Yikes, Smells, and Saving

I cleaned off my desk today. I'm like a big girl or something. Let's not talk about the rest of my apartment which I didn't actually get around to cleaning...

Ok, so Kara and I were driving tonight and I didn't think that a car coming at us was going to stop at their red light as we went through an intersection. So I said, "Yikes!" and then, "Gosh, I didn't think he was going to stop!"

Then Kara proceeded to giggle at me for saying "Yikes!" To which my first response was, "I'm adorable! That's adorable!" and then I said, "And anyway, I say that all the time." But Kara doesn't think that I do, she thinks I must just say it in my head a lot. I disagree, and the only way we can settle this is to poll you, my dear readers. Have you heard/read me say "yikes" to you? Or is Kara right, and it's all in my head? I mean if I'd said "Jinkies!" then I think Kara would have a point... but "yikes"? I say it all the time! Right, guys? ...Right? ...Guys? ...Don't let the crickets start chirping, guys!

BTW, By request of Kara, I'm removing the captcha requirement to leave a comment-- she dislikes it and I will see how much spamming I actually get.... and how much it actually changes Kara's process to leave a comment.

I noticed something tonight when I entered my apartment. It doesn't smell right. Not even bad, just not "right." You know how each person's house smells distinctive? As in, if you could bottle the smell of a dwelling and then do a blind test- I could tell you whose house it is? Is this just me? Surely it isn't. Anyway, my house doesn't smell right. And I don't know if it's because Nathan isn't here to make it smell differently, or if it's because I burned dinner last week and the carbon molecules in the air have absorbed some latent odor, or if it's the changing season.. It's weird when your house doesn't smell like you... It's like I just moved or something.

I was watching the news tonight for a little while, and of course it was all about Osama and 9/11... And at one point they interviewed the families of several 9/11 victims... One woman talked about her husband, and how she wanted to find her husband's wedding ring from ground zero... another girl was sent her mother's drivers license from the rubble and she has saved it...and then they talked to this man and asked him what he saved... and he said he never falls asleep on his wife's side of the bed. For 10 years he has saved that spot for her, and he said, "I know she isn't there. I wish she was, but I know she isn't."

Then they cut back to the news reporters, and the man (whom I didn't recognize) said, "Just to think, he saved her side for 10 years..."

And then Diane Sawyer shook her head and with a tone of respect and wonder said, "10 years..."

And I was both horrified and terrified. I heard the admiration in her voice... and I'm so afraid that that is what is expected of me... That somehow if I don't hold onto Nathan to the exclusion of all others for 10 years or even for the rest of my life, it will cheapen our relationship in the eyes of the rest of the world. I recently heard of some young teen star (I know, obvious font of wisdom) quoted as saying that her grandmother was her hero, because she never re-married after her grandfather died, and that showed true love. I'm a romantic. I know about pledging eternal devotion, I know about the romance of admiring from a far- suffering in silence, I know about the story of Romeo and Juliet... That's one of the most well known love stories on the planet... and the main characters kill themselves when they think the other is dead. And they aren't the only stories in which the true loves don't end up together...Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Titanic, Ghost, A Walk to Remember... Oh gosh... A Walk to Remember hits awful close to home now... All of them tell me to "never let go." But I don't want to stay here... I don't want to save his side of the bed for 10 years... I don't want to go 10 years with no one to clean the desk off for... I don't want to go ten years without someone to miss when they work late... I don't want to go 10 years without someone to gripe to when I don't like what someone says on facebook. I don't want to go so long without someone to make decisions with, and talk to as I fall asleep, and kiss goodbye.  Is it so impossible to have true love twice, without either of them being cheapened? I don't want to idolize Nathan, I don't want to make his side of the bed into a trap that I can't trigger without tremendous sorrow and guilt and fear and anxiety... It doesn't mean we didn't have true love... it just means that I didn't die and he didn't want me to live like I did. And I know all that... until Diane Sawyer says, "10 years..." in that tone of wonderment, and then my fear of somehow not honoring Nathan and everything we had flares up and I fall into a burning ring of fire.