But my last blog post gave me an idea.

So, I have started another new blog. One that I am actually inspired to write for. It’s going to be fun! Yeah!

So, if you don’t mind, I would love it if you would follow me to my new home: http://remedialblogging.wordpress.com.

I promise to write there much more often than I wrote here.

I am in love with my life, by the way. And I plan to keep it that way.

Sometimes I call him weird shit, like “Lubba.” I don’t know why.

But he forgives me for it, and most of the time he even responds to it.

Sometimes I get sad when I think about the fact that he will die someday.

But he’s only four, so I try not to think about it too much.

Even though we both seem to be aging at a rapid pace.

He is the best sigher I know. He sighs like he invented sighing.

He sleeps with me in my bed when it’s not too hot because I don’t have central a/c because I’m poor.

In the mornings he makes me get up to feed him before the sun has even risen because I feed him only once a day, in the mornings before the sun has even risen.

After he eats he jumps back into bed with me, burps loudly, and then leaves to go sleep on the couch in the living room.

But when he hears my alarm go off an hour and a half later, he runs across the apartment, down the hallway, and jumps into my bed to greet me.

Sometimes he scratches me with his claws like he did this morning, but I know that it’s really just him expressing his love for me, which is so strong that he has to hurt me sometimes by accident like Lenny in Of Mine and Men.

Even though he hurts me sometimes, it’s my favorite part of the day. He reminds me that every new day is astonishing and beautiful.

Just like him.

You can read it at http://childrenofanidlebrain.wordpress.com.

Mmm. Sushi sounds good, actually. Maybe I am hungry.

Maybe I am okay.

But then I look back at that last paragraph, and I used the word “good” four times. And then I realize that it’s not even a paragraph, it’s a sentence. One sentence. Four times.

I can’t write anymore, y’all. Maybe it’s a phase. I can’t even write about how I can’t write. I’m not blocked. I’m just nothing. Not a writer. Never was.

Also, there’s all those mistakes I don’t want to repeat.

NYEG and I decided not to move in together. He’s never lived with someone he was romantically involved with before, and I didn’t know if he was fully aware of what he was getting himself into, so I came to him to have the “but what about this?” conversation. There were a lot of “this”es.

At the end of it, I was pretty sure I’d freaked him out. He swore he wasn’t freaked out (pretty sure he was), but if I had doubts, then maybe we should just wait a little while to take that step. I told him I don’t have doubts, but I wasn’t sure that he didn’t. These words we were saying didn’t make sense to each other, so we dropped the conversation, and every once in a while now he jokes about how he won’t let me move in with him.

I’m trying to get him to sing/play a duet with me. He seemed open to it at first, but now I’m not so sure. I learned my part, anyway.

And, after three months of dating and traversing the three hours between us every weekend, I’m actually considering it.

What?

I’m sitting here in my bathrobe at 10 a.m.

I’m drinking really strong coffee.

I’m blogging.

I’m listening to Nick Drake’s Pink Moon on vinyl.

I slept all night with the windows open to listen to the gentle spring rain.

I have an interview at four for a job I think I would adore.

I’m going to see NYEG tonight.

I am in love with my life.

A while back, on my old blog, a (not-really) anonymous blog that caused lots and lots of problems in my life and in the lives of others, I asked my readers to ask me any question, and I’d answer them all as honestly as I could. I ended up answering most of them before shutting that blog down, but there was one that, for one reason or another, I was never able to bring myself to answer.

A good friend of mine (who doesn’t appear to be blogging anymore) asked “What advice about marriage would you give a young woman who just got engaged?”

The other day when I was cleaning my apartment, I was thinking about this question, and I began to have an imaginary conversation with a faceless, nameless young woman who just got engaged. These are the things I told her.

1. Don’t settle. Don’t settle don’t settle don’t settle. I’ve come to believe that the reason the divorce rate is so high is because most people view marriage as something they’re entitled to; however, not everyone finds the kind of love that a happy marriage requires (and I specify “a happy marriage,” because some people are perfectly okay with being in a humdrum or even unhappy marriage). But most people make do with the person they’re with when they decide they’re at the age society tells them they should be married by, and sooner or later, they realize they’ve married the wrong person for the wrong reasons. The old adage, “don’t marry the person you can live with; marry the person you cannot live without” is so, so true. Although it’s easy to talk yourself into not being able to live without someone if you’ve never actually found someone you cannot live without.

2. Have sex before your wedding night. To some of you, this might be the biggest no-brainer you’ve ever heard, and to others, this might be the most controversial thing you’ve ever heard. I was raised in a conservative Christian church that made sex both too important and not important enough: too important in the sense that, outside of marriage, it is one of the most destructive sins (it’s not), and not important enough in the sense that, inside of marriage, its main purpose is procreation (it’s not).  Anthropologists say that humans are not created to be sexually monogamous–it takes work to commit yourself sexually to one person for the rest of your life. And you need to know before you make that commitment exactly what you’re committing to.

On a business trip when I was engaged, the topic of sex came up, and I told a coworker that I was saving myself for my wedding night, as had been my plan since I was 13 (and was told at church that I should do such or else I would surely get knocked up or die of an STD or disgust the man who wanted to make me his wife or just plain earn God’s eternal scorn). The coworker asked me, “Well, how do you know you’re sexually compatible?” I answered that I knew we were by the way we kiss and touch, but I knew in my heart that the reason it had been so easy to wait until marriage was that we truly weren’t sexually compatible.  Of course, it would take me years to be able to admit this to myself. I spent these years blaming myself and thinking I’m simply not a sexual person (I am).

3. Know your needs. Our needs drive our compulsions and our actions. When our needs are fulfilled, we are happy and content, but when they are unfulfilled, we can grow depressed and withdrawn, which could cause us eventually to act out in ways we never imagined possible.

My main need is to be understood and accepted, but I wasn’t being understood or accepted inside my marriage. I began to starve to have these needs met, and then, when I was very nearly dead, I found a way to meet this need outside of my marriage. Of course, I had no idea that this is what was going on. Getting my needs met outside of my marriage saved me in a way, but it was unfortunate that it had to get to that point. If I had known my needs, perhaps I would have been able to get them met by my husband before I caused such irreparable damage to our marriage, to others, and to myself.

4. Know how to communicate your needs. Of course, just knowing your needs is not good enough. You also need to be able to communicate them to your partner in a way that is honest, heartfelt, and productive for both of you.

5. Make sure you are accepted. It’s better to be alone than to be married to someone who doesn’t accept you and love you for everything you are, vices and virtues, flaws and qualities. Don’t marry someone hoping to change for them, even if you think it would make you a better person. You are fine just the way you are, and you should be loved completely just the way you are. The inverse of this is also true: don’t marry someone hoping they’ll change, but, at the same time, you’ll need to love the essential being of someone enough to be flexible when and if they do change. It’s a tricky balance, to be sure, which is why everlasting love is something to be celebrated. It truly is a miracle.

Anyway, she urges all of her readers and friends to start their own Life Lists. I’ve thrown around the idea for a while, but I haven’t ever actually sat down to write mine. Until today, when I was researching the Vernal Equinox and thought of something I so desperately want to do that I had to write it down. Thus, a list was born.

These are my first ten:

1. See the sun rise while standing at the Sphinx on the day of the Vernal Equinox.
2. Adapt a novel into a screenplay.
3. Speak French fluently.
4. Earn my M.A. in Linguistics.
5. Live in a foreign country for at least a year.
6. Stay at the Lisbon Lux.
7. Touch the Roman Coliseum.
8. Hear Big Ben chime.
9. Read Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” while looking at Tintern Abbey.
10. Conceive a child in love.

What would be on your Life List?