My mom:

“i saw a little mole (or a mouse…couldn’t tell the diff….but, i think it was a mole) eating a violet plant in the front yard today. it was weird watching this rodent chomp away!!! i wanted dad to get it and throw it in the woods! where is mojo when we need him?”

Sorry, Mom… he was indisposed.

Last night I went on Etsy and purchased SEVEN birthday gifts for family members with birthdays in the next 3 months. between Matt and I there are a total of eight nieces and nephews, four parents, five sisters and four brothers to shop for each year, so when I get an opportunity to knock a few out at once I salute myself with a glass of shiraz. I was so darned excited that I promptly paged through my day planner placing checkmarks next to the appropriate names and dates. I won’t say who, because their moms all read this blog, but someone cute is getting this adorable sock monkey for their birthday! Check out iamsunshine’s store here.

It’s very interesting to me that Penelope Trunk is being very forthright in her blog about her divorce. Very few people talk about it, and very few people talk about it frankly. At the end of her most recent post she says the following:

I also worry that you are only reading this stuff because I’m a train wreck. People like reading about other peoples’ divorces because they feel better about keeping their own marriage together. So, okay. I hope I can make some of you feel smug today, because sometimes I write posts and I’m the one feeling smug. We should all get our chance.

Matt and I had an interesting conversation the other night about why people read and write blogs. Perhaps we read to be nosy, to be well-informed, to learn something new, to feel like we’re not alone, or to feel smug. Perhaps we write to maintain relationships, to be self-serving, or to fish for affirmation. From time to time I feel a little bit of all of those things but I try very hard to write a blog for one reason and one reason only: because I’m part of this industry – the web - and the best way to learn is by doing. 

So how does this tie in with Penelope Trunk’s blog and her divorce?

When Matt and I had been married for about a year, we started going to marriage counseling. He was starting to define who he was as a person and what he wanted from life and love which required some professional direction. And I was struggling with the major depression that came from being married to someone who was just now coming of age at twenty-five. It was a frustratingly slow process that tried to teach me some measure of patience, which I doubt I learned. Matt changed quite a bit over those few months of visiting “The Doctor,” as we fondly referred to him, and I gained unbelievable respect for him despite the fact that at most moments I wanted to leap from the Walt Whitman bridge.

A friend of mine just recently mentioned that she thinks we have a great marriage and that she knows no two people who have as much fun or are as well suited for one another as we are. Of course, I’m quite flattered by that remark, and in some ways she’s very right. I’ve always said that nine times out of ten I’m having more fun than most people in the world, and that’s mainly because of Matt. We have found in each other an enormously safe place where our commitment to each other allows vulnerability and the permission to fight for improvement.

But it’s totally not easy, and frankly it never has been. I’ve worked harder at this than anything else in my life, and I’ve wanted to leave this more times than any other project I’ve been involved in. I’ve wanted to walk away a hundred times, and so has he. We almost have before. And that’s how most marriages are. I don’t know anybody in any good marriage who hasn’t at one time seriously considered divorce.

At the end of the day the only thing holding us together is one tiny little whisper of a commitment made on our wedding day that we both believe in 100%. And as long as we both believe in it equally, it will work.

So I don’t rue Penelope Trunk for being a train wreck on her blog. And I think anyone who’s ever been married is reading her blog and not feeling one ounce of smugness. Because we know how freaking hard it is to make it work.

And I think something inside of me believes that if more people in failing marriages started blogging about what they were going through… maybe, just maybe they’d find a community that could uphold them and encourage them to stick it out. Cause we’re kinda like beavers like that.

What a downer of a post for my friends who read this and are about to embark on marriages of their own! So here’s my single piece of advice to people about to be wed: marry for money or for really, really hot sex. It seems shallow, but either one of these is going to be that thing you need when all else is lost and you say to yourself “at least he’s a phenom in the sack.”

Now it’s just known as American Idol.

As I write, I am eagerly awaiting the news that David Cook has won. I’m also enjoying a Ford hybrid commercial with excitement as I announce to you that the decision has been made to sell Matt’s car. He finally sold me on it this evening after we dropped it off at the shop for some final repairs. He told me that I would be helping the environment and cutting emissions. Why didn’t he mention this earlier? He should have known by now that I’m very easily green-washed.

Ok, gotta go. David Cook is singing with ZZ Top. That’s HOT.

For some time now we’ve talked about selling one of the cars. There are a lot of great reasons why we could easily do it. I take public transportation to work every day, if I ever needed a car I could get a ZipCar. We’d save money on insurance and repairs, not even to mention the fact that on most evenings and weekends we’re either running errands together or flopping at home together.

But for as long as we’ve been talking about it, I’ve been coming up with excuses why we shouldn’t go down to one car. I generally say that I wonder if it’s even financially prudent to sell a car now if we might need to buy another in 3-4 years or so. Wouldn’t it just be smarter to hang on to our rapidly depreciating vehicle and let it sit in the driveway instead of having to shell out MORE money to buy another car at a later date?

And then there’s the argument that we’d have to put more money into Matt’s car before selling it to get a good price, why not just hang onto it in it’s current state?

But I’m coming to terms with what’s at the root of my problem with car-sharing. The very smallest issue is the stupidest of all… as we would sell Matt’s hatchback that means he’d be driving MY WAGON. MINE. He basically does this anyway, but there’s still that differentiation that he’s driving MY car while HIS car sits in the driveway. And if he’s the one driving it at least 3 hours a day wouldn’t it then become HIS car by default? That would mean HIS sunglasses would be in the side door pocket and HIS cds would be in the glove compartment. And the spare napkins would inevitably run out and not be replaced. And what would be the fate of my emergency stash of feminine products and nylons!?

Then there’s the issue of feeling trapped. Because I might not be able to make that girls-night-out in the suburbs as Matt’s running late from a Friday afternoon meeting at the office. This is not a legitimate fear because #1 – I have no female friends and #2 – I probably don’t have female friends because of my natural disdain for people who live in the suburbs. Plus Matt’s the kind of guy who would do everything within his power to get me to the girls-night-out despite his late meeting, the darling.

But the deepest fear is that this would lead me down the slippery slope of stay-at-home mom-ness, trapped inside the house, speaking Toddler all day long and relishing the bi-annual opportunity to head to Chipotle and eat a burrito by myself. I often feel like I’ve sold off so many parts of my independence just to be married. Does the car really need to be that big last piece?

It’s a control thing. I want the freedom to be able to drive to New York for the interview I’ll have with Chris Matthews after winning a Grammy for audio engineering. Not sure why he’d be interviewing for that, but these are the stories I tell myself.

Matt made a great deal with me… if we sell the car I can be assured that at any time if I need a ride somewhere or if I need to call dibs on the vehicle, I’m more than welcome to, and he’ll be super-accommodating. I guess I’d just feel better about it if he threw in some promise about on-demand chocolate cake any time I want.

You have no idea how ashamed I am to say this. I have watched a few episodes of American Idol this season. And I like David Cook. He had me at “Billie Jean is not my lover.”

I hope he wins tonight.

But my brother-in-law could kick his sorry butt.