The Unreliability of Memory

My super-fantastic husband has been systematically cleaning out our boiler room over the past several weeks (hey, there's floor! and a workbench! and I can get to the oil tank without gouging out my abdomen on the weight bar!), and yesterday he found one of my old photo albums.

It has pictures in it from the end of my senior year of high school, graduation, the summer before college, and the weekend I arrived at Ohio Wesleyan. You know that funky slide into nostalgia you get when you look at stuff from 24 years ago? I'm kind of wallowing in it right now.

It's odd. I don't really consider myself a sentimental person. I told him to toss some ugly homemade ornaments from my childhood, including a particularly unfortunately clay design I made:

Me: Throw it away. It's ugly. 

Him: Nooo! It looks like poop!

But wow, do these photos have me missing the good old days. And that makes me resentful, because if there's anything I hate almost as much as close-minded absolutism, it's being a cliché. But after a childhood of being shy and introverted and picked on, my senior year of high school was pretty awesome. I'm very happy in the life I'm living now, so it's not like I'm wishing for change. I just miss some of the best parts of those times.

It's also interesting how faulty memory is, both good and bad. In mine, I'm always overweight. I lost 25 or so pounds that senior year of high school, and I weighed 117 when I left for college. I *know* intellectually how fantastic that is. But I don't remember it that way. I remember poochy belly and flabby inner thighs and jiggliness where you don't want it. But then I see this:

I look pretty good! If you ignore the 80s waistbands and hair. But OMG, the hair. I remember the curls from senior prom as being not the way I wanted them, but not awful. Um, yeah, they were awful. Very frizzy. I got what was supposed to be a spiral perm right before I went to college. I wanted it just like my friend Sue's, and I event went to her hairdresser. But I guess the wife usually did Sue's, I don't know. The husband cut and cut and cut and permed and cut some more. It was like a Brillo pad. Literally. Wiry and rough and tight and horribly, horribly short. I remember it as being bad...and still, it was worse.

I'm not posting those pictures. Some things should just remain off the Internet.

One side effect of nostalgia is a reminder of how grateful I am to all the kids in the Ichabod Crane Central High School classes of 1988 and 1989. They welcomed me into their classes and social circles, invited me to parties and *didn't* follow up by saying they didn't want to be friends with me anymore. Without them, I never would have gained the confidence and self-esteem that got me through college and gave me the ability to have the friendships I do now.

And maybe even more importantly, the passion to write romance novels.

Pure Indulgence

“They” say computers and the Internet are depersonalizing our society, keeping us from connecting with real people.  Once again, I call bullshit.

Today is my birthday.  The first person outside of my house to wish me a happy one?  A guy I knew in college.  The second?  A writer friend I met once, who lives hundreds if not thousands of miles away.  I got dozens of wishes via Facebook, text, and e-mail.

And not a damn one made me feel disconnected and alone.  Instead I felt warm and loved and part of a giant community of people who care about each other.  Imagine that.

So far, it’s been a great day.  My husband took the day off, so he got up at 6:15 with the kids and got them off to school (not that they need much) and did the morning chores (the very best part of having a birthday is not having to scoop litter boxes, stand outside with the dog while she does her business, or load the dishwasher).  I slept until 10.

I know!

Shortly after I woke up, he brought me flowers and tiramisu truffles. I do have a little bit of work I can’t avoid, but otherwise I’m going to write and read and relax.  Then I’ll open presents and go to Red Lobster for dinner and drag said totally awesome husband to the 3D version of Avatar, because I want to see it and because he’s made of awesomesauce (he hates 3D, but he hasn’t seen the new 3D yet).

I’ve opened one present so far.  My brother gave me Tom Brady.  Is that cool or what?  Of course, don’t worry, I’ll let him out for games. :)

Merry Christmas to all of my readers who celebrate it!  May you all have as much joy and love around you as I have today.

NaNoWriMo is Kicking My A**

Therefore, my dead brain is offering you these tasty morsels instead of a thoughtful and thought-provoking post:

Some Romance



Some Gravitas



Some Funny



And heck, let's have some more Jensen Ackles in Eyeliner

An Open Letter to Single Parents

Well, this is really not about single parents in real life, because I don't know many, and I can't say I've ever encountered the policy in real life. But it is everywhere in fiction. It abounds in category romances, and I just watched the episode of Gilmore Girls where Luke lets Lorelai throw April's birthday party.

The policy to which I'm referring is only applied to romantic relationships for some reason. Single moms don't want their kids to get to know the guys they date at all, or to know the women their kids' fathers date, because OMG the relationship might not last and the kid would be attached and they'd be devastated beyond recovery if they left.

So better not let your kid make friends. They might move away, or more likely, decide they'd rather be closer friends with someone else, and devastate your kid.

Don't let them go to school. It's sooooo easy to get attached to a good teacher and then wham, nine months later, they're out of their life. They'll never get over that, after seeing them day after day, more total time than they see their own family.

Definitely don't let them play sports. Attachments to coaches and teammates can be strong. And can you imagine, the trauma of a combined losing season and having to say goodbye?

Most of all, never, ever, EVER get a pet. Cats might be okay, if you get them young, because they can live 20 years. Unless, you know, they don't. They could get sick. So yeah, forget the cats. Big dogs only live to mid-teens, small dogs a little longer. "Starter" pets like hamsters have very short life spans. Stay away from those.

The point is, kids are resilient. My mother was a single parent from the time I was seven and my brother was four. She dated, and we met most of the guys, because it was important that if there was going to be a relationship there, everything fit. That we liked them and they liked us. All of them left our lives, and it didn't hurt us. It taught us.

The way to raise mature, well-adjusted adults who can handle change is to give kids reasons to adjust, changes to which they can adapt. Life has pain. We all need to endure it, and the only way to learn how is by doing it.

The flip side is that you may deny them, and yourself, something wonderful. And that's an even bigger loss.

Dual Purpose

JR Ward

Megan Padalecki

Brandon having sex with Megan

Chicken feet

Masturebation

Apparently, these strings will drive traffic to my site via search engines. So everyone who is reading this because they clicked a Google link...GOTCHA! Now go here.

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I got lax about bumping up my labels that only have one entry (purposefully, anyway--I did get a couple just by happenstance). So today the topics are "Love" and "News."

I'm in love. Been in love for nearly 20 years now. Every day there is something that reinforces that love. But there is a part of me that misses those early days, the feeling in my chest when I was falling in love. Misses the anticipation of searching the street in case he walked by, or of the first (or tenth or 500th) kiss.

Which is why I write romance, of course. To recreate those moments for others like me, and for those who may not have felt it yet. And to relive them myself.

It's also, without a doubt, the reason for my crushes on such specimens as Jensen Ackles and Orlando Bloom--but don't tell my husband.

I don't watch the news.

There. Two more down, only three to go!

Happiness Baseline

This morning the local radio personalities were talking about a guy who won $25,000 in the lottery two days in a row. They mentioned it because the host had read an article about a study that shows that the happiness spike of such a thing doesn't last, that after a period of time the person will go back to their baseline of happiness.

Well, duh.

The study also showed that if something terrible happens to you, you will also return to your happiness baseline.

Duh again. I mean, the phrase "time heals all wounds" didn't become a cliché because it was wrong.

We don't live in slices of time. So while winning money makes us happy in the sphere of influence of the win, other things in our lives are still occurring. We still have to feed the kids and drive them around and take out the trash and do endless amounts of laundry and dishes and struggle to either find or fit in those things that fulfill us beyond the day-to-day grind of living.

The part of the study I loved, though, was the part that found two specific things that can permanently elevate a person's happiness baseline.

One was adopting a pet. The other was marriage to someone they truly love.

If that's not validation of the entire romantic fiction industry, I don't know what is. :)