Oh man! I've found it! This is something I did when I was in 11th grade. I had been trying to trace it for quite a while. My scenario is the third one, called Trimming Roses. Now, reading it 4 years later, I wonder what the hell I was talking about.

Weee! After 6 days of readjusting-to-home-with-my-baby-temporarily-away hell, I am finally feeling better. Jet lag had a lot to do with my miserable mood, I am sure. But now I have settled in and made friends with the place again.
The trip was extremely interesting from a variety of points of view. I enjoyed my time in New York greatly -- although I realized I don't want to actually live there. In spite of the city's countless assets, I think I would get sick too often in New York to be able to enjoy it. Adam got sick after we had been there a week. I got sick after having been in Romania for a week. Polluted air is not good for us.
Speaking of us, my family absolutely adored Adam. I think they still don't take him entirely seriously, because of his youthful and extremely gregarious manner, but they certainly think much more highly of him.
Also speaking of us, we are finally going to go ahead and sleep with other people. We had certainly talked about it before, but I don't think either of us was fully ready. We had a couple of good conversations about the topic on our trip, though, and now we're ready to swing. (So if anybody knows of attractive couples or females looking for sweet, intimate and naughty encounters with a sizzling, cultivated, libertarian couple, please let me know. Um, thanks.) I am actually quite curious about how this will turn out. I think we will enjoy ourselves greatly and I think that our bond will only be affected positively. But I think that, because we will be sharing our intimacy with people (or bringing people into our intimacy by telling each other about our adventures on the side), we might take a little bit of the veneer of Big Love romance out of the relationship. In other words, we might have to be so secure with each other that we won't be able to afford to keep each other on our toes -- for you can't keep your partner on their toes when you're swinging. On the other hand, though, I think that's what we're looking for. Because we are committed to being together and we are very secure with each other, and realize that it can get monotonous in the long run, we're outsourcing the keeping-on-one's-toes part. Adam is the one searching for the exhilaration of seduction, since he finds that emotional intimacy is the best part of a sexual encounter. Me, uncharacteristically given my gender, am the one who's looking to get laid, and who thinks that emotional intimacy is a drag, if not inappropriate in a sexual encounter -- I am being purposefully crude, although I am, in fairness, less emotionally available than him. And it's not out of an unwillingness or inability to sympathize, for I do like to share people's emotions. I think I am simply a fairly private person. But I am getting better at it. Adam is a fantastic teacher, and I am starting to consciously enjoy flirtation and courtship.
Will write more very soon about my saddeningly Lefty Social Policy class. (What was I thinking when I chose it? Social policy shouldn't exist!) I might actually ask your help in a couple matters.

Today Romania celebrates the first day of the new school year. Slutty chic is de rigueur among the students. Some teachers' unions are on strike, which they are every year around this time. My parents tell me that my high school, the foremost in the school district, has been completely made over, outfitted with granite and marble and the like. The money came from, you've guessed it, the district administration, i.e. the taxpayers. And also, in case you were wondering, no addition has been made to the school library or labs. The money was used exclusively to purchase luxurious fixtures. Oh, dear God...
So let's talk about the food, which is ghastly. The paradoxical thing is that the raw materials available, though not numerous, are good quality. Pork, chicken and beef are plentiful, as are dairy products and mainly pork-based deli meats, vegetables are fairly seasonal and consist of potatoes, squash, eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, cauliflower, peppers, carrots, celery and lettuce and fruits range from the locally produced, such as apples, plums, apricots, peaches and pears to the imported, such as bananas and citrus fruit. Romanians, however, suffer from a chronic inability to cook. They resent to mix things. Their idea of a meal is a chunky piece of meat, boiled, broiled or fried with some onions, served with potatoes, or minced meat, gristle and fat grilled, served with potatoes, or bean or cabbage soup, adventurous additions to which are are paprika and black pepper. Pasta is not eaten very often and rice is mainly used in soups. Vegetables are used sparingly, usually one vegetable to complement a meat dish, such as stuffed peppers. Dishes are usually greasy -- the cooking oil of choice is sunflower oil.
Fundamentally, it is a matter of taste. They like things plain, very plain. Which is not so surprising, given the fact that they have had to deal with extreme scarcity over the past 50 years, when one had to manage food very carefully lest one should starve. But still, it is a damn shame.

Alright kids, so, after 10 days in a hellishly polluted New York, I am back in the Old Country, Romania, visiting parents and friends. On the good side, it's not as awful as I was expecting it to be: the people look nice, the neighborhood looks ok, my family is doing fine. On the bad side, the food is just ghastly. I have a theory as to why this is so, which I will share with you later on.
Also, my paternal grandparents are distraught that I am living with a man without being married. They believe that marriage is good because knowing that their union is state-sanctioned forces people to stay together, even if they may be tempted to stray. When I asked my grandfather whether it was the concern that his wife might suffer or the knowledge that the state would punish him that kept him from straying, he replied: "the knowledge that the state would punish me!" You gotta love an ex-Colonel!