Rainy Days and Mondays

It's gray, rainy, windy and cold today. I'd planned to take some photos this week to post of Chapel Hill in the spring (the azaleas around the Old Well, the flowering Japanese Magnolias in Coker Arboretum, Silent Sam amid the greenery) but our beautiful spring weather has been usurped by a cold front that doesn't seem to be letting up any time soon.

Rainy days always make me want to stay in bed. I want to pull the covers up and hide from the day with a book and a cup of tea. I love rainy nights, I love falling asleep listening to the rain on my roof and that damp, almost electric smell in the evening when you know a storm is rolling in. Rainy days make me want to go back to sleep and start over tomorrow.

What about you? Are you pro- or anti-rainy days?

Is your marriage sustainable?

I was reading the NYT's Well column this morning and found myself drawn to a post on The Sustainable Marriage. We seem to be once again entering marriage-season and a couple of good friends have announced engagements and wedding plans. I'm naturally thrilled that these friends have found the person they want to share their lives with, and I'm definitely looking forward to dancing at their weddings. However, (and this is not at all a comment on these friends' relationships, it's more a reflection of how my mind tends to follow certain well-worn paths) I'm always a little concerned about the focus we as a society (and the wedding industry) places on weddings while all but ignoring the marriage that will emerge from these parties. While planning Adam's and my wedding, I was as guilty as the next person of wanting a beautiful day, good food and a great party (and frizz-free curls, let's just be honest here). However, whether because we were engaged for such a long time or because we're apt to talk everything nearly to death, we also spent a lot of time talking about the kind of marriage we wanted to have after the ceremony and reception passed into the realm of happy memories.

What I liked about this quiz and the accompanying article was the discussion about what we look for in a marriage. A good or "sustainable" marriage, according to the article, is a partnership that allows both people to grow as individuals, learn new things and feel good about themselves. In short, a sustainable marriage is just as much about the individual as it is about the partnership. I like the equal emphasis placed on "individual" and "partner." It seems like so many of the articles I read about marriage focus on the fear of losing oneself in a relationship or the fear of growing apart. The quiz seemed a tad too simplistic to serve as a genuine assessment tool, but as a quick, stick-your-finger-in-the-air style barometer, I think it does the job rather well.

What do you think? Do you have a "Sustainable Marriage" or relationship? Does your relationship allow you to "self-expand"? Would you use this quiz or should it be consigned to the trashcan along with all those Cosmo quizzes we've all taken through the years?

Eight Days a Week

So, you all know me, you know that I need structure. I read a lot of blogs on a lot of different topics and one of the things that seems to work well is repetition. On The Happiness Project, Wednesdays are Tip or List days, at least once a week the Well Blog over on NYT talks about a certain dietary concern and then provides a couple of recipes to meet it, Diner's Journal (also NYT--I hope the blogs aren't included in their new pay structure) includes a "What We're Reading" segment (with links to the articles)...you get the drift. This got me thinking that perhaps a "Mondays are ______ Day" approach would help provide the structure I (apparently) can't live without.

I think one of the things that hindered me in the past was the stare of the blank screen and the blinking cursor (for other examples of this phenomenon please see: the latest unfinished novel on my desktop). If I were blogging about food or decorating or parenting or money, I would have a framework to work within for each post. With a blog like this one, where the only unifying element is me, I can write about anything. There's a lot of freedom in this...but there's also some terror. Just because I can write about anything doesn't mean I should. Do you really care what I had for lunch today? (Chopped salad and Jello pudding cup) No? Didn't think so.

Choosing my structure is going to be a bit of a work-in-progress. I think I'll start by picking one or two "days" and see how the whole thing evolves from there. For now, I'm going to take a page from some of the earlier mentioned blogs and go with "What Am I Reading" on Fridays and List/Tips on Tuesdays. We'll see how it goes and I of course welcome your feedback.

You Keep Coming Back Like a Song

So I'm going to try to come back to this whole blogging-thing. The blog-related hangups I mentioned in my very first post (why would anybody want to read this?) along with job changes and just that whole grown-up-person-life-thing combined to keep me from posting for the last 5 months. But I'm back now and I'm going to try to 1.) Say interesting things and 2.) Not disappear for another 5 months.

What's been happening...

• I quit my job at the school library and was hired as a (temporary) youth services library associate with the public library. This is better than the school job in some ways and worse in others...at the end of the day I miss my job in Chicago so much some times I want to scream and cry in frustration and sadness.
• I thought that my childhood (moving every couple of years) would have me well-prepared for the difficulties associated with being the "new kid" as an adult. I was wrong. More on that in later posts.
• We've been talking about taking this trip for years now and it's finally happening: we're going to Italy for ten days at the end of April. I'm looking forward to Tuscan hill towns, cobblestone streets, museums and lots and lots of Chianti.

The first three months of 2011 have been exciting. After spending Christmas with my family we rang-in the New Year in the Emergency Room so I could get my appendix removed (it was, of course, one of the few NYE holidays when Adam was NOT scheduled to be at the hospital), we followed up with a 10-day cruise and then went back to work. (Note to all: Always recover from surgery on a cruise ship. Especially when it's cold at home and you're cruising to a warm locale.) The remainder of January and February went by in a work-eat-sleep-repeat-blur and now we're knee-deep in March Madness and I got to watch UNC defeat Washington today with three of my favorite alums! Go Heels!

Now I'll leave you with you a promise to return soon.

Have a great Monday!