papiliotempestae

11 years later, and, i am still in love. of course, we love deeply now too, but we are also still in love. he is still the only man for me, my heart still skips a beat every time he calls (even if just to ask if he must buy bread) and i still smile to myself when i hear a certain song and i still flutter when getting dressed for a date with him (even though we live and work together).

one must just be so careful that one does not confuse love with lust. it is such an easy mistake to make, and is frequently the cause of much heart-ache and sorrow when the lust cools and nothing remains.

i started smoking when i was 13. yes, indeed, 4 years older than my daughter is now. that is a scary thought.

since i lit up the first time, i have ‘quit’ smoking so many times. but i have never quit in my head, which means i always light up easily again.
longest i ever quit was, amazingly, not when i was pregnant, but a couple years later, when i quit for 8 months. but, as usual, i found an excuse to start again.

and, at least once a year, my husband and i talk about quitting. it is a filthy habit, it is bad for the health, it is expensive, and yet…

we keep justifying our smoking. we smoke because… it is social… because it gives us a reason to take breaks from working… because we enjoy it.

and, honestly, we do enjoy it. not because of the feeling the nicotine rushing through our veins give us. or because of the yellow stains on our fingers and teeth. or because of any other reason relating to the act of smoking a cigarette.

instead, we enjoy it, because it is our last vice. it is the one naughty thing we as now 30-something parents have left in our lives. it keeps us in touch with the rebels we used to be (especially now that smoking is outlawed in so many places, and even our home is a smoke-free area), and allows us, for 5 minutes at a time, to feel like teenagers again.

so, how do we change this mindset, to allow us to actually get to the part where we want to quit, not because it is bad for us, but because we no longer need it? without finding a new vice, i should add.

I finally wrote myself a content managed website, from scratch. I figured if I can do this for our clients, I can do it for myself.
I actually played a little, and wrote one set of code to run 3 different websites – one for me, one for my husband, and one for my daughter.
It was a fun experience, and I now have a code-base I can trust, and build on to easily (which i have done already, by writing us our own Blog system).

now, when i go to one of our sites, i feel good about what i see and how it works.