This weekend, I did something I'm usually too lazy to do: read three interviews with women, and they were positive ones, you know, encouraging and "we are not ALL gonna die" toned, perhaps a coincidence, perhaps a tendency our country has developed as a soothing response to overall gloominess (as I said before, I can't actually relate to that, at least not yet).

The first was an interview with a very fine professor of folklore who has been rotated into Saeima (our Parliament) for a month now. Curiously enough, taking a place of a corrupt politician who's been convicted and basically agreeing to go there because the next person in line would be another corrupt politician (funny thing being, she basically said so). She is one of the finest scientists in our land, and one of the smartest and most original thinkers and - oh, you get the idea. She views her new role with a slight smirk and lots of idealism. I'm rarely moved by people, but this time I am. And I'm worried about her too, but I think she has the guts, she has actually more guts that all the rest of them guys combined.

The second was an interview with a TV star who married a friggin cigar-smoking millionaire who started stalking her after he saw her in nude calendar, for Chrissakes, begot a child and a tiny white pup, and for the whole interview she talks about how lucky she is. This kind of interviews always make my skin crawl. People telling ostensibly how happy they are feels like a bad sign for me. BUT: she's really happy about the fact that she and the guy "click", she doesn't stress all the money stuff, and she's going back to job and is feeling excited about it.

The third was with an actress, a really good and famous and beautiful one, who also married a friggin millionaire (no picture added, perhaps because, you know, we don't really care for the guy, do we). She is a housewife, having a child and spending her days running around to re-design their house, buying furniture, washing floors, cooking the meals and singing in her church. She says she's serving God and with the same breath that she's serving her husband, these two roles interchangeable (well, OK, for God she sings and does some amateur theatre, for husband she makes dinner and runs errands, so not entirely interchangeable). And she's kinda suffering from the fact that she's so well off now and everybody knows that. But it's the part of the serving thing, so it's okay.

Three interviews, all of them about women feeling good about who they are now and what they are doing, all three of them being slightly off-beat with what I kinda expect of them. (Good thing that they don't give a damn about my expectations.) All three of them using interview as a snapshot of their lives, the first: documenting the first month of her journey; the second: telling she's happy and hoping that nothing can erase what's written in paper; the third: giving an excuse for her new life that's even creepier than her new life itself.