Remind myself of myself, rather than somebody else

is it more important to be authentic or ironic?

ARE PARENTS HAPPIER THAN CHILDLESS COUPLES?

NEWSWEEK – The most recent comprehensive study on the emotional state of those with kids shows us that the term “bundle of joy” may not be the most accurate way to describe our offspring. “Parents experience lower levels of emotional well-being, less frequent positive emotions and more frequent negative emotions than their childless peers,” says Florida State University’s Robin Simon, a sociology professor who’s conducted several recent parenting studies, the most thorough of which came out in 2005 and looked at data gathered from 13,000 Americans by the National Survey of Families and Households. “In fact, no group of parents-married, single, step or even empty nest-reported significantly greater emotional well-being than people who never had children. It’s such a counterintuitive finding because we have these cultural beliefs that children are the key to happiness and a healthy life, and they’re not.”. . .

A key study by University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Sara McLanahan and Julia Adams, conducted some 20 years ago, found that parenthood was perceived as significantly more stressful in the 1970s than in the 1950s; the researchers attribute part of that change to major shifts in employment patterns. The majority of American parents now work outside the home, have less support from extended family and face a deteriorating education and health-care system, so raising children has not only become more complicated-it has become more expensive. Today the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that it costs anywhere from $134,370 to $237,520 to raise a child from birth to the age of 17-and that’s not counting school or college tuition. No wonder parents are feeling a little blue.

Societal ills aside, perhaps we also expect too much from the promise of parenting. The National Marriage Project’s 2006 “State of Our Unions” report says that parents have significantly lower marital satisfaction than nonparents because they experienced more single and child-free years than previous generations. Twenty-five years ago, women married around the age of 20, and men at 23. Today both sexes are marrying four to five years later. This means the experience of raising kids is now competing with highs in a parent’s past, like career wins (“I got a raise!”) or a carefree social life (“God, this is a great martini!”). Shuttling cranky kids to school or dashing to work with spit-up on your favorite sweater doesn’t skew as romantic.

There I am!

I’m keeping these new bangs indefinitely, but don’t want to get near the dye again.

If I can get an appointment, that is. I’m bringing the bangs back. The hair I wore when Taylor and I experienced the wonder of new, young love.

sleeping, eating, obsessing… the usuals.

Just like the me I knew. No longer a shell. Just enough connectivity. Well, admittedly, a bit of a shell.

I made bookmarks. Wrapped gifts. Watched mass. Transubstantiation—the least believable part of the whole thing. Why would one want to do such a thing anyway?

Sometimes I wish I was raised Jewish.

I had a locket…

Now I am married, a wife. Sometimes amazes how it just happened. That cute, hip guy I met at a party a couple years ago is my husband. We fight; that’s how I know it’s love.

I wrote my right-turn. Simplest of words.

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is really a large matter — it’s the difference between a lightning bug and the lightning.” -MT

Words have become important to me again. I thought God had taken their meaning. I’m glad to have them back.

myself lately.

ejecting the poison. being afraid if need be.

being unafraid, but only sometimes.

life’s pain is life. life’s joy is life.

just want to live it, when time comes die and whenever that is, that’s it. and it’s ok.

transience, impermanence, change, beauty and death.

from mr. thomas stearns eliot:
“Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.”

sadness for your passing, but grateful, so so grateful to have know you and for us to have shared love and affection. to have had so much laughter, silliness, aimlessness, passion, hope, plans, everything.

“now you know I understand, you’re with me only in the past…”

Stop pretending.

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you”

-WW