Fascinating.

What follows, is taken from an email to the new guy a week or so ago.

Shortly after I was baptized 35 years ago(!) one of the married guys in one of my Institute classes offered me a book his wife had allegedly enjoyed. I was still in the process of deciding which elements of feminism were consistent with the gospel, and which were rabid/rampant nonsense.

The book? Fascinating Womanhood. I read it over the weekend, handed it back with a big smile and thanked him for loaning it to me.

“You’re welcome. How did you like it?”

“I liked it a lot. I haven’t laughed that hard in a very long time.” I don’t think that was the answer he had been hoping for.

Men are neither idiots to be manipulated, nor babies to be coddled. I remember a needlework piece that one of my friends had in her home, years ago: “Love, honor, and negotiate.” Negotiation is only possible between parties who know themselves to be equals, and if I were to place it on a spectrum, I would say that manipulation is the world's (fallen, telestial) way; negotiation is perhaps consistent with a terrestrial mindset; and consensus-building, with all parties being heard and valued, begins to approach the Heavenly (celestial) pattern.

And this is turning into a blog post. [Ta-DAAAA!] Sorry. [End of email portion.]

I did re-read Fascinating Womanhood a few years later, when the children’s father and I were up to our ears in multi-level marketing. That time, I read it prayerfully, so that if there were any grains of wheat among the chaff, I would find them. I found a few, but thirty years later I still look on that book with what my father would have called love and suspicion.

If it’s a choice between a man who needs to be managed, and no man, I’d choose No Man’s Land, thankyouverymuch.

In other news, I was bushwhacked by my sinuses yesterday but seem to be recovering nicely. The birthday party for Lark (with her sister Willow in attendance) was enormous fun, even though I was still intermittently honking last night. Both girls like the yarn I picked for their presents.

And I have a date scheduled with the new guy for the middle of next month, though I am sure to see him before then. [The upcoming singles’ conference guarantees it, LOL.] Mt. Washmore tonight, and a planning meeting tomorrow night for a big to-do in my ward at Christmastime, and a doctor’s appointment on Wednesday to check my dipstick for Vitamin D levels, and if all goes well (i.e., I get a lot of things checked off my list at work today and tomorrow) off on Thursday and Friday for more puttering. I would like to get the rest of the house looking as good as the living room and kitchen do, preparatory to the new guy seeing it in a couple of weeks when we go to Secondborn’s for dinner.

Not spazzing. Not yet.