Twas Brillig

It’s Soap Opera Sunday and our fourth and final Chad. (Need a refresher? Here’s part one, part two, and part three.)

Okay, fine. I confess that to say that he asked me to marry him is a bit of an exaggeration. But he began to refer to us as though we were engaged, and he would talk about our children and our life and our future as though it were a done deal. He told me that there was a ring, but he knew that I wasn’t ready for it yet, so he’d hold onto it until I was.

I never saw that ring.

Somewhere in here, Kate and I made up. Obviously. Anyone who’s ever read this blog knows about my BFF Kate. It was on a very special Groundhog’s Day that I called her and told her I was sorry and that my life without her in it was… stupid. Especially when I knew that the blame didn’t fall on her. (Groundhog’s Day is a significant holiday for us, but she’ll have to tell you that story on her own blog sometime. It’s hers to tell, not mine.)

Naturally, I was getting sicker and sicker and searching for some kind of escape from our game, but I began to feel like this was my destiny. But Chad didn’t want to marry me in the Temple, which is where I’d wanted to be married my whole life. Not just wanted, needed. But he wouldn’t do that. He would have felt like a hypocrite there, because he just didn’t believe in it all anymore. I didn’t blame him for not just doing it anyway. I mean, if he didn’t want to get married in the Temple, then I wouldn’t force him–I wouldn’t have wanted him to just do it for me.

From the beginning of our bizarre relationship, one thing had always been understood. I was going to serve a mission for the Church. I’d always wanted to, and now I had an opportunity to go two years earlier than most women get to go. I was passionate about this, and whatever was going to happen between us would have to happen when I got home. He never considered talking me into staying home and marrying him instead. He knew that this was just something I had to do.

So I turned in my application to serve a mission and soon received my assignment to go to Buenos Aires, Argentina. I was so excited. I’d spent time in Buenos Aires before and I was utterly in love with it. I couldn’t wait to go. And so I threw myself into preparations and made myself, well, scarce.

One day he came over and said, “I’m going on a date tonight.” I laughed. “No, really. I’m going on a date. W from that-one-house called and asked me out.”

I scoffed. “Well, did you tell her you had a girlfriend?” Of course, she KNEW he had a girlfriend. Everyone in the foreign language housing knew us. We weren’t exactly hermits…

“No. I didn’t tell her I had a girlfriend. Besides, it doesn’t matter. It’s just for some dance social thing and she needs a partner. It’s no big deal.”

Hmmmm, I thought. Who asks out a guy who has a girlfriend? Still, I didn’t really have time to worry about it. Or care very much.

It was decided that I would go and spend some time with my parents (who were, coincidentally, also living in Argentina–though on the opposite side of where I’d be serving my mission) before I began my mission. So, very suddenly, I up and left. I didn’t say goodbye.

He began writing me, and I wrote back at first, but finally I decided that this was dumb and I was through. So I wrote him a letter, telling him that if he were still around when I got home (in two years!) we’d see how we felt about each other. In the meantime, I asked him not to write me again–UNLESS (and this part had been a joke) it was to send me a wedding announcement for him and W.

Exactly one year later, I received a letter from him. A wedding announcement. For him and W, who he was marrying in the Salt Lake Temple.

There was no letter attached. Just the announcement.

I nearly died. I examined it over and over again to make sure it wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t. By the time I received the announcement, they were already married.

I have to say, though, that the moment I finally accepted that it was real, relief washed over me–like warm water being poured over my head. It was over. PHEW!!!!

I’ve never seen him or heard from him since. I sometimes wonder how I would act if I were to run into him somewhere. But it’s just done. Over. And I couldn’t have asked for a better ending.

I do sometimes wonder, though, if she’s wearing my ring…

THE END!

(Stay tuned for June’s Perfect Post Award! The Awards go up on Monday–generally they go up on the first day of the month, but they’ve chosen to put them up on Monday the 2nd instead. Woohoo!)

It’s Flashback Friday, friends!

“So, what do you think of Mom and Dad selling the house and buying a condo?” my brother J asked me when he met me at the airport.  My parents were standing right there, shifting nervously.  Clearly they hadn’t intended for him to bring it up, especially because I knew NOTHING about it.

I’d been studying in Italy all summer while J had been working in Kentucky and my parents had been on some luxury cruise in Tahiti (and yes!  Those destinations describe our three distinct personalities perfectly).  I’d been very lonely in Italy and I was at an age (I’d just turned 15) where my friends and my social life trumped just about everything else.

And this bomb that J had just dropped meant that the friends that I was so excited to come home to were soon going to be miles away.

And plus, it was my house!  My house!!!  It was a great big house with 8 bedrooms, two huge family rooms, a formal living room and a music room.  The backyard was gigantic and had a swimming pool and a full-sized tennis court, along with lots of trees and grass to play in.

And now we were moving to a condo.

To say that I was furious would be an understatement.

J hadn’t been bothered by the news when he’d heard it.  He was off to college in a different state anyway, and then he’d serve a mission.  All of my other siblings were gone by now.  I would be the only one left at home.  It would only affect me.

Which is, perhaps, why I was so angry.  I still had 3 years left at home, and yet my parents were talking about this as their way of retiring and downsizing, as though I wasn’t a part of this picture.  It didn’t seem at all fair that my parents would make this leap without even consulting me.  If I were a baby, I would of course have to go along for the ride.  But at 15, I felt old enough to have my opinion taken into account.  And they’d clearly been sneaky about it.  They’d purposefully NOT told me.

When we got home that night from the airport, Emily (who lived next door) and Matt (who lived across the street) were waiting for me.  We were my bestest of friends–my whole world!–and I’d missed them so desperately.  I told them that the house had sold.  They knew this, of course.  They’d watched it all happen.  We all expressed our sorrow over it.  But as we all talked that night, trying to fall right back into where we’d always been, it was clear that we’d all changed a lot over the summer.  I suppose I had especially changed.   I’d been in Italy all summer, working and studying and indulging in a new culture, a new world.  They had been at home, doing what they did every summer at the same old places with the same old people.  We were all civil and polite, but I found that they couldn’t relate to me and I couldn’t relate to them.  We’d already moved away from each other emotionally.  The physical move wouldn’t be nearly so painful in comparison.
(Matt came back into my life in a huge way a few years later, as many of you who have been reading my blog for a while already know.  But that’s another story for another time.)

When everyone left that night, I knelt by the side of my bed and sobbed.  This was not the homecoming I’d anticipated.  Everything was wrong.

The next day, my parents took me to see the new condo.  I thought it was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen.  They explained that they were going to remodel this, add a room here and there, change the carpet and the walls, etc.  I tried to grasp their vision, but really I just thought it was ugly.

And the neighborhood?  It was Snob Hill.  Oh, I couldn’t bear it.  I’d spent the last many years mocking Snob Hill and couldn’t imagine living there, among the cheerleaders and jocks who drove BMW’s while snorting their cocaine.  These were the people that made everyone’s life a living hell in high school, and now they were going to be my neighbors.

Flash forward 14 years and here I am, in this very house, babysitting it while my parents are gone.  I’m sitting in my father’s office–now my office– and realizing how very pretty it is.  My parents had real vision as they were recreating it.  They added walls and removed walls and all in all made it a very lovely and functional place.  I love that there’s no yard work, but that there’s a playground right off to the side of us and a community swimming pool and tennis courts just around the corner.  You can hardly call it a “condo”–it’s so much more spacious than I ever think of when people say “condo.”  It only shares one wall and yes, I do hear the neighbors from time to time, but only in one part of the home.  And, frankly, they’re kind of entertaining!

I still keep in touch with most of the friends I met through living here (hi Jewels, Kate, and Hannah!) and it turned out that while yes, most of the people were awful, there were a few amazing people that my soul was just waiting to discover, and my life was never the same once I did.

Living here now is a bit surreal.  It’s like Flashback Friday every day.  I’m surrounded by memories and photos and pieces of my childhood family.  And I’m enjoying it so much.  I’ve been scanning in piles of my dad’s slides and photos and telling my kids the story behind various paintings and other collectibles.  While I don’t want to minimize how painful it was for me to move here back then, I have to acknowledge that my parents moving here all those years ago was the right choice, and all these years later I’m the one who’s reaping the benefits of that choice.

I stole this from Nell today. Yup, I saw it, I was flabbergasted, and I stole it. I was laughing my head off, but blown away by this bizarre talent. Go on, watch it. You know you want to.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cYWfq–Nw]

And now for something completely different…

It was November of 1983, and the London air was cold and damp. I was bundled in my tan woolly coat with a cheap but adored scarf purchased at Bayswater Station wrapped tightly around my throat. My dear sister Amy, seven years my senior (though my closest sister in age), accompanied me through the dark streets as we made our way to the man who would help us.

I don’t know why we were allowed out after dark, just the two of us little girls. In my memory, it was very late at night. But since it gets dark around 4:30 p.m. in London during that time of year, it may have only been supper time. Either way, it felt sneaky to me in the moment. Amy was only 12, after all, and I was a wee 5 year old. Surely we’d said something very clever to our parents, who were likely too busy with research and students to want to fight with us over it, so they let us go. They certainly wouldn’t have understood our mission.

Finally we approached the man who would soothe our souls with the answer to our eternal question. The air was thick with the smell of rain, car exhaust, and cigarette smoke–all scents that would remind me of London for decades to come. Amy cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she said, in her ridiculous attempt at a British accent. (She should have let me do the talking. My accent was real. Hers sounded like a mix of Utahn and Kentucky-an and South African. Even at my tender age, I could tell that she was trying too hard.)

“Excuse me, sir. I was wondering if you could tell me…”

My breath caught in my throat. Soon we would know!

“I was wondering if you could tell me when the next Duran Duran album will be released.”

I’m sure the man had to stifle a snicker. But we were earnest. Oh yes, this was vital information for us.

As it turned out, it wouldn’t be released until the next month there in England, and by then we’d be back in the US so we’d have to wait for several more months after that, as there was always a lag between release dates in the UK and release dates in the States. HOW WOULD WE BEAR IT?

I’m sure we whined and whined at the poor man, convinced somehow that if we just pleaded valiantly enough, he’d move up the release date for us. But when he wouldn’t budge, we left, defeated.

“Union of the Snake” had already been released as a single, which we’d bought on vinyl with our meager combined allowances, but it was only enough to tease us, not appease us. It seemed an eternity would have to pass before we could hear the rest of the Durany Deliciousness.

Yes, I was only five. But I had the great fortune of sharing a bedroom with Amy who at the wizened age of 12 seemed to know everything, and I was her apprentice. Thanks to her, I knew every lyric, guitar rift, and key change to every Duran Duran song ever. I collected posters and clipped interviews from silly British teen magazines. (I was FIVE, people! My oldest daughter is five, and she can sing the words to Barney… That’s the difference between the oldest, who is sheltered by mommy and daddy, and the youngest, who shares a bedroom with her teenage sister, I guess.)

I had five stuffed animals. They were Simon, Nick, John, Roger, and Andy.

And we had posters plastered to every last inch of wallspace. Amy had claimed John as her true love. Her best friend Alex (of whom I was TERRIBLY jealous, but that’s another story) had claimed Roger. They allowed me to pick from the remaining three.

Easiest choice EVER.

Hello, Simon!

(Though, I confess that over the years, when I no longer cared that Amy had already claimed him, I became excessively fond of John. Excessively.)

As the years went on, my obsession continued through my teens (and was very much revitalized in 1993, when I was 15, with the release of the single “Ordinary World”, which to this day I consider to be the pinnacle of modern music) but naturally it started to wane with age and maturity.

I grew up, and so did they.

A few days ago, I was cleaning the house and my kids were “helping.” I told Fluffy to turn on some music, so she grabbed my CD case and randomly put a CD into the player. Suddenly “Please, Please Tell Me Now” sounded out through the living room and all of my kids began singing and dancing as though their eyes had just been opened to the true beauties of this earth. I particularly watched my little Fluffy, who (for once) reminded me so much of myself at her age. And so, I pass the torch on to the next generation. While I’ve gotten rid of all the posters and the t-shirts and the interview clips and *gasp* even the cassette tapes, I’ve held onto the many, many vinyl records. One of these days, I will dust off my old record player and show her how to carefully place the needle just right, and I will bequeath my treasures to her.

Her world will never be the same.

I came to you with an open mind–too open. Not being a part of this particular conflict, but just an impartial observer, I wanted to learn about both sides. I was learning BOTH languages. I was studying BOTH cultures. I knew that this was all bigger than me, but somehow I thought maybe one day I’d be able to help resolve it all.I was only 12 years old. So were you.

We weren’t friends, or anything. We’d never met before. It was your assignment to show me around your school. I think we both thought that we could be friends.

You walked me through the hallways and discussed what you did at school and what you learned. You were learning Algebra. Hey, me too! You were learning biology, literature. We had so much in common.

At some point, we came to a glass-enclosed display. All I saw was cloth, stained and torn. I looked to you for an explanation.

And then your eyes changed. You grew dark, angry. It frightened me.

“Three weeks ago, three innocent men were killed. They are martyrs. This is their clothing here–the clothing they were wearing when they were brutally shot. You see their blood on their shirts. You see the bullet holes. We keep this here to remind us of our enemies and their wickedness. It reminds us of their unprovoked brutality towards us. They must be conquered. We must prevail.”

My breath caught in my throat. I considered telling you that you were wrong. Your eyes challenged me to do so. Thank heavens I didn’t–I likely wouldn’t have made it out of the country alive.

But I had been downtown the day those men lost their lives. These men, whose clothing hung here in a shrine, were no heroes. They had mercilessly slaughtered nine truly innocent people–three of them children–before the police had finally arrived and stopped them with their bullets. These three men were not martyrs, they were murderers.

“But you’re just children!” I said, instead. I had been forced to see blood, bullets, bombs. But I didn’t think that all children should have to. Certainly not at school!

“How else will we learn?”

And there it was–the great unbridgeable difference: My schooling taught me history. Yours taught you lies.
I couldn’t blame you for believing the lies. It was all you had ever heard. I couldn’t blame your friends, your parents, your teachers. It was all they had ever heard.

And now I was terrified. I couldn’t breathe. I had to leave. Your hatred, though not yet aimed at me, was suffocating and I couldn’t be there anymore. This place, this evil place, where children were taught to hate, was imprisoning me and I had to escape. I wanted to beg you to escape with me, though I knew you never would. I wanted to rescue you from this conflict, but you were too deeply entrenched. So I left you there.

We knew we could never, ever be friends.

I never said that the other side was right, but you are so very wrong.

And now I’m 28, as are you, and I think of you from time to time. I’m married. I have children. We live a safe, comfortable life. And you? Did you survive your hatred, or has it killed you yet, as it has killed so many of your countrymen? Is your life full of terror? Do you have children? Do you teach them what you were taught? Of course you do. You don’t know anything else. If you live long enough to raise another generation, that generation will be consumed with the same hate.

Someone has to break this cycle. I no longer think that it will be me. I can’t. I don’t understand. I feel helpless and hopeless. The more I learn, the less I know.

But I make an oath, here and now, that my children will never learn any form of hatred from me. And if that’s the best I can do, it will be a lot.

It’s interesting how sometimes after you write something, hours go by, and you look back over it and think, “wow! I hope that didn’t come across that way!” And then you mull, and you stew, and you fret–at least I do. And then I wonder who I might have offended or who got the wrong impression of me.

So, I’m throwing in yet another little disclaimer about this post here.

I’m a faithful and devoted member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I refrain from talking about my religion very much here, mostly because I don’t want to isolate anyone or to come across as preachy. But it also means that I leave out a huge chunk of who I am. THIS is who I am: I believe in God, that He is my eternal and loving Heavenly Father. I believe in His Son, Jesus Christ, and that He is my Savior. I love Him with all my heart and I try to serve him as best as I can. I want to love everyone, the way He loved everyone. I make a lot of mistakes, but my ultimate goal is to be like Him. I believe in the Bible. I believe the Book of Mormon is also the word of God. It is Truth. It brings me closer to my Savior. I read from it every single day. I go to church, every single week. I can hardly bear to miss it–sometimes I have to, due to illness or other circumstances–and I feel a great loss when I’m not there. The Gospel has brought me true happiness and I would be completely lost without it. I am grateful for it every day of my life.

That last paragraph describes me better than anything you’ll read about me anywhere else. And yet, sadly, it mostly goes unsaid.

And so, when I bash on BYU–something I’m prone to do without thinking through it very clearly–I forget that someone could mistake that for Mormon-Bashing which, as you now see, never what’s intended. Because I grew up in the shadows of BYU and both of my parents were professors there, I was intimately familiar with both the good and the bad things about it–things that are NOT in harmony with my beliefs as a Mormon. There is corruption and silliness everywhere, and for some reason I was in a position to see a lot of it at BYU. But BYU isn’t the Church, it’s simply a private university run and attended mostly by Mormons. They try to keep a high standard there, a strong moral base in an attempt to help students find themselves, as opposed to losing themselves as they do in so many other environments. I commend them for this, but I’ve seen where it goes way too far. The crucial thing to remember is that universities are run by people, the Gospel is run by God. I believe that people are, in general, trying to be the best they know how. But they are, alas, people.

It’s a tricky thing, because I want to keep my writing honest. If something’s screwed up, I wanna be able to say that it’s screwed up! But I also don’t want anyone to misunderstand my rantings.

I don’t think I was offensive earlier–no one has said as much, anyway. But I was afraid that someone might read something I didn’t intend to be read. For my own peace of mind, I needed to get this off my chest.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…

It’s Soap Opera Sunday and Chad Part Three (here’s part one and here’s part two if you need a refresher…)

By way of disclaimer, I’m going to tell some things here that I’m not proud of, and you, Gentle Readers, will refrain from berating me…

As it turned out, Chad and I did have one important thing in common: the art of manipulation.

To the untrained eye, we were this blissfully happy couple. While we would have sworn that we cared a lot about each other, I think that what we actually cared about was the game. I needed him to adore me, but I wasn’t prepared to adore him back. While he was incredibly charming, handsome, intelligent, and funny, if he’d fallen off a cliff, I’m not sure I would have cried.

Before you feel sorry him, he was playing the same game with me, even though I think that his emotions ran deeper for me than mine did for him. Still, he used me. I was his trophy girlfriend–the girl he could take to parties to show off, the girl he could use to keep the many freakishly-obsessed girls away, and the girl whose mind he could mess with just for the fun of it.

I confess that my loyalty and commitment to him were… lacking. In fact, I cheated on him–quite regularly. And he cheated on me, too. We were quite open about it, and we hated each other for it, but we stayed “together” anyway. Even with our cheating, though, there were limits. There were lines we just didn’t cross when it came to cheating. (Doesn’t that sound stupid? Cheating-boundaries? Remember when I said, “let the unhealthiness begin”? Yeah….)

One night, he and I and a bunch of our friends got together to watch a movie. I don’t even remember what movie it was, but I remember not having the least bit of interest in watching it, so I immersed myself in an online chatroom while everyone else cozied down to watch the movie. My best friend Kate was there, and while I thought it was strange
that the two of them got all snuggly on the couch, I wasn’t really all that concerned.

Eventually, I left, leaving Kate and Chad asleep together on the couch.

The next morning, Chad sat me down to tell me that he’d kissed my best friend. It felt like I’d just been smacked across the face. When I asked him to expound and tell me how it happened, he said there was no explanation. (I’m not sure what kind of an explanation I was looking for, anyway. “What? You tripped and accidentally fell on her face?”) I stormed out of his apartment, furious and scorned. He had crossed the line, big time. My first item of business was to call Kate and let her know that she was not welcome to call me or see me or come anywhere near me ever again.

Part of me felt slightly guilty freaking out at Kate like that, because I knew her and I knew Chad. I knew that if they’d kissed, it had been all him and not at all her. Still, I had to freak out at someone, and Kate was my lucky target.

Just screaming at her wasn’t enough. I had to get back. I had to get even. How?

I had to tell her mom.

Kate was only 16 at the time, and was therefore still in high school and still living with her mommy and playing the overly angelic act that her mother was still buying. The best revenge would be to tell her mom who she “really” was and let Kate live with her mommy’s wrath.

By the way, this was the worst idea ever.

So, I let Kate’s mom know, very cleverly and subtly. I assigned my dear friend Matt to go to Kate’s house to pick up some CD’s of mine, offering her mom the explanation that Brillig wasn’t speaking to Kate anymore and why–and then leaving just in time for all hell to break loose (while I waited for him in the car).

In the meantime, I forgave Chad. Stupid girl that I was, I dumped my friend–the innocent victim–and forgave the jerk. And we went on, playing our game.

Until the Honor Code Committee called us in.

Many of you will have no idea what that means. Let’s sum it up by calling it the BYU Gestapo. BYU has very strict rules, and in my experience, they have great fun finding rule-breakers and hanging them as examples. There are spies everywhere–people who consider tattling to be an attribute contributing to their uber-righteousness.

I was being called in because I had enabled a girl, my friend Kate, to be in a boy’s apartment “after hours.” Kate’s mom had reported me, and somehow this was all my fault. And all the female Chad-adorers who hated me and wanted to see me burned only confirmed the Gestapo’s hunch–that I was wicked and needed strict punishment. And so I was called in, sternly spoken to about righteousness and lawlessness and was told that they would discuss me in their committee meetings (really? They had nothing better to do than discuss the world’s most trivial infraction?) and get back to me later. Chad was called in and given a similar spiel.

Long story short, the result was Honor Code Probation, meaning that if I broke one more rule, I would be thrown out of the school. I looked at the man who was in charge of my “case” and said, “you and I both know that this is ridiculous. How do I fight it?” And in true Gestapo fashion, he replied, “don’t bother fighting it. We have people watching you everywhere. They’ll get you on something, even if it’s not this.”

I was completely shocked. He’d just threatened me. They were spying on me. He knew who my parents were, but he wasn’t scared. Wait. He wasn’t intimidated by who I was–who they were. Ahhhh, they were making a public example of me. It was BECAUSE of my special last name that I was being harshly dealt with.

You’ll be happy to know that Chad got the exact same punishment that I did.

You may recall that I was on full-ride scholarship at BYU and, since I’d dropped out of high school (yes, that’s a whole nother story, friends) I felt that my whole future hung in the balance. I was ready to spit in BYU’s face and storm out in dramatic tantrum style, but I knew that the truth was that I needed them. No one else would accept a drop-out (they’d accepted me before I dropped out, and never bothered to check to make sure I’d actually gotten my diploma). I was stuck.

And for WHAT? Because I had “allowed” Kate and Chad to be together after hours…

Does this make any sense? No? Good. Because even after all these years, it still doesn’t make any sense to me either.

(It should be noted that not everyone has such a miserable experience with BYU and their Gestapo… I recognize that many wonderful people have wonderful experiences there. This is just my own personal experience.)

So you see, Chad and I were on rocky ground (had we ever been on stable ground?) We professed eternal love to each other, while fighting constantly. Oh, how we fought. How we hated each other!

And yet, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world when he asked me to marry him…

Welcome, everyone! I can hardly believe that you’re here! Hey, I can hardly believe that I’m here! Expect many changes in color and style over the next little while (or possibly eternity). What a grand adventure we shall have!!!!

I have been a bad blogger these last few days. I’m hardly posting here, I’m hardly replying to any comments, or even acknowledging comments to new visitors to my site (who I love!!! Welcome!!!) I’ve been reading all my favorite blogs on my google reader, but not taking the time to comment. And little updates here and there have been ignored. I mean, Scooby has been two for several weeks now and Lil’ Dude is not only 10 months old now, but his nickname has been changed to “Fuzzles.” But have I updated that information? No. And when was the last time I updated my bloglights? It’s been weeks!

How do you people put up with me?

By way of explanation, I have a confession.

Brillig has a secret.

Acknowledgement of this secret on my part will require a little bit of work on your part. Still wanna know?

Today is my three month bloggiversary, and to celebrate, I’m going to dump it.

I feel quite savvy with Blogger. Everything you see here, I did myself. My banner, my color scheme, my buttons and slide shows and widgets. I can hardly bear to dump all of this and go on to the unknown world of my own site, and yet I feel that it is time, once and for all.

Many of you know that I’ve been contemplating the dump for some time now. And, in all honesty, I’d bought myself a domain quite a while back that I’ve just been sitting on. Okay–not just sitting on. I’ve been tinkering away at it like mad. I wasn’t, and am still not, quite geek enough to just buy a domain and have it up and running the next day!

Today, it is finally “up and running” as it were. Don’t get me wrong. It isn’t aesthetically pleasing nor is it very high tech. Yet. I’m really just getting my feet wet. But if you’re willing to put up with my tinkering and template changes and page additions, then I’m ready for you to make the great leap with me.

So, here it is in all its glory:

Twas Brillig

Now, won’t you change your bookmarks and your link lists for me? PLEASE? Even though I’ve been a very bad blogger for the last little while? (And yes, I will be obsessively checking my technorati to see who’s playing. hahahaha.)

And now, by way of disclaimer, I must throw in a word about WordPress. I think WordPress and I are going to get along swimmingly. But as many of you know, if you host your own site and put WordPress on it, your easy options are extremely limited, as opposed to sites that have wordpress.com in the URL. So please be patient with me while I try to get my site looking cool without all the magic that comes included in the wordpress.com sites! Keep in mind that I’m doing this all by myself… and I’m not very smart!

As for the title of this post, these are the very words that I uttered last night while Hubby was giving me some geek-pointers and a lamp suddenly fell over and hit me in the head. I was in a bit of shock, after feeling quite frazzled anyway, and the utterance was intended to be profound. Hubby, being the kind, supportive, understanding man that he is, busted up laughing at me. So I give it to you now, so you know a bit about what this blog-switch is doing to my brain.

Hey. What are you doing here still? Go! Hie thee forth to my new blog!

(Please?)

I can barely recall when I was very little and my parents actually shared a bed. It was a giant king size bed that we all loved to jump on.

But soon they went to separate beds. Twin beds, scooted right next to each other. That way, each could feel free to toss and turn without fearing waking up the other or having their blanket stolen.

My mother had her own room right next to mine–a study, where her computer and books and endless piles of professor-stuff all lived. At some point, a bed was put in there. And then, slowly but surely, her clothing and other personal items began to migrate there. Eventually she just began sleeping there full time.

I never worried that my parents had stopped liking each other or anything like that. Believe me, there was no mistaking their mutual adoration. But my dad liked to stay up late watching TV and sleep in in the morning while my mom liked to go to bed while the sun was still up and wake up long before the sun rose in the morning. Plus, Dad snored, and Mom had to pee twelve or thirteen times a night (okay, that’s possibly a slight exaggeration, but still…) so the separate bedrooms thing really worked for them.

I understood why they did that, but I thought, “man, when I’m married, I’ll want to snuggle next to my husband all night long. No WAY would I want separate beds, let alone separate bedrooms!”

When Hubby and I were first married, we went to an out-of-town family reunion and stayed in a hotel. Hubby’s sister and her husband, who’d been married for nearly ten years, were in the room next to us. Each room had two queen beds. Hubby and I put our luggage on one, and slept together in the other. So we were FLABBERGASTED to see that Hubby’s sis and her husband decided to each sleep in their own beds. Hubby made a comment, poking fun at them, and they both exclaimed over how wonderful it was to spread out and have their own beds!

Anyway, the years have gone by and I love Hubby even more than ever, but I also enjoy spreading out in a big bed all by myself. I certainly don’t sleep snuggled up next to Hubby when we’re in the same bed, the way I’d romanticized things as a teen. No–we each claim a side and once it’s time to sleep, no one crosses the imaginary line between us.

But this last week (as I have mentioned ad nauseum) I’ve been sick. I keep us both awake all night with my constant coughing and puking and tossing and turning. So I’ve sent him to the guest room so that he can get some semblance of sleep before he has to show up at work in the morning (he gets the guest room because he thinks the mattress in there is more comfortable, not because I’ve banished him there against his will or anything…)

And guess what? We’re enjoying it. LOVING it, in fact. I see, talk, play, and snuggle with him all I want to, but then at bedtime we go our separate ways. Right now, we’re just doing it because I’m sick. But once I’m better, will we go back to the old way? I don’t know! I really think that separate bedrooms means more freedom with my time (and my overhead light and TV remote) and we both get a better night’s sleep, and our relationship doesn’t suffer–in fact, it may even benefit from it.

So, Mom. Dad. Sorry I laughed at you. I get it now. I really do!