The End

Well, it was a good run. But Blogger is clunky, won't post photos correctly, won't let my mom post comments, and today it pushed me too far when it wouldn't let me TYPE A NEW POST.

It's a little sad. I've been here for eight and a half years, with Darren popping in occasionally too. But I've been thinking of shutting down for a while. Now I have an excuse to get mad at Blogger, break up, and announce that we are never, ever getting back together. Like, ever.

I'll find another source for my postings, I'm sure. The drive to write daily updates is like water: block it off one way, and it'll seep through somewhere else. But I'm closing down Keeping Up.

Thanks to all of you who made this blog a place of friendship and fun for so long. You got me through the early toddler and little kid years, and for that my family thanks you.

-- SJ

I'm Not That Kind of Girl

I was talking with a young teen recently about her deep, passionate love for all five of the members of the boy band One Direction. She was making up a story, she said, based on one of the boys. Apparently he is in love with another famous singer, but he dies, and she has to carry on. She forces herself to perform despite her pain, and one night at a concert, she sees his ghost.

Teen girls throughout the ages swoon.

It got me thinking. I never went in for celebrity crushes, but I certainly had a sizable roster of imaginary boyfriends, mostly from the stories I wrote. They were all good-looking, considerate, and witty. Oh, and alive.

Love stories that involve death simply don't thrill me. I don't listen to sad songs, I don't read sad stories. When a friend told me that she thought it was tragic and romantic to fling herself off a cliff into the ocean for the sake of lost love, I laughed.When I read about a girl caught in a love triangle between an undead vampire and a virile werewolf, I thought, "Honey, go for the warm body!" When it comes to tragic love, I'm all Elinor Dashwood, not Marianne.

I don't mean to say I didn't have laughable ideas about romance. I was into the idea of understated romantic tension. Lifelong love and passion? Absolutely! But I preferred my heroes to declare themselves with a grin and an offhand comment rather than an impassioned monologue in a rainstorm. I took the idea to the point that, at about age nineteen, I thought it would be the essence of understated passion for me to exchange vows with a man who would then kiss my hand. Four years later, when my father-in-law pronounced us man and wife, Darren had already informed me that he was not settling for my fingers.

All this to say... I'm not really sure what. Just that romances that involve death or ghosts don't make me puddle up into beautiful, satisfied tears. If he's going to kiss her hand, she had darn well better be able to feel it.

-- SJ