I'm up in the mountains with my family. Last night my dad and I went out with his friends who have known me since I was born. While I enjoy seeing them, I dread The Question that I inevitably get asked by my parents' friends. The wife portion of one of my dad's couple friends (at a certain point, they become a unit) did the honors:

"So, are you married, yet?!"

What am I supposed to answer? It's really a rhetorical question at this point.

I was ready to drown my loserishness in my turkey dinner when her husband suddenly opened up about the mating practices of their own children. Child born out of wedlock, divorce, and chronic bad choices...whew! I felt much better. These are my kind of people (not that I been divorced or have had children out of the institution of marriage...but hey, there's still time).

However, despite this respite of truth, the fact is that I feel a tremendous amount of pressure from Society (mom?) to have, at the very least, one of three things: husband, child, and/or property. I was considering the latter (it seems easier at this point), but got discouraged at the prospect of paying three times the amount of money I currently spend on rent for a place across the street from Target (my realtor tried to make this sound like a huge benefit by telling me about the fabulous end tables she found for half of what she was planning to spend...as if you have to convince me that Target is a temple to the Shopping Gods...doesn't mean I want to live there).

As my therapist would ask (because it's her job), WHAT DO I WANT?

One word.

Salsa.

Just for today, I can resist conforming to society's expectations.