Monday (I have Friday on my mind)

Temperature: a sunny 10/50 degrees.

Eating: Maybe later.

Drinking: tea.

Listening: to the troll-in-chief on his Life of a Showboat Tour brings to mind all the traits of the dark triad.

Watching: Slow Horses.

Reading: on AI from several angles and feeling more and more uneasy the deeper I delve. Automation bias, anybody? Seriously, despite hominid appearances, there's no one home. There's no one on the other end, and when a system gets so complex you can't decipher or understand its inner logic, you gotta ask yourself should I trust this thing to make an assessment or decision for me. And the piracy involved...mind-boggling.

Writing: something that would lift you from your funk and sling you straight into the depths of despair. So let's not go there right now, it's only Monday after all.

Thinking: I get to meet an old and dear dear friend over the weekend so I've already got my eye on Friday. I know, still only Monday. Gaah!

Feeling: an itch in my nasal cavity. Don't. You. Dare.

Whenever, wherever

“What happened to your voice?”
“We did some talking. Okay, a lot.”
“Yeah, I remember,” he said, shaking his head, thinking about the last time she visited with us.

Where have I been? Busy. And in the garden. ‘Tis the season to plant and propagate and move things around and move outdoors. And wish it was a bit warmer. When it’s not a dry spring it’s a rainy one, thank you climate crisis, and there’s no telling what summer will look like, not yet.

And I went to see a friend I’ve known since the 7th grade, the only school year we shared, the only time we lived in the same place at the same time. And yet we’ve managed to stay in touch, through letters and postcards and phone calls at first, the few and far between trips to wherever the other happened to be living at the time, through uni and different jobs and different partners and new babies and new neighborhoods. That’s how deeply we connected at the tender age of thirteen. Kindred spirits, sweetie darlings.

Doesn’t matter how much time has passed, we just pick up where we left off. No awkwardness, no effort. I think I gained five pounds in those 72 quite intense hours, she is an amazing cook, and that last glass of wine ruined my sleep but no regrets, and apologies to the neighbors, there really were just two of us in the living room, not ten people singing and dancing and laughing. And crying. The good, the bad, and the ugly; no taboos.

I’m still pooped but so happy I got to see her again, live, it’s been a while. I hope you have someone like that in your life, dearest denizens, and if you don’t, I hope you find someone like that in time. Like all loving relationships, this will end in tears. Some day the last time we met will be the last time we met. And yet I think what I’ll remember best is her smile and her laugh. Not because her life has been carefree, it really hasn’t, but because despite everything that has happened, she never gave up on herself or others or life. She is loud and proud. She is kind and hearty. She is my true-blue friend, someone I’ll love, admire and respect till death do us part.

Oh life. Dear life. Look after her, dear universe, you hear?

And goodbye May! Everyone ready for June?

No more “I love you’s”

Oh, sweetie darlings, my heart is breaking. Nothing compared to the pain one of my oldest, dearest, nearest, till-death-do-us-part friends is feeling, of course. Like death, divorce might not come as a total shock and surprise, but once the decision is made and final the torment isn’t over no matter how relieved you feel that the push and pull, the fighting, the on-off-and-on-again misery-go-round is over.

Like in the death of someone close, you are required to keep a level head and start taking care of business when what you really need is a cabin in the woods and some privacy to sort out yourself first. But there is no time, and not all divorces are friendly, let’s-do-this-in-an-adult-fashion affairs; many (most?) are the result of a long period of infighting where the road to reconciliation crumbled along the way and neither partner has the will or strength to begin construction anew. Separate ways, then, new roads and vistas.

She has been accused of being strong (accused! sweetie darlings, as if strength were a handicap; is it, in women? is that what those men were saying?) and will now put all that resilience of hers to good use, I’m sure. But strong doesn’t mean impervious, cold-hearted or flippant. She will need her friends and family every soul-searing step of the way. So will he, and my godson, a family blowing apart.

It happens all the time, I know. I’m just so fucking sorry and saddened it had to happen to them.

Obrigado à vida que me tem dado tanto

 

Oh, sweetie darlings, I got the most wonderful gift for my birthday courtesy of my Dad. He had finally, after years of careful consideration (you know how these things go), digitized all the ciné films and slides he’d filmed and taken in Brazil and during our pit stops between South America and Europe (we did some exploring on the way). Filming and photographing are hobbies of his, so what I now have, oh dearest denizens, it's a treasure trove, a time machine, a magic carpet ride. I’ve been going through them all week, forcing my family to take part (“Mom, I don’t know these people!” “But you must remember that street, it’s hardly changed!”), and it has been so moving and rousing I’m sure I’ve been a bit…tiresome. Am I getting old, is it these times we live in, the forced separation? Don’t know, don’t care, I’m just so happy and grateful that these moments have been stored and that so many memories have been restored, and I know I can’t go back but I can look back, step back in time, just for a visit, and feel my parents smiling in my soul.

Onward

How was your weekend, sweetie darlings? I do hope you found some form of R & R. I’m hanging on to every bit of good news I receive, but even those tend to be tainted by the pandemic.

I got word, or rather a picture at first, of a friend who had gotten married. How wonderful is that? Absolutely champagne-popping good news! But my next thought, one I should not have let in but which gatecrashed quite unceremoniously was: we don’t get to celebrate this. She said we absolutely would Once This Is Over, and I wish that were true, but I just don’t know.  

We're all amassing celebrations that didn’t get the party that was planned or the occasion called for. Some keep postponing festivities. Some are making due, observing as best as they can under present circumstances. It’s been disappointing at best and utterly depressing at worst, and that’s just the way it is. What we’re used to doesn’t apply. But it ain’t fair doesn’t fly. I know some perfectly stable adults who’ve thrown temper tantrums a two-year-old would gawk at in reverent approval. I’m sure my nostrils have flared, like really flapped as I fumed, trying to breathe in calm and breathe out some oh-hell-naw. You do what you gotta do to remain sane.

But let’s not postpone life. Let’s keep celebrating the big things and the small. Let’s keep living in the here and now. Let’s not yield a single moment of our time, because we won't get those moments back, ever. We don’t get to live them Once This Is Over; that’s another world we'll live in when we get there.

It’s September 14, 2020, a perfectly mundane Monday or the most important day of your life, and somewhere a clock is ticking.

Somebody that I used to know

I recently found out that someone I’ve known for 20+ years had been close by for a considerable amount of time without making contact. We’ve been separated by geography for years now, and have seen each other a mere handful of times over the past ten years. But modern tech provides all the tools we need to keep in touch, and I have tried to keep the lines open, but the lines have grown quieter and quieter over the years. There’s work and family and probably a host of things I don’t know about. And that’s okay.

Friendships shouldn’t be forced, ever. What brings and glues people together sometimes stops applying. Timetables conflict. Lifestyles conflict. Foundations crumble or were never that solid to begin with. And we are two very private, self-sufficient girls in an awfully public, self-aggrandizing world, not prone to splashing our daily life out in the open for the other to track. That’s a conscious, personal choice that comes with a price: make the effort one-on-one or risk losing touch. But…not a single call or email, no attempt to touch base. Nothing. She obviously didn’t feel the need to. And I guess it’s none of my business why. Having said that, is it petty of me to feel dismayed? Friendships are rewarding and enriching. They are also time-consuming and sometimes one-sided. I didn’t feel ours was either.

Maybe we just lacked that zing, that magic ingredient that allows you to pick up where you left off eons ago? We didn’t have that, did we? Time and space managed to do damage. We weren’t invested enough to take care of repairs. I still hope you’re happy, whatever makes you happy these days. I hope your children thrive; they always seemed as delightful and insightful as their mom. I hope you stay safe and curious. And I hope freedom doesn’t become too lonely a road. No man is an island. Many women are.

Same same but different

Temperature: a slushy 4/39 degrees

Eating: Heading out to dinner later today to meet up with my tribe of fierce fabulous fearless women. Happy International Women’s Day! ✊

Drinking: Oh I’m sure there’ll be a toast or several.

Watching: the new Moominvalley series. We need a Moomin emoji. To the Unicode Consortium, let's go!

Listening: to the X Ambassadors

Reading: How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals by Sy Montgomery, illustrated by Rebecca Green. This is a beautiful book on so many levels.

Thinking: Don’t judge me, exalt me, berate me or underestimate me/anyone based on my/his/her sex. What we do, think and say is what counts.

Feeling: A tad bit under the weather from the flu my son gifted me with. But thanks for waiting until carnaval was done!

Friends, family, countrymen, lend me your ears

"[L]ike a sunrise or sunset...we appear and we disappear, and we are so important to some, but we are just passing through."

~Natalia in Before Midnight

Happy Valentine's Day, fellow travelers. 💋💓
 

When all is said and done

 
Warning: verbal incontinence ahead.

Year-end review time! So how did you do, compared to how you expected to January 1, 2014? I started out all eleison, all merciful, not too hard on myself. And ended up, well...as the Mythbusters will tell you, failure is always an option. It wasn't a catastrophic failure, this year merely confirmed an observation: I'm an on-off person. When there's work to do, I'm all over it. When it's time to kick back, shoes and gadgets go flying into the depths and won't resurface until it's time to go back to work.

So. Maybe I should apologize for the radio silence here at the den but I won't. True to form, I've been working hard so I can enjoy some rest and relaxation over the holidays. Be with family, visit friends and take care of the new addition to the family, Chloe the cat. I know horses and hounds but I've never owned a cat. [I know. No one ever owns a cat, not really...] I've envied friends with cats and I've wanted one for the longest time, and now we have one, and not just because I wanted one but because the whole family did. She's a European shorthair and the sweetest, fiercest thing.

All in all, my life hasn't been very tale worthy. Work. Exercise. Family & friends time. Chores. Not always in that order but always some combination of the above. There's been some backstage drama worth a post or ten but that's personal and a business matter and nothing I can go into right here right now. It has certainly given me pause and another glimpse at the unsavory underbelly of a trade I've worked in for a long time in many capacities. So hardly a surprise, just another observation confirmed. People are the best, kind, loving and compassionate. People are the worst, cruel, selfish and unjust.

What else? I've been thinking about memory and identity and our lives, the only shot we have at doing everything we'll ever do, and I've been thinking about time, how it's become a luxury item [although I do believe that's an illusion, a creation after our own selves; there's still time, we're the wasteful ones and always in a hurry]. There are no winemakers in the family, only people who enjoy wine. Should you decide to become a vintner, from scratch, buy land and vines, it would take you a minimum of twelve years to see a grape worth squashing. The prerequisite of a quality wine is a quality vine, and those can take up to forty years to yield their best produce. Forty years. Still wonder why some wines cost a fortune? Someone somewhere waited half a lifetime for a vine to reach its full potential. Sometimes they wait by the vine in vain. Sometimes it comes to nothing. You can make bad wine from good grapes but not vice versa.

Take your time. Wait it out. See what happens. No time like the present. Carpe diem. Strike while the iron is hot. One of the biggest lies we tell ourselves is that we make decisions based on cool careful calculation, on knowledge, the intellect, dollars, pounds and euros, the bottom line. Maybe lie is too strong a word, the wrong word. Maybe it's not a lie but a blindness to how much private emotions and past experiences factor. We like to think of ourselves as sensible beings who can keep our sensibilities in check when the limbic brain, the reptile brain gives the first and fastest response in any situation and most of us never learn to override it. Most of us aren't even conscious of it's workings but everyone knows the physical reactions, the swell of emotion that so easily takes hold of you when something unexpected happens, good or bad. If you have time, you reason. If not, you react.

Some are all emotion and reaction all of the time. No one is reasonable and sensible in everything they do. Feelings factor and that's a fact, one dictators have shamelessly milked since the first undecided human decided s/he needed a determined leader. How else would despots garner attention and gain followers? Why on earth would anyone raise a hand or their voice against another unless they're driven by a logic, a rhetoric, that stands and falls on the feelings they generate, the reactions that follow, the emotional satisfaction they can bring?

"I'm going to slaughter 6 million people. Who's with me?" "I will give you a strong, proud nation, the greatest this world has ever seen, a glorious kingdom that will last a thousand years. Who's with me?" The power of words. The power of emotion. Words can be used to generate empathy and respect. Words can be used to create conflict, to divide and oppress. The very same words in some cases. Take the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, their words too often misused for personal gain, selfish purposes, evil. Just listen. Look around you. Here I babble but the world, oh dearest denizens, sometimes the world just renders me speechless.

Like dearest Europe, for example. Where are you going, old girl? Anti-immigration, anti-Islamic sentiments, anti this and anti that. Hatred disguised as nationalism. Nationalism disguised as patriotism. Egotism disguised as reason. This is your answer, your solution? What's the question again? You make them up as you go to justify your actions or should I say reactions because the only brain I can see at work and in charge is the reptile one. You feel threatened, you attack. Is there a reason to feel threatened? That's what I'd like to know but man is it hard to have a conversation with someone deeply immersed in a monologue. Take Erdogan whose new palace is bigger than the Louvre. The Louvre! And don't get me started on Orbán. One of my oldest friends is half Hungarian, and she's just... Well, not living in Hungary for one and probably never will be if this is their trajectory. And Putin... Putin explains Russia and Russia explains Putin. Don't be fooled, though. Russia and the Russian people are two very different things.

And I'm at it again, aren't I, soapbox out and foaming at the mouth... Great, just great. Let's talk about something else, shall we. The holidays? Yea! Whether you celebrate at Christmastime or not many around you do. I know it's a hard time of year to be alone. If you are, I still hope you enjoy the peace and quiet the holidays bring, even for a few days. I hope you do all the things that make you happy, things you enjoy, and if that's too much self-absorption to your liking, I hope you take up people on their invitations for you to come over for dinner, drinks, coffee... Maybe they're not asking because it's the Christian, Christmasy thing to do but because they really want you there. Life will resume normal programing in a few, you'll be swept away and full of excuses why you can't thanks for asking maybe some other time. Go.

We most certainly celebrate Christmas at Casa Dita. There's not much religious faith at the heart of our celebration because of the different individuals and denominations coming together, but there's love and compassion, there's empathy and respect, the moral compasses of die hard worshipers, agnostics and atheists alike. A religion, a life!, not rooted in love, compassion, empathy and respect...what purpose does it serve?

From soapbox to pulpit. Religion and politics? I just broke some social media rules, I believe, like all two of them. It's just that... Gah. 'Tis the season? Up next: New year, new gear! Are you thinking of a theme for 2015? Share if you dare. I've been on Facebook and Twitter, can you believe it, on-off as per this year's/this life's theme, but still. So find me if you want to keep in touch on a more daily/weekly basis.

I haven't had time or energy for writing fiction lately and that's a shame because I write in my head all the time. I intend to be a good girl over the holidays and get some words down on paper. Yes, paper. Still enjoy that, immensely, both writing on some and reading print. The computer and keyboard need a rest and I need some rest from them.

The dark days have been a drag but we got some snow yesterday and there's more coming in today. No more dreaming of a white Christmas, it's here and so is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Which means longer days from now on, slowly but surely! Another cause for celebration, what our "pagan" ancestors celebrated before baby Jesus and St. Nick started facing off. Can't shout too loudly, though, this is the land of Santa after all. Since we live in the vicinity, he visits Scandinavian kids on Christmas eve.

You bet the wee ones are excited and so am I. I need a break and some downtime with family and friends. I hope you get some rest too or if it's an adventure you crave, I hope you find one. I hope you find what you're looking for. I hope you keep the faith, whatever lies at the heart of your belief/s, and I hope whatever it is, it's rooted in love, compassion and respect. It would be sooo easy to give in to despair and cynicism, the world bombasts us with reasons every day. But we're not quitters, are we, sweetie darlings? It's our world too and love is our resistance.

Merry Christmas, sweetie darlings, and a most excellent new year.

Anytime you need a friend

For erotic romance authors love and lust, sweet emotion and hot sex, are inseparable. Can't have one without the other. Relationships are not sealed with a mere kiss, unless it's one that touches everywhere, and desire is no good without devotion. That is our cocktail of choice, one we serve in flavors ranging from vanilla to spicy hot.

Of course love is more protean, more multifaceted than that. We know that, but our craft is crafting tales of hanky panky with a happy ending so love's other facets and faces tend to get less coverage, often none. Well, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Or in this case, when in Scandinavia, do as the Norsemen do.

These bastions of brotherhood, these champions of equality, dedicate the 14th of February as much to friendship as courtship, maybe more. Maybe they're just not that into romantic antics, you say? They're just not into imported festivities, especially those that come with costly commodities attached, I say.

I find friendship one of the dearest faces and loveliest flavors of love. To do as the Norse do, I now use Valentine's Day to celebrate the gift of good friends. My oldest friendships span over three decades. Yeah, that's how young/old I am. It's a case of till death do us part with these two women, women I've grown up with and women I plan to grow old with. I have friends. And then I have them.

They know who they are. You know who you are because I will never tire of telling you how much I love you and admire you for who you are and respect what you do for others. What you've done for me. Without you, where would I be now. That's a dedication I stamp wherever I can. That's a dedication waiting to see the light of your e-reader's screen. I have...I had...have...gah...two Romantica WIPs where friends play an important part. Friendship is a theme right up there with courtship.

They say authors should never use a friend as a plot device or a mouthpiece. They can stop right there. I mean, what did you just say? Use. A. Friend. Use a friend. What kind of girl, what kind of author, do you take me for? I would never use a friend. My characters would never use a friend, unless they're monsters who would use and abuse a friend in which case they are headed for a world of hurt. My characters can speak for themselves, thank you very much, and the plot advance just fine without puppets. That's not what friends are for, how can you say that, how can you even think that?!

I am shocked. Taking a moment to breathe in and out of a paper bag, that's how shocked I am. Use a friend. Tut-tut. Share with a friend. Trust. Be loyal. Be honest. Dependable. Offer an ear and a shoulder, a place to stay, sustenance. Have fun. Get serious. Get mad without fearing disapproval. Get sad without fearing rejection. Travel. Talk. Keep a secret. Keep in touch regardless of geography, or life situation, or lifestyle. Be there. Be here now.

That's what friends are for. That's what a friend is. Someone whose heart and door are always open.

Something's gotten hold of my heart

'Tis the season, sweetie darlings, wedding anniversary season, a season that makes an insufferable lovey-dovey-shiny-happy-want-to-throw-my-arms-around-the-world girl out of me, a girl brimming with love; romantic, platonic, filial, maternal, sisterly...you name it, I'm feeling it, dearest dearest denizens. So I decided to celebrate this many-splendored thing with thoughts on the subject ranging across time and continents. Just because. Because love! So what's your favorite?

Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love. I'd stepped in it a few times. 
~ Rita Rudner

We choose those we like; with those we love, we have no say in the matter. 
~ Mignon McLaughlin

The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of. 
~ Blaise Pascal

The eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love. 
~ Margaret Atwood

Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart, and the senses.
~ Lao Tzu

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
~ Victor Hugo

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
~ Bertrand Russell

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
~ W. Somerset Maugham

You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.
~ Dr. Seuss

A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.
~ Jim Morrison

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
~ William Shakespeare

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
~ Pablo Neruda

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. 
~ Zora Neale Hurston

Love withers under constraints: its very essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear: it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited where its votaries live in confidence, equality and unreserve. 
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Stand by me.
~ Ben E. King

I'll stand by you.
~ The Pretenders

I'll stand by you

Sweetie darlings, I'm stepping out of the den tomorrow evening to meet up with two of my very best friends on this planet, or any planet, really. Women I can call at three in the morning. Women I love, admire and respect. Women who know my every hurt and secret, women who trust me with theirs. That kind of friends. We've laughed and cried together for almost thirty years now and if we're very lucky, we're laugh and cry together for thirty more.

I will see you Sunday evening/Monday morning then! Behave!! And don't forget to pop by the 69 Shades blog for the Halloween ditty I wrote starring this gent, The Rake in the Lake.

Love actually

I attended the best kind of wedding last weekend, one that looked exactly like the happy couple; it could not have been anyone else's ceremony. It was a large gathering of family and friends ages zero to eighty something, and not a stiff upper lip in the house, just a sweet day that had us sighing and crying and a fun night that saw us laughing and smiling.

I've known the groom for twenty years, watched him grow from where-shall-I go-what-shall-I-do to a seaman to the dashing sea captain he is today. (I kid you not, even the guys had to admit he looked awesome in that uniform.) I've known the bride for far less than that, but one thing is evident and makes me sooo happy for him: a fun-loving, life-loving, adventurous man has found someone who'll have no trouble keeping up with him. Alas, the last of the Mohicans has been tamed. Actually, his friends could not be happier that it is so.

It was good seeing people I don't see too often in person. As much as I appreciate modern technology (and a decent waterproof mascara) and all the ways in which I can keep up with friends all over the world (I wish I'd had that in my early youth) it will never ever be the same as hugging someone, sitting down for a chat, shimmying the night away on the dance floor, looking them in the eye and telling them I have truly missed you, kissing someone and wishing them every happiness.

All in all, it was a very life-affirming weekend, and the world being what it is, life being what it is, there are never enough of those. Then again, why should happiness be the anomaly and the rest the norm? Why is happiness so often followed by some measure of guilt, or fear? Survivor guilt, fear of loss. Because nothing lasts forever? What if you chose happiness, love, life, light? Because nothing lasts forever. Could you take it?

I saw the Carl Larsson exhibition at the Finnish National Gallery, a broad selection of definitive works and rare gems alike. I'd seen his art in books and posters and postcards, more often than not depictions of hearth and home, days in the sun, children at play, the great outdoors, flowers, self-portraits, his chin held high, a mischievous grin on his lips, light light light. What I didn't know was how much of a muse, how tremendous an enabler, how deeply loved and how talented in her own right his wife Karin was. I knew nothing about his humble beginnings or the defeats he encountered late in life and in his career. I hadn't seen the book illustrations he'd done, dark, detailed, morose even, so unlike anything he painted in his dear Sundborn, the images the mind's eye sees when you hear the name Carl Larsson.

I had no idea all that light came from a very dark place, a place his friend August Strindberg accused Larsson of turning his back on so he could paint travesties of life and living, an accusation that led to a falling out and left Larsson hurting. Because the man knew his shadows. They followed him all his life. They're all over his art, small details you catch on your tenth or twentieth viewing; when did that get there? But he made a conscious decision to stand with his face to the sun. The shadow still stood there. Of course he knew that, but turning his back on all that light would have left him with nothing but that shadow and that's where he would have disappeared, engulfed by things that were just as much a part of him as everything the sun had touched.

Why is it more honest, more true to life, more genuine to stand in the dark? Why is it naive, false, desperate, hopeless, to opt for the light? Because there are apt to be disappointments? Well, duh. I submit to you that it is much easier to give in to depressed thoughts, expect failure and fail yourself than to keep up hope, press on, and save yourself. So don't tell me to take off the rose-colored glasses. You first with the crap goggles.

The choice is yours

I love my job. I love Hubby's job, too. I wouldn't survive it for a minute. Then again, he couldn't write to save his life. He wouldn't stop as long as his heart beat in his chest, though. He would die trying, my hot man from the cold.

His hours are far from conventional, and that's okay. In fact, it's a bonus. We've had a steamy office romance going for as long as I've worked from home. What? Tsk. As if you wouldn't take advantage of the situation. Born to be mild or wild, moaner/screamer/do you want to get arrested, you would if you had kids and the constant prospect of interruption that comes with the package.

But the surest way to put out a fire is to deprive it of oxygen. So tonight I'll step out for some air and spend the evening with two women I'm absolutely demented about, women who love me as Hubby does, for me, women I love, admire and respect with all my heart.

You can't be all things to one person. No one person will ever fulfill all your needs. Expect that and set yourself up for disappointment. I wouldn't survive doing what Hubby does because I haven't got and never will have the skills and knack for it. I don't understand half of what it involves. It doesn't mean I can't be interested in what he does, appreciative of the fact that it's his chosen profession, thankful someone's at it because it can be stressful and demanding and laden with responsibility. 

What I'm truly grateful for is that he has people who understand exactly what he's talking about if he needs to talk about it with someone, and that I have people to unload to so I don't have to dump it all at his feet and watch his gaze glaze over as I talk shop. It takes nothing away from what we have together. If anything, it adds a very important layer to the relationship, one I consider all-important, the one where we belong together, yes, but where we don't belong to one another, exist for one another, are the other's only reason to live.

Marriage, or any other serious relationship, say friendship, is such a paradox. It's supposed to be a source of joy and enjoyment. So why does it sometimes feel like so much work? Where's the fun? Wasn't it supposed to be fun and fulfilling? Here's a thought: It's all of that, too. Chances are you're not married/friends for money, security, convenience or any other particular reason other than you choose to be. You want to be. 

And nothing requires more strength of will and determination than something you choose to do of your own volition. That's why marriage, and friendship, can sometimes feel like so much work. It's a choice you have to make every day. And unless you are absolutely free to make that decision, unless you have choices and you choose them above all others, you can't commit yourself heart, body and soul.

Told you. A paradox. Sorry if I lost you. My intentions are, as always, good; doubly so on a Frisky Friday. Feel free to comment, dissent, nod in agreement. Just promise you'll think about it, and that you won't be too upset with me if I don't immediately get back to you, because tonight yours truly madly deeply and partners in crime will burn this town.

A league of extraordinary gentlemen

Ladies: Do you at times feel that chivalry is dead? That courtly love has checked out? Do not fear, fret or throw a fit, for while you wait to see whether it be a fallacy, an extended vacation or a permanent one, you too can be the perfect gentleman!

Because she's worth it!! Because your girlfriends deserve the absolute best for being the queens, saints, sinners and goddesses they are!!!

Take them out, wine and dine them, surprise them with small gifts and shower them with compliments (if you thought it, why wouldn't you say it?!), especially those lady friends of yours who at present don't have a gentleman to call their own. 

You do? Good for you! Never thought about it that way? Get going! Make someone's day. You'll make her happy and feel good about doing it, gentleman's word.