Someone very kindly left a comment with some helpful information as to why my dear Ruby is so gassy lately. It could be the food I’m feeding her contains a fair amount of corn which dogs cannot digest. Does that seem just bizarre to anyone else???? WHY put something indigestible in their food????? It’s unfathomable to me. I know the answer, of course: cash. Corn is undoubtedly a cheap alternative to meat or grains or other digestible things. It seems so counter-intuitive to me . . . And yet, they are allowed to do it.

I sometimes marvel that as a country, we were entirely complacent about Bush upending democracy; Gore won that election. But I’m realizing there are a million little lies, half-truths, untruths in our lives. We are bombarded. Corn in dog food is the least of it.

(For anyone interested in a possible solution to dog gas, the answer is real yogurt, with the live active cultures. Despite the fact that I actually knew this, and keep yogurt for Ruby, I haven’t given her any lately . . . duh. I won’t soon forget again.)

It’s been a good weekend, all in all. I’ve been spending a lot of time just hanging out with friends, mostly Jen. It’s interesting to make new friends in your late 30s. My primary group of women friends are from college; we are going on 20 years together. I have other friends from junior high, a friend from high school. We have such a big, long history. They are all married, all have children. Their lives are what I consider relatively drama-free. Arguments with husbands are just part of the landscape. It doesn’t merit a call to friends, which isn’t to say that they don’t complain about the Mr. every now and again. That, too, is part of the landscape, and I feel as though when a girlfriend mentions that, she’s mostly looking to just talk about it, not get me to solve it.

So, as Jen sat with us, three of her women friends representing different stages of life (married with child; unmarried, but experienced in the fine art of long-term relationships; single and relatively inexperienced), and related her frustration with her fiancee, I was bemused by our reactions: the married friend can offer reassurance that this is how it goes, this is totally normal; I have the sense to be quiet; and the voice of inexperience comes to the defense of her friend and advocates that Jen turn the tables on him. There are so many things I don’t know, but I do know that tit-for-tat generally isn’t a productive way to solve relationship issues.

That’s commitment,  isn’t it? wanting to turn the tables, to inflict a little of the pain you’re feeling, a little of the injustice–but not. Setting aside your individual instincts (to some extent) to do what’s best and hopefully healthiest for the relationship? Because isn’t it always easier to never have to compromise? Never do anything that you don’t absolutely want to do?

I think we all probably need that time of our lives to just do our own thing. We need to figure out for ourselves what our own thing even is. I shouldn’t probably try to generalize this. I needed to be alone for a while with me. I needed to do my thing, be flighty, move cross country multiple times, impulsively adopt a dog (still love you Ben), try on careers the way some women try on shoes, find another dog (or stink-a-ma-potamus masquerading as a German Shepherd), buy a house, move away from the house, drop out of graduate school, fall in love without respect to gender, open my heart up and feel what it’s like for someone to bleed it dry . . . and survive. Then thrive. I remember that, how hard it is in the thick of it to imagine a time when the hurt will not hurt. It serves me well, to remember that pain almost always passes, at least the most acute variety.

I needed to do all that and more, and now, I know what I bring to the table. Even in the midst of personal crisis (the last 4 months, anyone?), I have a keener sense of self than ever. I have room in my life for someone else and their needs. I have done what I wanted, and now how to fit what I really need and want into my life, and now, I can share. I can do the big-time relationship stuff like, put my partners needs on par with my own. I can love someone else’s dog like my own.

I’m getting a little philosophical. But what I really sat down to blog about this evening is an element of my delayed adolescence (see above for my keen sense of adulthood): I pierced my nose today. Well, I didn’t. The fine piercer-guy down at The Alley on Clark St. (Chicago) did it for me. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I went down there intending to get my tongue pierced. (!!!!) I had this idea that a tongue piercing would satisfy my need to differentiate myself while preserving a somewhat corporate exterior.

Blech.

But what I really think is cool are very small, subtle nose piercings. I find that genuinely attractive.

So Scott (the fine piercer-guy) asked to take a look at my tongue, and it turns out, I’ve got a big vein up the center, so he said it was a bad idea, and he just plain refused to do it. Which was good to know that I do not have a tongue conducive to piercing. I did not argue this point with him. Although I briefly struggled with the idea of getting a pretty public piercing, it is in the end what I find most aesthetically pleasing, and I did it.

Although the actual piercing did sting briefly (my left eye watered a little), I feel nothing now, and I’ve blown my nose a few times, as well as absent-mindedly scratched it. It’s been a little surprising to find a stud there, but not painful at all.

I am quite pleased and happy with it, but have to admit, I don’t look forward to telling my mother. Sure, I pierced my nose when I was 38, but I’d like to point out that I’ve never had an unplanned pregnancy. I did not get knocked up as a teenager. They have never had to retrieve me from a police station.

This is not a road I want to proceed down.

New addiction: scrabulous.com.

Reading: finally getting down to the business of the Russian Reading Challenge with Turgenev’s First Love.

Make nice progress through my New York Times Tuesday crossword puzzle book.