Here's a question: Should a mother take her daughter to see Sex and the City? Should I even be asking this question?

I loved the series, but I'm 51 years old. Is it proper for a 13 year old to see this movie?

I don't think so, though my daughter is begging me to let her go. She's seen the softened version of SATC on TBS, and she's in love with the characters. She wants to know what happens to them in the end or more specifically if Big and Carrie get married.

Every little girl's dream — a beautiful wedding complete with gown, flowers, an orchestra, an unblemished face — you know the perfect day. We all had it once.

In the third grade, I was set on marrying a preacher. Don't know why other than as a form of rebellion against my older brother and sister who were best buds and were always leaving me out in the cold. Marrying a preacher seemed to be a way to "get them back" for some reason. Using God as my weapon. Hmmmm.

I did marry, but I was six weeks pregnant and nearly 38 years old. I wore an India style outfit I bought at Pier One Imports (when they used to sell clothes) and I felt like crap. We went to the Justice of the Peace. I had to throw up in the middle of the very brief and non-frilly ceremony, but managed to hold it in until we got home.

I was so sick; I barely made it to the bathroom, removing my clothes as I went for fear of getting them stained. It was awful.

Later, and in sweats, I treated myself to Velveeta Cheese & Macaroni (about all I could stomach) while our few guests had Mexican dishes that made my stomach churn. Yeah, it was a great wedding day and a great experience. Some fairy tale.

Now, back to SATC. I've heard, though I do not know, that the movie is not all peaches and cream and that there is a dark ending. "Dark" meaning what, exactly? Don't know.

No, next week was not better. Next week was far too long for a little girl missing her daddy. I pointed that out. 

"Aw, don't make me feel guilty. I really don't want to feel guilty about this. I need time to do my own things and..." 

When you separate and you have children, be prepared. Be prepared to be the one who has to explain, gently, why we can't go see Daddy. Or why Daddy doesn't come have supper more often. Or why daddy has to leave to go home. 

Despite being used to this, despite knowing all the right words and the proper how-tos, I still feel the pain of having to disappoint a child when Dad just doesn't want to be a dad. 

Does it make me mad? Sure. Sure it does. Fathers should be there for their kids — all the time. 

What makes this such a hot issue when a couple splits up, though? I know married couples that live together and the father works 70 hours a week. He barely sees his kids. I know mothers too wrapped up in their own lives to care for their kids. 

When a couple splits up, why do people suddenly get all upset if dad doesn't want the kids for a day or a week? What changed beyond the situation before? 

I don't begrudge my ex his need for time on his own. No one should have to have their weeks full of work and responsibilities with no spare time left to relax and do what they want.

There's compromise, too. My girl wants to see her dad. Dad wants to be alone for a while. "How about if we come at 3 and just stay for a few hours? You have time to do your stuff and she'll be happy to see you."

In the span of three days, my gentleman caller has called — twice — and has sent three emails. Three of these correspondences came after I sent an email saying that I was trying to get through the end of the semester, and that I would call as soon as the madness was over. He sent an email acknowledging this.

Ten minutes later, he sent another email, followed by a phone call the next day.

Needless to say, I am no longer interested.

In my younger years, I would have seen this eagerness as sweet, cute, or some other innocuous gesture. Now I see it as a nuisance. This is a very stressful time for me, and I need to dedicate all of my energy to completing this task — a task that has already dragged on far too long.

I don't know if he was just overly excited, or if he just doesn't care about what I am trying to do — I really hate to think this is the case. Fact of the matter is, I see his behavior as a bit on the insecure side, and I am not attracted to that.

I am not quite sure how I am going to handle this. Exams will be over in a few days, so maybe I will check it out then. Problem is, after graduation, I will have a whole new set of priorities — job search and the like. If he doesn't understand that I need time right now, what will happen later?

My girlfriend just emailed me and asked if I had "blog block." Yup guess that's it. A name for my condition. I didn't realize it was an official condition till just now.

You may have noticed the date of my last post. So what — you ask — have I been doing?

Well...everything you could possibly imagine and some stuff you wouldn't even believe.

Lately I have only two speeds — GO and PASS OUT — and I maximize every hour of the day I am blessed with.

Funny, I write all day long in my head but apparently my head and my hands have not been communicating. I assume that would translate into Blocked- Head as opposed to Blockhead which is so unfeminine....

So I am in search of the antidote to Blog Block and I aspire to my next post — shortly.

Debbie

After my Ingrid Michaelson song post, someone commented, "It's just a song people."

I loved the responses to that, but I especially loved this one:

"And a poem is just a poem? And a painting is just pigment on a canvas and (so the song goes) life is just to die? Sorry, I don't buy that. I think it's good, great, wonderful to look to art, music, architecture, nature — all these things — to try to find or understand our connections to one another and to find some meaning to go with our experiences."

I spend more time doing this these days — finding new meanings in pieces I've already known. Songs, especially — whether they're about splitting up, or, more recently, being in a relationship that makes me happy — songs I've known forever I hear again and suddenly understand, suddenly feel like they're connected to me.

Suddenly, there are songs that mean something. Books that suddenly make sense. Poems that make me feel like I know where I'm going.

Because I like that — that feeling of connection — and because I want to irritate the commenter who thinks songs mean nothing but a paycheck to the songwriter, I'd like to spend a little time this week on those connections.

That's the thing about major life shifts: There's new meaning to find, and there are others trying to find the same meanings. Sometimes they say it better than we do.

I remember the exact moment I realized that things might not work out with my husband.

We had been married a couple of years. His job had moved us away from our family and friends, but we were back in town for his friend's wedding. The trip corresponded with my birthday and I was excited to celebrate it with all our old pals.

My husband and I had an agreement that he would get to spend a bunch of time with his friends and I would spend a bunch of time with mine. His friends preferred video games and drinking beer while my friends liked going out dancing and enjoying the nightlife. It's not that our friends didn't intermingle, but it was definitely a situation where the guys hung out with the guys, and the girls hung out with the girls.

The morning of my birthday my husband took off with his friends. He was gone all day long. I didn't have anyone to spend time with during the day because all my friends were at work so when I asked him to carve some time out of his day for me, he got really defensive.

"You said I could hang out with my friends as much as I wanted!" he argued.

Yes, I had encouraged him to spend time with his friends during the vacation, but I guess I figured that maybe my birthday might be cause for some time together. I didn't even care if he had invited me along with whatever they were all doing that day. I just didn't want to sit alone on my birthday.

Silly me.

Late that night he came back to the hotel with his friends and a cake from a grocery store bakery. They all stood around me and sang "Happy Birthday" in a way that tipped me off that all these guys knew I was mad at my husband, and they all thought I was a typical hysterical female. Have you ever heard "Happy Birthday" sung by five very unenthusiastic men who wanted to be somewhere else? It's not pretty.

I've been listening to Ingrid Michaelson all week. One particular CD — it's like she's crawled into my head and is digging about it in, only in a catchy/lovely/song lyrical kind of way. My past two years are there in their entirety, neatly, in 10 tracks or so.

This one song — "Corner of Your Heart" — I can't stop listening to it. I can't stop because it upsets me so much, like a bruise you can't stop pressing. It's beautiful and haunting and infinitely disturbing. I can't turn it off.

"There's a corner of your heart just for me," it goes. "I will pack my bags just to stay in the corner of your heart. Just to sleep underneath your bed. Just to occupy one minute of your day."

Now, I don't know if this intended to be a love song. Maybe it is. Maybe to other people there is romance in it.

But to me, it's horrifying. It's everything that was wrong about my relationship: me just wanting something, something, anything that would tell me I was loved back. It's me being offered only a corner, being willing to take that. Being happy with that. Giving up so much in hopes of that one minute.

I can't stop listening to it because I want to know if that's what it's meant to mean. Because I recognize myself in it. And because I'm so far away from that place now and don't want to go anywhere near it again.

Also, it's a really pretty song.

Lindsay knows exactly what to do when a friend is getting divorced. She doesn't press. She doesn't pester with questions. She doesn't fill the space with reassurances or aspersions - she allows silence. She allows time. She knows that what's needed is normality.

At the same time, she'll let you that, anytime you need, it, you can call her and she'll drive out and spend the day with you, or the afternoon, or the hour. She'll take you to lunch, she'll go to a movie, she'll just sit with you so you're not alone.

When you move to a new place, she's the one that will spend the first night with you so you're not alone, making the weekend into a party instead of a chore, keeping any of it from being sad. She'll unpack boxes. She'll organize your closet and your kitchen.  

She is, in short, an invaluable friend. 

The other reason to look to Lindsay is that she has a marriage that makes me rethink my certainty that relationships can't last. Years in, she and her husband are still in love, still happy, still right for each other. They make room for each other's lives while still sharing them. They compromise. They talk. They are each other's best friends, and they still make out.  

There are people like this in the world. There are relationships like that out there. This is good to remember. 

After Hurricane Katrina blew my life apart, but gave me the opportunity to escape my prison sentence with Stinky, I was in what some people call a bit of a state of shock. I was traumatized. Yep, that storm blew my house, my children's school, and my office away, and Stinky had knocked me clean stupid.

So, though it's been two and a half years, sometimes I long for those first months (okay, it was actually a year) of being so confused and unhappy and scared that I couldn't hold down a full time job and was afraid to really do anything more than get up, get the kids to school, and brush my teeth.

That's when I found my new friends: Crown Royal and Mimosa. Mmmm. I had no money, but I actually bought the complete collection of all six seasons of Sex In the City and after the kids were in school, I would come home and I would put in the next DVD open a bottle of Frexinet Brut or Extra Dry, mix a mimosa and sit down to plunge into complete oblivion watching four hip chicks living their lives in the Big Apple.

Ahhh. Those were the days. By noon, the champagne was gone along with a king sized bar of Hershey's dark chocolate, I would lay down and sleep for two hours, awake refreshed, brush my teeth, again, and go get the kids.

Then after baths and homework and giggles and stories of their day, and once they were both snuggled in for the night, I would shower, slip into my bed and put in the next DVD and hit play. I would also begin drinking the four Crown Royal highballs that would lull me into a deep sleep, so deep that I would not have the nightmares that had plagued me the first few weeks after my departure from the coast of Mississippi.

I am excited by the thought of life on the other side: 9-5 jobs, no homework, time for a social life.

A social life? Really? The horror...

This unnerves me more than just a little, for it has been a long time since I have had one of these — a real one. For the last four years, my life has revolved around school. My friends were people I met through school, and most of what I talked about — you guessed it — school.

I find myself thinking about the time immediately after leaving the military - another large part of my life, which, much like college, has a way of defining who you think you are. When it's all said and done, and you have to assimilate back into mainstream culture, it is quite possible to feel a bit gun-shy.

Already being a bit socially awkward (I'm a geek, what can I say? We're all awkward), this is something that I am more than a bit concerned with. Will I be able to become a social chameleon, rolling with the punches and make the transition with ease?

Or will I live in a tiny universe, filled with books, empty Cheetos bags, and overgrown houseplants? Okay, so that may be overstating things a bit, but the fear — and the possibility is still there. I can't say for sure what things are going to look like, but I am sure it will make for some interesting times.