M-Square and I had a very serious talk on Sunday. It was hard because we talked about his job stress and his feelings about our relationship. It's hard for him because he is so stressed out that he is in serious survival mode and can barely meet his own needs let alone mine.

Afterwards I kept thinking this is what it must mean in the marriage vows when you have to say, "I, (Name),Take you, (Name),To be my (wife/husband); To have and to hold, From this day forward, For better, for worse, For richer, for poorer, In sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, 'Till death do us part." (or, "As long as we both shall live.") ... especially the part about for best or for worse. Sometimes when you're really stresed out, you literally have nothing to give the person you're with. You're like barely keeping it together and you can barely be there for yourself and meet your own needs let alone meet someone else's needs. This is what M-Square is going through and he knows it.

And I'm like how much do I really like this guy and how much am I willing to put with? M-Square said he loves me and that things will get better, but not until his work stress goes away. I feel like I'm getting a taste of what it would take to be in a long term relationship again and how frustrating and disappointing it is when your husband isn't doing well. The thing about relationships is, the person you love is never going to be there 24/7 for you. It's physically impossible. Both people have up and down days, weeks, sometimes months. And the question I guess you have to ask yourself, that I'm asking myself, is "do I love this guy enough to let him be human and not always be there for me? Do I trust him enough to ride this out knowing that when he's less stressed out everything will be better?"

And right now, I don't know. I think I do because I don't feel like it's time to leave, but I know that in the past when I've gotten to this inevitable point in a relationship I've bugged out. I think this feeling of wanting to bug out and move on to green pastures will always be there, only because I've always done it in the past. It's not the best way to go and I think I've let go of some really great relationships because I didn't want to wait around, and I don't want to do that. Not with M-Square. He's just too aamzing of a guy, and I just don't know if I'll find another guy like him. That's how much I think I like this guy. Plus, he's put up with me this far and he's been very forgiving of a ton of my foibles. I also know he'll always do the right thing, a trait I find very rare in a guy.

Before all this job stress, M-Square was there when I reached out to him and needed him to be there. He put up with my 11th hour anxiety attack about meeting him, and he was there for me when I went through a serious crisis back in July. And he did all of this before he even know what I looked like and whether it would work between us.

He just can't do that right now, and I'm not going to lie and say it doesn't hurt like hell that he can't be there because he's hunkering down and doing the Men are from Mars cave thing. He's trying but it's hard for him.

So all I can think of is "for better or four worse" because I think I'm getitng a taste of what it would take emotionally for me to acutally fulfill on this aspect of the marriage vow.

Despite not writing on Thursday through Sunday, I'm still on track with the schedule I set up for writing my screenplay. When I'm in the grove I can knock out three scenes in two hours.

On Thursday I went to see the Cal Shakespeare's version of "The Tempest" in Orinda. The night was quite cold, but it was beautiful to look up into the night sky and see the stars.

"The Tempest" was fantastic. A friend and I were speculating whether Prospero an Ariel were in love. The director really played their love story up and at the end I think Prospero didn't really want to leave the island and wanted to stay with Ariel, but he was too late. There was also a scene where Prospero and Ariel's cheeks were touching and it was so erotic, it was like there were making love. Ariel at one point asks Prospero if he loves her, but he ignores her. Oh well, too bad.

This production of "The Tempest" also had actors playing the spries and I really liked them. Apparently some critic thought they were too distracting but there so funny. Two the sprites are holding up giant flowers and swaying to and fro, and the prince starts swaying with him as if hypnotized. It was so funny.

I met the actor who played "Stephano" earlier this year, and he was fantastic. He did a one-man show on Buckminster Fuller which was supposedly fantastic a few years ago, but I missed. Too bad because he is such a great actor. The guy has amazing control of his body and did some great falls on stage. It takes a lot of phyical control to fall naturally on stage and to make it look accidental and not fake.

On Friday, I had to deposit some checks at the bank and then I went to The Container Store to buy a couple of french canning jars to store cereal. I use these jars to store cookies, and after months my cookies are still fresh and crunchy.

On Saturday, I drove down to Monterey to take a class called "Divine Intuition". A friend who also attended won the contest using her intuition to get how many jelly beans were in a jar. She was off by one. I don't know if that was just luck and a good guess or if she was really using her intuition.

The class was fun because we did readings on each other, although I received mixed readings about me and M-Square. It turns out I give really accurate readings. I don't think I can say the same for the partners I had in class. Then I went with a couple of friends to The Fishwife Restaurant and had a calamari sandwich. I had wanted to try it when I was in Monterey in July but never got around to it. The sandwich was very tasty and of course totally fattening.

When I went to my Weight Watchers meeting today I thought for sure I'd show a weight gain, but I actually lost 1/2 a pound. I'm having such a hard time getting into following the plan. If I write down everything I eat and stay within my point range I'm fine. But once I stop writing stuff down then I just end up eating a ton.

On Sunday I was so craving eating Captain Crunch cereal. I had two bowls of cereal which for me means a mix of Special K, Captain Crunch and Fiber One. I love having a handful of Captain Crunch on any cereal I'm eating. It's way better than eating cereal with fruit.

I am writing again and it's full steam ahead. I wrote four scenes yesterday and finished two difficult scenes today. I am so ahead of the schedule I set for myself that I think I'll be done with my screenplay if all goes well by next weekend.

I have to start thinking about the novel I'm going to write for Nanowrimo. I almost feel like just writing a screenplay, but a screenplay is less than 50K words. This year I want to write a novel from start to finish, and not just 30% of a novel that I normally do. What I should do is take that scifi screenplay idea I came up with back in January or February and turn that into a novel, and then later turn it back it into a screenplay. I've never taken a screenplay idea and turned it into a novel nor taken a novel and turned it into a screenplay. This will be a good exercise for me I think.

I'm blogging from the Starfbombs on 19th Avenue and surfing on someone's unsecured network. What a trip. This is the first time I've piggybacked on someone else's free connection. I'm working on that screenplay that I can't seem to finish, although I made a plan last night to finish it by the end of the month so I can enter it into a screenplay contest.

I just finished writing two scenes. To tell you the truth, I really dislike this screenplay. It kind of sucks and needs a serious rewrite, but Peter Z my writing teacher at UC Berkeley Extension told my writing class to always finish writing pieces because 1) it's good practice to finish what you're written and started and 2) it's psychologically healthy to finish your wriitng pieces rather than abandon them, no matter how they suck.

God, but is this screenplay just really really bad or what? Oh well. There are some good scenes and the plot is good; it just needs some serious tightening up.