Husbands And Wives

Mickey Rooney used to say that if you get married, do it in the morning so that if doesn't work out, you haven't wasted your whole day. Despite being a teeny-tiny, he married eight times, once to Ava Gardner who told him, I'm sick of being married to a midget and left. From my point of view, being married to Ava for any length of time was probably worth it - - she had several marriages and stayed good friends with her exes. Once after their divorce, she and Artie Shaw (the jazz musician) were out on the town and fighting. She told him to stop it lest people think they were still married. Zsa Zsa Gabor claimed she never hated an ex-husband enough to give him back his diamonds. I suppose it's good to keep a sense of humor about the enterprise.

Discussing wedded bliss with a friend the other day, we kept circling back to how much grief do you put up with and how do you know if it's going to work. If I had the answer to this question, I'd live in a bigger house and have a better job and so forth. And of course, there's that old sport's curse -- paralysis by analysis, where you do nothing in order to avoid error. When it comes down to it, you have to make a leap of faith, the kind you do when you're writing a story, that you can stick to it and that it will become something wonderful, even in the hard times. I'm no marriage counsellor but I do have one piece of advice for anyone contemplating making the jump -- don't see any Woody Allen films from the later Mia Farrow years. It will give you considerable pause. I still have my VCR copy of Husbands and Wives recorded by, you guessed it, my ex-husband. Even though I don't have a VCR anymore, I can't quite throw it out so it sits with the rest of the dvds, waiting to be played again when the time is right.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Be bold. If you're going to make an error, make it a doozy." Billie Jean King

Cocktail Hour
Drinking vodka suggestion: Titos -- a great Texas vodka made in Austin!

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Tuesday!