moving day.

In the time between now and when I began this blog so much has changed, if I read it in a novel, I'm not sure I'd have believed it. Just goes to show you, anything can happen. I live in Massachusetts with my husband now. He's not the same man I thought I loved at this time last year. He's a better man in every way that counts. He tells me the truth and seems to be interested in understanding and supporting me more than using me for fun. There's no point going on and on about it, I've posted about him before and was busted for it by his sister and a former girlfriend. But I like to be candid here and since I've shut this blog up tight (you have to have asked me to read it if you're seeing this) I can repost the original post about him. I wrote the next post when I knew we were falling in love. Now that we're married, I no longer have to be ashamed for being presumptuous. I knew from very early on that Steven was "The One." I had hoped others were but where there was hope in the past, this was inevitable. It felt as though it had a life of its own. I am only a part of this love, a part of this marriage. I am not constructing it as I go, I'm not in control and finally, I've discovered, that is the difference between real love and plain old desire.

How to show restraint

Right now, right this very minute, I am fighting the impulse to gush publicly about my new husband. I want to tell everyone how fantastic he is, how smart, how kind, how surprising, how talented, how tasteful, how funny, how considerate, how sweet, how tender, how strong and how handsome he is - all the things that make me happier by the day.

 I find myself caught by surprise by the sight of his broad shoulders or a glimpse of his hand on my arm in bed and how it's made a hundred times better by seeing the wedding ring on his finger and remembering how it was something he wanted more than I did. I didn't care if we had rings or not but it mattered to him, his ring matters to him.

 It makes me pause and catch my breath to realize this wonderful man is, as much as this is true of anyone with anyone else, mine. He belongs with me - by choice. I am the luckiest woman in the world and the rash and crazy thing I did a few months back? Getting on that train a month early, on a day's notice, without any idea of how I'd manage the trip?

Smartest thing I ever, ever did.

By far, hands down, no question, the single smartest decision of my entire life.

If I have learned anything in my life it's this: FOLLOW YOUR HEART.

 Forget money, forget convention, forget common sense and do what your heart tells you to do, it's right.

 It's surprisingly hard to keep this stuff to myself. My husband is easily embarrassed by too much attention so he doesn't want to hear me trumpeting to anyone and everyone about how wonderful he is and how happy we are and let's face it, nobody's friends want to hear anyone going on about being crazy in love. At best, it's boring and at worst, it rubs salt into the wounds of those who aren't so happy in their love lives or their lives in general.

 It's also pretty interesting to see people react to this change in my life. I have a cousin who has, since she reached adulthood, been pretty horrible to me behind my back. Generally speaking, I've ignored it. She's made up crazy stories and generally done all she can to alienate me from my Mother's family. Not that alienating me from my mother's family required a lot of effort - I was already more than halfway there.

Anyway, the reasons for this are unimportant I suppose, water under the bridge - who cares? Actually, I'm not even sure I know but it is what it is. Apparently she has been diagnosed with some kind of mental illness - that can't be easy and I am grateful my life path hasn't taken me down that road.

 To my great surprise, one day on Facebook I came across a comment she made about my marriage. She commented to another Aunt that she had found out about my marriage and wondered if my mother knew. She then said "I guess I'm the cougar now." That was pretty insulting, especially since I've never pursued younger men, and I have turned all of them down based on age but for one big mistake - and that's long over.

(My husband, although you'd never know it, is ten years my senior - the only reason I have ever wished he was younger was when I realized the human lifespan is limited and women tend to live longer than men. Now that I've finally found him, the thought of a day without him is unbearable.)

Last night I had to comment on my cousin's actions, I couldn't help myself. It's one thing to be unkind about me behind my back but to take my mother's hard-won dignity, which is already in pretty short supply and fairly fragile - well, I couldn't stay silent about that.

 Marriage has changed me. It has changed me more than love ever did, maybe more than love ever could. It has enabled me to feel secure enough to be emotionally brave. It has taken the fear away. I'm stronger, happier, more secure. It's changed my life. Now if I could only figure out how to stop wanting to talk about it.

More Changes

It's surprising to me how much changes after marriage. Feeling more secure in one's relationship can't help but have a positive effect. I wake up happy every morning. Even if I've had a night full of nightmares, which sometimes still happens, (I'm making some pretty big adjustments after all) I'm happy to see his face, happy to know his affection is not up for negotiation, just basically happy. There are some other things though, things that surprise me and not always happily. Adjusting to a new kitchen, new methods of cooking and new supplies of food - I'm not much liking that at all. I just finished a dinner that was entirely unsatisfying. Makes me grumpy to think I spent all that time cooking and eating this stuff with no dessert to make up for how entirely uninspired and unpalatable (to me) it was. I ate it because it was fuel, nothing more, nothing less. I tried to cook pork in a way that would have rendered it delicious in Ottawa. I put it in the oven and slow-cooked it for nearly two hours. Slashed the fatty areas and threaded them with garlic, put it on a bed of mushrooms and onions, threw in some peppers and sweet potatoes and covered the whole thing with tomatoes, added some cider vinegar to cook things down and a little olive oil in case the pork wasn't fatty enough (which is often the case these days unless you buy a heritage breed) it should have all melted together and gotten delicious. It didn't. I don't know if it's because of the convection oven or just because whatever took me two hours in Ottawa takes four hours here but it was undercooked, the flavors did not blend and it was just plain - yuck. I used to be good at this. People think I'm still good at this and that's one of the worst parts; everything I make smells delicious and it is usually such a huge disappointment when I taste it - it's just frustrating and embarrassing too. How is it possible that I'm going through this stage? It's like I've never cooked before and that's just not so. My husband, Gd bless him, ate it anyway and said it was just fine. I ate it and ate the salad, made with bitter lettuce that I do not like and am now resentful because I've nourished myself with stuff that was a waste of the calories if you ask me and there's nothing to show for it and nothing to make up for it either. And it instantly gave me gas. This seems to be the case on a fairly regular basis. I am making my way through organic, local foodstuffs. I am very pleased to shop local. I am happy to be able to provide nourishing meals to my husband and save him some time in the process but if you'd asked me to trade every bite of tonight's substandard meal for one decent piece of chocolate cake? No contest. Now the rest of the bitter little salad sits at my elbow waiting to be consumed. I've had my quinoa, I've eaten my vegetables - what did I do to deserve this? Granted, I've lost weight and I feel better for eating healthy and I suppose I will eventually learn how to use all these things - gluten free this, whole grain everything, quinoa and millet (which, granted, I like when he makes it) but I am never going to like this bitter lettuce and right now - well, I'm just grumpy. I wonder if all brides go through this? Seems as though everything domestic that came so easily to me on my own needs to be reassessed and tailored to fit a new reality. I know it's all good but it's not always a pleasure. I love my new life but I do miss the pleasure I used to get from cooking and eating delicious food. I miss my identity as a good cook, I miss chocolate chip cookies (yes, made with white flour) and I miss knowing for sure that anything I put on the table is going to taste just as good as it smells.

The New Normal

I've closed this blog to anyone who isn't invited to read it. At first, I thought doing this would feel limiting. In fact, it has made me feel like writing more regularly. In the time since I last wrote, one of my boyfriend's former girlfriends, sought out this blog and used it to embarrass me. Truth is, I was forming a habit of saying too much. The way I saw it, online I am nobody - a random entity with a random name that would not arouse interest from anyone unless I specifically directed them here. The truth is, people are curious and will use whatever they find, whenever they find it if they feel wounded by circumstance or by someone else - anyway, it's just better not to have my life open to those who would do me harm. (and shockingly, they are out there. Wish I'd never learned that.) So, there's news and plenty of it. I've married a man in New England and so, I suppose, everything has changed. I wake up in the morning every day now with this new and precious aspect of my life firmly in place. I know, private or not, he doesn't want me to elaborate on our relationship in print but marriage is what it is and we have married. Maybe that's enough said, right there. So from here on, this blog is private. If I don't know you, you're not here and I am not a random cipher. That's going to take a bit of getting used to. For now, I think I'll go back to the bedroom and wake my new husband to start our day.

Ten Years After

Here we are, September 11, 2011. It's funny how we think not very much in our lives changes from day to day and yet when you look back over a decade, everything changes. Nothing is the same at all. Ten years ago I was living in Toronto. I was just starting mt second year of grad school and was still involved with Jesse, who still had his original kidney transplant. I was volunteering for the Toronto International Film Festival. I had never been to Texas, had never written a blog, never heard of Facebook and as far as I knew North Adams did not exist. I was on the verge of a lot of unhappiness but I didn't know that then. I was in an abusive relationship, that was becoming clear. We seem to think waking up is something we do suddenly and irrevocably. But it's not. Life seems to me to be a series of times when we are awake and times when we fall back into a deep and dangerous slumber. The lessons I learned from 9/11? Everything can change in a heartbeat - and it often does. I have a limited time on earth. Love should not be a chore. Leaving a place when things get difficult is about the worst thing you can do. Staying with a person after you know things have gone sour may be the only thing that is more destructive. I am tougher than I think. As I listen to the water in the flood channel behind the mill and watch the sky brighten, I can't help but think of all the people who have come and gone from my life and be grateful for those who are here and those who have passed through. I hope someday to be remembered fondly - I think that's about all you can ask.

Predictable horrors.

The LA Times published a piece this morning stating that terrorist organizations are now considering the surgical implantation of explosive devices into their agents in order to thwart the increasingly stringent security measures employed in American airports.

While I know, logically, that all terrorist bombers are, by definition, disposable people and that their intention is to destroy whatever they can and die in the process, it still creates a visceral disgust in me to hear that anyone would consider degrading human life to such a degree.

It's stomach turning.

Once the nausea passes though, you have to ask yourself what all of this means. In my lifetime I've watched the attitude of nations change from a sensible assumption that most people are relatively innocuous and those that aren't benefit by being treated with respect and kindness when they cross the border into a "civilized" nation to an attitude of absolute terror based on the assumption that most people are monsters just waiting to pounce and we should all be suspicious and terrified of each other at all times, in all ways and do whatever we can to be sure that we stamp hard on everyone we meet to be sure all the spine is squished right out of them just in case they might decide to act on what we assume is their natural, evil disposition.

Am I the only one who finds this discouraging?

Am I the only one who notices that it seems to be making things much, much worse?

The thing is, there are people, like me, who feel so wounded and offended by negative assumptions and false allegations that they will live up to those assumptions just to prove a point.

When I was a teenager, my father told everyone I was stupid. They believed it, I believed it and I acted on it. I was Queen Airhead, I was frivolous, mindless and devoid of ambition, then one day I woke up. I went away to school and came back to town loaded down with accolades and awards, nationally published, on the Dean's list, you name it.

It gave me nothing but pleasure to see how stupid people felt to have misjudged me as they did. Of course, I never bothered with them again, why would I? But it was nice to be right for that moment.

However, a terrorist is not a misjudged teenaged girl. When you put a terrorist in that position, they'll prove you right and die doing it - that article in today's LA Times proves that just as it proves one other critically important thing: the object of terrorism is to waste the time, resources and energy of your enemy on fear. They're succeeding.

Canada Day

Been a while since I've posted. Of course there are reasons, there are always reasons but it's Canada Day and it seems to me that even if I weren't revving up the creative engines again, the day would call for an entry.

Somewhere around 200 years ago, a bunch of Americans decided the independence thing wasn't going so well. They looked north and saw a vast open expanse of rocks and trees and snow they could reclaim for England and there, they could live as the English did with a class system and a King and the force of the British Empire behind them both economically and militarily. For a while there were struggles about it between the "sensible" Canadians who knew Democracy could never work and the upstart revolutionaries living out their nutso ideas of equality and civil rights in the south. Maybe some of them thought they'd take the south back. They were wrong about that but I hear they made a pretty good stab at it, even managing to burn down the Capitol and the White House - they were that pissed off.

If you don't believe me about that, look here or, if you'd like to hear about it in song, here

Really. Canadians did that - cause they weren't too big on the whole freedom thing. Still aren't.

Anyhow. Canada is my country and today is its day so - what to say about that?

We have lots of open space, lots of water and ice. If you want to experiment with mixed drinks, Canada seems like a pretty good place to do that.

We're polite but not actually friendly, we'd appreciate it if you'd keep the friendly stuff below the 49th parallel. As a group, we seem to have thought George Bush (both incarnations) was a pretty good idea since we've re-elected Robo-George three or four times now and in Canada that gives him as much power as the Queen in 1800. (he's about that weird too) What makes that safe is the fact that the population of Canada is about the same as Texas and with a population that size you can be completely out-of your-mind-Conservative and it doesn't change much in the scheme of things.

We make pretty good music. Arcade Fire and The New Pornographers are from Canada, so are Stars, Final Fantasy and, to be fair, Celine Dion and Justin Bieber (sorry about that, really.)

We produce terrible, inscrutable films that make people feel smart and superior (see Atom Egoyan) and endure six month winters and more cowboy hats than Texas, Colorado and Wyoming put together. We have chuck wagon races and Vancouver (which pretends the rest of the country does not exist) we also have creton (look it up - too gross to describe) and poutine, (similarly disgusting but mandatory) and tourtiere which is actually pretty good and makes salad much more desirable than usual.

Some of us have British accents, even after 6 generations or more. Really. We are stubborn and slow slow slow. Daily newspapers feel they need a two or three week lead, at least to produce a feature.

We don't like enthusiasm and we think the internet is moving way too fast.

So happy birthday Canada. Hope everyone there is enjoying the day. I'll raise a glass of sparkling water to the great white north and plan to see a baseball game and fireworks in small town America while I think about degrees of liberty and freedom from creton.