Stayed home today

I called in sick today, which was a hard decision. They were going for a Botany Bay cruise excursion! I love it when we go on cruises. Sigh. But there was just no escaping the fact that I'd coughed all of last night and this morning and had a terrible sore throat again. I've also run out of antibiotics! yikes.

Yen, i'm trying hard to not die of bronchitis before my birthday but the germs conspire against me!

In other news it occurs to me a few of my friends have recently been thinking hard about the whole soggy business of relationships and love. I found this out through their bloggythings of course. :P One isn't sure she's capable of loving someone, two others aren't sure they'll ever find someone suitable in the same country, another one is going out with yet another socially-maladjusted weedy-but-kinda-hot jesus-lookalike... well alright she's got her preferences sorted. :) But everyone else is unsure.

To the one who's not sure if she can love the way people are supposed to love other people, i say of course you can. You've loved before, and said so, and that's all there is to it. You know Ethan Hawke's character in Before Sunrise? He's asked by Julie Delpy if he's ever been in love, and he's like yes, and i told her so, but if u want to know if it was something pure and true and totally unlinked to lust and my baser instincts, then no.

Well duh. Anyone who thinks that love is all pure and chaste is talking about love for ratties.

or other assorted pets.

I think love is a decision, a shared delusion that becomes real when you share your life together. Sometimes its a bunch of messy feelings, sometimes its clear... Sometimes you meet someone, that particular someone, and you think, wow THIS is what love is! It's so nice and peaceful, it Must be true!

Or you don't, and you think you've never really loved someone truthfully, but you have. You obviously love your friends and some of your family if not all, and your dog/cat/hamster. The thing is though, whether you see your love as nice or messy, strong or weak, i don't think that's a measure of how real it is, but rather of how real the relationship is, or was, as may be the case.

Which brings me to the seeming absence of suitable candidates. Just because the world is filled with people incompatible to your higher instincts doesn't mean anything is wrong. That's just the way the dots scatter. Neverminding that, just what kind of people are compatible then? I've thought about this a bit, and people always say things like similar sense of humour, similar goals, similar tastes and needs, blah blah blah. I think it all boils down to, would you like to be this person? That's all. Give or take a few bad habits, if some super alien came to earth and for a bit of mischief, made you and the other person switch bodies and lives for, say, a couple of years, would you be totally horrified, or enjoy it for the opportunity to be this person for a bit?

I know, its flawed, but i think it covers most ground. :P