Help in civilizing self, please.

Perhaps reading the Times Sunday Styles section on the Wednesday night bus ride is the uber-convenient metaphor for my chronic tardiness.   (An hour late to work this morning .... ugh .....)  As in most folks, by Wednesday, are usually reading the Wednesday paper.

Then, as if karmic, the 2 articles on Page 6 I got through on the ride were:

"When a Former Life Beckons": one (37-year-old!) woman's tale about re-designing her drunken, done-in-her-20s bikini-tattoo, as a way of reminding herself that she wasn't totally "settled down."

It scared the shit out of me.

"I breathed, and then I breathed more, enduring the kind of sharp, mean and intense pain that had been impossible for me to feel in my 20s. I cried, acutely aware that only now was I capable of feeling this pain, and remembering my young recklessness. If this current pain was so intense, what, I wondered, might I be vulnerable to feeling after another 15 years that I can’t yet imagine at 37?"

Right next to it was the blog "Studied":  "The Marrying Kind:  Born or Made?"

"Women have long been saddled with the onus of 'civilizing men.' According to studies of varying reliability, once under the womanly wing of matrimony, men work more, make more money, go to church more, eat more healthily and drink less unhealthily. Sociologists refer to this as “the marriage effect."

"But there has long been a niggling question: Is marriage responsible for turning the beastly male into a well-behaved husband? Or are the upstanding men the ones who marry in the first place? The debate is between selection bias (men who marry are not misbehavers) and causation (married men don’t misbehave). 

Thinking of my own behavior as of late ... staying up until ungodly hours 3 nights running and then oversleeping same; walking the city during a snowstorm carrying a box of cat litter in one hand and a 12-pack of Sunkist in the other while wearing paisley waders, red gym shorts and a parka; seeing Saturday-night's wine glasses still unrinsed, sitting next to the sink, and leaving them unrinsed yet another night ....

I'm ready for my civilizing effect, methinks.  Wonder if I can find a man who's ready to be saddled with the onus of me ....?

Day 19 of 31: 3.01 miles

January total: 28.36