But Maybe... I WOULDN'T HAVE!

I read an interesting thing in Salon.com the other day. A guy by the name of Cary Tennis has a daily advice column and while he generally picks well-written, thoughtful, and peculiar letters to respond to, I have absolutely no interest in his response. All I care about is the writer's dillemna itself and what I would tell them to do. So, I'll paste an excerpt here of the letter that got me thinking this week:

My brother is a happy-go-lucky guy, always the life of the party. He's been married and divorced three times, and before his third marriage he neglected to disclose both previous marriages to his wife. He did admit to having been married before. Now that we've met his likely fourth wife, we're very happy for him and we want the best for both him and his fiancée. The problem is that he's told our family not to reveal all three prior marriages to his prospective wife. Instead, he wants to pretend there was only one prior marriage. To complicate matters, No. 4 is now expecting his baby.

OH NO!!!!! So the writer wants Cary to tell him if he should be the bearer of bad news or not. When I read this, my immediate reaction was "YES you moron! Tell her!" (Which by the way, Cary advises this as well, thank God.) I'll tell you why. I didn't find out that my (now) ex-husband was bi-polar or a drug-addict (although I should have seen that a mile away, but I was young, 22, and very naive) and had served time in prison for robbery and assault until after I married the bastard!!!!!! Oh yes, it was a few months afterward that his brother casually mentioned this to me one day at The Olive Garden. And should I mention that at the time, I was "expecting his baby" as well?

I need to also say that even if I had known all of this sordid truth, I probably still would have married him anyway. He would have made all those things seem so insignificant and trivial, even tho complete and total criminality is something that goes against everything I stand for. It just felt like a punch in the face to be told this stuff after I had already gone and did it. It would have been nice to know before hand. Maybe I wouldn't have married him. I'm still pretty sure I would have anyway, but maybe... I WOULDN'T HAVE!

You see, even tho I think this part of my life is gone forever, my thirties have turned out to be the blessed and finally "Happy Years", I read things like this and it just brings the misery all back. What I went thru then was so soul-crushingly damaging that I'm not ever going to completely recover. It is now at this point of the essay that I need to stop and hug my boyfriend right now, and tell him how grateful I am for his real-manliness, his un-dying devotion and his willingness to help carry a soul-crushingly heavy load.

Best Movie I Saw This Week: American History X. I watch lots of movies every week. I prefer to watch movies over sitcoms or even reality shows (however, I see that a new season of Project Runway will be starting in a couple of weeks! Yee Haw!) hell, I have 15 movie channels already plus On-Demand, so I've got it made, but every once in awhile a film really gets to you, it really sucks you in completely, and this movie was one of those. I'd never seen this before, and it's already eight years old. I need to preface this first by saying that Man! Edward Norton looked HOT as a totally buff and pumped up skinhead. You take away the swastika tattoos and he'd be purrrrrfect. You couple that with a man on a mission to transform himself into a good person and save his brother from being comletely immersed in the skin-head life, and you've got a recipie for Dreamboat. But what I liked the best about this movie was that the issue of racism wasn't presented to us as a cut and dried predictable morality tale, black people good and persecuted, white people who hate them evil. Issues such as Affirmative Action and rioting were brought up with sentiments such as "rioting is just an excuse to destroy property and loot" and Affirmative Action is wrong because the job is awarded not on merit but on race. White people who are not evil or racist think this way whether it's right or not. The ending was this movie's most compelling message. That even tho Edward Norton was working so hard to undo the damage he had already caused by being a leader in the Aryan Nation, his little brother was sacrificed anyway on the altar of his past transgressions.

Book I'm Reading: 24 Days. It's a book about Enron. It's another Dollar Tree Special. You know, I haven't bought a book from the bookstore or from my store in weeks because the Dollar Tree has a great selection and they are ONLY A DOLLAR! Now, I don't know a whole lot about finance and Wall Street, but this book is very informative. It is actually comprehendable. It is written by two Wall Street Journal reporters who broke that scandal in the first place. I once heard in school that newspapers have to be written at a sixth-grade reading level, and thank God they did because otherwise I wouldn't have a clue what they were talking about.

Best Song I Heard: I totally got into Seven Nation Army yesterday when I was cooking dinner. I cooked Aldi's Flat Iron Steaks, be-bopping along and sipping Wild Vines. (they're really good, they come frozen in a bag and you cook them that way, you're supposed to grill them but we don't have any gas right now so I cooked them in a skillet instead and they are just as tasty). The White Stripes seem to make into this portion of the journal entry a lot. What can I say? They are just that good.

Current Sewing Project: I have started a pair of shorts for my daughter. I am debating whether I should put a Disney character on the back.

Top News Story: They found a group in the most impoversihed section of Miami that wanted to blow up the Sears Tower, in allegiance to Al Queda. All they had done so far was take a few pictures of the building in downtown Chicago and buy some army boots. That's how far they got. I know this is serious and I'm glad they got caught, but Oh JEEZ! People can be so fucking stupid sometimes!

Today looks like another fabulous summer day, and right now I'm cooking lunch and then will be kickin it poolside. Then I will retire inside for my lovely afternoon nap, and then I hope we get to go downtown for a Carnival tonite! You are never ever too old to like those!