- Dental angst, the holiday weekend, and a quick turnaround time on an important task I'd never done before have made me tired.
- Curious Girl has a friend over now. They're getting married, which involves lots of dress up clothes, a very large stuffed bear (who I think is actually the partner, since one of the girls seems to be a newborn baby), fancy music (Vivaldi), and money for the trip to the store after the wedding. CG loves to play getting married, and I am mightily amused by the things she seems to think people do immediately after the ceremony. In the tub, she often wants to play that she's just gotten married, and is now at the gym working out. Her partner is invariably unavailable (usually having been hurt in a car crash and thus needing hospital treatment, although sometimes merely at home because of a cold). It's all about the long dress.
- My medical phobias are really bizarre. Saying calming thoughts to myself makes my stomach hurt. I know this is irrational. But knowing it is irrational does little to address it, which is unlike how the rest of my life works, where rationality reigns.
- A favorite observation of one of my college friends was "there are few situations in life that can't be improved with either a nap or a good sandwich." Looking at a fresh loaf of whole wheat bread cooling on the stove, I have to agree (even with an angsty stomach ache).
27 May 2007
Very Light Blogging
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4 comments:
Some things aren't rational. That's okay. I've got some phobias myself, and it's hard to feel tied to the phobias; but even still, it's not a flaw. I tend to think of it like this: phobias are a byproduct of evolutionary important fear and warning systems. To ME they may not be rational, but their presence was part of the package that kept all the monkeys that came before me going, and so there's no reason to get frustrated with myself for the irrationality of the animal alarm system of my body. I tend to go with what seems to work best with my 'fraidy monkey, and not worry about how sensical it is.
I had imaginary partners hurt and requiring hospital treatment too, when I was younger. Married meant a lot of different things I liked to play, but partner was not always convienent. I find that interesting.
From what you're describing, it's the wedding dress is still so invested. I imagine these days, it's mainly the dress - when I was younger, there were other things that came with the package. Being respectable, having stuff, and as I was older, nascient ideas of sexuality.
I wonder, if men got to wear/do/have something expensive and special and reserved just for wedding days, do you think boys would have imaginary partners just for the excuse of having the wedding?
My son often play acts getting married, but its usually to provide an excuse for why a baby shows up on the scene. He likes playing at being pregnant, (a feat which would take substantially more than a wedding ceremony, I imagine.) His partner then goes to work. He has the baby, and then he takes the baby to work at the zoo, which is always his fantasy workplace.
Given that he was there when his dad and I were married, I'm not sure why the traditionalism. But I learned one thing from baby-first-marriage-soon-after: you don't have the option of relaxing on a honeymoon and spending money you shouldn't. So, hey. I'd recommend marriage (if it's important) first and baby later, if only on hedonistic grounds.
I'm long winded everywhere, Susan, but at your house I like to tell stories. Your writing opens something up in me.
Arwen, I love your stories! You're welcome here any time (and of course would also be welcome if you're not feeling so long-winded). I'm glad my posts have a way of encouraging them.
We went to a wedding last fall, and that was the first time Curious Girl saw a bride in a wedding dress and it made quite the impression. Well, that's not quite true: she'd seen ME in a wedding dress at a photo shoot (for a fundraising calendar, in which Politica and I were dressing as brides. CG got thoroughly freaked out, I tried dancing around with her to get her to calm down, which had only a marginal effect, but for a long time afterward, whenever we saw brides at one of the churches in the neighborhood, she would say, "oh look, they're going dancing!"). CG's wedding fantasies are also about separation anxiety: she often wants me to pretend to be her mother, and then we have to talk about how much fun her wedding was, and how we had so much fun dancing together, and how she's going to come visit me soon. She wants the dress, but she doesn't want to have to move out of the house!
See, you bring out my stories, too. (And I like that you tell stories when you comment-I often do that, but worry that other bloggers will think I'm terribly self-centered to be telling my own stories on their posts).
So true about the nap and the sandwich--even if it doesn't solve the problem it helps the brain chemistry.
I like having people go off in directions I don't expect in comments--not sure that it happens too often on my blog, but I like the comment field to be a conversation, not a Greek chorus.
Z. has a somewhat obscure book (I was handed a copy of it at BookExpo a few years back) called Mom and Mum Get Married, and this has made her very interested in our wedding (she calls our wedding album "Mama and Mommy get married," which I had to resist italicizing).
Neither of these weddings (ours or the one in the book) involved a wedding dress, which never occurred to me before now. But now that it has, I'm grateful, since my feeling about wedding dresses has been profoundly influenced by Joni Mitchell's "Song for Sharon."
Hello -- I've been lurking around your blog for a while. Which I like, a lot.
I'm a philosopher, and I wanted to share with you the peanut butter sandwich paradox which has always made me feel better just thinking about it.
(1) Nothing is better than true happiness.
(2) A peanut butter sandwich is better than nothing.
Hence: A peanut butter sandwich is better than true happiness.
QED.
Enjoy your sandwich!
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