growing in the goo

A couple of weeks ago I read "the godmother," by Carrie Adams. It's about a 36-year-old woman who has a bunch of friends who are either married, married with children, or single with children. She compares her life to theirs, blah blah blah.

First of all, I don't know when I switched from "hijinks while finding a fiance" chick-lit to "I'm married to a man I love and I have a child but I'm miserable" chick-lit (SEE: Jennifer Weiner). Is this a new genre? Or did I just stumble upon it? Or maybe since I'm now living in the suburbs, Borders puts out a different collection of fluff that will appeal to the demographic?

This book had a few great quotes that especially hit home...the one I'm thinking of right now, especially, is:
okay...turns out that I can't find the stupid quote. But the essence is, For once I'd like to meet a man who doesn't have a "...but" attached. Like, "He's rich and driven...but lives with his mom," (not like I can talk there!), or "Smart...but enjoys torturing little animals," or "Nice, but was drunk when I met him. At 11 a.m." (yeah.)

It seems like everyone I meet has a huge big honking "but" attached. I'm aware that I have quite a few "buts" to my name right now, but really? Really?!

Which leads to my next favorite quote, which I did mark:
"At twenty I was not ready to make that deal. I was having too much fun. When the bouquet sailed through the air, I abstained again, letting it fall at my feet. Marriage would come later, that I knew; I didn't want to rush things. I wasn't going to catch roses to cement the deal. I was so sure that I would get married and have children that I never even questioned it. I now know a tiny fraction of what I thought I knew then, which is just about enough to realize that I knew nothing."

When I read that, I had a little flashback of me at my older brother's wedding...chatting outside with the uncles, drinking it up and having my second cigar. All my life I've been snubbing my nose at superstitions, laughing mockingly when I break a mirror, taunting black cats in my path, absent-mindedly wandering underneath ladders, opening umbrellas indoors often. I have two weddings coming up, and depending upon my state of mind, I might actually stand in the herd. (This is not to say that I want to get married now, but it might be good to stop acting too cool for school...?)

With that said, there's one more quote that I really like, one that doesn't pertain to my life at all, but I found it fascinating. One of the characters is talking about marriage, and she said:
"Someone once said that marriage is like standing in a corridor lined with doors. You go off through your door, he goes through his, but at the end of the day you have to come back to the corridor, touch base, hold hands, because through every door are more doors, and beyond them, more again, and if you both go through too many without coming back to the corridor, you may never find your way back."