Alone at last

I came home tonight after a long, frustrating drive from the city, followed by a fruitless search in the suburbs for a new nose stud ("no, we don't sell those"). Despite my sister's car in the garage, no one was home. I sat down and ate dinner in absolute quiet, and realized how long it's been since I had some true alone time. It's wonderful. I think a lot about whether or not I'm cut out to spend the rest of my life living with another person, and I don't know if my lust for solitude could coexist with the desire to be married (etc.) I suppose it all depends on the other person.

Which is true in general. It's not easy, at times, to resist the conventions of relationships, and the unnecessary limitations they place on me. Two people may be anything to each other they want. If I don't want marriage in the traditional sense, I don't have to undertake it. Henry James, oddly enough, wrote, "We must for dear life make our own counter-realities."

Well. In other news:


We've discussed hiring a photocopy monkey at the Newberry. One of us thinks this monkey should wear red overalls and a hat. However, this week, we were basically the photocopy monkeys. The book-scanner (which is used to copy fragile-type materials, and is pretty cool), broke down twice, and there were mountains of copy orders. In the end, though, we conquered all, because we are Super Pages (TM).