Do you live for someone else?

While at the moment my skin still more or less retains that glowing, elastic smoothness that so many aging trophy wives seek to revive, I've recently discovered what I'm pretty sure is going to be the first place I get any serious face creases. Which, I believe, is in the same place as my mom: two vertical lines between the eyebrows, caused by an excess of squinting, frowning, and general incredulity. What do YOUR future facial disfigurations say about you?

I think if there's one thing that's relatively solidified about me, it's my priorities.

Have you ever wondered how people can really go around saying the word "poodle" like it's not hilarious?

So life goals were brought up in one of my classes the other day. And when I put my mind to it, I was able to make a pretty quick list of things I never particularly considered a life goal. I don't want to be wealthy. I haven't given my career all that much thought, nor do I consider being in a single, stable career my entire life very important. I have no grand illusions of changing the world beyond hopefully adding something to the lives of those in immediate choking range. I'm not even entirely convinced children are on my agenda, though I wouldn't be surprised if they showed up at some point. I realized that my only consistent, ardent hope for my life is that I'll get happily married. Which probably equates to telling Susan Faludi, Virginia Woolf, and Emma Goldman to bite me.

"Then the city acted in wartime like an intelligent woman under siege. She gave what she couldn't with safety withhold, and secured those things which lay within her reach. The city became for me the idea of what I wanted to be as a grownup. Friendly but never gushing, cool but not frigid or distant, distinguished without the awful stiffness."