--quotes--

Sheri: I can't even be here. My friend died yesterday.

Me: Oh no! I'm so sorry to hear that. Were you really close?

Sheri: Very close. She was a rich friend, and I keep my rich friends very close.

God can bring me whatever kind of woman he wants. Unless it's a Hungarian girl.

-Bogdan

Watching a boy pull a girl down the street by her hair:

Me: Man, this is the wild west.

Emanuel: Oh this is nothing, sometimes they bring out their swords.

Ashlyn: Wow, you and me are chopped liver!

Me: He only has eyes for Liz.

Liz: I think someone else has his teeth though.

When we were kids, we used to call Coca Cola "water with darkness in it".

-Carla

He's going to come back and throw a mazel tov cocktail through the window.

-Celisse

I think maybe he used to be cute. Maybe they used to have a real arousing marriage, but I don't know."

-Judy talking about really old neighbors

Francisco: Did you miss me yesterday?

Me: Por su puesto!

Francisco: Don't be sarcastic. I know you only like me way way way way way way in the back of your heart.

32 years later and I'm still trying to fall out of love with someone I can't be in love with.
Still wrestling with God.
Still messy and addicted.
Still searching for new things to learn and taste and know.
Still dancing by myself.
Still sleepy.

a lifetime stretched out into Manchester albums--
a girl at the gym with all the other people who can't sleep tonight, running,
a man she still loves after 5 years of sleeping in separate towns.

Sobriety turned out to be less glamorous than we thought, and depression came back in 2017. It ate me alive and it still eats me alive. Mostly it hurts at night. It hurts in my arm, and in my neck and in my ankles, and in my hair, and then my chest is just a cave full of bats. It's a bookcase full of horror novels.  It's a small, small world inside of a---
And then I'm fine in the morning and I show up to work mostly on time.

This week I'm staying in the woods on the mountain and it's really pretty.
I'm grateful for the cold nights and heavy quilts,
for friends and family. For re-reading White Noise by Don DeLillo. For an entire bag of cookies that this lady left for me in the house-in-the-woods. 
Thanking God for m e d i c i n e. Sweet beautiful pharmaceuticals.

Quotes

"I even told this principal that I was in a pickle, and he still hasn't gotten back to me."
-Andrea J.

Watching 13 Reasons Why
Celisse: You can't watch this show buddy, because it's for adults. It's a little spooky.
Wesley: Why? Is it about vampires sucking blood from a man?

"I like my coffee like I like my men. Tall, dark, muscley and rich."
-Shae, at Easter breakfast

"If I got married again, I would walk down the aisle to the Hamilton Soundtrack."
-Celisse

"I did three sports in high school: baseball, basketball and hockey. Wait. I don't know why I just said that, I hate hockey. It was swimming."
-Shawn

I miss what men smell like up close.

“oh god it’s wonderful 
to get out of bed 
and drink too much coffee 
and smoke too many cigarettes 
and love you so much” 
― Frank O'Hara

I wonder if David laid his head on Bathsheba's chest
and thought about the fields
and his sheep
and how much less complicated things were for him back then.

I packed a minimalist-style suitcase, and I'm staying this week (9 days) in North Carolina with Allison and Will and Annie. It's been so beautiful and sunny here while it is snowing at home, and I'm feeling so happy and healthy and lucky. Their house is literally in a forest and the air smells like mountain air when you open the front door.

Last January, I swore I would not spend another January living in Utah, and this is the best compromise I could make. And actually, that's fine because life is just busy.

What I'm trying to soak in, this week, is a lesson in moderation. Allison and Will don't drink brewed coffee, while I normally have 4 - 6 cups per day, and taking a break has been really good for me. I think? I sort of replaced the coffee with about 4 cups of black tea per day.   Because that's what you do when you're an obsessive, neurotic person, in recovery.

Allison has been taking me to her boot camp work outs, and so I'm also perpetually sore. Everything about this just feels like a great way to spend the beginning of the year; working hard, in community, and trying to fast from parts of my regular routine.

Now if there is just a way I can keep doing something like this, every January, I think I can manage to keep living in Utah.

I will look back at this winter and remember it as driving around slowly, in the snowy dark, listening to Malcolm Gladwell read me his books.

And it's beautiful. All of it. I stood in Sprouts the other day with an armful of veggies, and thought, "I can't believe that I'm lucky enough to get up and do this all over again tomorrow." And that is something I've been waiting 20 years to feel again. Dependent on nothing but God's mercy.

"These violent delights have violent ends

And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume: the sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
And in the taste confounds the appetite:
Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow."

Shakespeare

Samson loved Delilah, and let her crush him.
I feel so much stronger than him today.

Thankful for days where the mountains are crystal clear. Thankful for the smell of Lush body wash and early gym workouts. Thankful, so thankful for coffee. Thankful for a couple weeks of sleeping in my own bed. Grateful to watch Ray Donovan, sober. Thankful for my job and rare days with no headaches.

Sometimes I feel like my sobriety is viewed like a cancer by my friends who are normal, and can drink normally. Like they don't know how to act around me, and that I'm more serious than I used to be. 

What I want in this next year of my life is to be as fun, or more fun, than I was when I had alcohol to help my personality. It's more work now, but I feel like I can little-by-little get excited to be alive.

The dreams are scary enough, and my new life is happy enough to keep me whole. 

  

Today's silver lining:

The Dog Didn't Die at the End.

give me my ordinary name

I try to write when I feel sunny.

Some one called me sunny the other day, and I wanted to take that back to the one who called me a dark and stormy person and say--but sometimes I think she was right. I am sunny and I am stormy and I am gonna keep getting through that.

Hiked 10 miles in Big Cottonwood this weekend over Saturday and Sunday and I wanted to bottle up the clean air and take it back to Salt Lake and use it as a balloon to pull me up and over my troubles on Monday morning, but it can't do that. But I do keep fighting. Fighting the unrequited love, fighting the wage gap, fighting the stupid decision to end our daylight at 5 PM. Wrestling with God and for God.

Dog Lake via Butler Fork this weekend with Kenz, and we met up with God at the water.

We also did Bonneville Shoreline for a few miles on the Mt. Olympus leg the next day.
I can't believe the female support system that God has given me.

in my sophomore year at the U, I took this film class about cinema in the developing world. Almost none of the films we watched were in English. I was so tired back then. I worked 40 hours a week, played regularly in a band with Billy and Dan, and took 15 credit hours. I would fall asleep on the train even when I felt unsafe. I kept cans of Slimfast and Clam Chowder in my backpack like a hobo.

Sometimes the films come back to me like a dream, or a memory that belongs to someone else, that I've absorbed. A Mexican child drinking warm Coca Cola. An Iranian man crying about his cow. A Vietnamese guy in an abandoned house in the jungle, with a Volkswagen Beetle parked in the driveway. 

I can't believe how many lives I've lived since then.  The mountains make me feel new. Sobriety makes me feel new. Speckled green eggs and homemade espresso make me feel like a rich lady, and I'm lucky. I'm grateful for all of it.

Everything feels new and more beautiful, and more manageable than a year ago.

where but for the grace of God go I

I'm one week away from 5 months sober.

Everything about my life feels more peaceful than it did. I was able to quit my anxiety medication, and I've gotten my finances on track.

Mostly these days are about working 45 hours a week, doing a bunch of Micro Economics homework, and taking care of people's pets. Drinking lots of sparkling water. Trying to fall out of love. Singing and laughing.

Lots of hope for the future. For a new and important relationship with God. For loving more and more people. For big tent revivals or for the small amounts of blood my heart pumps continually to keep me alive. I see tiny miracles that I didn't see before. I see entanglement; sometimes exhausting and frustrating, but so mysterious and delightful too. What am I that You are mindful of me?

Purity

"Love turned out to be soul-crippling, stomach-turning, weirdly claustrophobic: a sense of endlessness bottled up inside him, endless weight, endless potential, with only the small outlet of a shivering pale girl in a bad rain jacket to escape through. Touching her was the farthest thing from his mind. The impulse was to throw himself at her feet."

Purity, Jonathan Franzen

absolute beginners

When I was a teenager, I always wanted to get amnesia somehow.
I thought it would be great to wipe the slate clean and start over. A good way to escape.

Now I'm getting closer to 30, and I feel like I have amnesia all the time. I realized, hanging out with Kelsea the other night, that I've lost most of the memories of high school. This morning I had a brief flashback to one of my classes at the U that was in a building where I never had any other classes, and the teacher was this tiny woman with a child's haircut and a doctorate, who taught me about Frankenstein and I wrote her a ten page paper on Silence of the Lambs.  And then I was sad to learn that I've also lost a lot of the memories of college.

I wonder how much of this was alcohol's gift to me, and how much is just getting older. Dear teenage me; is this what you wanted? It has taken away the sting of old lovers, but also the warmth of time with friends.

I do have so much hope for new memories. Driving to work today, I thought about what Spain or Ireland would be like for sober me. For the hope of new love and new friends and new memories with old friends.

My insomnia used to give me so much anxiety but now I try to look at it like God just wanted to give me more hours in my day than normal people get.

Noah-isms

Mom: Oh so Rachel's invited now?
Noah: Well, Rachel's not very annoying.

-------------------------------

"It's the only show that's made me emotionally smile."
-about 11.22.63

-------------------------------

"You can kill a man's soul but can't take his carbs away... even an atheist eats carbs."

I let myself feel things now because I don't have a choice.

I feel happy and recharged.
I feel sad, and I can't mask it with something. I let myself have a milkshake and I tell all my problems to the dog. The dog says, let's go for a walk.

I go for a walk. Feel angry that I feel love. I feel angry that I might be in love with a fool, and also feel angry that my sinuses hurt and my throat is swollen and I have to take care of myself.

And I'm grateful. For all the minutes of it. The minute I want to be with Jesus more than here. The minute the sun rises and the fields glow. The minute my coffee reaches drinking temperature.

I get tired of being the bad guy. When I get tired, I go to bed, and then tomorrow we lace up our boots.          

I told You I'd never be in Your army again, but the fight--and Your mercy--sucked me back in.

Parley's

The spiritually sick attract the spiritually sick, Mackenzie says. And while my soul knows parts of your soul, and my soul loves parts of your soul, my soul is suspicious of your soul. My soul wants to go in the washing machine. And then it wants to stand outside in the Pines and clean air.

"If you call failures experiments, you can put them in your résumé and claim them as achievements."

Mason Cooley

New life. New LIFE. Everyday new life in You, my hope and my savior.   The only thing important I did today was take my dogs on a walk, on my lunch break. But colors seem brighter, and friends lovelier, and the coffee smoother and my purpose stronger. 

Come Be My Light

"Do not think that my spiritual life is strewn with roses--that is the flower which I hardly ever find on my way... But I am happy--yes happier than ever. And I would not wish at any price to give up my sufferings. But do not, however, think that I am only suffering. Ah no--I am laughing more than I am suffering--so that some have concluded that I am Jesus' spoiled bride, who lives with Jesus in Nazareth--far away from Calvary. ...Pray, pray much for me--I really need His love."

Mother Teresa

Bergamot, Mediterranean Orange, Sangria Accord, Spanish Rose, Leather Accord, Vetiver, Turkish Rose Petals, Guiacwood, Amber

I put on the perfume that will remind him of something he used to love. So he can't get out of this. I feel exotic, I feel like if anything, I am a Spanish wine on a summery night on a back porch far away from cars, and I feel like if anything, I am the stars and the hot humid night.

When he is laying next to me, he is not thinking about that but the perfume has reminded him of when he was a little boy.  He isn't thinking about the streets in Oviedo after a warm summer rain. He's never been there. He's thinking about an aunt an uncle of his used to be married to. Maybe she smelled like me and that's what conjured her up. He was watching her cut carrots and red cabbage. She sliced the cabbage in half and showed the inside to him, as she was always marveling at the small things, the intricacies of cabbage or how tadpoles could into frogs and how she knew that the TV was floating in millions of particles over her head--which we have all learned from Willy Wonka--but she couldn't explain to him when he asked, how the rest of it worked. She had freckles. She couldn't explain to him why her skin had freckles and his didn't. But they weren't actually related by blood.

What he says out loud is something about Donald Trump.

I love to wake up before my alarm. 
Or with no alarm set at all. To see the spring sunlight coming through my window, and the fan making my cranes dance on the strings that suspend them from the ceiling in my room. I used to do this on the weekends (can't now because I live at the hotel, and have a different tradition there on Saturdays and Sundays) and it feels like a small happy moment that I can start to build a house on.

I build this house of sweet moments with God, and one day I can live in that house and trust in His goodness fully again. We are rebuilding our relationship with love letters and phone calls, but I want to marry Him fully and spend my nights in that house of joy, sleeping with my hand holding His. 

at home with Judy

"You've had pomegranate seeds before? How come I'm the last to know?"
-Judy


"This is just the worst idea I ever had."
-frosting warmish cake

"Well, you just need to move to Texas and we'll tell ol' God that He needs to get on it."
-on dating

I'm just so happy. Fat, and I haven't seen a vegetable in three days, but really happy. Happy to sleep through texts from someone I need to get over. Happy to have pastries and coffee each day until two.  I'm even watching Hallmark movies, and acting like I can't figure out the ending. Happy to shovel the dusty snow off the longest driveways. To eat Long John Silvers and see my curves in the mirrors of a West Des Moines Super Target and just shrug. Happy to go through black and white pictures of my grandparents' wedding on a snowy Valentine's Day.

If you forgot what God's grace and love was like, you might need to spend some time in Iowa.

I live in a hotel by myself on the edge of a field and I spend my Saturdays drinking cinnamon coffee and watching the snow fall.

I think, how did I get so lucky to be here?

I breathed through a panic attack in a room full of Christian women on Wednesday night. I left that house sobbing so hard I couldn't see the road to drive. I cried to God.  And what I feel like he's been telling me since then is that my life doesn't have to look like the other women's lives at my church. That I have my own special relationship with him, and my own gifts from him, and if it looks different than theirs does, it's okay.

Being childless is a gift, just as children are a gift.
Being single is a gift, just as much as marriage.

This hotel is my gift. My family is such a gift. Stretching out and rolling over and not having to take care of children on Saturday is a good gift.

the end of January

It changes my whole attitude to have flowers on my desk.
To have my nails painted.
To have my own house each weekend.
Getting accounting problems correct.
Running miles.

God is so good and I've been reading little love notes He leaves around.

am i doing it right

I've been thinking of Custer, this week. George Armstrong Custer, and his luck. How he led and was lucky for how long he did not die.

I've been thinking about the extras, in the movie of his life. I've been thinking of those extras, those soldiers who die suddenly in the movie due to an arrow. Due to a gunshot. Due to falling from such great heights. We see stunt men, but in real life, they were real men that died suddenly. Who were one moment here, and one moment gone, though their carcass remained. I might be an extra in someone's movie. A soldier, certainly.

And how do we sleep, knowing this. That we will be here one moment, and another moment we will be meeting our Creator.

The mix of fear and love for my savior and my God is terrifying. But that's the way that I like to keep Love.

Underneath the morning sheets     My skin is tangled in between      Sun is peaking through the blanket holes      Don't you wish you were there?

patrick watson

Every one is posting those Instagram pictures of their year, but none of my Instagrams can say what actually happened in 2015.

Feb '15:
Started my new job at W--
Went to Vegas with Caitlan.
Broke up with N---.

Mar '15:
Cried and Drank.

April '15:
Cried and Drank.

May '15:
I wake up to a text from Celisse that one of our friends died. My first thought was, I wish I could take her place and go be with Jesus. I realize I need help and call the doctor.

After 26 years of fighting my anxiety and pessimism, I finally give in and the doctor prescribes something good.

I start hiking with Katie. I start having ideas again. I start to like God, again.
I get up in the morning, simply because it is a happy time, being alive. Where has this been all my life? Why did I wait? What would college have been like with such a sunny outlook? What would it have been like to not spend my bus rides crying?

June '15:
Seriously, where was this drug? I'm singing again. Laughing again. I have energy to go to parties and I LOVE EVERYONE.

July '15:
Just happy, all the time. Hiking. Running. Tubing down rivers.

August '15:
Lost 20lbs of break up weight. Started dating.

September '15:
Realized I'm in love with someone new that I am not dating.

October '15:
Trip with siblings to Portland and Seattle. Beautiful. Four days of laughing, and rain, and beaches, and trees and waterfalls, and a tiny house, and a strange hotel.

November '15:
Fall out of love with guy I'm not dating. Go on date with Christian dentist instead. Much safer.

December '15:
Look around at all the snow and wonder what's next.

Now: 
No more dates, no more dreams. Just plans and goals.

I love you.
I love you too, but you know I'm crazy.
Crazy for being here?
No, I mean really crazy.
Yes. You are really crazy.
No I mean I take crazy pills for it.
I snort crazy pills, he whispered.
I held his face in my hands. I'm going to build a tiny house and live in the woods.
I'll come live with you.
No, you can't. You're not allowed.
I will come and live with you whether you want me to or not.
No. You're too tall.
I love you. I'll always love you. No matter where we go. 
Near or far.
Mostly near. No. I'm serious. I'll always love you even if it's platonic. I'll always love you even if we're like Jerry and Elaine.
That is really sweet.
I know.

Holding every new, perfect baby, I think, "You have your whole life ahead of you. It will unfurl and you will make good choices and bad choices." And it makes me want to hold that baby close to my chest and never let it grow up.

I feel that what I have struggled against my whole life, is to not picture God as a mean-guy holding a legal pad, making a tally mark for each sin of mine.  As a grader.  As an auditor.  Looking for the things I am great at hiding from everyone but him.

My heart knows he loves me,
my head's so hard to convince some days.

I hate that I tell myself lies, when there is such a different God that gave me life.

Help me to know you, God.

"See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him."
1 John 3:1

“Maybe the first time you saw her you were ten. She was standing in the sun scratching her legs. Or tracing letters in the dirt with a stick. Her hair was being pulled. Or she was pulling someone's hair. And a part of you was drawn to her, and a part of you resisted--wanting to ride off on your bicycle, kick a stone, remain uncomplicated. In the same breath you felt the strength of a man, and a self-pity that made you feel small and hurt. Part of you thought: Please don't look at me. If you don't, I can still turn away. And part of you thought: Look at me.” 
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

Prayer XVII

On a hard futon bed in the home of a Chinese lady, I give myself to you God. I listen to the empty space in the room. I listen to my heartbeat and my ocean of blood inside my sack of skin. I listen to the ocean as it tells me there is no greater joy than you. That the pain of being here and the happiness of being here is nothing compared to how big you are. Help me know it and give in, to You.


"I said what do you do with the pieces of a broken heart? And how can a man like me remain in the light? And if life is really as short as they say, then why is the night so long?"
Chinese Translation, M Ward

rocky mountain heart

There's this smell and feeling of camping from when I was a kid that I try to recreate sometimes.
It happens especially in October.

The air comes through the window, a little cold but not menacing, and you can close your eyes and think you're in a tent, and think the world is yours, and think that you're alone but safe, and hear a fire crackling somewhere and that your parents love you and that you have a raincoat that you can put on that is four different colors and sneakers with Velcro and that when you get out there, there are pine cones and dirt and that this is real happiness with your family, and Poptarts, and it took so long to drive here and you can dry your sneakers on the fire if they get wet and the air smells only like conifers.

Right now I've got the window open and I can feel the rain coming in and--

I'm behind on all my homework from being lazy.
I'm behind on all my friendships from being sick.

But I feel safe and loved and safe for a minute.

and my love, my darling
I reach for you.

Dialogues with Izzy

Me: Poor guy, I mean God bless his soul, but--
Izzy: No, I'm done thinking God bless his soul.


----


I think of all of my friends as if I was sitting next to them in a class.
I wouldn't talk to any of them.
Not even you.


---

Emma: No, it's from Hamlet, and he doesn't know it. Poor...poor...poor somebody.
Me: "Alas poor Yorick, I knew him well."
Izzy:.........Sure.

Had a dream about N--- last night: we were at a swimming pool or a high school football stadium, but we were together holding hands was all that mattered. Woke up to my alarm, and in my sleepy fog, I was surprised he hadn't texted me. Once the fog wore off, I remembered he was never going to send me midnight texts again.

I took a walk around the block. Drank in Utah October, the air cleaned up from the rain. Thought about all the things I will never get to do with him that I always wanted. Thought about camping with him and talking his ear off. Thought about the planetarium and the aquarium. Thought about Southern Utah and the farm, and thought about my little bridge over the canal that I wanted to picnic with him and throw crumbs to the ducks. Thought about the songs I would never sing along to with him, and thought about how weird it is now for us to build our lives separately.

And then I thought about that imaginary camping trip, and how I would say
"I just can't believe all the stars."
He'd say something scientific.
I'd say
"What a gift from God." I'd sigh deep. He'd roll his eyes in the dark, stoke the fire.
He would say something about his version of science.
I'd question his proof, and then I'd question his proof for the proof.
He would try to change the subject.
I'd already have started crying.
His face would become a wall.
I'd cry my mascara into his white t-shirt, like usual, whispering, Please God, I don't know why You don't save him.
He'd say we're going to be just fine and he would get up to find a log to throw on the fire. And it would go like this for a lot of years.

Which is why--

Which is why now and which is why the planetarium and the crumbs and the ducks will have to wait.

God be merciful to me

Redeem me Father.
Save me from the noise.
Keep me in the garden.
Close my eyes.

I want to go everywhere, and I want to take you with me.

i don't really mind being a star crossed lover.
during the day.

"I've gone and quit my worshippin' of the false gods and golden sins, 'cause we made love in the Tower of Babel and it fell down." 
Jenny Lewis

a life that's good

I feel like I am constantly drinking from this full cup, that keeps getting better. I never knew life like this before. I love my job. I love my friends. I love my God and hold nothing against him anymore. I stopped worrying about the things I couldn't control and here I am, excited to get out of bed each day and do another one. Not ticking days off the calendar, hoping God takes me home. Instead I hope that God uses me, and I look forward to all the seconds I get to be on the court for the game.

I'm overwhelmed by joy. It feels like falling in love each day.

Quotes

"Will you have a drink sir?"
"Certainly, I will have 10 drinks."
 Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms


"This olive oil better be from olives imported from Italy and pressed locally."
-Celisse, at a hipster restaurant

Mom: There's more champagne if anyone wants some!
Judy: But you might need to be sober for Jeopardy.

"My room smells like musty adults."
-Celisse, apologetically

"All of my time off gets used up in out-of-state weddings. I mean, I know it's for a good cause, but..."
-James K.


"Noah used to sit under the kitchen table and eat sugar out of the sugar bowl and--"
"Fish Oil."
"No.  Tums.  Because you thought they were candy."
"Oh I still eat Tums to this day for that reason."
- Emma and Noah

"I drive a stupid Camry that smells like the Pentagon."
-Christine

"I think he, even, is surprised that he has five kids."
-Ashleigh

Me: That girl is wearing the same shirt as me.
Celisse: What, that homeless guy?

Little 5 year old girl at Walmart: Can I lay on the bag of salad we're getting? Salad feels so good.

"But the old man always thought of (the sea) as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them."

-Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

Quotes

"I'm a little bit paranoid about pot lucks, at best."
-Karen

"I was so alone that everyday was like eating my own heart."
 -Junot Diaz

I visibly cooked some one else a dinner last night.

Today I went to the dentist and the hygienist was awful. He was so nice and over educatory. I immediately thought up ways to avoid getting him in six months for the second cleaning. What I want is someone who won't try to talk to me at all. Give me that girl from three years ago who doesn't understand how they make decaf coffee beans, because I don't either and I want HER cleaning my teeth. 

By noon I was sitting up tall in my chair at work and really taking care of business. It's easy to feel overly confident when you pull your hair into a pony tail and all the guys in licensure pause to listen to what you say from your side of the office.

"I miss you," is what I whisper. I miss your freckles that I only noticed on Thursdays. I miss telling you what I heard on NPR on my way to work. I miss you when you haven't moved in chess for a few hours. When an Arby's commercial comes on. 

I start to write you a letter, twenty times a day, that says I was wrong and we're kidding ourselves to say we can meet someone else good enough. Like a politician, I pretend I like other people's babies. I eat healthier. I decline comments on how I spend my free time. Like a politician I stop writing the letter for the good of us both. For what we signed up for. For the long run.

I sigh, even though I sit up so straight, and the sigh becomes all the hours of my day. And when I finally drive home, I want to drive home to your house. To your mood swings and your diatribes and your bullet points. To your balcony, to your steak dinners, to setting our silverware out, to feeding the cat. 

I'd do the last night over if I could. 

Wouldn't argue.

I'd hold hands and smile and think it was the beginning again. I'd choreograph every moment so that the words would  never  come  out.