"Caught between the longing for love and the struggle for the legal tender..."

"I'm gonna be a happy idiot and struggle for the legal tender ..., and believe in whatever may lie in those things that money can buy, though true love may have been a contender. Are you there? Say a prayer for the Pretender who started out so young and strong only to surrender."

Okay, so however hokey that is, I keep thinking about those lines from Jackson Browne. Because there's so many things I've "surrendered" for the legal tender, and maybe it's an early mid-life crisis, but I don't know if it's all worth it.

Of course, I couldn't feed my "pack" if I didn't have my job. But now that I'm back to working full-time, along with being a mom and working part-time grooming, those things I surrendered seem to get further and further away.

Like tonight. It's gorgeous out, 25 degrees, a light dusting of snow on the ground, which is actually FINALLY frozen. I wanted to come home and hook up dogs in the dark of night.

Instead, we went to Target to buy diaper wipes.

And, why did I spend eight years in school reading Shakespeare? I was going to go for a Master of Fine Arts in the creative writing program at the University of Montana in Missoula; I was going to be a "starving artist," throw caution to the wind, and make a living off my good looks.

Then I had a kid, then another, and those good looks started changing, fading, sagging in places that used to be perky and firm!

These lines also make me think of my dad. We all start out so "young and strong," holding fast to ideals that don't meet reality. Dad used to be the strong, stoic marine who nothing could topple. And now he's changed, different -- realized the tenuous grasp we have on life. He cries now. He hugs me now. He tells me he loves me now.

Life is short, and all those things we think are so important, they change. I'm struggling for the legal tender, and still longing for love.