Last night, I bagged two different skirts and brought them with me to Jeff. I wanted to be warm, and I have only two skirts with a thin little lining that psychologically makes me think I'm far better off. I packed also some black leggings--the very same I wore the day before. And a tight black boucle turtleneck that I got at the Eddie Bauer Outlet store at the beginning of this winter. I wasn't sure which skirt would look better: the tannish-orange-ish skirt or the dark blue-navy-ish corduroy skirt. I love the corduroy and so this morning, decided that I would dress a bit dark and enjoy it. Enjoy it I did. I felt comfortable and warm and actually walked around very aware of what I was wearing. It makes the day different, obviously, to notice something like that. It was the topic of my day, in my mind, where nothing really is recognized or noticed but exists only inside of me. It's the type of thing I imagine the good writers write about for a chapter at a time and thirty years later, editors and the New Yorker exclaim that the bit about the skirt was 'pure genius,' 'a symbol of the times,' or simply 'amazing.'

Oh, someday someday.

I sat at my desk the entire morning reading journals, weblogs, and articles in the local paper online and the New York Times. Today was a "let's get intellectual" day but I never really proved it to anybody. I had only one task today at work and that was to pick up some children for a visit with their parents and then bring them home and supervise the visit in between. Easy enough, though I never imagined the stress that automatically exists when four children are in your car, screaming and rolling down the window and you don't know why, but you want them to roll the windows up, as if some stranger on the side of the road could reach inside and snatch a child while you were stopped at a red light so everything the children do is some sort of risk against their safety. I would often times wonder why parents are so upset when their child does that seemingly harmless thing or this seemingly harmless thing and I think it all boils down to a mysterious fear that this is the time when something freaky will happen. At least, that's what I was thinking while driving around town with four kids in my car.

I fell asleep last night while Jeff stayed awake in bed beside me watching The Lord of the Rings on DVD. We both wanted to have sex and I was pleased when he told me he was expecting it, for I was as well. But then I wiped a smidge of the lovely moon-red and had to break the bad news and then wait to see, with bated breath, if this was a time when he didn't care. But I feel he really likes sex more before he falls asleep, which means I'd have to be woken up at 3 a.m. unless I really just strip him down and get my groove on before he does--which is incredibly fun to do because I know he likes it and I certainly like it and I can sleep peacefully after that. However, I wasn't really in the mood to worry that I was going to smear his legs in uterine lining, and so I simply put on a pad, lay on his shoulder and fell asleep.

Yesterday, he said to me, while holding my leg and rubbing my foot while he was on the computer, "I like when you come home from lunch and lay with me. Even though I usually don't like it when someone lays on me, I like it when you do, cause I just go right back to sleep, but it's nicer because I know you're there." I think he's perfect, but I'm still judging. I could marry him, I think. Sure, it's been only three months and I'm sure that somewhere in the world on the big wide World Wide Web, you've read me write those very words before. I'm sure it happens to everybody about ten times in their lives, saying over and over with a different man, "I think I might want to marry him." I just can't imagine him changing on me the way others have, suddenly not wanting to touch me or hold me or kiss me randomly. He's been alone so long and loves me that it seems impossible he'd be "one of those guys" that ends up taking the woman he is in love with for granted. I think he's perfect. And I mean that as much as I am afraid to declare it, especially in print, and especially in print that others will most surely read. To do so makes it more solid and stable and real, whereas before, I can just think it and hope that I am right and if I am wrong, I won't look silly or naive or young. Always crazy young, stupidly so, believing, heartache after heartache, that I have found the one.

But I think I will marry him. I think he will marry me. And I think this is and always will be a relationship that just works in my life. It will be unnecessary to put a knife to it and dissect piece by piece. I like everything. Everything.

And I decided that tonight, I am going to wear my skirt until after Jeff comes over and I am going to write a little note and put in a pair of his pants that are at my house so that the next time he wears them, he'll reach into the pocket and no matter where he is--his store, his house, his car, my parking lot, a gas station, or the store--he'll find the note and think about me.

A part of me feels that all of this is ridiculous. To write like this, to think like this, to actually believe it. Watching it in a movie (which is how I imagine all of my life--what would an audience think at this point?), someone would scoff, "Oh Jesus! Please! This is dumb." And I might be a person who is slightly embarrassed at the theater, sliding down in my seat, but secretly loving it and wishing it was me.

Had to stop writing for a minute because said Jeff called me. He's fun. Makes me laugh. Makes me want to talk about sex all the time in very technical terms, "How is your penis doing?" or "clitoral stimulation equals orgasm," as if I'm teaching a class and don't want to embarrass the group.

I'm strange. I admit this from time to time.

He's going to come over and we're going to order Chinese food and rent two movies and watch them. Doesn't this seem too good? Well� I think it's perfect and I hope it never stops. I feel fantastic.