on a saturday night,

I wandered into a thrift store today on a whim and picked up Mona Lisa Smile. I’m not going to lie, I only grabbed it because I saw the words “art history” on the back and Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst, and Maggie Gyllenhaal on the front. It was a beautiful movie with overtly feminist themes that I completely did not expect. But of course, I’m not complaining. It dealt with the idea that marriage and motherhood with both lead to death, an idea I’ve often struggled with. I’ve seen marriage as the death of my career, my creativity, my freedom, and my happiness. What the movie didn’t pay enough attention to, in my opinion, is the third possibility in the debate between family and professional life, which is the marriage of the two. I’d like to think that if I were to ever get married and have children, I would be able to maintain my career and my sanity. I think I’m just selfish enough for that. But ultimately, I think it makes you a better mother in the end if all of your efforts and happiness do not rest upon the success or failure of these little people with your eyes and your husband’s mannerisms. Anyway, I won’t talk your head off tonight about feminist approaches to having children.

I’ve had this one bottle of perfume for the last ten months — a boy bought it for me as a gift and so now whenever I spray it on I get flashbacks. That whole smell–>memory thing is so, so real. So I’d rather not relive those memories every morning. I went to a store downtown this afternoon and picked up a new bottle of perfume and had it gift-wrapped for myself. Happy birthday, to me? I still have two weeks, but I was in a self-indulgent mood today. Now that I’ve finished my movie and had my dinner, I’m just in the mood to sit in my bed for the rest of the night, read my books (Baby Love and Two Wrongs Make a Vice) and listen to music that was recorded before my parents were born.

It’s a nice night to spend with myself.