a very beautiful and sweet cover that I am hoping the story will live up to

An incredibly sincere and often sweet read, _Once_ is definitely good and definitely worth reading, but L.T. Smith's _See Right Through Me_ remains my absolute favorite of hers. Lovable and very endearing and adorable Dudley (a dog who will just melt your soul) is my favorite character in this touching book whose cover truly matches its spirit and heart.

Normally, I love that almost all of L.T. Smith's novels share a common theme in how insecure two people can be about each other's feelings when they are first getting to know each other. I really, really get self doubt so it would seem perfectly natural to me that two people could actually like each other and yet have no clue about it or any confidence in their own appeal. This motif in Ms. Smith's fiction is a big reason why I love her books so much.

But with Once I became physically exhausted by it all, at times. It's not the writer's fault at all...if anything, this time around she's captured the pain of self doubt better than ever before, along with an underlying darkness and deep sadness to both women's relationship histories. I also found myself very, very troubled by an early scene in the novel where the main character punches her ex very, very hard in the face. It made painfully lovely passages lose some of their power because Beth really is not all that likable at times: "It wasn’t that I didn’t believe that Amy was the person I wanted to be with; it was more a case of not being able to trust that anyone would want to be with me. Like Groucho Marx said, he didn’t want to be a member of any club that would accept him as a member."

Perhaps I am being a bit overly sensitive to this part and the main character does believe her ex has been abusing her dog when she punches her. The thing is she does not for sure her ex hurt her dog and when she realizes later she did not there is no real remorse on her and that just disturbs me so very much.

...because music makes everything better

I always do this...install the newest Apple iOS update before all the bugs are fixed. The most recent one, the iOS 8.4, really caught my eye because it allows the brand new Apple Music to be installed and I have been curious about Apple's music streaming music service since I heard about it earlier this week. Lord knows there are problems with it (thank you very much, iTunes, for messing with my music library and for taking away the simply joy of shuffle) but I do like some parts and how can you complain about a service that instantly sets you up with John Hughes soundtracks?

For a rather helpful FAQ online guide to all that is related to Apple Music go here:

http://www.imore.com/apple-music-faq

finding the 7 minute and 26 seconds version of "Nights in White Satin"...priceless! :)

On my player right now is "Every Note" by Mystery Skulls. This review by Matt Collar captures the album very well:

The debut full-length album from Los Angeles' Mystery Skulls, 2014's Forever, showcases the group's infectious, '80s-influenced disco, R&B, and dance-oriented soul. Primarily centered around the talents of lead singer, songwriter, and musical mastermind Luis Dubuc, Mystery Skulls make pulsing, laser-toned R&B that touches upon vintage '70s and '80s club music as much as it does contemporary R&B, techno, and EDM. In that sense, cuts like "The Future," "Fantasy," and "Forever" fit just as nicely alongside cuts by Daft Punk and Grum as they do tracks from such similarly inclined artists as Sam Sparro and Justin Timberlake. What helps set Mystery Skulls apart from the rest of the electro-R&B pack is Dubuc's lithe vocal abilities. Blessed with soulful phrasing, a burnished middle vocal range, and a knack for ascending into a lusty falsetto croon, Dubuc comes across as less the pulsating center of a robotic hive mind, à la Daft Punk, and more like an improbable cross between Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stump and '90s R&B prodigal son D'Angelo. It also doesn't hurt the album, or Dubuc's cred for that matter, that he's joined here on "Magic" and "Number 1" by both Chic guitar legend Nile Rodgers and '90s soul diva Brandy. Musically, while most of the songs on Forever are set to deep programmed grooves and heavy synth basslines, Dubuc nonetheless strikes an even balance between his use of synthesizer (his main instrument), real piano, drums, and orchestral strings. Ultimately, it's this sophisticated balance that helps Forever sound both organic and computerized, warmly familiar, and utterly fresh.

I know this might sound silly, but whenever I have ignored my intuition I have often really, really regretted it. Lately, my intuition has been acting up so much that it is almost like a loud voice in my head. I want to be careful, though, because if my intuition is wrong I could end up making a big mistake and making an idiot of myself. For now, I am trying my best to ignore it because I still need more facts before I make my decision. It did make me curious, though, as to the science behind intuition and so I read up on it some...this is one really neat article I discovered:

 http://www.medicaldaily.com/your-gut-feeling-way-more-just-feeling-science-intuition-325338



“We often talk about intuition coming from the body — following our gut instincts and trusting our hearts,” the study’s coauthor Barnaby D. Dunn, of the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, UK, said in a press release. “What happens in our bodies really does appear to influence what goes in our minds. We should be careful about following these gut instincts, however, as sometimes they help and sometimes they hinder our decision making.”

I hope this post is not too much or too inappropriate. It is something that has been on my mind lately and even more so within the past week since the Supreme Court ruled on gay marriage and there has been a lot of reaction (both good and bad) to their decision. 

I have noticed that both anti-gay and gay friendly people can sometimes say the same thing, if not for the same reason. "I don't care what two people do in their bedroom" is often cited by both sides, though often said in completely different tones. Those who support gay rights think they are saying something positive and being an ally, the far right believe they are emphasizing the sexual components. But BOTH (in my mind, at least) sides are trivializing the bigger issue.

The only thing I do in my bedroom is sleep. Of course I am single and not in a relationship and have never been in one involving intimacy of either a romantic or sexual nature. That is too much information to share, I am pretty sure, but I only mention that because the fact that sex and sexuality is so often THE main thing both pro and anti-gay people bring up in discussion saddens me a lot.

When I tried to come out to my family it went horribly, horribly (horribly) wrong. It did not, in fact, go at all and so I tried my best to just be "cured." The few friends I told were pretty accepting, though one person told me they just did not believe me because I gave off no sexuality at all. I did not have to ask him what he meant because I had heard it before during one of the times I was brave enough to go on dates, hoping I would meet Miss Right For Me.

"You're a nice girl and all that, but you just aren't my type" was more or less the message I got whenever I did try to meet someone and it did not take me long to know that was universal speak (for me, specifically) for "I'm just not attracted to you." One woman was even bold enough (which I actually appreciated) to say she just did not think I was someone anyone would want to go to bed with.

After a while I stopped trying. It was all for the best, anyway, considering my parents would never accept who I am and I was feeling very guilty for trying to meet someone special who not only most likely did not exist (for me) but who (if she WAS out there and COULD love me back) would be unfairly dragged into a really bad family situation. So, I stopped dating and have not even thought about it seriously since. I just go about my business, sometimes reading romance novels, sometimes day dreaming, ALWAYS knowing my 'place' (or lack of one) in the world of love.

This is the thing though: I do not care if I give off sexuality or not. Frankly, I do not care that much about sex (I guess it is pretty easy to not miss something you have never known) and I KNOW I am not sexy. I am more childlike than adult, when it comes right down to it. But that does not mean I do not have a heart and that I do not care deeply about someone and that that caring deeply is most likely love, maybe romantic in nature, definitely deep. I am making my peace with a life ahead of being on my own and I (more or less) am okay with that. What I am not so okay with and what just breaks my heart so, so much is how so many people see being gay as being about sex...when that is simply not so. 

It does not matter to my own personal life that this false impression continues to perpetuate itself through both sides of the gay rights and gay marriage debate. But it DOES sadden me very much for the loving gay and lesbian couples out there who have been together for decades (decades!) and have never once cheated or betrayed each other and that there are hateful straight people on their third and fourth marriages pointing their fingers and having mini hissy fits on who should and should not be allowed to marry.

It may be a cliche, but I think it is a true one: the heart wants what the heart wants. The saying does not go the body wants what the body wants, after all. And another thing I wish people knew about celibate gay people: our hearts want they want, too. It is just that we either love someone who does not feel the same way we do or we remain silent because we know, for us, that is just the way it has to be. 

I think in terms of 'survival mode' lately...like getting through the day without wearing your heart on your sleeve...or tamping down how you really feel and promising yourself you'll cry when you get home if you have to, but 'not now.' The catch phrase survival mode actually comforts me because when I try to achieve that it may sound like I am just existing, but I am actually trying my very best to thrive, even if it does not feel that way at the time. I saw this article on the deep-rooted origins of survival mode and I find the link between (long, long ago!) then and now rather fascinating:


The extraordinarily high levels of social isolation found today provide perhaps the most important current example of evolutionary mismatch. When people feel that they lack supportive, loving relationships, when they feel lonely for extended periods, the consequences can be devastating. Social isolation has been shown to have effects on physical health that are comparable to not exercising or even to smoking cigarettes, and loneliness is also a major risk factor for most psychological syndromes, including severe depression.

...

But the catch is that in modern life, being alone more than one might like is rarely a serious survival threat. It may not feel good to consistently have nothing to do on a Saturday night, but that on its own is almost never a sign that your life is at serious risk. Because of our hunter-gatherer past, however, being alone too much often triggers a survival-mode state in us that, like all survival-mode states, creates stress and releases stress hormones throughout our bodies and brains. And chronically high stress levels seem to be largely responsible for the physical and psychological health issues that lonely people are at higher risk for. So the cruel irony is that, although being socially isolated is rarely an actual survival threat in modern, industrialized cultures, the state of being lonely does trigger stress and survival-mode states because of our hunter-gatherer past, and so being socially isolated does often end up creating a survival risk – but mainly because of chronically elevated stress levels driven by unnecessary and inappropriate survival-mode states. The brain is, in effect, tricked – typically unconsciously – into unnecessary states of survival mode, such as fear of abandonment, not because of actual survival-threatening circumstances, but because our brains confuse our evolutionary past with our modern circumstances. Every modern life is lived in the teeth of massive evolutionary mismatch, and the typical result is that we have far, far more survival mode in our lives than is healthy for us.

You can read more here:

 https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-embodied-mind/201212/survival-mode-and-evolutionary-mismatch