By Jupiter!

"...many a man has made his way into an honest girl's bedroom by calling himself a god." - Juno says to Semele (from Ovid's Metamorphoses)

One

"Alone also means available for someone outstanding."
- from It's Called a Breakup Because it's Broken.

Better ingredients

"Even with all the mayonnaise in the world, you can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit." - Amiira Ruotola-Behrendt's grams (from It's Called a Breakup Because it's Broken).

Particularly

As she set out to re-write her man list, she jotted new things down in the margins of the old draft, listing things in particular. This next revision would be a list of 100 or so tangible things so as to not confuse the universe about what she really wanted. There was no need to bog down the faeries scouring the universal database of men with good sized penises with vagarities and generalizations that would only lead to nothing better than a mediocre match.com list of marginal search results.

Oh no. She was going big. Leaving nothing to the ambiguous, she was going to whip up this list and hand it over to the faerie god-mothers to find her divine partner with a sense of urgency and a clear image of what to send her way. No more wading the murky waters of bad search results. No more "surveying a multitude of options." She was honing in on the one and only.

In absentia

Dear Blog,

I know I haven't written too much as of late, and for that my sincerest and deepest of heartfelt apologies. Quit taking it personally (Qtip) - lol! I've been a bit preoccupied with the lushness of life. The sweet scent of spring has enlivened my senses and so has my hot latin lover. I'll let you know how that goes, when I come up for air.

Kisses,
me

Faux

"You should be looking right here," her dance instructor said, pointing to the space of his heart.

They kept dancing. Lest she stare transfixed on that one spot on his shirt, he mentioned: "You don't need to analyze the thread count."

She relaxed her gaze that was likely burning a hole through his chest, and thought about her inherent lack of seductive presence.

"Your gaze should be on me in soft focus, as if you are enrapt in this one moment, as if my leading you is the only thing that exists right now, you are stuck in this moment of ecstasy."

She looked up at him and her fit of giggles leaked into laughter.

"And even if you really don't feel all that, just fake it," he said.

She was never good at faking it.

Impaired judgement

Every guy she passed on the street looked like a potentially delicious morsel. Her discriminating taste that was usually dished with a heavy hand seemed to be out to lunch. Kinda like her mind, which followed her eyes as they clung to the fellows that walked passed her at the wi-fi coffee shop. For every dude she looked at she said to herself, "I could have sex with that one..."

It was spring, yes. She checked the calendar to confirm that point in the 28 day cycle that involved a patiently waiting ovum. "It ain't ova, till it's ova," she said under her breath, remembering a line from her especially punny high school biology teacher as he polished his humor during the human reproductive system chapter. Another guy walked by. She had to fan herself.

If you had asked her about her Man List today, she would have stared at you blankly. Obviously, a lonely spring ovulation creates the omittance of sound judgement as the estrogen breaks the blood-brain barrier. She has a friend who vows to stay indoors when ovulating as a rule. Together they had established this baseline standard: no dating when ovulating. Today, she felt like a victim of her biology but was not making excuses.

And then, she suddenly realized: this is what guys must be like all the time.

She couldn't wait to sleep off this deluge of hormones and wait for the following day of clear thinking.

Needs & open hearts

Today's Just for Women Podcast features Newt Bailey, communication specialist with a far reaching and deceptively simple message about communicating in the bedroom, the boardroom and everywhere. He speaks of open hearts and maintaining in the moment. Listen and live it - and never be incommunicato again.

Protocol

It was a lovely spring evening for a walk. She took to her new route contemplating whether or not to splurge for the Jimmy Choos & the silky selections from the Spring 09 Max Azria collection.

As she passed the tennis courts in the park, one of the figures through the meshed cage of the court looked familiar. His stature, his calves, his beard, his hat, shirt, shorts, shoes. She could pick them out of a camouflaged crowd with the primal sense of shape acuity that can only be known from years of closeness. She wasn't fully convinced until she saw the racquet, the one they bought just two summers before. Through the immanent distance, part of her wanted to wave. Part of her didn't want to potentially ruin their game. It was at once so familiar, and so foreign. Her presence went unnoticed, as an innocent passerby on a warm evening scented with lilacs.

The eyes have it

"Do you know about the cabeceo?" he asked as they sat down at a table along the dance floor.

Her look said 'nope,' and she hoped the fact that this was her first Milonga -- heck, her first formal social dance ever in the history of her little self -- was a good enough excuse to be in the dark on this one.

"You need to know about this..." he said.

Her eyes showed interest as she tuned in for the 411.

"As a follower, you need to be scanning the room and scoping out the potential leaders. If you see someone holding their gaze for a while, that's a preliminary sign that they want to dance. You can hold their gaze in return, or look away. Looking away is a gentle signal that you're not interested."

She was amazed at what she was listening to -- all of this great social experimenting offered by the Tango scene. Who knew Project Man Field Work would be so prosperous after a brief hiatus of leading a full and intense life. Yet, this all sounded so familiar to her, like she'd heard this story before. "So, it's kinda like being at the bar?" she asked. (Having never been part of that crowd, ever, either, she was taking yet another stab in the dark. All she knew was hunkering down at a coffee shop, knitting and simultaneously scanning the room and evaluating every dude that passed by with her speculation and keen sense of intuition about his innate character, while she tried to catch the gaze of the cute one across the room.)

He looked at her, as if he was trying to figure her out. "Well, I guess it's like that... from what I've heard."

Points, she thought to herself. The dude doesn't do the bar scene. She eased into the conversation more as he dished out more of the scoop on the social tangle of the weekend dance hall.

"As a woman, you can always turn down a request to dance," he continued. "Some followers won't dance with a leader until they've seen them out on the floor. See, in tango, no one wants to look bad. So, naturally, you don't want to accept an invite to dance from someone who's moves you're not impressed with. Even while you're out dancing with someone else, you can be scanning the floor for your next partner."

She was fascinated by, and grateful for, this tutorial. It seemed at once like Darwin meets the potential for drama. "So, I should stop looking at my feet while I'm dancing?" she smiled.

He nodded and got up from his chair. "Set that cabeceo on fire," he winked.