cyn's looking at photos of a high school friend's wedding. it's funny to scroll through and see all the goofing around people do at weddings. this is much more fun than admiring the bride or the groom or flowers or whatever the hell else. mostly it's because we're sort of irreverent about the couple; i assume if you actually care about the people getting married, you pay a little bit of attention.
i think i'm lucky to be 29 and a girl and not really feel anything about getting hitched. i assume that when you meet the right person and you're ready emotionally, than you proceed accordingly. my mom's forceful reminders that she would like to see me knocked up as quickly as possible are unrelated to my unmarried status. she advises that i should just have kids out of wedlock. nice, mom. since i'm unemployed, now is a stellar time to think about kids.
no one in our close circle of friends is married, or even engaged. not even close, last i checked. we're all 28-31, happily bopping along: several in b-school, one doctor, one just finishing an MPP, a couple of slackers (me), one ph.D in comp lit, one in biotech, one architect, a lawyer, a couple kids running their family businesses. everyone's dating or whoring or something in between. once one falls, a few others will go quickly. it's inevitable. i am not looking forward to that day, although i'm not necessarily opposed to it, because i assume it will mean that one of my very good friends is really happy and is about to get happier. so on that rather simplified level, i can accept.
i mean lucky because i'm not there yet, and i don't want to wake up one day and feel like i need to be someplace i'm not. i've never been a goal-setter when it comes to things like that, and i get almost infuriated with societal pressures on women who hit 30. i have known far too many women who have become consumed with the idea that they're shitty, terrible, inadequate, lacking something, whatever, because they're over 30 and still single. i think it's bullshit. being single is not worse than being married, and is certainly not a negative reflection on anyone. if you're a lovely person in general, than chances are you're still lovely, regardless of age and ball-and-chain status. my aunt got married for the first time in her 50s, and she's giddy as all hell. everything in due time.
i had a boss, my first job out of college, who would refer to herself frequently as a 'spinster' and would sprinkle her conversation with self-depracating comments about how no one wanted her and that she was washed up. she even had a blown-up cartoon taped to her wall of a skeleton sitting on a bench, holding a purse, with the caption, 'waiting... for the right man.' i think she scarred me for life. i'd honestly never met anyone who so openly hated her life or herself, and it was friggin scary.
my mom doesn't pressure me about marriage. i'm not sure why, but i appreciate it. a lot of my girlfriends' moms do, openly, and sometimes not in a nice way. the whole grandkids thing is weird to me, coming from my mom. she's not particularly maternal, but i guess she does like to play with babies. i always thought, as a child, that my mom was too busy for her kids, but now that i've emerged somewhat from that petulant, self-involved childhood bit, of course i realize it was all for us. she's resorted to blackmailing my sister and i into having kids, but we don't succumb. she's instilled in us more strength than to fall for a silly trick like that. she's probably kicking herself now.
in other news... today spent spiraling in randomness. went and checked out the last dance studio on the list, so now i can sit my ass down and actually go about writing the article. met up with steph and her friend janet at a random art showing on fuxing lu. we spent about 45 seconds looking at the paintings and 1.5 hours drinking the free wine on the terrace. went over to 3 on the bund and strolled through the gallery on the third floor, where the art and the wine were much better. stalked the waiters and bumbled around the space, admiring some of the cooler pieces. met some intense fashion photographer named jeremy, who weirded steph out to the point where she excused herself to stare at a painting more closely. went to the weird place in the basement of 5 on the bund that replaced number five and had some fairly crappy bar food. albert and scott and a visiting friend joined us, then we headed to a rather outstanding yakitori place on shimen at nanjing.
instead of heading to pirates with everyone else, i elected to come home to drop off the laptop and change into something less daytime than a jersey skirt and my reefs. predictably, i'm still parked on the sofa. i don't have it in me to go all the way to xujiahui by myself to inhale lungfulls of smoke and drop another few hundies on drinks and taxi.
volar last night was lovely. really. nice scene, nice people, perfect cocktails, and you can't complain about the decor. but the cigars were killing me. there was one point when every inhalation felt like i was barbequeing my cilia. i could visualize the nice and healthy-pink tissues in my trachea withering and turning gray-black. ugh.
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