anabellemars

Yes, I feel that there is way too much pressure to be in a relationship. Every time I see a member of my extended family I'm asked if I'm dating anyone, when or if I'm planning on getting married and having kids. My immediate family members know better than to ask these things. My Aunt, without any prompting, will say that my cousin Liz and I are still waiting for the perfect men, because our standards are so high, implying that because we have now both reached 'mid-twenties' we are at the point where we should start lowering our standards in order to catch a man. My mother and my aunt are now at the point where they say "when I was your age I was married with two kids". While Liz is content to just say "yeah, I know" I alway interrupt with "Yeah and you were married at 17 and I'm obviously not you so it's kind of pointless to point that out".

I don't know if ostracizes me from others. People I'm not related to are very understanding of the fact that I'm happy being single, if I wanted to be in a relationship I would be. My family however, it makes me dread family events, at least on my mothers side. My mother's side of the family are all super religious (in fact, my siblings and I are the oddballs since we're not) and they're all married with kids and put a lot of stock in that. My cousin T often feels that having children makes her superior to Liz (her little sister). She used to believe the same of me but I once called her a retard for thinking that, having 3 children with the loser that is her ex-husband and living in her parents basement doesn't make her superior it pretty much makes her a cautionary tale, she hasn't mentioned it to me since. My dad's side of the family is quite a bit more open-minded though. My oldest cousin on that side, Jamie, is nearing 60 (I'm only 24) and has been single for nearly 15 years after ending her 5th marriage. I don't think any of my aunts and uncles haven't been married at least twice (my godfather and oldest uncle, who is almost 70, has been married 4 times and we can't remember if my godmother is his second or third wife). All 20 cousins on that side have all been married, some divorced, and they've all got kids, but they don't pressure me. They are all more protective and think I'm better off taking my time.

The pressure to be in a couple is a little more during the holidays. I can't speak from personal feelings on this since I don't let that stuff get to me most of the time. My family has pretty much stopped hinting at anything. I think there one time, when I was twenty, when I was asked if I was going to bring a boyfriend home for the holidays. That was the last time I was ever asked because the resulting mega-rant informed them all that I do not need a man to validate myself and if I were dating someone we'd be engaged before I would expose him to my family, in hopes that he wouldn't bolt and knowing if I had waited for the wedding to spring them on him it'd be a disaster so unless they heard of my engagement they'd have to restrain themselves from asking again.

NOW
1. "Full of Grace" Sarah McLachlan
2. "Take A Bow" Madonna
3. "Rain" Patty Griffin
4. "Clean Getaway" Maria Taylor
5. "Daydream Believer" Mary Beth Marziaz
6. "Breathe Me" Sia
7. "Mr Brightside" The Killers
8. "Any Other World" Mika
9. "Reason Why" Rachael Yamagata
10. "Bittersweet Symphony" The Verve

THEN (I'm going with high school since when I as an actual kid I loved Shania Twain and the Chipmunks)
1. "Full of Grace" Sarah McLachlan
2. "Backstreets Back" Backstreet Boys (I was a huge fan)
3. "Hit Me Baby" Britney Spears
4. "Move Bitch" Ludacris (yeah... I know, totally out of place)
5. "Graduation (Friends Forever)" Vitamin C
6. "I'll Never Break Your Heart" Backstreet Boys
7. "Take A Bow" Madonna
8. "All I Have to Give" Backstreet Boys
9. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" Nirvana (also out of place...)
10. "As Long As You Love Me" Backstreet Boys

There's a little overlapping, but I'm somewhat embarrassed of my 'Then' list. I was a huge BSB fan, wallpapered my bedroom room with their posters and videos and everything. I haven't actually listened to them in years, I think I played them too much to be able to handle it anymore. There's minimal overlapping because of the whole BSB and Britney Spears craze of the late 90s.

Wow, there have been a lot of song related Writer's Block in the last couple weeks.

My bff, well, after reviewing the situation I'd have to say my cousin, Liz. Yes, it can be a kind of cheesy thing, naming someone as your bff because you're related and they didn't really have a chance to decide if they want to know you because it's automatic. I'm not sure if I'd be friends with her if we were to meet on the street or at work or school or whatever, I don't know if I would've made the effort at getting to know her, especially because we're kind of opposite in personality. Where I am often described as bubbly and dramatic and impulsive and confident and aggressive and all that, she'd be described as calm and a planner and unsure (not insecure, just unsure) and passive. Where I am the one to get super excited about something and bounce up and down and gush she'd simply nod and say okay. In most people that annoys the shit out of me, you can't get excited? You're that cool that you can't be openly excited about something? But I know she's excited, she just doesn't gush. The thing about Liz, is while she is almost my complete opposite (and she does this annoying thing where I tell her a movie is really good and she doubts me only to find it really is as good as I said it would be, happened last week when I forced her to watch Fanboys and she loved it), we're really not all that different and she kind of balances me. There's really no one in the world that knows me like she does, no one can. She understands my weird ass quirks, like the fact that I don't like fruit but I love vegetables like broccoli and asparagus. She knows that I can only eat grapes if they're peeled for some reason and that I don't consider berries fruit. She knows all about the fact that water irritates my skin and I'm allergic to things like latex and pistachios and she checks ingredients for them just in case. She knows about my crazy ass family because it's her family too. She knows all about the fact that I'm named after both our grandmother and her mother and that it means that I have absolutely no hope at being normal one day. She knows when I lost my virginity and when I kissed a boy and that I really don't have a favorite color because I refuse to choose between pink and purple. She really knows me, which shouldn't be shocking since she's had 24 years to learn all about me.

There's a photo of us at our grandparents house, I'm in a car seat, laughing (I'm about 6 or 7 months old, which makes her 18 or 19 months) and she's talking to me. Our mothers say that she was basically telling me about her day at the time and I was laughing because she was talking about Winnie the Pooh (which was both our favorite cartoon until we were three, and my Pooh was my first word). Our mothers say that we were best friends from the get go. We're protective of each other and honest.

So she's my cousin, but in the end she's my best friend because there isn't anything I wouldn't tell her, which is really hard for me. I don't open up to people easily. I lived with my roommate for almost 4 years, and was friends with her for nearly 12years before that. That's 16 years and I don't think I ever really opened up to her and actually let her into my little [weird] world. It turned out to be a good thing because we didn't stay friends and parted ways and all that, which I can admit might be, at least partly, my fault because I could open up to her. I was there for her, don't get me wrong, I supported her in all her decisions [most of them stupid] and was a shoulder for her to cry on even though I disagreed with her most of the time. At least until she made the decision to marry the internet guy from England after talking to him for, like, two months. There was a limit on my support it turns out. But I think if I was able to be open with her it might have been different, she might have understood why I couldn't support her or understood different things about me. I have some pretty big trust issues, as well as commitment issues, which I don't particularly understand. My control issues are quite clear, I can look at pretty much ever single woman on my mom's side and see where my control issues come from (they're all controlling, every last one of them... and there's a lot), but the other two, I don't know where they come from. Which is something else that Liz gets.

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Hearing. Because you'd get arrested if you touched everything. It'd be disgusting if you licked/tasted everything. Smelling could be potentially gross, and I was under the impression that when your smell goes taste goes too anyway. Seeing would be good, but without you're not biased, you don't base everything on beauty. And while I'd be sad that I couldn't enjoy the Louvre as much I used to, it would potentially make me a good judge of character. Especially if I could hear because then you become attuned to voice inflection and can tell when people are lying or not. But the best part about hearing is that your ears are what you use a lot of the time to judge human emotion, when you hear a hitch in someone's voice and know they're sad. Or they sound stiff and formal and you know something has upset them. I can get on the phone with my best friend and all she has to do is say "hi" and I can know her mood, that something is wrong. And the best part about keeping your hearing is that you don't have to sacrifice music. Nobody will ever have to describe the sound to you. I once knew a deaf girl whose mother described music to by using colors and pictures. I don't think it would be enough for me. I love visual art, but music is better because the singer can make you feel and I love Fur Alys way too much to never hear it again.

I'll post a real entry this weekend, but for now if you want a christmas card/letter from Andy and I leave your name and address in the poll (only I can see the results) so I can get an idea of how many people want one this year.

And for anyone who wants to send me one, let me know and I'll send you my new address.

Poll #1493814 Christmas cards
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 7

Write your address and full name

My feelings are mixed. I admit that after two beers, if there is someone smoking in the vicinity, I will catch a few drags or steal a whole smoke. But while I am only a 'social smoker' I also am completely incapable to forming an addiction. I have a genetic flaw that doesn't allow me to form an addiction to nicotine, something I found out after 'smoking' for 2 1/2 years in high school in that way that smoking is both cool and uncool and definitely rebellious. So my feelings remain mixed because while I smoke 'socially' (and by 'socially' I'm mean 'only when I'm halfway to drunk') the smell of the smoke makes me sick if I don't have a beer in hand and an empty sitting in front of me.

I think that it's obvious that the non-smokers should have more 'rights' because they are technically not the ones changing the conditions of the area. The smokers are releasing something else into the air that is not naturally there so they should have to recognize some restrictions on it. The non-smokers are not releasing any unnatural byproduct into the air so they should have the 'right of way' in the situation because second-hand smoke is unhealthy and it's not their choice to breathe it in if they are next to a smoker (unless they chose to be there, then it's totally their fault).

I definitely agree with the banning of smoking from public areas because it's easier to go out when you don't have to worry about the fact that you will ooze that smoking smell out of every pore of your body the next day. That if you happen to go out and then end up cutting the evening short for a family thing that you were previously not informed about you don't have to worry about how bad your hair smells (because obviously I changed my clothes). Also, it's just easier being in the bar.

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