it's summer so i must be listening to wilco

Yeah, all I've been listening to lately is "Being There." I guess I am just feeling the pull of heat and the ache to be on the road. I just had a birthday which means the summer is all downhill from here. Once I hit my birthday, the summer just flies. So I need to enjoy it while it's still here.

Which means I tend to listen to a lot of Wilco. Maybe if I'm really maudlin I'll listen to Beth Orton "daybreaker."

But yeah, I could stand to listen to "Do You Miss Me," "I Got You (at the end of the century)" and "What's the World Got in Store?" for a long time. Work has me in a serious schedule. New York is feeling like a pair of broken in boots. Still hip, but I definitely run into people from all facets of life on the subway. I'm kissing people hello on the street so I must have made my way around the block a couple times.

And maybe that's just it: I have been around the block and back again. I'm not a green kid who just turned 18 and is packing her bags for college. Yet I am getting more and more freaked out by all my friends getting married. It isn't getting any easier to stomach listening to the girls I used to help with their homework talk about bridesmaid dresses, fighting with their mothers about caterers...

It's just weird. I mean, Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise is only marginally more weird than this... So that's the standard we're looking at, kids.

Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever get married. I love living alone. I love nights entirely by myself drinking a glass of wine, listening to Wilco, puttering around my room.

I just can't see myself having time to do things like consider:
church or civil ceremony?
bridesmaids?
cakes?
caterers?
flowers?
photographers?

And more shit I can't even think of because this is so beyond the realm of my imagination.

Is this because I just can't do this? Because the idea of being a wife seems so foreign to me?

And for someone who cannot stand the thought of being responsible for pets can hardly think of being in possession of a husband.

I think the day these terms don't scare me is the day I might actually contemplate marriage. Why does it freak me out so much?

I think it has a lot to do with the fact that marriage just is not high on the list of things I need and want to do with my life in the next five years. More and more, I'm recognizing all the things that are more important and interesting to me and I want to focus on that rather than validating my relationship with the state and society.

Whew. That was a mouthful, but it felt good to write it all down.