The last few weeks have taught me that no matter how prepared you think you are for something, if the “something” is home ownership, you are NOT as prepared as you think you are.

I have good friends who have owned homes for years.  They all warned us that it’s a lot of work.  We even heard this piece of advice, which is turning out to be invaluable: “Whatever you think needs to be done to your house, always assume it will cost $1,000,” so I thought we knew what we were getting into when we signed the papers at closing a few weeks ago.  But… not so much.  It’s as though actually OWNING the house we live in has rendered Alex and I into complete boneheads at times, bringing about some of the following little incidents, all of which really happened and are reasons I have not been posting as much for the last few weeks!

• We bought a drill, but forgot to buy the drill bits.  Genius that I am, I thought the bits for my screwdriver would do the same thing as drill bits for a drill.  NOT SO MUCH!!!  It’s hard to install curtain rods with no drill bits, by the way.
• It’s been a long time since either of us lived someplace with a basement.  We’re lucky, because our basement is only a quasi-basement: it’s on the ground-level, and it’s finished.  But the spiders did not get the memo about it only being a quasi-basement.  They also missed the eviction notice I tried to give them when we moved in.  Not wanting to mess up our freshly painted walls, I thought it would be a good idea to suck the spiders up with my trusty dustbuster instead of squishing them.  Did YOU know that spiders don’t die when dustbusters suck them up?!?  Or that they can CRAWL OUT of dustbusters???  Well, I didn’t.  And so I’ve had a few spiders land on me as they made their escape from their dusty prison.
• The house has all new appliances, and they are mostly of the energy-efficient variety.  Something I have now learned about energy-efficient stoves: there is one burner, called a power burner, that is much better at boiling water than the rest of the burners on the range top.  It took me 40 minutes of trying to get water to boil on one of the other burners to learn this, though.  That was a fun night.

Some other things I didn’t know when we bought this house:

• If there is a vital piece of cheap computer equipment, like a keyboard, that your husband absolutely needs to be able to use the computer, you won’t be able to find it in any of your moving boxes, and will wind up wandering around Wal-Mart at weird hours of the night trying to buy the cheapest keyboard possible, because you just KNOW that the minute you buy a new one, the missing one will turn up.
• Attics get hot.  Like, really hot.  And if you have a kitchen cabinet with a vent for a fan that connects to the attic for ventilation, the interior of the cabinet will get hot, too.  Know why I learned that?  Because this was the cabinet I chose to store all my baking supplies in (read this: CHOCOLATE).  Suffice it to say, now I have bags of liquid chocolate (which my husband helpfully suggested I put in the fridge so it can re-solidify into chips… sadly, I don’t think cooling physics works that way).  I have since moved things around to prevent the loss of future bags of chocolate chips.

I’m confident we will encounter more mishaps of home ownership as we do more in the house.  Alex hasn’t even tried to mow the lawn yet, and we have a gas grill to put together!  The chances of at least one of those things going not-quite-as-planned seem pretty high from where I sit.  Will I write about these things?  Absolutely! As long as I can find the keyboard…

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

I’ve been horrible about posting lately, and I’m sorry! Unfortunately, there’s a chance I will continue to be horrible about it for another week or so, because Alex and I made a big decision last week and it has created loads of extra work for us in this last month leading up the wedding.

We put an offer on a house. And it was accepted… just in time for the tax credit! We couldn’t be more excited, but now we’re scrambling to get everything done so we can close on the house in time for the tax credit deadline.  Will I write a post detailing the whole experience?  You bet!

By the way, buying a house 4 weeks before your wedding definitely falls into the following category: things you probably shouldn’t do if you want to remain sane.

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

A few weeks ago I ranted a bit about how Alex and I were going to have to move right before the wedding.  Well, that has been changed, and now we don’t have to move until the week after we return from our honeymoon.  YAY for us!  Before we found this out, though, something happened that made me suspect the gods were telling me it’s in our best interest to move as soon as possible: birds built a nest in the exhaust vent for our kitchen fan.

Maybe this doesn’t sound particularly problematic.  At the very least, it probably doesn’t seem like a sign from any gods to many of you.  That’s because I left out this one very important detail: I am horribly, irrationally, TERRIFIED of birds.  It’s no joke.  They scare the crap out of me.  I once dropped a perfectly good $5 cupcake into the dirt in Greenwich Village to facilitate my escape from a pigeon that had taken up residence 2 feet from me because my OH-SO-CHARMING friend threw her $5 cupcake to it.

Yes, birds are definitely animals I don’t care to spend much time with, ever.  And there were 3 hanging out in our kitchen exhaust vent.  They sounded like they were doing their damndest to come into the kitchen, too.  One morning I actually woke up SURE I could hear one flapping around in the toilet after having flown into the house via this vent.  It took all my courage and bravery to get out of bed and check it out, armed with my trusty slipper.  Of course, there was no bird in the toilet.  I’m just THAT paranoid about birds.

So I now present you with my big list of reasons why birds scare the be-jesus out of me.  It is by no means a comprehensive list, but it’s a good overview!

1.  They can fly.  I can’t fly, but birds can.  This means they can do things like dive bomb unsuspecting, innocent people.

2.  Since birds can dive bomb unsuspecting people, they can also steal their food in a sneak attack.  I’ve seen this happen.  I was once walking on the boardwalk in Ocean City, NJ, and a seagull swooped down out of nowhere to take a corn dog out a woman’s hand.  The seagull actually bit her to get the corn dog!

3.  My grandparents had parakeets when I was little.  Sometimes they let the parakeets fly around their house.  And one time when I was four, one of these cute little parakeets landed on my head.  It dug its creepy claw-feet into my hair, and wouldn’t leave until my mom came over and shooed it away.  If that’s not traumatic, I don’t know what is.

4.  The goonie birds.  If you don’t know about goonie birds, ask my dad.  All I can say about them is, they come and take you if you don’t listen to your parents in the parking lots of shopping centers.

5.  Once while riding my bike at age 12, a bird pooped on my head.  It was really gross.  And contributed to my fear of the fact that birds can fly.

6.  Birds used to be dinosaurs.  Enough said.

The irony of this all?  I have a flamingo tattooed on my back.  It’s there because flamingos are awesome. But if I met one, I would scream and run away, no questions asked.

Hey – I said it was irrational!  Anyone else care to share their irrational fears?

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

If you look around the internet, or in magazines, or at news programs on TV, you will probably be hard-pressed to find anyplace that doesn’t list money as a top reason for divorce in the United States.

If you think about this a little bit, it’s not particularly shocking.

Let’s say a young couple (or even a not-so-young couple) gets married.  Everything is fabulous, and they decide they want to have a family, complete with a white picket fence and a neighborhood ice cream truck.  So they buy a house.  Then they have a kid.  Or two, or three.  The kids need STUFF.  The house needs STUFF.  Maybe now they need a new car.  And the couple themselves occasionally need stuff, too.  All these early marriage “stuff” acquisitions means the couple needs money… and may also mean the couple has to go into debt.  If the two people that make up this couple view and handle money differently, there’s a good chance there’s going to be friction, and over time, that it will be a major problem.

Like I said, it’s not shocking that money issues often = divorce.

As a soon-to-be-married person, this type of statistic freaks me out.  I certainly don’t want my marriage to be felled by money.  Money is, to a certain extent (you know, barring prolonged illness, alien invasion, and job loss), something that can be controlled.  So for Alex and I, I figured we could avoid problems if we talked early and often about how we are going to handle our finances as a married couple.

Turns out, I’m kinda dumb for thinking it’s that easy.  Because, when it comes to relationships and money, it’s not easy at all.

For Alex and I, we decided to split joint expenses – things like rent and electricity – according to the disparity in our incomes, but we keep our money separate so we can easily pay our pre-relationship obligations.  This was my idea, and I had read about this method of handling money in relationships in The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke by Suze Orman.  For example (and I’m making these numbers up):

He makes $40,000/year

I make $30,000/year

This means he makes 0.57 more than I do (40,000/70,000).  So if our rent is $1200 a month, he pays 0.57 x $1200, or $684, while I pay $516.

This is supposed to ensure that one person isn’t paying so much that all their income is gone every month, while the other person has tons to spare.  It has worked pretty well for us thus far.  The problem we are running into now is that this formula really isn’t going to work very well if we intend to buy a house, or have kids (which we do).  The person with more income is going to have to use a lot of that ‘more’ if we want a house that isn’t a shack.

Now, it isn’t that being able to afford these things is a problem.  They are do-able, achievable goals.  It’s the concept that all of a sudden it’s going to be pretty uneven financially, when viewed individually.  One of us is going to be paying a lot more, but we’re receiving equal benefits.  And for both of us, it’s the first time in either of our lives where our financial stability will be tied to someone else’s financial stability.  It’s the first time I can’t afford something basic, like housing, without the help of someone else in my adult life.  Our fates will be officially linked.  It’s like there’s less individuality there, somehow.  For two people who have been very independent and individual their entire lives, it’s a terrifying concept.

This makes me suspect that disagreements on this topic, not just with Alex and I, but with most couples, are not just about money.  This is stressful, emotional stuff because something important isn’t under your solitary control anymore.  Or maybe it’s an under-discussed fear about marriage in general, a fear about losing independence, and this is where it manifests.  Whatever the reason, the idea that it is not just MY money anymore is the hardest pill I’ve ever had to swallow.  I’ve worked hard to have a clean financial name, and it bothers the heck out of me that it won’t just be mine anymore.  I’ve never been particularly good at sharing.

I think that maybe this is why so many couples have trouble when it comes to money.  Money is power and control, and you can’t have much of a life without it.  Lucky for me, Alex and I do talk about money and the future a lot.  I suspect we will figure it all out intelligently and be fine.  Many people have trouble talking about this topic, though, so if anyone else is willing to share their thoughts and experiences, please do!

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

Welcome to another installment of what Whitney and I call ‘collective blogging.’  This means that we have each written a blog post on the same topic – but we wrote our posts separately.  Her take may not be the same as mine, and that’s the fun of it!  We got this idea from Melissa and Amy, who have also written collective blogs from time to time.  If you’re interested in reading my past collective blogs, please click here.

Today’s Topic:  New Year’s Resolutions

To read Whitney’s post about New Year’s Resolutions, please visit her blog, My New Chimerical Kit.

I’ll be honest, when Whitney and I first discussed writing about our New Year’s resolutions, I wasn’t sure what I’d write.  It’s been a few years since I truly made a New Year’s Resolution, because I don’t see the point.  I don’t think I know anyone who has kept a resolution like the ones you typically hear about around this time of year.  And I think there’s a reason for that.  New Year’s resolutions are notoriously high-reaching and unrealistic.  “This year I will climb a mountain.”  “This year I will lose 50 pounds.”  “This year I will find love.”  All nice goals, to be sure, but I think most people become overwhelmed by goals like these once the initial anticipation-high wears off.

So I was initially going to write: I have no New Year’s resolutions.  End of post.

But then I started thinking a bit about the coming year, 2010.  I’ve got one VERY big thing happening, with some small things that could happen mixed in.  Perhaps this, I thought, is the kind of year when a person should make New Year’s resolutions.  So, here they are, in no particular order:

Resolution 1: Quit whining and complaining and playing my tiny violin about being unhappy with my body and go do something about it.  Preferably well before June.

Resolution 2: I’m already pretty good about money and saving, but if Alex and I want to buy a house within a year of getting married, I need to become even better about it than I am now.  To that end, I will cook at home more and wait at least 2 days before buying something I don’t actually NEED.

Resolution 3: Relax about the little things more often.  (This one is for you, Alex!)

Resolution 4: Finish my NaNovel.  I mean really finish it.  I haven’t written anything about the Collective NaNovel since NaNoWriMo ended, and there is a reason for that.  My Collective NaNovel sort of turned into a spin-off story from my first NaNovel (written in 2008).  What I’d like to do is put the 2 novels together into 1 story, which I think actually has a lot of potential!

Will I stick to these things?  I hope so.  We are at Day 8 in 2010 and so far I’m doing OK… so stayed tuned!

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

My new year has not gotten off on the greatest foot.  I was all ready for this to be the best year ever, so I’m pretty bummed things haven’t been going my way so far.

Let me explain further.

Because of where we live, we have Cablevision in our house for TV, internet, and phone services.  There isn’t another option, at least there wasn’t when we moved here.  Perhaps there is now, I’m looking into that this week.  Anyhoo, unknown to me (or anyone else I’ve talked to for that matter), Cablevision, for whatever reason – and to be honest I don’t give a crap about the reason – ended its deal with the Scripps Networks as of January 1, 2010.  Scripps Networks, for those of you who don’t know is the company that brings us the Food Network and HGTV.

That’s right.  As of the New Year, there is no more Food Network in my house.  AND IT’S ALSO THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT.

The Food Network has been my background noise, my relaxing-in-front-of-the-TV channel, and my muse for my entire adult life.  The loss of it, in a word, sucks.  Cablevision has their version of what happened running on the channel formerly known as the Food Network.  You can check it out here.  Similarly, Scripps Networks has their own campaign going to explain what happened, which you can check out here.

What it comes down to is a contract dispute.  All I can think of is 1994, when the MLB Player’s Association went on strike and the season ended before it’s true end, robbing fans of the World Series for that year.  The fans didn’t care what the problem was, or who was right and who was wrong, they just cared about losing out on watching their favorite teams play baseball.  It’s the same thing here.  No one cares whose fault the whole thing is.  We just care that we’re getting screwed out of our shows (while still paying the same price and having to hear from people on other cable networks about all the great stuff we can’t see).

As if losing my favorite TV channel wasn’t enough, we also discovered last Saturday (1/2/10) that our dryer is broken.  We rent, so we have to wait for our landlord to fix that problem.  Until then, we either can’t do laundry, or we have to wash it and then line dry EVERYTHING.  Or we have to impose on someone we know to use their machines.  I won’t go to a laundromat, for reasons that are outside the scope of this post.

*sigh*  I still have high hopes for this year!  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that both issues are taken care of soon.

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

I suspect most writers will be able to relate to this statement: sometimes material just PRESENTS itself to you.  You’re not looking for it, and then BAM! there it is, staring you in the face, begging you to write something, lest the material disappear forever.

Well, last night material presented itself to me in a rather… projectile… manner.

I spent all day yesterday with Alex, Nicole, Jay and some of Jay and Nicole’s friends on the Shawangunk wine trail.  We were participating in the Wreath Fineries wine trail event, which was wonderful and fabulous and people should go if they can still find tickets.  Our little group started at Palaia Vineyards, where the general consensus among us was that it’s a really cute place to spend time when the weather gets warmer.  We then went to Brotherhood Winery, which was in my top 2 out of the 8 wineries we visited, and then to Applewood Winery, which was the other member of my top 2.  Applewood was giving out this really delicious blue cheese potato au gratin dish, which was hands-down the best food we received all day (the other stuff was good, too, this was just INSANELY delicious).  We also visited Warwick Valley Winery, Baldwin Vineyards, Whitecliff Vineyards – a very cool place to go sit and drink a bottle when the weather is nice, – Benmarl Vineyards, and Stoutridge Vineyards (another cool place because they use science to make their wine!).  There were a few we didn’t make it to… but that’s not really the point of this post.

You see, I was originally planning to share our experience on the wine trail, but then I forgot my camera.  Figuring the post would be a bit dull without pictures to show what I was talking about, I axed the idea.  But like I said, sometimes material presents itself….

After we did the wine trail, we dropped off Nicole and Jay’s friends at the train station, then the four of us went to dinner at Chili’s.  Alex and I were pretty psyched about this, because it has been a long time since we’ve been to a Chili’s.  Plus, they have one of those 2 people eat for $20 deals, which meant going out would be affordable for once.  We get a table, and are sitting and talking and relaxing after a long, hard day of drinking wine.

And that’s when the material presented itself.

Alex tends to have things happen to him.  If someone is going to drop something, or spill something, or otherwise do something undesirable, it tends to be him, or someone does it TO him.  Last night was no exception.  We were at a high-top table, and it worked out that Alex had me on one side of him and Nicole on the other side.  There was a row of tables behind him.  At one table behind him, there was a young kid.  And the young kid suddenly didn’t feel so good.  His mother was trying to hustle him to the bathroom, but there just wasn’t time.  The kid threw up.  Not just a little bit, or on his own shoes, but the kind of chunky, disgusting, projectile vomit that goes everywhere.  Sorry to be gross, but I know everyone reading knows what I mean right now!

Oh, and by everywhere, I mean on the floor – and on Alex.

At first we didn’t know it was on Alex.  He had his fleece jacket on his chair, and he was wearing a sweater over his shirt, so his skin was all covered.  He didn’t FEEL it.  We were all quite busy staring at the chunks of red and pink puke all over the floor behind Nicole and Alex, so we didn’t even think to look at his back.  But then a man at a table behind us pointed to Alex and said,

“It’s ON you!”

I couldn’t see anything, so I had no idea what he was talking about.  But Nicole had a great angle and she looked and said,

“It’s all over your jacket – it’s in the sleeve and everything.  And it’s on your back.”

And so Alex did what no one wants to ever have to do when they’re eating a relaxing meal.  He turned to look at the vomit on his clothing.

It really was all over his jacket.  There was no way around it.  And he also had to remove his sweater, which really sucked because it was about 28 degrees (Fahrenheit) outside last night.  A manager came over and helped Alex put the jacket in a plastic bag, and told us that if he wanted it professionally cleaned Chili’s would certainly pay for it.  She also promised to do something for us on our bill.

Well, the bill came and guess how much getting thrown up on is worth at Chili’s?  $5.  They took $5 off – in the form of removing JAY’S BEER from the bill!!  They didn’t even take off something ALEX was consuming!  The waiter commented on this, because he wasn’t sure why it had worked out that way, and of course Alex being who he is didn’t complain about it while we were there, but I did hear about it when we were going home – how is being thrown up on only worth $5?  Granted, it’s not Chili’s FAULT that he got thrown up on.  And it’s not as if Jay and Nicole were all, HAHA we got money off, nannie nannie, sticking their tongues out.  Obviously it got passed along to Alex.  It’s just the point of it all!

Oh, and then there’s this other little tidbit: the parent of the child who threw up?  Said NOT A WORD to our table, or to Alex.  No apology, no sorry about that, no “oh that was my fault for taking my sick kid out to a restaurant.”  Nothing.  That part actually bugs me more than the $5 off part.  I know if E did that to someone when Alex and I were out, we would have been apologizing profusely to the person E threw up all over!

Does anyone else find this rude??  Perhaps the parents were embarrassed… perhaps.  Anyone reading have any ideas about this?

© 2009, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

There is one aspect of my life I have been hesitant to mention here: the man I am marrying next spring has a toddler.  I will refer to him as ‘E.’  I typically won’t talk about him because for various reasons I’m not sure if it’s appropriate.  However, I’m going to declare a moratorium on that policy for this post, because… well… you will see!

You’ve got to love kids.  Especially toddlers.  They are great for loads of reasons.  Like getting grown-ups to remember to be excited about candy and the ice cream man.  And forcing you to be calm even when they have thrown up all over your brand-new couch – followed by peeing all over it (yes that has happened).  And, the #1 reason kids are great… they make sure everyone in the room knows when you’ve made a fashion faux pas.

‘E’ did the latter to me this past Friday afternoon.  It was Alex’s birthday this month, so we brought ‘E’ to his work “birthdays in October” cake party.  I was feeling a bit lazy that morning, so when I put on my dark blue jeans and brown clogs, I didn’t care that I also put on off-white dress socks.  Yes, I know you’re not supposed to wear white socks with dark pants and dark shoes.  I just had no real care factor for it that morning – and I also presumed (wrongly) that no one was looking.

So we are sitting at the cake party.  ‘E’ decided there were simply too many people there for his taste, and spent the whole party sitting under the table where the cake was being cut.  I sat in a chair near him to allow Alex to socialize without having to worry about ‘E.’  Did I mention that ‘E’ has a tiny bit of OCD going on?  No?  Well, he does.  It’s really entertaining to watch.  Everything has to be in a straight line, all the time.  Lights have to be turned on and off.  Doors have to be CLOSED.  (Have I also mentioned that I adore this kid??!!)  And, apparently, white socks are NOT supposed to be seen.

I had my legs crossed and to one side of the table.  This made my jeans-leg come up a tiny bit – just enough to expose my white sock.  ‘E’ noticed the offending sock and tried to pull my jeans over it, so all you’d see was the brown shoe.  But of course, as soon as he let go of my pants, they popped back up and the sock was once again exposed.  After this happened three or four times, ‘E’ started to get mad at my jeans and making a fuss, which of course drew attention to my foot.  That my sock was the source of ‘E’s consternation was cause for great amusement amongst the part-goers, to say the least.

So now all Alex’s co-workers know that sometimes I wear white socks.  I guess it could be worse.  ‘E’ could have outed my age, or my bra size. You’ve got to love kids.

© 2009, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

Welcome to another installment of what Whitney and I are calling ‘collective blogging.’ To refresh everyone’s memory, we will both be writing blog entries on the same topic as an exercise to see how different our thought processes and memories are. Hopefully it will be good practice for an idea we have for NaNoWriMo 2009 – to write the same novel, but separately.

Today’s Topic: Thoughts and Memories on the First Week of Being Engaged

A major milestone was reached for me since I last posted on my blog.  I am now engaged!  Since Whitney and I can now say we both have experienced the first week of betrothal, we decided to make that the topic of this collective blog post.

You know how in school, when you’re writing those God-awful essays for college entrance or scholarship contests, they like to ask you to pick one word to describe yourself or an experience and then explain why you chose that word?  Well, the only word I can think of to sum up the experience of the first week of being an engaged person is this: surreal.   I definitely never thought I would get married (you can ask any of my friends, they will back me up on that), and I definitely never thought I would be getting married to Alex.  He is definitely everything I never knew I always wanted.  And I hate to say this, because I think it probably sounds awful, but I can only remember the proposal in bits and pieces.  I know what we did and what he said before it, and after it, but the actual proposal is a bit hazy.  Alex feels the same way; people ask him what he said and he can’t remember!  It’s like someone else’s life to both of us right now.

On top of the feeling that I’ve been removed from my body, there is the realization that one of my closest friends was dead-on balls accurate about one thing: people who are normally rational human beings can become totally crazy when you announce a wedding.  Demands get made that you didn’t see coming.  Things get blown out of proportion that you never would have thought were a big deal to someone.  And then there are the politics of weddings – the guest list, the budget, the wedding party.  And it’s only the first week!  Then there are the questions that have been asked, more than once, by many people, that I didn’t realize you have to be prepared to answer right away.  For example, many people have asked us if I cried when he proposed, or if he cried when he proposed.  To me this is weird, because I’m not really a crier and neither is Alex.  Were we supposed to cry?  Is there something wrong with us because we didn’t?  Obviously this is not as strange a question as I think it is because many people have asked it, but it sure threw me off!  I’ve also been asked many times, in some cases the day after the proposal, if we’d set a date yet.  This one I understand, and it’s a logical question to ask a newly engaged couple, but still!  The other one that threw me off the first time I got it was whether or not I have decided on colors for the wedding.  Again, now that I’ve gotten the question a bunch of times and thought about the reasons, I understand this question.  But it’s pretty overwhelming at first!  (Actually, everything is overwhelming at first…)

And then we come to the ring.  I love my ring.  It’s beautiful and I am so proud of the way Alex put it together.  I expected people to want to see it.  I expected myself to look at it a lot.  I did NOT expect that I would be as paranoid as I am about having something happen to it.  Some things are obvious, like don’t wear it if you’re cleaning or doing loads of dishes.  Other things I struggled with at first, and am still struggling with, like hand washing, and showering, and sleeping with it on.  I work in a lab, and it never once occurred to me before I was engaged that you have to decide whether or not you want to wear your ring at work, because lab gloves don’t exactly fit over the ring.  I wear mine, and got bigger gloves, for the record.

So my general impression of being engaged, a little over one week in, is that it’s a lot to take in, and I still haven’t fully absorbed it all!

If you want to read Whitney’s take on her first week of being engaged, you can read it here.

© 2009, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

Welcome to another installment of what Whitney and I are calling ‘collective blogging.’ To refresh everyone’s memory, we will both be writing blog entries on the same topic every week as an exercise to see how different our thought processes and memories are. Hopefully it will be good practice for an idea we have for NaNoWriMo 2009 – to write the same novel, but separately.

Today’s topic: What is the meaning of life?
To be honest, my initial response to this topic was to give a joke answer and tell all my readers that the meaning of life was 42.  If you have never read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, you probably don’t know why 42 would be considered an answer to this particular question, nor do you follow why it’s a joke answer.  I recommend reading the books because they are fabulous, but in case you aren’t going to I will sum up why 42 would come to mind: a race of highly advanced beings in HGG create a machine to answer this very question – oh, and the machine is Earth.  The machine (Earth) is about to render its answer (42) to the question (what is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything) when it is destroyed by hateful Vogons.  Like I said, you should really read the books.

Obviously this question – what is the meaning of life – is a philosophical question for which there is no “right” answer.  Furthermore, it seems to me that you might need to define what life is to even begin to discuss what its meaning is.  The scientific definition of life is still a debated topic, and being that this is more of a philosophical question anyway, I will assume that to answer it there may be more importance in defining consciousness and self-awareness than in defining what is and is not alive.  I’m not sure I can define either of those things, but I will say I feel sure humans are both conscious beings and self-aware, and therefore alive and justified in asking the question, ‘what is the meaning of life?’

This question can also be a problem if you believe life exists anywhere else in the universe – another hotly debated issue that I will not delve into here, except to say I believe it probably does.  Carl Sagan explained the rationale for why I believe that better than I ever will:

“Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.” ~ Carl Sagan

If we are alone in the universe, then life is precious and therefore meaningful.  But if we aren’t alone, what we do here might be tiny and insignificant in the theater of the universe.  For anyone that looks up and thinks we might not be alone, that thought makes the question of the meaning of life rather esoteric.

This is why the joke answer of 42 would have been a much easier way to go with this topic!

I figure that all science and philosophy aside, humans pretty much want to feel like we matter, and that there is meaning to life.  The ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything may not be something we – the living humans on planet Earth – are meant to know.  I also figure that even if we don’t matter a whole lot to the universe, we matter quite a bit to the people in our lives.  Interpersonal relationships, the people we choose to let in, that we love, they are what give meaning to life.  We profoundly effect more lives than we probably realize.  I know a little bit about this – I recently lost someone who I did not realize touched me as much as he did until he wasn’t here anymore.  So I don’t think the meaning of life is about having the highest paying job, or being the most famous you can possibly be.  I think the meaning of life is to leave gentle footprints on the people who will remember we lived.

Although, I do still leave room for the meaning of life to turn out to be 42.  You never know.

If you want to read Whitney’s take on the meaning of life, you can read it here.

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