Julie > Recent Status Updates

“I’d loved thinking of myself as having the capacity for mature love, which I’d experienced as self-erasure and processed as achievement.”

“I’d thought the marriage would improve, somehow, if I just improved myself. If I could sufficiently better myself, the fumes of my betterment would form a medicinal cloud that would surround and improve my husband.”

“So at his worst, my husband was an arrogant, insecure, workaholic, narcissistic bully with middlebrow taste, who maintained power over me by making major decisions without my input or consent. It could still be worse, I thought.”

“He sounded as if he’d do anything to save our marriage - anything but curtailing his arrogance or going to a single session of individual or marital therapy or apologizing for anything ever.”

“I was in charge of everything and in control of nothing.”

“When I said that I enjoyed being able to travel for work again, John said he couldn’t believe I’d even have that thought. He said he wished he didn’t have to travel so much. He said he always missed us when he was gone.

I got maybe one trip a semester, while he went to Calgary twice a month. I wondered if he truly missed us or if just hated being alone.”

“At that moment I believed my husband didn’t value w, my work, or my life. At that moment, I wanted out of the marriage. At that moment, if we hadn’t had a kid, I’d have left.

The feeling wasn’t resolved; it just got set aside.”

“Sometimes I thought that if I weren’t writing and publishing and traveling so much, I wouldn’t be so frazzled, but then I remembered that those were the things that gave me energy. What sapped my energy was running the house and being a wife.”

“John didn’t just need to win the fight; he needed me to agree that it was my responsibility never to say anything that might make him feel as if he’d ever done anything wrong. Feeling that he’d done something wrong really threatened his sense of entitlement.”

“He didn’t realize that I didn’t have time to shit during the day. He still shitted like a bachelor, whenever and for however long he liked.”

“The cumulative amount of eye contact we made over two days might have been only ten seconds, but it felt like an entire alternate life.”

Nightfall by Asimov. Interesting premise but kinda thin. Didn’t care about any of the characters. More psychological than sci-fi. 2.5 stars

“It wasn’t happiness; it was the temporary cessation of pain. But I wouldn’t know that for another seven years.”

“I wanted neither a divorce nor a disdainful partner, so there I was, hoping for a third option.”

“I was a layer cake of abandonment and hurt and fury, iced with a smile.”
“I thought, If I had the energy I’d leave him, and then I folded up that little thought, wrapped it in gauze, and swallowed it.”

“By noon I’d showered, dressed, tidied the house of John’s shoes and clothes, put away laundry, swept to the floor, watered the garden, moved boxes to the garage, cooked breakfast, eaten, done the dishes, taken out the recycling, handled correspondence, and made the bed John had gotten up and taken a shit.”

“I decided to examine my rage, determine what I needed, and rely on John for no part of it. I imagined never needing to ask him for anything ever again.”

“And yet no married woman I knew was any better off, so I determined to carry on.”

“The reality I wanted didn’t include this event, so I stepped around it and continued on.”

“Agreeing to be someone’s wife should be done only if you can’t help yourself, I thought, but of course no one can help herself.”

“Tonight I learned why my mother always squealed and shrink away when my father tried to touch her: She was a fortress. And inside that fortress was rage, and in the center of that rage was the pain of the insult of being treated like a stupid maid.”

“When I was young, all that fathers ever had to do was sit in offices, eat at restaurants for lunch, do whatever they wanted wherever they went, and then come home and appear hard-working and loyal. Loyal, just for coming home to eat food and enjoy a clean and well-run house that a woman maintained just so a father could do whatever he wanted inside and outside of it.”

This woman is insufferable!

Microcosmic God by Sturgeon. Super smart loner lives on his own island and breeds a new, tiny species of extremely intelligent creature. He employs them to solve complex scientific challenges. His evil banker back on the mainland wants to take over one of his inventions to make money. 4 stars.

The Roads Must Roll by Heinlein. Long. Mildly interesting. The roads are giant, high speed conveyor belts. A group of road engineers wants to take control of the roads from the government.

Helen O’Loy by del Rey: Two men build a woman to do the housework. They build in emotions. She becomes romantically obsessed with one of the men. They marry. Happy ending. Blech! 2 stars.

Twilight by Campbell. A time-traveling guy from the future tells the story of traveling 7 million years ahead where humans are declining due to lack of curiosity. 2.5 stars

A Martian Ofyssey by Weinbaum: an okay story; a Martian creature helps a human astronaut get back to his craft.

First person narration. Book club pick.