There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.

Oh, Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day ... i find it quite perplexing. Most people love it or hate it (depending on their relationship status i suppose), but i genuinely don't know my opinion on it.

I'm one of life's serial singletons, I've never even received a Valentine's Day card, ever .... Although i did once receive some beautiful flowers .. which were completely unexpected, which i think is what is often missing from Valentine's Day, it seems to be dominated by girls expecting their other half to buy them gifts, and the boys do it so that they're not in trouble. It's supposed to be romantic, where's the element of surprise?!

The day seems to be one big game of oneupmanship and only serves to make those that are alone feel completely unloved. Which, admitedly i do sometimes feel on the day itself when everyone around me are gloating about their flowers and cards and beautiful , magical, perfect evening plans, but then i take solace in the fact that most of these people will probably be moaning about "Dave not pulling his weight around the house" or "liking every photo that bitch puts on Facebook"* the next day while i'll be sat at home in a nice hot bath in the quiet, with a book, being glad i'm not dating Dave ... Anymore.

But then i do see glimpses of genuine love being shown on this day, and even though i'm a sad, lonely love cynic i'm a massive secret romantic at heart (please don't tell anyone). It's nice that there are things happening in the world on this one day of the year that are making people smile, and this can never be a bad thing .. Even if the only only ones smiling are the bosses of Hallmark.

*Some names have been changed for anonymity purposes ... Mainly so i don't get in trouble.

I love you so much. So, so much, and I probably always will. I just don't like you anymore. I'm sorry

If you know me you will probably already know that i'm a little bit of a bookworm. I love books, actual books, not e-readers. I do have an e-reader but only for when i'm travelling and having 5 paperbacks is not practical. I read from a book every day without fail. I read everything from the classics, to crime, to poetry, fiction, non-fiction, most books i will give a go .. Although i'm dreadful at starting a book then getting bored or forgetting about it and going on to a new one. I love the words, the magic that some people can create is amazing just from the placing together of a few words, i'd love to be able to write like some of the authors i've read. My favourite book is One Day by David Nicholls. It's a perfectly beautiful love story. But a more real love story. Not like the crap you get in 'chick-lit', i hate 'chick-lit' it's all so predictable, and often, badly written (do not get me started on the atrocity that is 50 Shades of Gray). One Day is a story about two best friends and where they both are in life at exactly the same day (15th July) throughout the years starting from the day in which they meet and become best friends and unbeknownst to them (well Dex anyway), become soul mates. Dex and Em, Em and Dex .. i love these characters. It's a hard book to write about because the story sounds simple and somewhat 'chick litty' but it isn't. Some of my favourite quotes are from this book:

"What are you going to do with your life?" In one way or another it seemed that people had been asking her this forever; teachers, her parents, friends at three in the morning, but the question had never seemed this pressing and still she was no nearer an answer... "Live each day as if it's your last', that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn't practical. Better by far to be good and courageous and bold and to make difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance."

"Dexter, I love you so much. So, so much, and I probably always will. I just don't like you anymore. I'm sorry."

"In eight years not a day has gone by when she hasn’t thought of him. She misses him and she wants him back. I want my best friend back, she thinks, because without him nothing is good and nothing is right."

"Occasionally, very occasionally, say at four o’clock in the afternoon on a wet Sunday, she feels panic-stricken and almost breathless with loneliness. Once or twice she has been known to pick up the phone to check that it isn’t broken. Sometimes she thinks how nice it would be to be woken by a call in the night: ‘get in a taxi now’ or ‘I need to see you, we need to talk’. But at the best of times she feels like a character in a Muriel Spark novel – independent, bookish, sharp-minded, secretly romantic."

"Their friendship was like a wilted bunch of flowers that she insisted on topping up with water. Why not let it die instead?"

"...Emma Morley wasn't such a paragon either: pretentious, petulant, lazy, speechifying, judgmental. Self-pitying, self righteous, self-important, all the selfs except self-confident, the quality that she had always needed the most."

"She made you decent, and in return you made her so happy"

"The problem with all these fiercely individualistic girls was that they were all exactly the same."

If i add any more i may aswel just copy the whole book .. i won't .. buy it, in paperback .. Not for your Kindle! Even though i say it isn't your regular 'chick-lit' i do think it's a girls book ... but if you're a bloke, read it, let me know whether you like it, maybe (probably) i'm being presumptuous. It's beautiful, happy, sad, poignant, thought-provoking, funny, definitely worth a read. 

What lies behind appearance is usually another appearance.

I don't really do New Year resolutions. Nobody ever follows them, not for more than a month anyway. Go to my gym on January 1st and it is rammed, go on February the 1st and it's dead ... This happens every year, i pray for February to come so that i can park in time to get to my 5.30-pm class. They should be called month promises or some such thing. But this year i've got a resolution. I'm wearing lipstick, every day. It's not a serious resolution, it doesn't affect anything, but i quite like wearing lipstick.

Yesterday someone questioned why i wear makeup every day. Now, i don't wear it every day, if i'm not leaving the house i won't wear it, if i'm just popping to the shops i won't wear it, but i do wear it for work every day. I think the comment went something along the lines of "Why do you feel the need to wear makeup? You're pretty enough without it" .. Firstly, i'm not pretty enough without it and secondly i don't 'feel the need' . I don't need to wear it, i like to wear it. I enjoy the application of makeup, i've been known on a particularly boring day to take my makeup off and reapply it differently. I don't trowel it on like some girls, i don't make myself orange (i don't think, i hope ... tell me if i do!), i don't look like a drag queen (of which there is nothing wrong with looking like ... if you are a drag queen). Some people say "oh i like girls who are naturally pretty" not realising that 99% of these girls that they think are naturally pretty have spent and hour doing 'natural' makeup. It bugs me when people judge people on how they look, whether it be because they have makeup on, or because they haven't, because they have dreadlocks or blonde extensions .. stop it, stop judging. Maybe i've read too much into a harmless comment, maybe he caught me when i was moody .. It's not hard. ;)

Our life is what our thoughts make it.

I've been reading other blogs today, lots of blogs .. The internet seems to be full of them. I've been trying to gain a bit of inspiration as to what to write about in my blog now i'm back. It's nice, I like the idea that there are millions of people just like me verbal diarrhoeaing onto their keyboards. Except most aren't like me. Most have some kind of theme, rather than just nattering about what their brain is thinking, boring stuff, unimportant stuff, random stuff, jumping from one topic to another. It doesn't bother me that my blog is just full of my own idiocyncracies, I love the idea that in 40 years time my grandkids will get some small insight into what was on my mind at a certain point in history. Or, when I become Queen of England people can see what I was like as a 'normal' person.

Women's blogs, on the whole, tend to be one of three topics. Fashion, food or children. If I had to write about one of these three things I would be buggered (am i allowed to say buggered on a blog?)..... I have absolutely zero interest in fashion. I like pretty clothes like most women, but I could never be fashionable. I'm not saying that I don't have anything that is fashionable, but if I do it is an accident ... I don't know what is fashionable at any one moment. I wear clothes that i like, because they suit me, or because i find them ridiculously pretty, not because of the name, or because Kate Moss was seen wearing it (Kate Moss?! how 90's am I?!). Food .. Oh food .. I love food, but I have about 3 specialities ... Carla's food blog would be the smallest blog in the world. Oh correction .. Carla's baby blog would be the smallest in the world, as I don't have any.

So, yeah, I didn't get much inspiration as to what to write about, so i apologise to those of you who often read what I write (for a lot of you probably out of loyalty, because you know me ... and for this I love you!) because I will definitely be sticking to my randomness, unless that is, I pop into Topshop and get sucked into that world and become a fashionista .. I'm excited for that day (don't hold your breath).

So last year.

Wow! Look how long it has been since i have written here. I've either gotten really lazy or really busy. I'm not even sure which, probably a mix of the two. Apologies to those that have been popping by to see that i've done nothing, nada, weirdly i have lots of readers from America and the Middle East, i've no idea why or how they got here, but 'hi' (i also don't mean to call you weird). I really appreciate that people have been reading even though i've not been here ... i promise i'll write lots more this year .. resolution if you will. I've got a few blogs on the go, almost ready to be posted but i'm going to start off with a really simple one. A quick recap of what's been happening in 2013 in a list, the laziest of all the writing skills i know, but i need to warm myself up, so here we go... my 2013 ..

I opened a new online business (www.facebook.com/idrewthishandmadecrayons) making wax crayons.

I had a dip-dye on my hair.

I've got pink hair!

I will be having blue hair.

I've been on 7 first dates.

5 second dates.

2 third dates.

1 multiple dates.

1 declaration of undying love (not made by me, by a man, an actual man, actually to me, yes, me! - this would make a ridiculously funny blog but i'm too scared to share incase he reads).

1 chest infection.

1 tattoo.

1 punch (thrown by me ... It was rather a good one too!).

1 Dublin break (this will be a blog).

4 serious hangovers.

1 26th birthday (i won't be correcting this!).

About 12 books started.

4 books finished.

1 knobhead neighbour.

2 falls.

Lots of tears.

Much more laughter.

I seem to be finding it difficult to remember what happened to me last year, my memory is shocking at the moment, i'm tired. I will update with some proper writing soon then we can all never mention this blog again and it can slip down the list into obscurity.

A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.

Ot oh …. I’m scared I might be turning into a boy.  I’m starting to like boys films .. this worries me.  Last night I went to watch the new Batman movie and thoroughly enjoyed it and got stupidly excited at the idea that there might be a fourth.  There. better. be. a. fourth.  Granted I’ve never been a chick flick kind of girl, I like some chick flicks but only the better quality of chick flick like Bridesmaids or the classics such as Dirty Dancing, but ask me to watch something starring Channing Tatum, Lindsay Lohan the cast of Gossip Girl/Vampire Diaries/Glee or anything based in an American high school and I’ll probably say no, run away or fall asleep.  But similarly if I have to watch a film starring Van Damme, Statham (although he is beautiful!) or the former Governor of California then you’ll probably find that my phone is out for the majority of it .. sending out some kind of SOS text.  I can’t be doing with films that have more guns, blood and gore than it does dialogue.  So why did I like Batman?  Comic books are stupid, stories for kids/grownup kids (ahem.. geeks).  Granted Christian Bale is not at all bad to look at, especially with lack of shirt … he does however seem to put on some comedy Batman voice, which kinda sounds like the voices girls do when we put a man voice on.  Oh oh and Michael Caine is in it, I love Michael Caine!  Him and Ray Winstone have the best voices in the history of the world.  I also really liked Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, i'm a bit biased though because i've always quite liked the Hathaway. And then there is the supervillain .. Bane? Something like that .. he's suitably scary and has also been given a comedy voice.  I did do a bit of a random giggle half way through the film at a particularly suspenseful dramatic - not comediac -point when i realied what his voice reminded me of, the X Factor voiceover man!!! He sounded just like him .. i half expected him to go "I will kill you Batman ... it's Rachel Adedeje!!!!"

Oh oh i can't talk about Batman without honourable mention to the late Heath Ledger as Joker in the Dark Knight .. he was actually, completely amazing it.  Hollywood definitely lost one of the good ones.

ok this blog post seems a bit mish mashed, it's late, and my mind is being rubbish after a bad nights sleep so i've kinda just written stuff as my mind is coming up with it, rather than trying to think coherently and organise my thoughts ... i shall probably do a massive edit at some point.  I can't even think of a suitable way to end the post ... so, erm, yeah, The End.

Why do fools fall in love?

So ... the dating website. There's a bit of a stigma about being on one. I'm on one for the second time (although not a paid one ... i'm not quite that desperate yet ... hi stigma), and admittedly 90% of the men on there are complete freaks but in a world where men don't go up to women in the street like they do in the movies to ask women out there is not much choice. I certainly don't want to find someone through a drunken haze during the friday night meat market in town .. half because that's not really the syle of the kinda men i like, secondly because i'm somewhat too old for the majority of them. :( and in a little sleepy town, the men aren't all that eligible.

I told my sister today that i was meeting a man and she asked where i met him ... i haven't met him, we've been speaking on a dating website making this our first time of meeting, she screwed up her face and went 'ooh i couldn't do that'. I have checked with him that he isn't an axe murderer though. I have genuinely told him he is banned from murder on this night and he has given me his word that he will leave his axe and/or chainsaw at home. If needs be i will frisk him to make sure ... i probably will need to ... he is rather attractive.

Some men seem to think that the way to a womans heart is via insults. I'm currently engaging one man in conversation who has called me a 'f*cking b*tch' a 'retard' and has just told me to 'sort my face out' another called me 'a hoe' telling me that he could tell i was by my face! I must admit, i quite like these messages, they entertain me and don't seem to know how to handle a woman that can retaliate in an eloquent way and just explode into a tirade of insults. Most however, are nice, it's just a shame i seem to attract the elderly and men that tlk lk dis bbe. Luckily i've spotted a few gems and just hope i'm not on there for too much longer, there's only so long i can cope with the copy and pasted 'oh my god how can a girl like you be here, are the boys near you blind' (without question marks) only to get the exact same message a few days later from the same men after they've forgotten they have messaged me already. Yawn.