Just love, no hate.

Friends and Music

http://youtu.be/Mkgq6u7YAA0

Let's call him "Old School"

Just to give you a brief history of Old School and I, we met when we were both 21 and working at a call center and I was the end of a year long relationship that just wasn't working out and I couldn't figure out how to end.  Old School is and always has been your typical cocky asshole with a quick smile and sarcastic sense of humor.  We had mutual friends outside of work and started hanging out.  There was always sexual tension between the 2 of us and he made it his mission to get to me.  I did not put up much of a fight.  I began seeing Old School about a month before I finally ended the year long relationship.  I'll admit, not my best moment but it was the only time (and has been the only time) I ever cheated on any boyfriend.  I justified it as "well, he's been sleeping with half the chicks we work with, so it's fine."  For the nine years to follow, Old School was always around when I needed him to be.  He was one I could be just myself around and someone who didn't care if I had my make-up done or was wearing the sexy outfit.  He always made me feel great and wild and free and like there wasn't a care in the world.  We embarked upon sexual adventures that either one of us would suggest and throw ourselves into whole-heartedly.  There was never any embarrassment or self-consciousness when I was with him.  It all ended the night my father was in the hospital, maybe 2 weeks before he died and no one knew what was wrong with him and I needed a friend.  I needed someone to just go and sit somewhere with a drink in hand and just be.  So, I called Old School.  It turned out that he was with his girlfriend at the time and she hated me simply because I was a girl.  He caught attitude with me and I flew off the handle.  The next day, he called to apologize and I sent him to hell in a hand basket.  We didn't speak until a bout 2 months ago when he found me on a dating site and sent me a message of "Can we be friends again?"  All I had to do was read this and realize that I had missed him in my life all this time.  I missed that feeling I had with him.  He said it best when he described why he needed me back in his life "It's like your a drug I can't get enough of and I don't want to run away from."

I miss you, Dad.

Just sitting here talking about Christmas memories with my co-workers and realizing that I have some kick ass memories of my dad at Christmas time.  Sitting up, fast asleep while we tore through presents and my mom ooohh-ed and aahhh-ed at everything we opened.  I miss him.

If a Man Wants You

This is all stuff you learn in hindsight and by the time you hit 35, you wish you would have known it sooner.

If a man wants you, nothing can keep him away.

If he doesn’t want you, nothing can make him stay.

Stop making excuses for a man and his behavior.

Allow your intuition (or spirit) to save you from heartache.

Stop trying to change yourselves for a relationship that’s not meant to be.

Slower is better.

Never live your life for a man before you find what makes you truly happy.

If a relationship ends because the man was not treating you as you deserve

then heck no, you can’t "be friends."

A friend wouldn’t mistreat a friend.

Don’t settle. If you feel like he is stringing you along, then he probably is.

Don’t stay because you think "it will get better." You’ll be mad at yourself

a year later for staying when things are not better.

The only person you can control in a relationship is you.

Avoid men who’ve got a bunch of children by a bunch of different women.

He didn’t marry them when he got them pregnant,

Why would he treat you any differently?

Always have your own set of friends separate from his.

Maintain boundaries in how a guy treats you.

If something bothers you, speak up.

Never let a man know everything. He will use it against you later.

You cannot change a man’s behavior. Change comes from within.

Don’t EVER make him feel he is more important than you are...even if he has

more education or in a better job. Do not make him into a quasi-god.

He is a man, nothing more nothing less.

Never let a man define who you are.

Never borrow someone else’s man.

Oh Lord!  If he cheated with you, he’ll cheat on you.

A man will only treat you the way you allow him to treat you.

All men are not dogs.

You should not be the one doing all the bending...compromise is a two-way street.

You need time to heal between relationships...There is nothing cute about baggage. 

Deal with your issues before pursuing a new relationship.

You should never look for someone to complete you. A relationship consists

of two whole individuals. Look for someone complimentary, not supplementary.

Dating is fun; even if he doesn’t turn out to be Mr. Right.

Make him miss you sometimes. When a man always know where you are, and you’re

always readily available to him—he takes it for granted.

Don’t fully commit to a man who doesn’t give you everything that you need.

Keep him in your radar but get to know others.

Share this with other ladies.

You’ll make someone smile, another rethink her choices, and another woman prepare.

They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate

them, a day to love them, and an entire lifetime to forget them.

Say it with sound...

Unknown and Anonymous are my favorite writers.

Crazy Fads

http://www.crazyfads.com/

Going through this list of fads made me nostalgic for my younger days.  Sort of.

As long as I remember this, I'm good to go.

I Don't Get It

I received an email about the new sitcom that's suppose to start on ABC soon called Work It.  The basis of it is:

According to ABC, the show centers on two unemployed men who have "learned the hard way that the current recession is more of a 'man-cession' and their skills aren't in high demand." One finds out that a pharmaceuticals company is hiring sales reps, but only female sales reps. He goes to the interview dressed in heels, a skirt, and make-up and gets hired as a woman.

When I first saw the commercial for it, I laughed and immediately thought of that 80s sitcom Bosom Buddies with Tom Hanks.  -------------->

For those who don't remember, the basis of Bosom Buddies were these 2 guys looking for a place to live in NYC and the only affordable thing they could find was an apartment building that only rented to woman.  So, they dressed as woman, got the apartment and hilarities ensued.  No one caused an uproar about it then, at least, not that I can remember.  It was a funny show.  That's how Work It looks to me.  I won't say who the email came from but it has it's panties in a twist because "The premise of "Work It" reinforces false and damaging stereotypes about transgender people."  I don't see how.  The 2 guys in questions are obvious dudes who I even believe are married in the show.  They are not trying to really be women.  The way this economy is now, people have to great lengths just to land a job and I feel it's a satire poking fun at the way the world is now.  I just don't see how it's damaging to the transgender community.  I am well aware that members of the transgender community face very real adversities in the workplace as well as in all other areas of life.  But what I don't see how this satire of a show is a damaging stereotype of transgender people.  It's almost as if they are missing the entire point of the show.  Why haven't the extreme feminist come around and said that this show is sexist beyond belief and shows the inequality in the work place between men and women, that women are seen as sex objects and that's why the hypothetical company only wants female sales people?  At what point did we as a society cross over into taking everything so offensively?  When are we going to get to the point of simply accepting human beings for who they are and not what they look like, who they love, what they're wearing, or the damn reality TV show they're on?  I just don't get it anymore...

30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself

Stop spending time with the wrong people. – Life is too short to spend time with people who suck the happiness out of you.  If someone wants you in their life, they’ll make room for you.  You shouldn’t have to fight for a spot.  Never, ever insist yourself to someone who continuously overlooks your worth.  And remember, it’s not the people that stand by your side when you’re at your best, but the ones who stand beside you when you’re at your worst that are your true friends.

Stop running from your problems. – Face them head on.  No, it won’t be easy.  There is no person in the world capable of flawlessly handling every punch thrown at them.  We aren’t supposed to be able to instantly solve problems.  That’s not how we’re made.  In fact, we’re made to get upset, sad, hurt, stumble and fall.  Because that’s the whole purpose of living – to face problems, learn, adapt, and solve them over the course of time.  This is what ultimately molds us into the person we become.

Stop lying to yourself. – You can lie to anyone else in the world, but you can’t lie to yourself.  Our lives improve only when we take chances, and the first and most difficult chance we can take is to be honest with ourselves.  Read The Road Less Traveled.

Stop putting your own needs on the back burner. – The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.  Yes, help others; but help yourself too.  If there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do something that matters to you, that moment is now.

Stop trying to be someone you’re not. – One of the greatest challenges in life is being yourself in a world that’s trying to make you likeeveryone else.  Someone will always be prettier, someone will always be smarter, someone will always be younger, but they will never be you.  Don’t change so people will like you.  Be yourself and the right people will love the real you.

Stop trying to hold onto the past. – You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading your last one.

Stop being scared to make a mistake. – Doing something and getting it wrong is at least ten times more productive than doing nothing.  Every success has a trail of failures behind it, and every failure is leading towards success.  You end up regretting the things you did NOT do far more than the things you did.

Stop berating yourself for old mistakes. – We may love the wrong person and cry about the wrong things, but no matter how things go wrong, one thing is for sure, mistakes help us find the person and things that are right for us.  We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past.  But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future.  Every single thing that has ever happened in your life is preparing you for a moment that is yet to come.

Stop trying to buy happiness. – Many of the things we desire are expensive.  But the truth is, the things that really satisfy us are totally free – love, laughter and working on our passions.

Stop exclusively looking to others for happiness. – If you’re not happy with who you are on the inside, you won’t be happy in a long-term relationship with anyone else either.  You have to create stability in your own life first before you can share it with someone else.  Read Stumbling on Happiness.

Stop being idle. – Don’t think too much or you’ll create a problem that wasn’t even there in the first place.  Evaluate situations and take decisive action.  You cannot change what you refuse to confront.  Making progress involves risk.  Period!  You can’t make it to second base with your foot on first.

Stop thinking you’re not ready. – Nobody ever feels 100% ready when an opportunity arises.  Because most great opportunities in life force us to grow beyond our comfort zones, which means we won’t feel totally comfortable at first.

Stop getting involved in relationships for the wrong reasons. – Relationships must be chosen wisely.  It’s better to be alone than to be in bad company.  There’s no need to rush.  If something is meant to be, it will happen – in the right time, with the right person, and for the best reason. Fall in love when you’re ready, not when you’re lonely.

Stop rejecting new relationships just because old ones didn’t work. – In life you’ll realize that there is a purpose for everyone you meet.  Some will test you, some will use you and some will teach you.  But most importantly, some will bring out the best in you.

Stop trying to compete against everyone else. – Don’t worry about what others doing better than you.  Concentrate on beating your own records every day.  Success is a battle between YOU and YOURSELF only.

Stop being jealous of others. – Jealousy is the art of counting someone else’s blessings instead of your own.  Ask yourself this:  “What’s something I have that everyone wants?”

Stop complaining and feeling sorry for yourself. – Life’s curveballs are thrown for a reason – to shift your path in a direction that is meant for you.  You may not see or understand everything the moment it happens, and it may be tough.  But reflect back on those negative curveballs thrown at you in the past.  You’ll often see that eventually they led you to a better place, person, state of mind, or situation.  So smile!  Let everyone know that today you are a lot stronger than you were yesterday, and you will be.

Stop holding grudges. – Don’t live your life with hate in your heart.  You will end up hurting yourself more than the people you hate.  Forgiveness is not saying, “What you did to me is okay.”  It is saying, “I’m not going to let what you did to me ruin my happiness forever.”  Forgiveness is the answer… let go, find peace, liberate yourself!  And remember, forgiveness is not just for other people, it’s for you too.  If you must, forgive yourself, move on and try to do better next time.

Stop letting others bring you down to their level. – Refuse to lower your standards to accommodate those who refuse to raise theirs.

Stop wasting time explaining yourself to others. – Your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t believe it anyway.  Just do what you know in your heart is right.

Stop doing the same things over and over without taking a break. – The time to take a deep breath is when you don’t have time for it.  If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.  Sometimes you need to distance yourself to see things clearly.

Stop overlooking the beauty of small moments. – Enjoy the little things, because one day you may look back and discover they were the big things.  The best portion of your life will be the small, nameless moments you spend smiling with someone who matters to you.

Stop trying to make things perfect. – The real world doesn’t reward perfectionists, it rewards people who get things done.  Read Getting Things Done.

Stop following the path of least resistance. – Life is not easy, especially when you plan on achieving something worthwhile.  Don’t take the easy way out.  Do something extraordinary.

Stop acting like everything is fine if it isn’t. – It’s okay to fall apart for a little while.  You don’t always have to pretend to be strong, and there is no need to constantly prove that everything is going well.  You shouldn’t be concerned with what other people are thinking either – cry if you need to – it’s healthy to shed your tears.  The sooner you do, the sooner you will be able to smile again.

Stop blaming others for your troubles. – The extent to which you can achieve your dreams depends on the extent to which you take responsibility for your life.  When you blame others for what you’re going through, you deny responsibility – you give others power over that part of your life.

Stop trying to be everything to everyone. – Doing so is impossible, and trying will only burn you out.  But making one person smile CAN change the world.  Maybe not the whole world, but their world.  So narrow your focus.

Stop worrying so much. – Worry will not strip tomorrow of its burdens, it will strip today of its joy.  One way to check if something is worth mulling over is to ask yourself this question: “Will this matter in one year’s time?  Three years?  Five years?”  If not, then it’s not worth worrying about.

Stop focusing on what you don’t want to happen. – Focus on what you do want to happen.  Positive thinking is at the forefront of every great success story.  If you awake every morning with the thought that something wonderful will happen in your life today, and you pay close attention, you’ll often find that you’re right.

Stop being ungrateful. – No matter how good or bad you have it, wake up each day thankful for your life.  Someone somewhere else is desperately fighting for theirs.  Instead of thinking about what you’re missing, try thinking about what you have that everyone else is missing.

Aaahhh, f*ck it......

What Matters

It took me a long time to be able to do this with my love life.  I'm at a point where I'd rather be happy by myself and keep the company of very few who make me happy than be with someone who doesn't make me their top choice.  

Hope

"If you support OWS, please remove me from your friend's list. Thank you."

This was the status update I saw on my Facebook news feed from someone I knew years ago. Everyone who does know me knows I can be vocal about the things I support and I'm always up for a debate.  I've gotten into itover abortion rights, religion, politics, you name it.  I have friends on my list who are very religious, some who are very Republican and some who never see eye to eye with me on any topic but not once have any of them ever said "Delete me because you don't agree with me."  To me, the best debaters and smartest thinkers are the ones who can agree to disagree.  The ones who can take constructive critisism and know that there's more than one view.  I like surrounding myself with all kinds if different people, not just the ones who agree with on everything.  What's the fun in that?  I don't know if I can live in that kind if bubble.

The Magic of Snowflakes

This picture reminds me of the story my mom told me of the first time she ever really saw a snowflake.  Now, I'm not talking about ever seeing snow as she grew up in NYC but the first time she ever really saw the uniqueness of a snowflake.  She was 16, already married to my dad and pregnant with me.  It was snowing outside as she was walking to I can't remember where but the flurries made her blink into the winds when she happened to glance at her gloves.  This is when she noticed  the patterns of each of the snowflakes and how beautiful and unique each one was to the next.  She said she had never noticed this before and she felt such wonderment and awe like she had never felt before and with being pregnant for the first time, she felt such immense joy in that moment.  For this, she always called me her miracle snowflake baby. Even at 35, I still feel special.

Eh...

Death and Taxes - Fame Festival 2010

http://www.little-people.blogspot.com/

You have to check out this artist's project. Simply awesome!

Something I learnt about myself this past year

For years, many of my friends always thought of me as the strong one, the one who never gave in or let the tough times affect me.  And I use to think, "If they only knew..."  We'll this past year has had so much happen that pushed me so far deep in between a rock and a hard place so many times that I thought I would never see the light of happiness again and that I would never fully be able to breathe again.  And yet, here we are at the end of it and everything has already been put in place for an amazing year to come that it makes me smile. The saying really is true.  When it's your only option besides breaking down and giving into the tears, you find out how strong you really are.  I guess my friends saw it before I did.

A Funny Thing Happened to Me Last Night...

I recently cut my hair very short and while I love it, I know my dad would have not.  He was old school about certain things and girls having long hair was one of them.  I never really understood that since I can remember my mom having short hair for a majority of my childhood.  Go figure.  So, last night after I fell asleep, I started dreaming.  It was one of those dreams where everything feels so real that you have to question it.  Anyway, I was already in bed watching tv while the girls slept when there was a knock on the door.  I'm wondering who it could be only to find my dad on the other side.  Mind you, my dad passed away February 2006.  He walks in and the first thing he tells me is, "Tasha, I really don't like the hair."  I had to laugh because I knew it was coming after I hug him.  I showed my little apartment.  He commented on the laundry I had to do because he was always after me to clean up more.  hen we talked for a while with me telling him what I had planned for the place when I got my income tax return and he liked my ideas.  Then he told me was proud of me for starting school again and to stick with it.  I don't remember much more but I know he had to vocalize his opinion on my hair. lol  I miss him so much.

Rules to Live By

Yes!

Listen to Nike and just do it already!

And this what I have been doing all year long to be able to look in the mirror come New Year's Day and say, "It's done and over with.  No more bullshit.  It's time to be fabulous again."  This entire year has been me climbing over walls, jumping hurdles and plainly digging my way through it.  Everything is all set up to begin starting in January.  I'm starting school again like I've been wanting to do for so long.  February brings about the re-decorating of the apartment, my birthday, my tattoo and the new car.  March/April will the first official family trip with just me and the girls.  Possible cruise in the summer.  It's looking all golden from over here.  I can't wait!

GOP Willing To Raise Payroll Taxes On 113 Million Households To Spare 345,000 Millionaires From Tiny Surtax

I simply do not understand the train of thought of most of the GOP when it comes to not taxes those who make over 1 million and instead tax the middle and lower class families more. I just don't get it.

GOP Willing To Raise Payroll Taxes On 113 Million Households To Spare 345,000 Millionaires From Tiny Surtax: pSenate Democrats yesterday introduced legislation — as they’ve been promising to — that would extend a soon-to-expire payroll tax cut, and pay for it by implementing a surtax on income above $1 million. Republicans, of course, are opposing the plan, reviving their false claims that taxing the very wealthiest Americans will hit small businesses and [...]/p

Just Don't

Body Paints

Another amazing artist, not just in photography but in his art work done of the human body.  I've seen some really great body paint work at some of the clubs/parties/festivals here in Miami but this gentleman's work is amazing.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107771181372242547518/about

Check out some of his other work to fully understand what I mean.

http://www.roustanbodypaint.com/ 

The Dancer's Despair

I love pictures of dancers.  Maybe it's because I can almost hear the music going in my head as I see the stills of them in mid leap, bodies pushing themselves into spins or the graceful arc of their arms over their heads.  This picture feels like a dancer's worst nightmare.  To be bound to tight to move to the calling of the song.  I know I always said I'd be ready to die when I couldn't dance anymore.  That's this picture to me.

http://www.juliedewaroquier.com/

Such Beauty

I follow a lot of different artists and photographers on Google+  that I normally would not have had the opportunity to had it not been for that site.  Some of the work I come across is simply breath-taking to me and I love the moments these people capture.  Some are gritty reality while other get lost in imagination.  There is one photographer who tends to lean towards dark Gothic looking pictures (at least I think he does) and, of course, this appeals to my dark side.  This picture is one he posted today and I had to share it every where -

www.cortis.info
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102377882249382281108/about

Just the simplicity of the woman in the dress reaching for the rose.  I feel like it's something out of a dream.  As if she's reaching for the unattainable.  I love it.

The Serpent (or What I Am Considered To Be By The Mayan Horoscopes)

You are the kind of person who is always noticed, yet others rarely understand you. Few ever get to know you really well. You are hard to pin down -- you either project an aura of mystery, or you are just simply charismatic in some way and manage to attract a number of followers. You are often found prancing around one stage or another -- or attracting attention by lurking in the shadows. Leadership comes naturally to you, in part due to your ability to "psych-out" others.

Your emotional power is remarkable. Others do not want to be in your way when you are angry or upset. You are very affected by your feelings and are occasionally overcome by them -- in a sense, you "wrestle with the serpent." For some Serpent personalities, a needed emotional release comes when under the effects of alcohol. One of the effects of this character trait is in the periodic upheavals in relationships and family matters that you tend to experience. When your powerful emotional energies are harnessed, you can be very constructive and creative, working hard and rapidly to realize your visions.

It is possible that you have a noticeable sex-appeal, or you are sexually frustrated. The key factor here has to do with personal centering. When your life is in balance, your deep reservoir of primal emotional energies are enticing to others -- who then respond to you sexually. Actually, you are a natural performer with a sense of the dramatic. You also have a tendency to keep the act going well after the curtain has come down.

You are probably regarded by others as being of high intelligence and very well-informed. You tend to be interested in subjects that involve strategy and transformation, like psychology. You may have some experience with therapy, or are something of a therapist yourself. It is because you are so deeply in touch with the process of change and transformation, possibly due to close experiences with things like birth, divorce and death, that you try to learn as much about it as you are able. Over the years, this learning becomes wisdom. 

I wonder...

My daughter has chosen the Dark Side.

First the car...

Next, THE WORLD!

The Vow

Besides the fact that Channing Tatum is hot as all hell, this trailer just made me get all teary eyed. I'm going to need a box of tissue to get through this movie and then be depressed for days after that my love life isn't even close to this. Damn romantic movies....

Lady Gaga is not toddler friendly

Lady Gaga Terrifies A Crying Baby: via HuffPost

Love

"Finally those you love are simply... those you love." ~ The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice

I refuse to believe I'm getting old!

Don't be a victim.

11-11-11

Well, have you?

This is falling in love...

...someone to play music so I can dance forever...

Musical chills...

No More Kings "Sweep the Leg"

Mazzy Star - Into Dust (John O'Callaghan Deep Dream Remix)

By chance...

Today, I will take a chance.  Today, I will make the first move and say something because I have been crushing for way too long and I have to figure the worse part of "you never know" is actually not knowing.  The passing of simple pleasantries has been going on for weeks and if I don't say something now, my chance just pass me by and I can't let fate have done all this work for me to sit and watch it disappear.  I've let my imagination go crazy with scenarios.  I've daydreamed enough.  I put on my favorite heels this morning that make me about 4 inches taller, left my hair down and put on my favorite red lipstick because it makes me feel good.  I've been psyching myself up since yesterday.   Even if nothing comes out of it, at least I know I did something about it.  Besides, those light eyes are driving me crazy!  

Single Moms Are Crazy! Does everyone secretly think this?

By Katie Roiphe

When I was pregnant with my second child, I was aware that there were ways in which I was not prepared to take care of a baby on my own, but that awareness didn’t unduly influence or affect me. What I thought to myself was, “The universe will rearrange itself for this baby.”

I often hear people refer to other single mothers I know as “crazy,” and I assume that they refer to me that way, too. I have thought about this word, especially in relation to one single mother in particular who seems to me more sublimely functional and sane than anyone else I know. I began to realize that the quality people are referring to as crazy is actually what I would call “romantic.” They mean that she is not influenced by the practical news on the ground, is listening instead to another story that is in her head. She is drawn to things that are, according to the dictionary definition of romantic, “impractical in conception or plan” and is in thrall to the “heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized.”

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This is a common thread in the single mothers I know: They go for vividness over contentment, intensity over security. One was embedded with the Army in Afghanistan when she was six months pregnant, another somehow floats with her toddler between Los Angeles, Paris, and wherever her French rail pass will take her. Others with more pedestrian professional lives simply decided to have a baby while their romantic lives remained complicated or turbulent or a work in progress. I can see why this is “crazy” in relation to conventional, settled life, but is it crazy? And, more importantly, is the term crazy one of our few acceptable ways of passing judgment on something different or unusual or uncommon in a culture that is technically not supposed to be passing those judgments?

To be clear, I am writing here about myself and the handful of other single mothers I know, specifically women who conceived children in some sort of relationship that they are no longer in and had the baby: a tiny, arguably privileged subset of single mothers. (It’s worth noting, though, that nearly four in 10 babies in this country are currently born to single mothers, and a rapidly growing percentage of those mothers are adults.)

A few months ago I came across a Pew Poll showing that 93 percent of Americans still view single motherhood as unacceptable and, in the colorful words of the poll, “bad for society.” Which somehow doesn’t surprise me. Caitlin Flanagan wrote in Time, “Few things hamper a child as much as not having a father in the home,” which is perhaps a little unsubtle for progressive New Yorkers, and yet many of them think and recycle polite, modified versions of this same idea.

Someone who was trying to persuade me not have the baby said that I should wait and have a “regular baby.” His exact words were, “You should wait and have a regular baby!” What he meant, of course, was that I should wait and have a baby in more regular circumstances. But I had already seen the feet of the baby on a sonogram, and while he was pacing through my living room making his point, I was thinking: This is a regular baby. His comment stayed with me, though. It evoked the word bastard: “something that is spurious, irregular, inferior or of questionable origin.”

Someone said, similarly, to a single friend of mine who was pregnant that she should wait and have a “real baby.” As if her baby were unreal, a figment of her imagination, as if she could wish him away.

Such small word choices, you might say. How could they possibly matter to any halfway healthy person? But it is in these choices, these casual remarks, these throwaway comments, these accidental bursts of honesty and flashes of discomfort that we create a cultural climate; it’s in the offhand that the judgments persist and reproduce themselves. It is here that one feels the resistance, the static, the pent up, irrational, residual, pervasive conservatism that we do not generally own up to. Hawthorne called it “the alchemy of quiet malice by which [we] concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles.”

A novelist I know is sitting on the bench in the park with his wife and two sons. He peers into the stroller at my 5-pound newborn, Leo, and says, “How did that happen?” He smiles radiantly: It’s a joke! But my 6-year-old, Violet, is standing next to me, and I feel her stiffen because she senses something in his tone, something not quite nice. I say, “The usual way,” but I have a feeling that if I were married, he would have said something more along the lines of “congratulations.”

It’s around this time that I begin to see that The Scarlet Letter is in fact a fresh, modern commentary. One might be under the impression that tolerant liberal New York bears no resemblance to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s windy Puritan New England town, but one would be wrong. Our judgments are more polite, more subtle, more psychologically nuanced; latter-day critics of the state are thinking, of course, of what is best for the child, what is the healthiest environment; they are not opposed to extramarital philandering per se, but there is still underlying everything the same unimaginative approach to family, the same impulse to judge, the same sexual conservatism, and herd mentality. The single mother traipsing down the subway steps in heels with her Maclaren in New York (as opposed to, say, Paris or Berlin) is not as many worlds away as you’d think from Hester Prynne.

One day one of my colleagues, noticing that I was pregnant with my second child, ducked into my office and said, “You really do whatever you want.” He meant it as some variety of compliment, and I took it as such, but I was beginning to get the sense that other people were looking at me and thinking the same thing; it seemed to some as if I were getting away with something, as if I were not paying the usual price, and if the usual price was take-out Thai food and a video with your husband on a Saturday night, then I was not, in fact, paying that price. James Baldwin once wrote, “He can face in your life only what he can face in his own.” And I imagine if you are feeling restless or thwarted in your marriage, if you have created an orderly warm home for your child at a certain slight cost to your own freedom or momentum, you might look at me or someone else like me and think that I am not making the usual sacrifices. (I may be making other sacrifices, but that is not part of this sort of calculation or judgment.)

Before I have the baby, one of my friends politely suggests that it may be “hubris” to think that I can make up for the fact that the baby’s father would not be in the house, and not even in the city most of the time. He tells me that I am too confident in my own powers. This worries me, sometimes late at night, because I wonder if it’s not true, and there are times during the baby’s first year when I wish the earth would stop spinning so that I can get off for a moment and rest. But maybe this is the good and useful kind of hubris.

The submerged premise here is that there is something greedy, selfish, narcissistic, or anti-social about having a baby on your own. But is there? It seems to me that if anything a baby born in these conditions is extra-wanted. The fact that having that baby is not necessarily the obvious or predictable or easy thing to do at this particular juncture in life makes it all the more of a deep and consuming commitment.

At lunch I mention to an editor that I am thinking of writing about single mothers and the subtle and not so subtle forms our moralism toward them takes. He says: “That’s a good idea. And I say that as a guy who looks at single women and thinks, ‘What’s wrong with her? How did she screw up?’ ”

In spite of our exquisite tolerance for and fascination with all kinds of alternative lifestyles, we have a wildly outdated but strangely pervasive idea that single motherhood is worse for children, somehow a compromise, a flawed venture, a grave psychological blow to be overcome, our enlightened modern version of shame. It malingers, this idea; it affects us still.

The power of this view is that it very easily gets inside your head, it resonates with every children’s book you have ever read about little bear families, with all the archaic visions of family that cohere in the furthest reaches of your imagination: It’s hard to free yourself.

I notice the tendency in myself is toward jokes, toward a kind of protective mockery. I find that I am very deliberately not apologizing for the baby by embracing the most ridiculous, tabloidy words for him like love child. I hear myself spinning a caricature of my semi-bohemian household when I run into someone at a party I haven’t seen in a while: “Yeah, two babies, two different dads. I somehow ended up with the family structure Pat Moynihan was complaining about.”

In fact, by now I have spent so long outside of conventional family life that sometimes when I spend an afternoon with married friends and their children, their way of life seems exotic. The best way I can describe this is the feeling of being in a foreign country where you notice the bread is good and the coffee excellent but you are not exactly thinking of giving it all up and living there.

The baby refers to his sister’s father, Harry, as “My Harry” as in, “My Harry is coming!” It seems to me the exuberant, unorthodox use of preposition kind of gets at the conjuring, the act of creation, the interesting magic trick at the center of the whole venture: His family will be what he makes it. He is 2, but he chooses his own people. He picks fatherish figures, including his own father. I notice people often find little ways of telling me that it’s not the same thing. And of course it’s not, but it seems a bit narrow minded or old fashioned or overly literal to think that love has to come from two parents, like water from hot and cold faucets.

But is it more stable or secure to grow up in a house with two parents? There is arguably an absence of what people like to call borders in my house. For instance the baby seems to have caught my insomnia. Before going to bed he howls like a wolf, then says, “I am a wolf,” then says: “Where is my bottle? Where is my mango? Where is my ketchup?” then very deliberately climbs out of his bed and walks through the halls saying, “I am lost, Mama, I am lost.” It occurs to me that in this unfiltered, unmediated environment I am passing everything along to him. In any event, that’s exactly how I feel at 2 in the morning—somewhere in the middle of “I am lost” and “Where is my mango? Where is my ketchup?”

I am prepared to believe that in a household with two adults, there is often a little more balance, a healthy dilution of affection, a diffused focus that makes everyone feel comfortable. One morning I overhear Violet saying to the baby: “You can’t marry anyone. You are going to live with me.” When I first separated from her father five years ago, she said, “Mommy, it’s like you and I are married.” And this would pretty accurately reflect the atmospherics of our house: a little too much love, you might tactfully say.

Quentin Bell once wrote about growing up with his single-ish mother, the painter Vanessa Bell: “We had to balance the comforts of being so well loved against the pain of being so fearfully adored.” And that seems like a fair assessment of what goes on in my house. (The grown son of one of the single mothers I know refers to this same thing as “the unparalleled intimacy.”) But if I am being honest I like the fearful adoration, the too-muchness of it, the intensity, the fierceness. I don’t actually believe “healthy” is better.

I also can’t help noticing that the people talking about a “healthy” environment are often the same people talking about “working” on their relationships. They are often the denizens of couples therapy and date nights in restaurants with hand-cured pancetta and organic local fennel. I have no doubt that they do create a healthy, balanced environment, but I like to think there are some rogue advantages to the unbalanced and unhealthy environment: to the other way of doing things.

Here someone is bound to say, “Studies have shown …” But as far as I am concerned the studies can continue to show whatever they feel like showing. There are things that can’t be measured and quantified in studies, and I imagine the multitudinous varieties of family peace are among them. Not to mention what these stern studies fail to measure: which is what happens when there is anger or conflict in the home, or unhappy or airless marriages, relationships wilting or faltering, subterranean tensions, what happens when everyone is bored.

One day at dinner, Violet is playing a game where she is listing impossible things. Like it’s impossible to talk when you are dead, when she suddenly comes out with, “It’s impossible to be normal.” The family member in attendance shoots me a look that eloquently points out that Violet might not think it was so impossible to be normal if instead of piles of books on the floor I had a little financial security, if I had a man around the house. If I stopped running around like I do, in other words.

It’s near dawn when I finish the Scarlet Letter and I had forgotten the ending. Hawthorne is careful to tell us that Pearl, wild, radiant, spritelike Pearl, grows up and leaves for Europe, where she flourishes; the suggestion is that she is perhaps a bit happier than the children of the drab Puritan town she has left behind.

It’s getting dark and I am stepping into a taxi, the parlor window is lit, the children at home in their pajamas, smelling of Johnson & Johnson, domestic peace descending, and I go off in the taxi to meet a man at a hotel bar. This will seem to many people like the wrong structure; they will tell me how unhealthy it is, how unsustainable, how unstable, and they may be right, but there I am speeding nonetheless over the bridge. There are other possible ways I could conduct my life, other forms and structures. But I remember hearing somewhere: “You have one life, if that.” And one sometimes feels like mentioning that to some of the more blinkered, respectable couples, to those purveyors of wholesome and healthy environments, to those who truly believe the child of a single mother is not whole or happy in his room playing with his dinosaurs: You have one life, if that.