I never intended to be a Spinster. I thought that I would get married. I never for a second thought of myself in the image of an "Old Maid." Hair in a bun, sucked up cheeks and bifocals. I'm older and a wee bit wiser. I have removed the last of the illusions of finding Mr. Right or "the one and only." I have even moved pass finding a somebody to love. I accept that it may or may not happen.

I use to be a child. Some say a curious child. No, that is understatement. I was a damn Class A question box. Most children pass through that intensive questioning stage of development. I was not one of them. That sucker attached itself to me and will not let me go without “the answer.”  It has been a blessing, a curse and a guaranteed path to adventure.

A hairdresser asked me in front of my daughter if I planned to cover the grey that is slowly taking over my dark hair. And lest you think four-year-old girls are not attune to the messages we send women about aging, my daughter announced as I started the car, "I think the grey in your hair is beautiful because it sparkles. Don't change it, Mommy." How long do you think it will take until she's singing a different tune?

Do you hate your body?  Do you avoid looking in the mirror for fear of what you'll see?  Well Kelly Park and Carson Kressley of Lifetime Television's "How To Look Good Naked" may be able to help.  And without liposuction, facelifts, butt lifts or tummy tucks. As part of BlogHer's "Letter To My Body" campaign which tries to help women improve their body image, I'm going to have the pleasure of doing a podcast interview with Kelly Park who starred in the premiere of this season's "How To Look Good Naked."

Marketing is suffering from an identity crisis. It's one of those every day activities that is critical for a businesses' success and yet very few people can agree exactly what it is. It's a funny thing about marketing. Lots of people go to college and major in marketing. Lots of people have jobs with the title of director of marketing, Lots of people have consulting firms to help other businesses with their marketing,and goodness knows there's a healthy genre of blogs devoted to marketing.

Lisa Stone has a wonderful post about turning 40 this year.  Well, I'll be hitting 50 a little later this month. I don't feel old at all.  I think that might have to do with the 10 hours a week at the gym swimming, yoga, spinning, and pilates and eating a healthy diet.   I've been thinking over the last few months about how I might mark this birthday - do we actually throw a party?  No.   If I hadn't just spent the holidays raising lots of money for the Sharing Foundation, I might consider having people donate in my honor.     I'm always looking for an excuse to play with technology tools ... so I'm celebrating it with a Flickr Photo Remix Contest.  Here's how you can wish me a happy birthday with some user generated content!

Meet Dr. Nancy Hendrie, a retired pediatrician in her seventies, who didn’t want to spend her retirement years on the golf course. Almost ten years ago, she founded a nonprofit organization, The Sharing Foundation, dedicated to meeting the physical, emotional, educational, and medical needs of orphaned and seriously- disadvantaged children in Cambodia.

Using textbooks as shields. Teachers packing heat. Making students defend their own classrooms. These are just a few of the ideas being floated in the wake of the murder of Amish girls at a Pennsylvania schoolhouse. As a mother, teacher, and longtime student, I'm a major stakeholder in these proposals. I think they're all asinine.

What people see as fearlessness is really persistence. Because I am focused on the solution, I don't see the danger. Because I don't see the danger, I don't allow my mind to imagine what might happen to me, which is my definition of fear. If you don't foresee the danger and see only the solution, then you can defy anyone and appear strong and fearless. -Wangari Maathai, Unbowed.She has been in jail four times and beaten on the head twice. Not a very peaceful life for a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Her new memoir, Unbowed, is the kind of book that you put down every 50 pages and say to whomever is listening, "You're not going to believe what happened next."

Here's a dating truth: People will tell you things you need to know if you're listening. In a perfect world, people would always communicate openly and clearly, but in the real world, where everybody's just doing the best they can with all their hopes and fears and uncertainties, sometimes you have to listen. To jokes. To off-handed comments. To remarks that seem off somehow, and especially to anything like that that's repeated more than once.

I. How many clothes you have to take off before you can make love. This I think is important: the undoing of buttons, the gradual shedding of one color after another. It leads to the belief that what you see is not what you get. --Margaret Atwood, excerpted from "How to Tell One Country from Another" How many clothes do you have to take off before you can reveal your breasts? To whom do you (would you) reveal your breasts, and why? Who has commented on your breasts? In what contexts? In what ways do you discipline your breasts? Bras? Surgery? Pads to soak up breastmilk? In what ways have your breasts disciplined you? Cancer? Low self-esteem? Popping out of your clothes? Hindering exercise? In what ways have your culture's views on breasts limited or empowered you?

A couple of years ago, I was home alone with my son while my husband was in Southeast Asia. The phone rang at 3:00 a.m. and I immediately woke to answer it, thinking that with the 12-hour time change, it had to be him on the phone.  It wasn't. It was an obscene call. I slammed the phone receiver down.  The phone rang again and this time I noticed an unfamiliar name and phone number on the caller ID.  I dialed an operator, stammering, "Can you tell me where this area code is located."  When I found out it was a mobile phone number, I immediately dialed 911 who alerted our local police department.  All the while, the phone kept ringing and my heart pounding.