The end.

There will be a new site at some point. I'll e-mail you the address if I want you to have it. Please don't ask for it; it'll be awkward to have to turn you down.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one...

-Thoreau

Yes I said yes I will yes

Sometimes I am faced with the fact that I chose to obtain a degree that many (let's face it, most) people ridicule and consider useless. But then I read stuff like this, and I don't care about uselessness. I just feel happy, grateful and amazed that such writing exists, and and that at one point, there was a glorious time in my life when I spent a good portion of my time analyzing and poring over it.

". . .I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. "

(From Molly Bloom's inner monlogue at the end of Ulysses.)

The Conscious Bride (Another Rant).

Yesterday's Oprah was about what she called "the conspiracy of marriage," specifically the fact that after getting married, so many women stop being themselves and start being wives. We're taught that being a wife and mother means sacrifice of self in every sense of the term. A good wife and mother puts her husband and family first. A good wife and mother doesn't think about what she wants, but about what is best for her family. We're playing out these tired, outdated roles because it's all we know.

God, I was happy to see this show, because it's something I've been thinking about/freaking out about for months now. I realized that the reason I've been so afraid of getting married is that I bought into the conspiracy too. I want to marry D, but don't want to lose who I am. I don't want to stop being me and start being Mrs. anybody!

The show featured two women (both engaged to be married in the next few months) who were feeling scared and doubtful. One woman said she was afraid of her life changing too much because she loved her life the way it was (hello, that rang a bell for me). The other woman said she felt like she was just getting started living life the way she wanted, and now everything was going to change.

I think Oprah, who is definitely not pro-marriage, wanted to tell them both to call off their weddings. She's a big fan of "doubt means don't." But I don't think that's necessarily what these women need to do. I think sometimes doubt means that you're alive and thinking and not blindly jumping into something without careful consideration.

If you're a thinking person, you know that marriage is a lot of hard work, and that according to cold, hard statistics, it's very possible that your marriage will end in divorce. If that doesn't scare you a little, maybe you're buying into the Cinderella fantasy a little too much.

Yes, there should be joy and hope and happiness associated with getting married, but a healthy amount of fear is OK too. Your life is changing. You're making a massive commitment. And yes, your old single life is coming to an end, so it's natural and normal to mourn that loss (especially if you've carved out an excellent solo life for yourself).

Now that marriage isn't (and hasn't been for a long time) a survival necessity for women, our ideas about it need to change. We need to talk about the fact that it's OK to get engaged and feel some fear as opposed to 100% giddy excitement. In other words, it's OK to be awake, aware and conscious about this gigantic commitment and life change.

I hope to god that in the next generation, a new concept of marriage emerges, one in which as a wife and mother, you're expected to become more of who you are, and not less, one in which becoming a wife and mother doesn't mean only sacrifice and caregiving, but blossoming creativity and individual fulfillment. It'd be a lot less scary that way.

I feel as though I'm caught in a whirlwind.

This last week was rough. I feel comfortable writing about this here, because I don't think anyone's reading. I should maybe pick up my paper journal, but whatever.

I had one of those weeks that shakes everything up, and I still haven't recovered. I'm waiting.

There are times when I'm content and happy, and times when I make myself miserable by questioning everything. I am in questioning mode, and when I am in questioning mode, I make myself crazy with thoughts like, "What if the questioning mode is the reality, and the content and happy mode is the coma? What if I am questioning everything because everything is all wrong, really all wrong?"

My mother and I went to dinner last night, and I poured everything out. My brother was there too, and I felt slightly uncomfortable letting it all out in front of him, because although he's 25 years old, he's still my little brother, and I'm still his big sister, and I'm supposed to be strong and have all of the answers. But he's an adult, I thought, and he can know that I'm sometimes weak and scared.

So I did my best to explain things to them, how I was feeling lost and sad and sort of groundless and most of all, scared. I rambled on and on and flew from subject to subject, all the time on the brink of tears. I'm not sure I really expressed what I wanted to express, but at least I was getting it out there, outside of inside my head, where everything had been blowing up into the equivalent of a mental hurricane. "I just want to know, Mom, that I will be OK no matter what." I finally said. "I just want to knowthat and believe it, and then I can go on and not be scared."

"Well, you will be OK no matter what. You will," she said firmly.

And I believed her. And I realized that if you have a good mother, like I do, she is the most powerful woman in the world, with the ability to say a few words and cure your misery instantly, like a magic incantation.

Under the weather.

Ugh. I am sick, sick, sick. I haven't been sick for a while, probably at least two years, so this is hitting me hard. I'm irritated more than anything else. I hate having a snotty, peely nose, and I loathe the loss of energy I'm experiencing. I haven't been able to run for the last three days.

Speaking of which, I have started a new running route that I like very much. It takes me down Magnolia Street, which is a great street in Burbank full of thrift stores, antique shops and vintage clothing stores. This route also takes me past Yummy Cupcakes, which, wow. I mean, really, WOW. Luckily, they are not open when I run by, because I'd be seriously tempted to stop and get one, which would pretty much defeat the whole purpose of you know, running, in the first place. But I like seeing the cheery awning and looking in the window at the workers preparing to open the shop.

While I'm on a kick about Burbank, I have to say that living here has really grown on me. Of course, the primary reason we live here is because D's work is so incredibly close by, but now that I've been here two years, I've found a lot to love about this little town. There are a lot of people out there who sneer at the mention of The Valley, and I know there are a lot more exciting places to live, but fuck them. Seriously, FUCK THEM. I really hate that elitist attitude. I am very accustomed to regional elitism, considering I grew up in fucking Orange County, but I still hate it.

As an aside, I find the recent fascination with Orange County to be very bizarre. When D and I went to Florida last Thanksgiving to visit his family, his niece squealed with delight when she found out I grew up in Orange County. "No, not Laguna Beach," I said. "That's a whole 'nother world from where I grew up." Still, she was thrilled to learn that I had spent many summers baking on the sands of Newport Beach, etc. Weird.


***

A few weeks ago during my little blogging hiatus, Quincy ate a shitload of chocolate truffles (which he had surruptitiously dug out of the garbage) and had to be rushed to the doggie emergency room. Upon arrival, he promptly vomited up about a gallon of what looked like pure chocolate. It was nasty. The vet induced even more vomiting and put him on an IV. Thank god the poor little guy's OK now. Poor Sadie, our "good" dog, received the same treatment because we weren't sure if she'd partaken in the truffle gluttony. Turns out she hadn't, so she underwent the fun that is induced vomiting for nothing. Oh well. Better safe than sorry.

Just two weeks after that incident, while out on a walk with D, Quincy and Sadie were attacked by two huge dogs that were off-leash. It was off to the emergency room again. Quincy was unhurt, but Sadie was bitten on her ass. No stitches necessary, but she had to wear one of those goofy cones for a week and take antibiotics