This is it.

Welcome to my second contribution to the Absolute Writes monthly blog chain. Once you're finished with my entry, please check out the links on either side of me - *RomanceWriter* and laffarsmith.

This month's topic is growing up. My first impulse is to make the forcedly lighthearted declaration that I will never grow up. I'm just to wacky, just having to much fun! Of course, that's not really true. Anyone trying to sell that is already grown up and trying desperately to cling to some notion of childishness. Someone who will never grow up wouldn't have considered the topic.

I am grown up, aren't I? So are most of us. And I think that the most surprising thing about it is that there's not more to it. This is it. I expected to be given a key or realized some truth at some point. I expected a bright line to appear somewhere in life that, in the crossing, would have made me a grown up. I mean, after the life initiation of puberty, we deserve something like that don't we?

Nothing happens. And it doesn't happen so gradually that you don't even notice it not happening. None of the traditional signposts of life are what you expect. You graduate high school but the next day your mom is still telling you to clean your room. You turn eighteen and now have the ability to vote with the other adults. Statistically, you probably won't. If you do, nothing changes when you turn in your ballot. You turn twenty-one and nothing much happens except some friends might take you out drinking. You graduate college but you're still just a kid looking for a job.

At some point, years later - almost always a moment that's only remarkable for its insignificance - you look around and realize that you are grown up. When that moment arrived for me, I was first a little amused then just pissed off. How could this be it? Grown ups know things. They know how to do stuff and how to get stuff done. They have opinions that should be respected. They run companies, they are people's bosses, they serve in public office.

But I shouldn't be one of them. I didn't know any more than I used to. My opinions weren't worth any more than before. I didn't have any employees. I never even got a freaking key.

The Whole Chain:
aimeelaine - www.aimeelaine.com/writing/blog
AuburnAssassin - http://clairegillian.wordpress.com/
Collectonian - http://collectonian.livejournal.com/
DavidZahir - http://zahirblue.blogspot.com/
FreshHell - http://freshhell.wordpress.com/
Simran - http://theglutenfreefoodblog.blogspot.com/
Proach - http://everythinghistorical.wordpress.com/
*RomanceWriter* - http://www.staceyespino.blogspot.com/
Breddings - http://breddings.blogspot.com/
laffarsmith - http://www.writersroundabout.com/

Everthing is Okay

I've Gotta Write About What?

This is my first month to participate in the blog chain at Absolute Write. Check out I do it all for love and Writing about Love to keep the chain going. I'm glad to be a part of it; should be a healthy exercise. But did they have to choose love as the topic? For fuck's sake!

I've been furiously scribbling my thoughts and feelings since elementary school. My English teachers loved me - although they were continually confused by my love of writing and my casual relationship with grammar - and my gym teachers hated me. The feeling was usually mutual.

I'm a stereotypical Midwesterner. My protestant, tea totaling parents raised me to believe that we should think about our feelings as little as possible and to talk about them never. I've held true to this system as much as possible. It really helps me avoid that oogie feeling.

And, in a lot of ways, I'm a stereotypical dude. I mean, when it came down to finally picking a genre in which to write I wound up in nonfiction writing about beer. I wouldn't say that I chose it - I actually kind of fell backwards into it - but I've been incredibly happy doing it and wouldn't trade places with anyone, except maybe a beer writer who makes more money that I do.

So, my point is, am I not that last person in the world to write about love?

Clearly. We're already six paragraphs in and I still haven't even come close to the topic at hand.

I don't write about love. I tried it a few times in short stories and briefly in the novel that is languishing on my hard drive. And I wrote plenty about it back in my teenage years before I knew what the hell I was talking about. It's difficult to write about. The feelings are simultaneously so common and so extraordinary that to capture them one is left in that horrible place between silly cliché and absurd metaphor.

I am in love. I met my wife and partner in college and we've been very happy together since. This is our sixteenth year together although we have only been married a little over five years.

This is how all that happened. Celeste - we'll call her that since it's her name - was fed up with her employer constantly raising her health insurance costs. So, she dropped it. She had told me that morning that she would do it if her cost went up x$. When it was announced that it would, she emailed me with the news.

I went to my HR person and asked if I could put Celeste on my insurance. Even though everyone at work knew and liked Celeste -- she's the likable one of the two of us -- the answer was no. Corporate didn't recognize our arrangement. So, I replied to Celeste's email with, "well, I guess we'll have to get married."

I called the marriage license people for our county. $55 and three days later, we were married on our lunch break. Her adult son and my parents attended the 5 minute ceremony at the court house and joined us for Chinese buffet before we had to get back to work.

Celeste loves this story. She loves to tell it. She loves everything about it: the emailed proposal, the lunch break wedding, the Chinese buffet honeymoon. Can you think of a more perfect woman for a dude who writes about beer for a living and gets that oogie feeling whenever emotions are brought up?

So, I can't write about love. But, I sure know it when I've got it.

Other Lovely February Bloggers
Aimeelaine - www.aimeelaine.com/writing/blog
Charlotte49ers - http://www.amandaplavich.com
AuburnAssassin - http://clairegillian.wordpress.com/
Breddings - http://boozingear.com/blog
*RomanceWriter* - http://staceyespino.blogspot.com/
Claire Crossdale - http://theromanticqueryletter.blogpost.com
Collectonian - http://collectonian.livejournal.com
FreshHell - http://freshhell.wordpress.com
David Zahir - http://zahirblue.blogspot.com/
Harri3tspy - http://spynotes.wordpress.com
Sneaky Devil - http://sneaks-myfantasylife.blogspot.com/
Frodo - http://annvevera.blogspot.com/
Upsidedowngrl - http://noellenolansblog.blogspot.com/

Healthcare Lost

My message to the White House regarding this:

I read in today's news that you are going to drop the public option for health care. For shame. Every one of you in the Obama Administration, especially the President himself, should feel a deep sense of shame, failure and defeat on this one. You had the support - the overwhelming support - of the American public and you squandered it for some loud-mouthed, right-wing operatives and dupes. Shame on you. It looks like we're going to have to wait another 15+ years for a sane healthcare policy in this nation. Shame, shame, shame.