2001-02-22 - 986032274

Who's Who Cheat Sheet
Who I Read

On the internal soundtrack: "Movin' Right Along", from The Muppet Movie

So, what do I have to do to get my journal to be the subject of a flame war? I guess being a hairy gun-shooting libertarian nudist just doesn't cut it.

Hm... I was fussing about identity a while back, how people define themselves. Maybe that'll be my trademark phrase: "I'm Evelynne, and I'm a hairy gun-shooting libertarian nudist."

If you're a nudist, where do you keep your gun? A gun belt a la Josey Wales might chafe a bit. Perhaps an ankle holster.

Actually, the thing I like about the online journal business is that I know that people who are reading are interested in (or sickly fascinated by) the stuff I write. For whatever reason, they are here by choice. If there's anyone who is offended or grossed out by me, they're long gone. Unlike in real life, where you have to watch what you say because the people you talk to may still be there tomorrow whether they want to be or not.

A few more vacation tidbits:

The waxing thing is one of the better things I've chosen to do. I didn't have to think about leg hair for a solid week. No shaving, no worrying about people looking at the five-o'clock shadow on my legs, no careful arrangement of my bathing suit. Gotta love it. MIL thinks I should just get lasered and be done with it. I'm considering it.

My brother loves to lie in the sun, just like our grandfather.

The macaroni and cheese appetizer at the East City Bistro is amazing.

Poindexter is getting really good at skating, and it's almost fun for him now. We went out skating almost every day we were there. I actually had to work to keep up with him, too.

So, I am weird, and I am not real excited about the boat. Everyone else just loves the thing, but I would rather stay on land. I'm not sure why. Part of it is that claustrophobic feeling I get, wanting to get off and walk somewhere and not being able to. Oh gosh ... I bet the big thing is the noise. The noise of the boat and the wind makes it difficult to chat with people. As it is, I spent most of my lone boat trip napping. I do like napping on the boat. When we hit somebody's wake the rocking motion makes me sleepy.

Y'know, a lot of women complain that husbands are like additional children. I wonder, how much of that is because women take over the household and treat husbands like additional children? What happens if you give men chores and expect them to do well at them?

So, even happily-married folks seem to be annoyed with their spouses a lot. Maybe over time, the little things that vaguely annoy you turn into not-so-little things that annoy the hell out of you on a daily basis, and become difficult to ignore. It seems like a reasonable thing to have happen. Even in the best marriages I have seen, it appears that eventually annoying habits come to the fore.

Still, I really, really hope that this doesn't happen to us. Perhaps I am being naive. Most people start out thinking their spouses are damn near perfect, but 20 years later they're happy to give you a long list of faults. You go from being annoyed by your spouse about 5% of the time to something more like 50% of the time. It's only half the time, but it sure tips the balance.

On the other hand, maybe I'm not so naive. Poindexter puts it like this: Everyone is different. We are quite different people with a different relationship. Also, he believes that if things deteriorate into a relationship we don't like, it's because we have stopped trying. And he and I both have "us" as our first priority, so that helps.

After five years, with the first bloom of love worn off (I can tell because I can concentrate at work now without mooning about him), Poindexter and I aren't even close to not trying to keep things good between us.

In addition, I selected Poindexter very, very carefully. It wasn't merely a case of "Oh boy, I love this guy, we should get married."* I picked someone with whom the inevitable conflicts could be resolved in a rational manner without a lot of angry screaming. (I really, really just don't want to deal with that -- I try very hard not to take my anger out on other people in unfair ways and wanted someone who felt the same way, because it's excruciatingly hard to do on your own while the other person is screaming insults). It was important to be in a relationship where we were both willing to make small changes in behavior to keep things like annoying habits from taking over the relationship. And, correspondingly, it was important to me to make sure we agreed on the big things that we can't change about ourselves (this is where the money/kids/relationship-style stuff comes in).

As for the bickering/fill the silence thing, Poindexter doesn't think I will ever, ever run out of things to talk about. I'll always come up with something weird to discuss, he says.

And when you hear us "bickering", it's for the entertainment value or to sharpen our wits, not because there's any real animosity there. For example, in the car on the way to Fort Lauderdale, I was cold. Papa keeps the car at about 72 degrees, and it blows directly on me, sitting in the middle of the back seat between Poindexter and my brother. I couldn't actually put the sweater on, so I had it draped over my front. Poindexter kept moving around and knocking the sweater off me, so I started shrieking at him to sit still and stop making me cold. It started a mock "argument" with no actual anger or irritation on either side, but amused us for a minute or two. We do this a lot, and people usually think it's a real argument, but it's not.

* (The reason I went from love to marriage with Poindexter was because we want exactly the same things in the money, kids, communications departments -- so much so it's sometimes spooky -- and we work extremely well together in making decisions. I am actually quite a cynic and do not believe that love, in itself, is a good reason to get married. Love is an important ingredient in marriage, of course. But marriage is a partnership, and if you can't work together as partners, if you have major philosophical differences about money, kids, and what you expect out of a relationship, you have NO business getting married. Double up on birth control and fuck like bunnies, but don't get married. Please. You'll just end up getting divorced. Might as well save yourself the money and aggravation.)

Another tangent on the relationship thing, which is kind of related to the E&P:ALS I'll be continuing next week, probably.

I was pretty compatible with my college boyfriend, Sam. In many ways I loved him a great deal. And while money was somewhat more important to him than it was to me, it was manageable and we were in agreement on all the Big Things except one: the importance of talking in a relationship.

Now, I know there's a stereotype about women and talking. This is not quite it. It has more to do with sharing. I want to be able to share EVERYTHING, from deep philosophical thoughts to wondering about what makes people tick to "penny for your thoughts" to "A peanut is neither a pea or a nut. Discuss."

I am not a private person, and Sam was. There were things that he didn't want to share. And as much as I respected that, to me it felt like I was being shut out. There was this part of me, a small but really, really important one, that really NEEDED to be able to talk about everything.

The thing is, this wasn't some weird ideal I had. It wasn't a figment of my imagination. I'd already experienced this kind of talking relationship with other people (male and female) in platonic friendships. I'd just never found this quality in a guy I was also attracted to, and I'd given up on the possibility that the combination existed. Then, of course, I ran into Poindexter again.

I've never been able to come up with a name for this quality in a person -- "openness" is a start, but doesn't tell the whole story -- but it is something real. Some people call this a "connection", or say they "clicked", but people use those expressions too often, I think. What I'm talking about is a pretty rare thing. The people I've encountered it with in my entire life can be counted on one hand.

Oh! Valentine's Day! I almost forgot.

We didn't do anything.

I did get Poindexter a card, because I saw it while looking for cards for the nieces. The outside said something about how I wracked my brains and made myself crazy trying to think of a present to get him, and the inside says,

"Then I thought, forget it, I don't need the stress."

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