{"id":5041,"date":"2010-08-03T20:40:23","date_gmt":"2010-08-04T01:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=2929"},"modified":"2025-07-30T14:00:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T19:00:08","slug":"i-wanna-fall-in-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/i-wanna-fall-in-love\/","title":{"rendered":"I wanna fall in love."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20100807052342\/http:\/\/mrsgiggles00.livejournal.com\/140335.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mrs. Giggles\u2019s post today<\/a>, this caught my eye and helped me define something for myself:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"normal\"><p>I know, some folks view \u201cescapism\u201d as a dirty word, because we get defensive when people portray romance readers as silly women who want to escape their real lives by indulging in romantic fantasies. But there is some truth to the insulting stereotype no matter how we try to prettify things &#8211; we read romance novels for the vicarious entertainment. Nobody reads romance novels to become a better person &#8211; those who claim to do so are either people trying too hard to defend their hobby to critics or academics forced to read those things as part of a research and not as a hobby.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I read romance novels because <span class=\"blue\"><em><strong>I get to fall in love<\/strong><\/em><\/span> over and over and over and over again, that rush of feeling you get when you first meet somebody and there\u2019s this strange and wonderful and glorious attraction and it\u2019s emotional and sexual and spiritual and intellectual (if you\u2019re doing it right) and you happily-ever-after yourself with this person and have a wedding-and-babies epilogue.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-16091 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/20100803_theydidit.jpg\" alt=\"Panel of 4 images showing a muddy young boy playing in a mud puddle alone, muddy toys strewn about, with a slide that is also muddy. A man says, \u201cHey Robbie, who got the slide all muddy?\u201d The boy points at the slide. \u201cThis slide?\u201d He points off into the distance. \u201cThey did it.\u201d\" width=\"310\" height=\"700\">But then, real life settles in.<\/p>\n<p>The babies really do come.<\/p>\n<p>But so do the bills.<\/p>\n<p>And the doctor visits for this and that and some other thing, reminding you you\u2019re not twenty-five anymore.<\/p>\n<p>The 7-year-old XX TD won\u2019t stop telling you what she expects to get for Christmas, Valentine\u2019s Day, her next birthday (almost a year away), and Arbor Day, preferably an XBox, a Wii, an iPhone \u2026<\/p>\n<p>The honey-do list gets added to faster than both of you together can keep up with it because you have a 4.5-year-old XY TD that breaks everything he touches\u2014because he can\u2014and you\u2019re stepping on random screws that \u2026 you don\u2019t know where they came from.<\/p>\n<p>I love my family, but love is built on history and defeat and triumph and hardship; it\u2019s made for the long haul. Falling in love is the glamour that tricks you into thinking you want to spend enough time with this person and these babies you make together to build that kind of love.<\/p>\n<p>It wears off all too soon.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve had a hell of a day today. Dude doesn\u2019t get off work until late. I have no Calgon in the house. TV doesn\u2019t satisfy. I\u2019ve no interest in immersing myself in one of my craft\/sewing\/refinishing\/decorating projects. I\u2019ve been <a href=\"http:\/\/b10mediaworx.com\/peculiarpages\/out-of-the-mount-mad-blurbery\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">coding all day<\/a> and have worn myself out.<\/p>\n<p>But what <em>will<\/em> help, what I <em>can<\/em> do, is go fall in love for three or four hours once the kids go to bed and I\u2019m waiting for Dude to get home from work.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019ll hold me over until tomorrow morning, when I awake and pick up where I leave off tonight.<\/p>\n<p>Because I love my family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Mrs. Giggles\u2019s post today, this caught my eye and helped me define something for myself: I know, some folks view \u201cescapism\u201d as a dirty word, because we get defensive when people portray romance readers as silly women who want to escape their real lives by indulging in romantic fantasies. But there is some truth [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[367,532],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5041"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5041"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16702,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5041\/revisions\/16702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}