Continued

Yeah, so ten years ago I wouldn't even be able to imagine myself where I am today.  Ten years ago I was 22 and I was working but partying all the time, alcohol, coke, heroin, ecstasy, whatever.  (Never used needles.)  I got burnt out on the pot and acid by 18.  I was a mess squared, haha.  Clueless and looking for something I was missing even though I wasn't aware of it.

I'm still kind of obtuse but so much more grounded.  Being married, settled, and having finished my  MA degree is pretty amazing.

Life when I lived in Providence was the craziest.  I had a blast but also some of the worst times of my life.  My friend Lou, who died about ten years ago now, is someone who I love and remember fondly to this day...even though he couldn't escape his demons the way I managed to somehow.  Thinking about him still hurts, it's bittersweet, and I just try to realize his lack of ability to save himself was no one's fault.  And that I need to go in the opposite direction he did and try to make some positive changes in this world, even if they are just small ones.

Lou and my old friend Jef are two people who I will always wish were still alive and I wish sometimes still that I could show their examples, as well as my more successful one, to all the other lost kids out there.  I know that is impossible, but maybe at some point in the future I could do something along those lines, on a local scale or something.

And I'll keep reading and training and living.  Cheers.  :)

Post-Christmas

So we had a good Christmas...Stu & I were going to feast on Christmas Eve and then open presents at midnight but we failed.  We ended up opening them around noon.  Pretty relaxing day though.  I made a yummy breakfast on Christmas morning.  Dinner with my mother's side of the family on Christmas was nice too.

Found out that I passed my Comprehensive Exam today!  I am officially done with my Master's degree.  I've come a long way.  More on that later.

Food for thought

In Old English, cases were used to show subjects, objects, and so on--similar to Latin or Modern Russian.  The language was much more fluid in terms of syntax.  When prepositions began to be used (for a number of reasons, such as influence of other languages), as in "TO a place", the cases began to vanish.  Good or bad?  Who knows.

6 days...

...till my MA comprehensive exam.  I'm pretty stressed, what with being laid off and all, but hopefully that will give me some time to study more before Monday.  I subbed yesterday and today and have two more days to go.  ASC is a great school; I would love to work there.  

I'm beyound exhausted, too.  Can't wait for this exam to be over.

PDR

Good hour of PDR/S.P.E.A.R. training with Jake today.  He went on to a new part of the drills, which made me feel a little better at how I was doing--like I was getting what he showed me before, so I could move on a small step.  I get nervous doing "self-defense" training for some reason that I haven't figured out yet but I would really love to teach women a self-defense system that really works in the future, and I think PDR is excellent for that.  I was considering Krav Maga and some other styles previously, but I prefer PDR. 

Here is more info if you are interested:  http://pdrteam.com/  or http://honestphilosophy.blogspot.com/  .

Marriage

I suppose writing about the meaning of marriage is one of the most worn-out reasons for writing, but I also suppose that there is a reason people write about it so much.  It can be confusing as hell, especially right in the beginning. 

Of course I'm writing in the context of my marriage to Stu.  It still sounds strange to me sometimes.  I am 32 now but when I was 17, 20, 23, etc., I was one of those rebellious and out-of-her-mind young woman who was partying like crazy, never wanting to do anything as mundane as putting down roots or getting married.  Yet here I am now.  Married with 2 cats, haha.

It's kind of funny because Stu and I are basically the same person in a lot of ways (both important and trite):  we both lived in the same area previously living in the same area here, we both teach the same subjects, we both love martial arts/combat sports, we roughly have the same politics, and we've roughly been through the same amount of crazy stuff in our lives.  I think that is the best thing about our marriage and also the worst--being competitive, Stu likes to one-up my on stories which is maddening and the fact that we do have so much in common can be a little mundane.  I wonder if it is better if opposites attract or not.  I'm not saying I'm not happy, just thinking aloud too much early in the morning.

Anyway, after about 7 months of marriage, I'm thinking that marriage is a lot like a balancing act of compromising and figuring out how our life together is going to be.  It's not easy but then Stu and I did rush in to everything really quickly.  It makes us extremely frustrated and even angry sometimes when we learn things about each other that we don't like so much and know that we can't get away from each other--or at least, that's my point of view.  But I think we're in this or the long haul.

A good friend of mine told me, "you just have to remember why you fell in love with this person in the first place."  I guess that is the most important thing.

Addendum

...and my own private library...