Still, I am mostly a prude. I like to intellectualize sex rather than share all the naughty (or normal) things I may (or may not) be into. When it comes to my own personal behavior, I will blush and stammer and decline to comment.
UNTIL NOW.
Don't get too excited. I'm just trying to write a witty preface for the following, only slightly related, topics.
I have mentioned before my strange obsession with Regency-era Romance novels. After a rather long hiatus from indulging, the addiction has resurfaced.
I had a pretty tough Spring. My grandpa was hospitalized in early March--his lung failed to re-inflate after he had some fluid removed. After about two weeks in the hospital they found where the fluid was coming from. He had mesothelioma (it's that lung cancer caused by asbestos exposure the infomercials want you to join a class-action lawsuit about). So the doctors told him he had a few months to live, and my family started the extremely painful process of saying our long good-byes. He was totally okay with it, as far as I could tell. He said he had a pretty awesome life--that's paraphrased--and figured he'd live on in the genes that his progeny would keep passing around. Someone somewhere would show up with his nose or his eyes, and there he would be. He lived to see a lot of history happen (true, he was 88) and was a lot luckier in life than many he knew. So he was ready to go. He died on May 19th, in his own home with opera playing and the windows open to the garden in his back yard.
Of course, grief works its way into every aspect of daily life, especially when you try to ignore it. I hated my job, I hated school, I hated everything. It was all excruciatingly tedious and irrelevant, when my grandfather was uncomfortably dying and my whole family was choked up with the pain of it all.
So, now, I'm trying to find my way back to things that make me happy. And, dammit
, I like Historical romances. I found a website specializing in the rating and reviewing of romances and their authors, printed out a top 100 list, and bought a few of the higher-ranking titles second-hand on Ebay. They arrived in the mail today. They are ridiculous things. Especially the covers. Exhibit A, over there to the right, made me laugh out loud. There's one I will NOT be reading on the bus or the beach, lest some burly, long-haired man with an open shirt carrying flowers gets the wrong idea. I am still a prude.Onto exhibit B, which I have been meaning to post about. John and I used
to live with our fabulous ex-roommate, still friend Georgina in a second-floor two-bedroom apartment not far from our current site of cohabitation. John and/or Georgina, I can't remember who, found a bunch of nude sketches inside/near the dumpster. I finally bought some frames for the two John and I picked as our favorites, and now they hang above our bed. Dirty! There are cartoon nipples in my bedroom! I mean art. There is beautiful art in my bedroom.So those are two things that make me happy these days. Stories about passionate nineteenth-century lovers, and drawings of a naked chicks with fros.
Always,
Carolyn
