Tahoma and Verdana are pretty much exactly the same font, aren't they? Oh well, at least I tried to veer slightly from the status quo ...

This morning I awoke to the horrific realization that I forgot to test all of my pages in Netscape before I uploaded them. So sorry if you're using Netscape and everything is all screwy. And for the present I have absolutely no way of knowing how it all looks on a Mac. If you're a Mac user, would ya mind telling me how it behaves?

Some days it feels like I'm not really here, like the person doing my job and talking to my coworkers and going through all the motions of being civil is some kind of automoton that's running on autopilot, and the real me is kicking back and watching it all on a monitor with vague disinterest just to make sure the double doesn't screw anything up and blow my cover. Today is one of those days. This usually happens when I don't get enough sleep. Everything I said or did this morning seems about as real to me right now as the television shows I watched last night.

I hope I snap out of it by this evening. Tonight is my baby sister's wedding shower. Since she had a disagreement or something with her maid of honor, I've been upgraded to fill the post. Yee-haw. This means that not only do I have to attend and stay for the entirety of the events (I can only take parties in small doses. I'm the type of person that has to take a separate car so I can duck out early when it all gets to be too much), but I have to be right in the center of everything, and I have to take notes so she'll know to whom to send the thank you notes. Whee.

Have I mentioned before now that she's getting married? This means that I'll be the only single sibling. My family already has this view of me as some sort of tragic old maid. Once I'm the only one sans esposo the pressure will really be on to get me hooked up. I guess I'll just add that to the list of reasons to move far away.

My mother is actually pretty supportive of the fact that I'm in no hurry to get hitched. She's been a widow for four years, and she's getting the same kind of pressure from friends who can't believe she could be happy without a man in her life. After nearly 35 years of being married to a controlling, verbally abusive drunk, I don't think it should be that hard to understand why she'd be in no hurry to relinquish her freedom.

My sisters, on the other hand, both become uncomfortable fairly quickly if they're not in a relationship (or at least looking at prospects). Fortunately, they've both ended up with good men, but not until after going through hell with the scum-of-the-earth variety. It really seems to pain them, as well as my brother's wife, that I'm not in a relationship.

Me, I've always thought that it would be a crime to even think about getting married before I'm thirty. I made the decision a long time ago to devote my twenties to getting to know myself on my own terms. Now, the closer I get to the big three-oh, I have a hard time picturing myself as a wife. In theory, I do want to get married someday. I want to have kids. I want to be a wife and mother; but in reality, when I think ahead to my future, I always see myself living alone in an oh-so-sophisticated apartment and travelling around to oh-so-sophisticated places and, when I'm not writing, spending time with my not-quite-so-sophisticated friends. I don't see myself as a wife, doing wifely things, and I don't see myself as a mother. Part of me fears that the more time I spend on my own, the more I'll become accustomed to it, and I'll eventually grow too independent to be able to handle being married. Then again, a small, but ever growing, part of me is not convinced that that would be such a bad thing.

I do think, though, that it would be tragic if I went through my entire life without ever having been in love. I also think that if I ever do really fall in love with someone, the wife and mother scenario might become easier to picture. Maybe I don't want it to become easier, and that's why I'm so guarded all the time.

I also think that it's inevitable that I'm going to end up in therapy sooner or later ;p