The Red Tape of Love and Marriage

Getting married in France is, well, fricken' complicated. My birth certificate arrived from the land of aloha-style, (aka three weeks late in all directions,) and A and I faced the challenge of getting it translated IMMEDIATELY so that we could dash in the city hall and reserve a date. (Everything is happening in high speed, I remind you, so that we can submit his green card application ASAP.) The only official translator we could find in Dijon was expensive, old, unfriendly, and clearly insane. 

On the day it was supposed to be ready for pickup, I rented a street bike and ventured far and away in the freezing rain to find her hermit-like dwelling. When I buzzed, her wrinkled face appeared peering around a lace white curtain in a window above me. She had tapped on the glass to get my attention. She looked suspicious, so I waved. She disappeared for a moment, then opened the door to demand what I wanted. I said I was there for the birth certificate. She responded with a blank expression. "..The translation? For the birth certificate from Hawaii?" I added meekly.

Finally, signs of recognition. "-I told you after 10am!" 

"...It's 11..?" I offered delicately. She sized me up a few more moments before allowing me in to sit beside a giant, stuffed elephant to wait for my documents.

Couldn't dash away from there fast enough. Then, meeting A at the city hall with our hundred-page dossier, we are told that our attestations of residence, a bank statement for me and an insurance statement from A, were no good. Too old and they don't accept bank statements. We run home and scrounge up a phone bill for me and and a newer insurance statement for A. Then back to the city hall, where we hold hands in the seats across the desk from the mairie, panting. -She tells us they don't take phone bills either and points out that there were two addreses on A's insurance - one ours and one his parents - (which was "confusing,") so no good. We're told to go the office of electricity in town and get one there with both our names. We gather up our dossier once again and run across town to find that the office is closed uniquely that day for re-decorating. Awesome!

At that point we were out of ideas and returned to the city hall defeated. We ended having to photocopy every piece of identify in existence for A so that I could return the next day without him after going back to the electricity office and getting an appropriate attestation. Far from a walk in the park, this business! Luckily, I got it done this morning and we now have an official date: the 25th of May. (-Three weeks after the date we wanted, but beggars can't be choosers.) 

The one enjoyable part of the whole effort was putting a heart on the calendar.  That part felt good. 

 

(Dijon's city hall) 

Paris Perturbé

OH. MY. GOD. If anyone had ever suffered a more miserable day trip to Paris I  would be very surprised. Of course I was mildly excited, I love Paris, (who doesn't) and was looking forward to lunch someplace romantic on a pleasant spring day + getting my marriage paperwork + scenic train ride home with little to no complications.

Well. Ominously just before I arrive at the train station here in Dijon, I get a puzzling text from SNCF telling me that circulation is "fortement perturbé," and that I can exchange or cancel my ticket at the service desk. But, I've just arrived, I'm a bit late, and see on the information boards that my train is at the quai, à l'heure, and ready to leave. So I figure the SNCF people have gone insane and I jump on moments before the doors close and the train starts rolling. 

I text A to tell him how silly the SNCF people are and sit back happily.

As the train moves North, the warm sunlight of Spring turns from pleasant, to gray, to snow blizzard. Before I know it the train is stopped on the tracks in a sea of white, where we sit for the next two hours. I miss my embassy appointment and learn from the chatter around me that the Gare de Lyon is completely blocked by snow, no one is getting in or out, and I start fearing for how I'm going to get home in the evening. I havent eaten and I start thinking I might die. Also, I'm not dressed for snow. 

The train finally arrives in blizarding Paris at 2:30 in the afternoon, two and a half hours after my appointment. (I tried calling the embassy on the train but the operator kept disconnecting me or sending me to an answering machine.) I run down into the metro and catch the subway to rue Rivoli, just beside the gardens at the Louvre. I pop back up into the freezing snow blizzard and see the hazy, gray form of the Eiffel Tower peering through the white and for a moment feel a little burst of butterflies in my heart: I can never see that tower without remembering how in love I am with the city. The moment is short lived however, as I shield my eyes from the snow and skid across the slushy, busy intersections to the embassy. 

I get there and only one guichet is left open. I take a number and wait. After 20 minutes, the person abandons their post and I'm seemingly left alone in the American Embassy. A janitor eventually approaches me and asks what I'm doing. I tell him about my appointment and he tells me that everyone in notarial services is gone and that I'll have to come back another day. I muster my most miserable, helpless little girl face and tell him I don't live near Paris and can't come back. It seems to work and he takes pity on me and gets on the phone. Thank goodness, someone was still there for me and they met with me at one of the desks. Straight away they asked me if I had cash. I said no. Then they proceeded to tell me that they couldn't give me my marriage documents because the cashier had left and I couldn't pay with a credit card. I give her my miserable look I used earlier on the janitor. Again she takes pity on me and produces a map of the area. She draws a little path on it to an ATM, and tells me to hurry, because everyone was trying to leave.

Back out into the snow blizzard. I'll remind you here that I had bronchitis, was wearing spring clothes, and was running through a freezing wet blanket of white in a complete panic. Long story short, after stopping and asking several people in the streets,  I found the ATM, got back to the embassy in time, and got my paper work. By now it was time for my train home, so I turned on my heels and dashed directly back to the train station.. where all the trains were still delayed or canceled. Snow was falling in the station and I was freezing and still hadn't eaten. I took shelter in an expensive station cafe and made a hot chocolate last for the rest of the evening until finally, a train heading south appeared on the info board. I got home at 8 feeling victimized. Dieu merci, A had made me a bath and a cocktail. 

Sitting in the hot tub and sipping my drink, I thought, at least I'm marrying the right guy. 

Please, Spice Up My Life

How weary I have grown of the mild cream and butter flavors of France! I'm desperate for cinnamon, turmeric, ginger, clove, basil, masala! Spices!!! I made the grave mistake today of daydreaming of a world of zesty veggies: Indian food- and I nearly went mad. My body is aching for zest. Burning for spice. Hungry for heat!! Citrus! Peppers! Uuugghhhh. A girl who found her earliest culinary loves in Thai and Indian cuisine should never have chosen French as her heart's lacking language. 

In desperation I sent a message to a friend and San Francisco dweller begging that she send me a flat rate of boxed Indian foods. Incomparable to restaurant quality of course, but oh so much better than nothing. 

Lately I've been facing a heightened awareness of the lack of flavor in my life. I went on a quest to not 1, not 2, but 3 super markets seeking jalapenos, a grocery store staple in the states, but couldn't find the elusive buggers anywhere. Here food is seasoned with butter, salt, oil, herbs; garlic occasionally, but the slightest pick to your tongue you are hard pressed to find. My desire for saucy spicy burritos; steaming coconut curries, and colorful vegetable stir fries has just about pushed me out the window and to an un-timely and overly dramatic death. 

And I wont even mention Kombucha. !!!

First person to mail me a spicy care package gets an authentic Eiffel tower key chain. who's in? Anyone?

Positive Plumbing

The toilet clogged in my tiny apartment, (I admit it, it was probably my fault: I've always thought that a toilet made a suitable substitute for a garbage disposal and had just a few days before tried to flush a bowl of spinach stems and kiwi skins,) and TMI and I faced an evening of plunging up all sorts of private unpleasant things that you normally don't want to share with your significant other. Tossing eloquence, I'll just say it: we were battling a seemingly endless onslaught of old turds. Just when we'd figure out how to deal with one, (secretly throwing it out the window, onto a neighbor's roof, running down stairs to put it in the trash, etc.) another would pop up to terrorize us.

I have to say despite the obvious unpleasantness it felt.. intimate. We weren't so embarrassed as we were disgusted and desperate; we were facing a domestic dilemma like two people truly in love. And for that I thought it was a valuable experience.

..Except that it's still broken and every time I have to go to the bathroom I have to either pee in the sink or run into town to find a place. And let me tell you, public toilets in France: basically non existent.

In other news positive plans are falling into place delicately and tentatively, like new snow: it's soft and clean and looks pretty good, but there's no telling if it will stick or not. I've started to apply for several online MA programs in Art History and/or Art Administration, which would allow my nomadic lifestyle while also continuing my studies. I was supposed to meet with a man today about a six month work contract, so that I could come back to France in March or April after my current visa expires in February, (but he didn't show up, so that's a little worrying) and TMI is working on getting an internship in a vineyard on the West Coast of the USA. All these efforts combined have made me feel like maybe he and I will find a way to stick together, but, like I said, the guy didn't show up today and there's no telling if the snow will stay or not. But I want to choose optimism. And I want to be with the man I love, so I'm devoted to the idea to make the choices that allow that.

Today I read: "Life is a choice. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness."

And despite my raging PMS this week, my usual worries, and my plumbing problems, I'm going to give it my best shot.

Train Pain

So on the way home from Sauzet and about to step onto the 4 hour train to Lyon, I was suddenly aggressed by a familiar terror. Burning tearing pain in that oh-so-sensitive of places. This is my fifth time around at this, let me remind you, so I knew immediately what was happening and burst into tears. Yet another UTI, despite all of my precautions. And, not arriving in Dijon until 7:30 that night, there would be no doctor until the next day and a whole night of searing pain to look forward to.

I told TMI we absolutely HAD to miss our connection in Lyon and go into the city and find me a doctor and anti-bitotics ASAP, and proceeded to convince him by crying into his lap the whole train ride. Dear God those things are painful, and each one over the past 5 months has been successively worse than the last.

TMI called home and had his dad find us a doctor's office near the train station and make us an appointment. Luck shone a bit here because we were able to get in early. I blurted in teary emotional French my tramendous streak of bad luck involving my vagina since coming to France. He asked what was different in my life since the infections started. The obvious answer was TMI, but since he was sitting right there in the office and being such a saint since the pain started I wasnt ready to to point fingers. So I beat around the bush a bit mentioning oral contraceptives, etc. The doctor eventually picked up on it and told me privately that intercourse, should I wish to keep it up under such circumstances, needed to happen after showers and be finsihed every time promptly by peeing and a glass of water. How romantic!

Anyway, the trauma ended with antibiotics and a blessedly comfortable train back to Dijon. TMI was so kind and loving and, I have to face it, drop dead gorgeous all afternoon and throughout my misery I couldn't help but feel all new heights of love for him. In fact my love seems to be steadily growing along with the adversity against our relationship. Still no visa solution.. and time running out!

The Storm

Somehow, in my last relationship, even though the man was completely wrong for me and we had almost nothing in common, in the beginning I managed to convince myself that we were perfect; that he was perfect for me. It's amazing how people can bend their beliefs about themselves, about who they are, and what makes them happy when it could mean having someone love you.

I have to consider this when looking at the current rough patches in my relationship with TMI. Yes, I'm much older now and no, he's nothing like my last relationship: but I know my capacity to convince myself that someone is the one just because I want them to be.

Several nights ago after the Christmas dinner party, I told TMI, finally in a moment of truth, that often being entrapped at parties and wine tastings with raucous 20-21 year olds at 4 am, tired, usually intoxicated, and aching to go home, then being told that I have to leave alone and "I don't know when I'll be back" maybe "tomorrow afternoon sometime" is sincerely not the kind of relationship I want to be in. Maybe I can't explain why, but hearing "you go, I'm going to stay here on the couch" hurts. Like seriously. Hurts.

Then, mere hours after I expressed this concern, I discover that starting in July or August of next year, TMI is expected to do a 5 month internship somewhere in France and probably no where near Dijon. As if my visa expiring and being exiled to Hawaii on the other side of the Earth for 3-6 month weren't bad enough. Assuming I don't get the work visa and have to wait for the student one, that could mean a combined time of some 10 MONTHS apart. Not to mention no roommate when I come back to France.

What gets me is that after all of my effort: the studying for French exams, the paperwork, the job searches, the old people meetings, the tears and stress and money all so that I could get back to France, he tells me that he might be gone for 5-7 months? And he tells me this now??

...

Why is this happening?

Sometimes I feel sincerely like the universe is doing it's absolute best to keep my relationship from working. It's like maybe in the future he and I would bear a child who would become a warlord or bring forth the apocalypse. Do the international governments and wine education circuits somehow know about this..??? Honestly I wouldn't be surprised after how many obstacles have been relentlessly hurled at two people in love.

I have to wonder if the right thing really is to march into the haze armed with optimism, or listen to the signs and give up. When faced with such a struggle my first instinct is to submit to despair and climb under the table. When does it stop being romantic and start being foolish to stubbornly whether the storm? He's too young; the odds are against us; we face 10 months of separation; our families are oceans apart; what is keeping me clinging on?

More Than Love

"I wish you had a favorite beauty spot that you loved secretly because it was on a hidden bit that nobody else could see"

-The Nicest Thing

I am deeply in love. But things are chemically and mentally difficult for me. Last night I went out and attempted to be social with TMI and his friends; we danced and laughed and drank and I desperately sublimated the fact that two of the girls we were passing the night ever so amicably with were previous persons of interest in TMI's physical life. Not. So. Easy.

We were up most of the night, slept for some 3 hours, then awoke in the morning to catch a train to a wine tasting with the same gang. I managed to stay for 6 hours before my feet, exhaustion, and the sight of the rear end of a previous squeeze of TMI drove me away. I tagged along with a couple leaving early and left him with his friends at the event, where they remain still.

I'm so exhausted and just want to go to sleep- but they plan to have a party at one of the girls' apartments tonight starting at 11:30 and going till who knows when. I seriously don't have the physical stamina for this kind of thing. I hate retreating and leaving my boyfriend to those I am jealous of for the whole night while I cower at home, but I also hate to feel like I need to make myself uncomfortable just to prove something / be fabulous when I'm not feeling fabulous to keep my partner.

Sometimes I worry I love his love more than I love him; maybe even more than I love myself.

The One's Shelf Life

The work visa fell like a stone giant and crushed beneath it lay the quivering remains of my hope for coming back to France. Last night I had to look at TMI and know that we had a finite number of kisses between us; a dwindling number of times I would open my eyes to his in the morning.

Of course, I cried like life was a lost cause long into the night and again this morning. It doesn't help that I'm visiting with TMI's family in the South, wanting to be well liked but sitting silent at each meal with a trembling lip.

Hurled yet again into post-graduate-obscurity. I hate not having a path, and for a few horrific moments I didn't even know what hemisphere I was going to commence my life as a hopeless hobo in.

Fortunately, this afternoon, TMI took a determined eye to the internet and found me some Masters programs I could pursue here in France, assuming that my French were good enough and that I could find the money. There are none in the city of Dijon, so we would only see one another on the weekends, and I wouldn't be starting until September of next year; meaning 9 months of separation.

Does love, realistically, have that sort of endurance? I mean everything has a shelf life, right? This is the one you guys; this is the one I want to make babies with and wake up to every morning. The one and only one I want to kiss before brushing teeth or feel smooshed against me when I'm falling asleep. This is a scary time and I want to know: can I put the One on the shelf, and does it have to hurt this much?

The Driving Force

Late last night I went out dancing with TMI and his friends. As is the norm of my life abroad, I had to overcome my shyness and discomfort of being in a group of someone else's French speaking friends, but I somehow managed to be at least part-way to comfortable. I was wearing a big sweater and not feeling particularly attractive, but I convinced myself to dance away my inhibitions and relax. I kept it up for 30 or 45 minutes and I was under the impression we were having fun. TMI is a wonderful dancer: fun and creative, and I was feeling overcome with pride and love. Finally, to avoid sweater + dance floor induced heat stroke, I stepped off to the side to take a break. He came after me.

...To tell me that I was dancing too provocatively and "sending a message" to all the other men in the club that I was "easy" and "wanted sex."

There I was: standing in a sweater amongst scantly clad French girls, admiring TMI for his dance moves when suddenly I learn that he is, in fact, aggravated and "embarrassed" by me. I told him I wanted to leave and I didn't want him to come with me.

I was furious, but also tired and feeling hurt, so I didn't have it in me to fight or yell when he insisted he leave with me. At home, I was fixing to go to sleep without talking about it, but he said: "I feel like if we don't talk about this now we'll just continue our relationship always feeling like there was a problem we didn't solve." I conceded, but naturally, the talking just made things worse.

Here are the straight up facts: I love him more than I've ever loved anyone. He's gorgeous and talented: I'm courageous and beautiful; but we are both detrimentally jealous and insecure. In the end I almost suspect the fear of loosing one another is what will drive us apart.

Past Cats and Passed Family Members

Honeybees depend not only on physical contact with the colony, but also require its social companionship and support. Isolate a honeybee and she will soon die.

- The Queen Must Die: And Other Affairs of Bees and Men.

Typing in the cafe where I work, I can see three French girls sitting together outside on the terrace. Each holding a white tea cup and sharing a large pot of tea with honey, I can see them chattering: moving their hands expressively, laughing, leaning a chin on their palm while they listen to one another's stories.

Last night I was overcome with such intense nostalgia that I couldn't sleep. I lay there dissecting memories of childhood, school, past Christmases and beach camp-outs, ice cream cones with girl friends after school and granola in the morning with my dad. I thought about past cats and passed family members, old infatuations and home-town landmarks. In my mind I drove my little car along the main road in my tiny mountain town, trying to recall every roadside detail that once outlined my every day.

I've been gone from all of that for a long time. I haven't had a proper girlfriend since coming to France and I scarcely talk to my closest friends from Hawaii. Yes, I am in love with both my boyfriend and with France, but it's time to face the music: I am homesick.

I finally found sleep cozied against TMI who, I might add, totally pissed me off by stealing the blankets in the night and then sort of.. sleep yelling when I tried to steal them back.. but all the same when in complete consciousness he made his best effort to ensure I was cozy. I'm only 23 and all ready regularly body slammed by nostalgia. Does it get worse? Or do we eventually figure out how to embrace Dr. Seuss and not be "sad because it's over, but happy because it happened?"

The End is in Sight

After three weeks of not having TMI home with me in Dijon, he is at last making his triumphant return to my longing arms tomorrow afternoon. (With several cases of wine, rumor has it.) But, instead of feeling excited and giddy, I find myself feeling increasingly miserable; loosing sleep, in fact. Amazingly, after a lighting fast 8 months in France, Christmas is already appearing on the horizon and thus bringing with it the mandatory plane tickets to return me to the islands and to my family.

TMI is obligated to stay in Dijon at least another two years to finish his analog studies. My visa is up in February and without money or a well paying job which in turn requires the miraculous miracle of a French work visa, coming back to France would be...difficult.

Today, coincidentally and for the first time, I allowed myself to admit to friends and family and, perhaps more importantly, to myself, that I am in love. And I am scared. Scared out of mind about enduring a last night with TMI. The alarm the morning I have to drag myself out of his arms and somehow out the door; to the train station and through the airport terminals alone; knowing that I have three days and half a globe to put between me and the man I love. Not to mention the incredible menace of facing the obscurity of responsibility and adulthood in which I have virtually NO DIRECTION.

There's a part me that still bitterly denies the existence of true and/or lasting love. Maybe it's for the best that TMI and I execute our relationship at the height of its youth and fervor instead of letting it get old and stale. It's a meaningful union (I'm ashamed it took me so long to realize it) and maybe it deserves better than to cool off in drawn-out domestication. It deserves tears and misery. Die young and face the history books with eternal youth, right?

Lasting Things

Several years ago, I adopted a kitten. I was living alone and going to university on the West Coast. The first week, I was unaccustomed to the furry purry in my bed and started to lock her out of my bedroom in the night. Each morning, she would wake me up early crying piteously at the door. I would shout "NO!" and refuse to let her in, leaving her mewing for hours. She was a little kitten and all alone.

Even though there have been things in my life that have made me cry, or shudder with fear, or rock with laughter, or even scratch my own chest in despair: surely I've wronged people, missed opportunities, lost things, broken things, or cared immensely for things I couldn't have, keeping a kitten locked out of my bedroom is, today, the heaviest weight I bear on my heart. Now, years later, I continue to kick myself and wish I could go back in time and just open the door.

Why is it the little things that come creeping back, years later to wring our hearts with importance, as we steadfastly leave behind the people and events that at one time or another meant the world?

Too Hot for Hot

I've been a little sluggish about posting lately as I've been incapacitated by the heat as well as TMI's insatiable sex drive. I have a moment to myself for the first time in 5 days, and, while I want to write, my brain is BOILING in my head. My computer is so hot each key slightly singes my finger when I hit it to type. This past week I've actually been putting it in the fridge when I'm not using it, just to keep it bearable to touch.

An embarrassing number of French die every year during the heat-waves. Apparently a great number of them have forgotten that the human body is designed to drink water and can't get off the wine long enough to save themselves from the sizzles. Speaking of which I'm brewing some iced hibiscus tea. Caaaaaan't wait.

Next post shall be about respect in relationships: can we keep it between partners if we keep it out of the bedroom? That said yes, my sex life has been heating up- but more on that when the weather cools of :/

bisous mes chéris!!

Giving and Getting: Reciprocity and the BJ

Allow me to get a little down and dirty here. Last night, while suffering through what a large majority of wives, girlfriends and adventurous dates must suffer through in every sexual relationship, I had some disheartening feelings. Blow Jobs. Yes, your partner loves them. Yes, if you're lucky, you may even love your partner, in which case "taking one for the team" isn't so bad: their feeling good makes you feel good, right?

But, last night, after pushing myself through several gags and enduring the very unpleasant taste, complete with encouraging groans of enthusiasm and a loving smile, I started to feel like I was giving a little more than I was getting.

I've heard it said that the only point of doing it is reciprocation, and I partially agree with this, but, as one of the majority of the world's women who find orgasm during sex very elusive, I can't help but start to feel I'm getting the short end of the stick. And I most certainly mean that figuratively.

Don't get me wrong, my current relationship is easily dishing out the best sex I've ever had; and where I'm not having orgasms from actual intercourse or even oral sex, we have been managing to fit them in regularly and TMI is very considerate to my sexual well-being. But still: dang! Giving a blow-job, well, blows! Dealing with teeth placement, jaw stress, gag reflex, all the while moaning while breathing through your nose and bobbing up and down, honestly, "they don't call it a job for nothing!" I have to wonder: Would a man ever suffer to such an extant for their partner's sexual pleasure?

What's the verdict on this? Always worth it? Enjoyable? A fair trade? Or are women just in the habit of giving too much? In fact, forget about BJ's; what I'm talking about here is something more than that. Zorba, my favorite Greek to quote, wags his big gnarled finger and insists, "Never forget boss! A woman gets more out of the pleasure she gives than the pleasure she takes!"

The Weekend, and the Story of B

I had the good fortune to spend the weekend yet again in the colorful South with TMI's family in Sauzet.

Between delicious and drawn out meals, we went on walks, runs, bike adventures and gallery visits, plus one outing to a river to swim around in the icy water. We made our usual constant and creative love on every rock, table, park bench, and physically possible place that turned up throughout the weekend.

Despite all this goodness, about half of the time, I was totally plagued by two extremes: A) I really love this guy and am insecure and think he's gonna break my heart and this makes me miserable, or, B) I'm not really in love with this guy, and, if I stay with him, I'm just missing out on something better and this also makes me miserable.

While problem A can be jotted up as typical insecurity and latent desire to keep a little turbulence in the romance, problem B is a little more complicated, and, well, embarrassing.

Last summer, when I first came to France and fell head over heals for the repulsively unattractive, smoking, and foie gras farmer, B, I somehow convinced myself I wanted to marry the guy and invited him to Hawaii to meet my family. I incessantly gushed to my parents about how great he was and how much I loved him. (uuugghghhh this makes me want to puke now) Then, he shows up in Hawaii, and, in the harsh light of my own reality: my family, the island where I grew up, my friends, my language, I saw B for what he really was: a completely wrong for me, stinky, dirty, and dull French guy who I could barely communicate with. I had to break his heart in a drawn out, pathetic, and hugely uncomfortable drama that continues to nauseate me to this day. The man had brought a diamond ring with him which he gifted me in front of the entire family christmas morning. Yeah. Messy. I no longer trust my own eyes, heart, or brain.

The B incident proves that I'm insane. So now, with christmas visible on the horizon and TMI and I discussing love, the prospect of him visiting me in the Pacific has surfaced and filled me with subsequent terror. I want to be in love, but I don't want a repeat!

Confessions

OK so, turns out, I have a problem, and I'm gonna spill. I've gained about 6 pounds since coming to France, and, as a petite woman with a small frame, broad shoulders, and an ugly as sin mug as it is, it doesn't suit me. I've gotten unhealthily obsessed with this fact and have, for the past two weeks or so, been so ashamed of my physical appearance that I can barely leave my apartment. When I'm outside, I'm so embarrassed I literally break an anguished sweat and often catch myself running, seriously, running, back to my apartment so I can hide.

It takes me hours to get dressed, the whole process often interrupted by me bursting into a sob as I lean my forehead against a wall. Yes it's retarded, yes there is infinitely more to life; people with real problems; starving children in the world, not to mention good literature, relationships, and beautiful aspects of existence demanding attention, but all the same I'm indulging in this ridiculous misery.

The worst sensation of all is in a store or in the streets where I can see my reflection in a window or a mirror, and I'm hit with an overwhelming wave of shame. I just want to curl up and hide. Those are terrible moments. No one should have to deal with that silliness, seriously.

So I'm thinking of telling TMI that I need to cool it with him until I work it out. You can't love someone else until you love yourself, or so they always say. So there's that.

La Douleur d'Amour

All right, so not that I want to break the chimerical haze of sensual and exploratory love-making that's drifting over IFFTP right now, but I feel obligated to mix in a little jolt of reality. The aforementioned sugar: Wonderful, but I totally came out of it with a UTI. Ouch. Just an honest word of warning for any of you out there getting ideas.

So after an embarrassing doctor's appointment I'm now home with a 1-time antibiotic and a glass of cranberry juice. Ahhh real life. Can you believe people ever pull romance novels out of this stuff??