OH, LOOK!! A new baby !

Yes, the Gifting Stag has a shiny bright new baby.  Found him at the Goodwill last week.  lol


  Other than that, no news at Honeysuckle Hill. At least not about babies. That ship has sailed, baby!

On a bright note, the Irishman appears to have survived the plague and is actually OUT OF MY HOUSE  this morning and hopefully (if he doesn't relapse again) this afternoon.  I love that man, but a whole week of him sick and under my feet has been rough. At one point I thought about putting a pillow over his face while he slept...just, you know, so he wouldn't have to keep suffering like this.  Good lord.  If I have to hear one more word out of him about pooping or cramps or his stomach gurgling- I will kill him dead.

  Marriage.  A nice Sunday post about marriage I think may be in order. Just to remind myself that I don't really want to hold his head under the water until the bubbles stop. To remind myself that there are lots of good things to be said for being married to man like him. If that's what you have to do. Although I must admit...I have been having lots of dreams about being in a women's army and being married to a woman lately.  And it all seems really peaceful. (Well...not the army part).  But still...


 Rereading this, I sound a little crazy. But I'm not going to delete and rewrite it, because I am a little crazy, after all.  And I am gender diversified. And I have a theory that maybe we all are, to some extent. But that's another story.

 In my dreams, I have been recently released from the women's army, and one of the retirement benefits is that they provide you with monthly rations of food. The catch is that you have to find it, and then figure out which part of it is yours. It was exhausting. The storage containers looked like big trash dumpsters. They were scattered all over at the edges of towns and in the woods. (Doesn't this sound like the Hunger Games? lol) The food inside (hams, turkeys, etc.) all had codes on them saying who they belonged to. I was a good code breaker, so it was easy enough to figure out mine, but the other women trying to figure out theirs kept asking for my help. Of course I had to help them. It was part of the women's army code.  I was later rewarded for being so helpful.  LOL


 
 It's a wonder they don't lock me up, isn't it? And last night a young girl posted on my FB page that I was a "wonderful woman" or something like that, and I thought--no. No I'm not... Why are we like that? So quick to dismiss kind words and compliments. So guilty for all the nasty thoughts I harbor sometimes, all the pissy feelings I have about people now and then. All my selfishness and gluttony and  oh hell--the list just goes on and on.  But for some reason, there are some people who like me.  lol

 Okay. Marriage.  I heard someone say once that they had a good solid 50-50 marriage. I had to laugh. I think it's more like 110-110 most of the time. Living with another human being day in and day out can be trying.  It's about picking your battles. And not sweating the small stuff. And compromise EVERY SINGLE DAY OF YOUR LIFE.  If you're lucky (like I am) you find someone who is the least objectionable person there is. And I'm sure there are a lot of them. (Why they get involved with ME is another matter).  If you're lucky, you have lots of things in common. Interests and values and ideas.  For instance, any man (or woman) who is married to me had better be a serious reader.  Had better have a sense of justice. Had better not be worried about getting chicken (or dog or cat or bird) poop on his shoes.  Just sayin'...  And really had better be able to laugh and make me laugh. 

 Even with all this, it can be hard sometimes. We live in a world where serial monogamy is the norm. It's as easy to  get unmarried as it to get married. The world is getting smaller and smaller and it isn't like it used to be, where you looked around you and no matter how small the spousal pool, your choices were limited to what there was.  Today you can pursue resumes in online dating sites.  You can see and know almost everything there is to know about someone in about 15 minutes. You can weigh the pros and cons.  Not like when I was young, and you had to keep going to bar after bar looking for Mr. Right.  lol  (kidding--I actually met this guy  in AA)... lmao  You can meet people online from halfway around the world.  The possibilities are limitless.

  There's only one problem.  Human nature. And I don't care how much you read about someone, you will never know them until  you live with them a little bit.  And maybe you luck out and you're compatible...and maybe you're not.  Shake it off and start over again.  And again and again and again, sometimes.

  When my innocent young grandmother got married in her mid teens, she had no idea what she was in for. And once in, never out. So she lived a life of hard work and misery and found happiness where she could. And just kept on keeping on.  And died when she was 60.  MY mother, who didn't know she wasn't the marrying type, married a nice guy and got pregnant every time she rolled over into him and hated her life and couldn't figure out what to do for a long time.  And when she did decide to take action, took all the wrong actions and wound up dead of cirrhosis of the liver at age 55.

  You can understand my reticence.  And, like cats who are always drawn like magnets to the people who don't want them around them...men love me. And want to marry me. And  unfortunately for me, there has never been a shortage of men in my life or marriage proposals or promises of a Wonderful Life of Bliss. So anytime I was vulnerable (or drunk)  one of them would propose and I would say yes and...there I'd be.  Okay-that's not entirely true. I haven't been married as many times as ,say, Elizabeth Taylor.  But certainly more than once.  Or twice.

But I digress...I used to be really embarrassed by all this. And the older I got the more I heard this same story from people who made a life path of getting married and divorced. Searching,  And although it still makes me uncomfortable,  I do realize that I'm not the only one in the world that has spent a great deal of time searching for that partner that would be the ONE, and making a lot of mistakes along the way.  Still--I just said to myself, aloud--there's no way in hell I'm going to publish this posting.  LOL  

 So...I have married and divorced and moved and lived all around the country...always looking for ...something.  Contentment. With a healthy dose of self respect. And a lot of forgiveness along the way for all the stupid things I do.  And security (although I don't know if you ever really have that in this world).  And a feeling of usefulness.  And, well..love. I'm not so jaded that I don't want to be loved.  But I have had love. I have love now.  And today love is a myriad of experiences and actions and thoughts and deeds.  It's not riding off into the sunset on the back of a horse with Prince Charming. It's more like somebody holding my hair back when I'm vomiting or cleaning up after me or helping me grow, and understand myself better.

  It's getting a glimpse of myself through someone else's eyes now and then, and feeling beautiful.  Because that person sees the real me. The inside me. The one I have  finally let that one person get close enough to really know.  That me that is only me because of the helping hand I have gotten for the past 21 years...a hand in learning about me, why I am the way I am,  a hand to pull me up out of the darkness now and then. The history we have after 21 years of this.  A hand to quietly lay on my arm while we are on the couch reading on a cold winters night, silence and comfortableness settling on us like a heavy quilt, woven around our life like a tapestry that tells a story whose ending  I would never have guessed.


  I think he'll live another day.





Namaste.