloween!

Tell me 7 things that you value about your family.

This is way too complicated and mushy/ fluffy.

Tell me 8 things that you like to watch on TV.

• Some of the commercials are good. I like watching a guy I knew from school appear on various commercials, he's in one for Rogers now.
• Dust and dust bunnies. I just don't clean around there as often as I should. But they are kind of interesting and don't you almost hate to destroy their little dusty empires?
• I used to watch the Gilmore Girls. I haven't seen it for years now.
• Sometimes I watch Medium or Ghost Whisperer but they are about ghosts and that's a bit touchy with me. I don't enjoy being scared and I do believe in ghosts.
• I watch YTV (the TV station) when my nephew is visiting. Some of those shows are actually good. I don't look for them when he's not here though.
• I watch Canadian Idol when it comes on.
• I have begun watching Deal or No Deal.
• I like watching a lot of science fiction but when you live with someone who really doesn't like it you tend to miss a lot more than you see.

Tell me 9 things that you loved about school.

I barely remember school. I liked walking to and from school, kids miss that these days. I liked most of the classes: history, literature, geography, English. I came to enjoy exams and tests once I realized they were as much fun as those personality tests I am still addicted to online. That's about it. I had some friends but most of the time I was a loner. I dropped out of high school a few times.

Tell me 10 of the little things that you love about life.

• It's always there. No matter what the last hour was like or how busy yesterday was, the next day always comes - as long as you wake up for it.
• There are endless things to learn and explore. It's like living in an encyclopedia.
• It comes in a great range of colours.
• Rain, rocks, nature in general. Storms and weather in general.
• Plants, nothing can be too terrible if you can go outside or look out a window or your kitchen table even and see a plant growing. I'm a closet tree hugger.
• Being able to use my body. Just having fingers, legs, eyes... it's really amazing and we should not forget or take any of it for granted.
• A smile. One smile has a huge amount of power. Not everyone really has this figured out. Some go around in a grump all the time, I feel sorry for them.
• Humour, any kind of humour that is really funny and clever but not the kind that hurts or cuts up other people.
• People, sometimes I think I'd like to have the world to myself but in reality the world would be far different and missing so many things if there weren't other people around. It's not the famous people who count its the everyday people who deliver your newspaper, cook your eggs the way you like and drive the bus who really make the world go around.
• Just being here at all. It's such a miracle that each of us were ever born. Think about all the combinations of people who built up to your creation. If anyone had done something differently you wouldn't have been born. Some other warm body would be living your life, or many no one at all. Give thanks to your ancestors. Not just the sex part (I know a lot of people will think that's all there is to it).

I posted this to Skye's blog post about regrets.

I think you can't afford to have regrets. It makes you put time into looking back and analyzing things that are already history and can not be changed. Just look forward and do your best each day: personally, on the job and for yourself too. What better can you do? Don't try to be perfect, only robots are perfect and not even they are error free. Be yourself and look forward to all the good things still to come ahead in your life. Don't be afraid or intimidated to look up and smile at people too. If you can smile at a few people everyday and do your best, what will you possibly have to regret? One road not taken means you did take another road, you're still traveling. Don't stop for looking back and regrets.

Regrets don't bother me. But, sometimes the road not taken theory does bug me. Not that I regret or especially think about the roads I have taken. I think about all the roads, endless streams of choices not made. Think of one choice/ road which would have led to other roads and choices which you never even knew about. Roads in the future, even more than roads in the past. After all, the past is gone and can't be changed. What about the future, where there are so many endless roads and choices.

You would be surprised how many times I have heard that in reference to myself.

It seems that things which I consider doing and then think, "why not?" Make other people cringe in horror and give me the evil eye and back away, quickly even.

Sometimes it makes me feel I must be a mutant freak. But, all the reasons they come up with for not doing whatever it was just never occured to me. Besides, most of them seem like things I could cope with, if they came up.

Did anyone else get on Noah's Ark under the category of mutant freak? Raise your cloven hooves please.

I've kept my column at BackWash going, more or less, mostly less. I was writing for a friend's adult site but that was called off. So now I'm a free agent once again. I still write non-adult and have a job on the side. But, the adult writing has faded away like most of my relationships with men. Why do they do that?

At the start they can't get enough of you, fill you with how much they desperately love you, must have you, etc. Then, without warning you just never hear from them again. If you bother to send an email to check in case he was hit by a bus, there is a slight chance he will send a short reply, saying nothing of anything. Men seem to be pretty small minded and shallow. But, I'm nothing if not optimistic and I still hope I'm just not meeting the right men. Somewhere there are real people out there who happen to be men.

Anyway, I am putting up a new site. It's going to be a site for writers. I will also attempt to get back to keeping up here. Though, see above, I am pretty much dateless. I don't even mind much at this point. Kind of nice to get away from it all. I'd try again if I found someone who seemed sincere about being with me. I'm not a lightskirt, I just play one for fun.

See you if you see me.

Laura

Originally posted to Wallflower Writes/ Blogs at Indecent Blogging.com