Romanceland

Sometimes, just a simple question can be a loaded time bomb. Tonight I had to decided whether to pull the pin or leave that particular grenade alone.

I pulled the pin.

My lovely 17-year-old  is spending the end of the summer with us so she is here every night. She has been dating a boy that has caused her some angst; some his doing, some not.

While in her mis-matched jammies, towel turban over her wet head and toothbrush in hand, she turned and casually asked me, "When you and my dad were first going out, was he all romantic and attentive at first  and then stopped? Did he do less after a while but act like it was the world? Because that is what (boyfriend) is doing, is this normal?"

Yikes. That is a much bigger question than she realized. Do I tell her the truth, or do I lie to save her feelings? And if I do tell her the truth, how much of it do I explain? My answer turned out to be simple and the chicken's way out. "Yes, he did the same. He was very romantic at first but after a while it diminished greatly and now, like you are feeling, I miss it a bit. But Honey ALL relationships are like that, it is part of the evolution of an intimate relationship, it gets even better after this." And I went to bed.

Lame, lame, lame! That is all I could think of. I told her a half truth that could have made it worse, maybe better, but I did not get the soap box out like I wanted to.  I wanted to save her a lifetime of hurt and disappointment. I wanted to tell her every show,  every movie, every song, every myth, every love story is a lie geared to play to our yearnings for eternal romance. I call the whole mess of it Romanceland.  In Romanceland people fall in love quickly, deeply, romantically and then they get married and either it ends there, implying that it just keeps getting better, or keeps going and they hit a few rough spots after a couple of kids but they manage to rekindle that romance completely with one dinner, a few flashbacks, and its back to Romanceland.

Bull.

I wanted to sit her down and tell her the reality of it, to save her the disappointment and heartache that can

take from 10 years to a life time to never to realize...Romanceland is a lie.

When you date and the rush of chemicals in your body finally subsides, the romance will die down quite a bit, sometimes completely. If you have something real, it will mellow and deepen into a friendship that grows into love and keeps growing.  It will be a place where you feel you belong, where you can be you, where make-up doesn't matter. Where you are safe and happy and fulfilled and yet still a bit excited. Maybe not every day, but most of the time. Love needs to be nurtured and worked on all the time, a never ending project, but the outcome is a life, a family, roots, happiness, REAL happiness.

On the other hand, when the chemicals subside and you do not have that core intimacy, you part ways, the end. I f you are older and happen to have gotten married and/or have kids, it can be a heartbreaking, scar-making experience, so decide wisely.

The problem is that we are conditioned (and for women I believe a lot of it is just in out nature, sorry feminists) to believe that the romance stage IS the love, so when the romance wears off, we are no longer loved. How many times do you think the average person does this before they find real love? Think about this and realize that every time this happens it's like being told we are no longer loved or, therefore, loveable. To us, some invisible fatal flaw has been realized or shown itself and boom it is over, the love is gone. How many times does this happen before we give up on "love" and think we are damaged humans somehow and cannot be loved? How many people developed eating disorders, depression, even become suicidal, because they simply do not know what real love is and think Romanceland is 'It"?  (I know so many adults, especially men, my age who use every excuse in the book; I love being alone. Women are nuts. You ALWAYS get hurt so why bother. One even said it was too expensive to be in love! It is so transparent that they really are just too scared, too hurt to be rejected again. In the name of "freedom" they have built themselves a safe little cage).

How do I get through to a blossoming young woman that she is perfect as she is, that the romance part is the fun part, but it is not the real part, and that when it ends, that ending means no more than something has run its inevitable course? It does not means YOU are not good enough, the RELATIONSHIP was not good enough.

I wanted to tell her that outside of Romanceland you find the one person you can count on, the one person you love deeply, who loves and respects you as much as you do them. The one where the romance is really, truly felt from the heart. The person you care for so much you want to make little people with, and when those little people become too much and you find yourselves fighting and hating and your sex life and love life are gone, that you fight even harder and you MAKE it work. Unlike Romanceland, you do not fix it with a vacation to the Bahamas  and a bottle of wine, you fight within it. You talk, you cry, you love and hate until you come out of the other side of hell and you are stronger and better than ever as a couple. Then when the

kids grown up and leave you again meet this stranger you have made a life with for 30 years. The romance may come back, but this time it is between two people in real love, not people who met in Romanceland.

"You are not going to marry this boy" I so want to tell her. "You are probably going to break up before graduation" I wanted to prognosticate. The signs are all there, to those that have bought many tickets to Romanceland. "You will cry. You will feel lost,  like part of you is gone, but you will survive" I wanted to tell her. And if she is lucky, if she is wise and if she listens to me, she will buy another ticket to Romanceland and get her hand stamped on entry so she can return the next day, knowing that she will have to revisit it quite a few times in her life before she is finished with it. Ah, but with the right choice by her side Romanceland is child's play compared to what Real Life romance is like.

Until then, cry, I will be here. Listen to my advice. You won't, but try. Remember you are loveable to us and to boys. Love comes in many forms and yes, I do believe you are in love with him and he with you. But again, this is Romanceland, made of dreams and hopes and cardboard.

In a few years you will drive past Real Life and stop by for some lunch...and that is when the real fun begins.

...and I cant's wait t see you there.

Ch..Ch..Ch..Changes.....

Born to go fast.

Finally have photos for those of you who have been asking...me with blond hair and the changes we have done to the house recently.

The first three need no caption, just me as a blond.
Please don't tell me you like me better as a brunette. I do too, and have always identified myself partly by my being a brunette. But when Mother nature replaces the brown with grey and Clairol cannot make a dye that can cover it for more than a couple weeks, you just go blond and deal with it.
The only photo cheating I did was fix my broken tooth and re sized them so those that have accused me of messing with it to make it look better, well that is simply not true, but thank you for the compliment.
I think I photograph better than I look. The blurry one is there to show how I look when its not a great photo.

Okay now for the house. These I will caption.

Mark and I had to strip wallpaper and paint plaster, not an easy thing, you have to use a brush for the whole wall. Put up new crown molding and new fixtures in the bath. The color of the bath made it hard to photograph. The towels are very bright and the walls are a medium sunny yellow. A very clean, happy room, the Period Table shower curtain I got from The Big Bang Theory, and the same with the bright colors for everything else. 

The dining room walls change color. They were more blue when I photographed them and in different light they are more of a peacock teal. We really took a chance painting it this dark but it paid off through the expressions on friends' faces when they see it. 

I added a photo of how it looked before to show the contrast and sorry but it happens to be Miranda's 16th birthday party.

Sorry this one is sideways. Shows new fixtures and cute shelf mark made from an old piece of marble he found in the shed. Hobby Lobby pictures, and tea light holders, target towels. Also switched out light fixtures from other bath and got a new toilet seat.

Better picture of the fixture and shelf. I went a little wild on the towel buying.

Replaced old shower curtain with the extremely nerdy, and therefore cool as hell to me, Periodic Table of the Elements. Also put in a bowed curtain rod so there is a lot of room in the shower now. Inside there is a bright blue mat and pink soap holder. Oh and a very posh back pillow for baths.

This whole project began because our friends gave us this pretty chandelier. Its hard to see but the table cloth is black and the runner (which has to be sewn up properly) is a light lime green, an really dramatic accent color used throughout the  room.

View from the opposite angle.

Room before the change.

This is the crown molding and corner pieces in the door Mark added. Really brings it all together.

For you Daddy, see how great my prized Canterbury tales looks since Mark restored it and the frame? It has been hanging constantly for about 4 years now. We love it and it is almost the exact width of the piano under it. 

Sorry, I do not know why these are sideways, i fixed them in the photo editor but they moved back. This is a framed copy of the song my great grandparents wrote together and had published at the turn of the century. I was not lucky enough to know my great grandfather frank (apparently whose personality I share) but i did know and love my great grandmother. We spent a lot of time together and I still miss her sometimes. This photo holds a lot of love.