Not surprisingly I want some fun adventures this year, and I want to do things I haven’t gotten around to doing. Things like:

A road trip where I’m the main driver
The furthest away I’ve driven is two hours or about 200 km away but my youngest brother mentioned going to the USA for shopping before September, so I suggested we make it a sibling thing and rent a car. I’ll never say no to outlet shopping so I’m looking forward to this.

Getting a hair cut and colour
I’ve gotten trims and very simple hair cuts before but this time I want a real cut, something sassy. I’ve never coloured my hair so that’ll be something. The cut I’m thinking of (which one of my friends was sporting when I ran into her this past weekend, funny enough) requires me to grow my hair a bit more so I’ll colour first.

Learning to run
So two years ago, I did a walk/run to raise money for a cause dear to my heart. My time was slower than I hoped, and I had grossly underestimated how far five kilometres is by foot. I haven’t run since.

But a crazy colleague has convinced me that a learn to run program is what we need in our lives and she simultaneously convinced me that it won’t kill us (me). We start in two weeks.

I decided to go out and try what we’ll be doing the first week: run for one minute, walk for two minutes, repeat a trillion (or maybe 6-8) times. The good news is I managed to run for a minute without stopping (yes, I am that out of shape); the bad news is I could only do four sets before I switched to walking alone. The worst news is today, the day after, I feel like I tried a new form of exercise that showed me who’s boss; either that or I was doing squats in my sleep. I feel it in my (fl)abs too.

Eating yogurt
I’m a very picky eater. I have never knowingly ingested salad dressing, dips, cottage cheese, sour cream and yogurt. My crazy colleague (yeah, the same one) made me try a dessert yogurt (120 calories, 3.5% milk fat) and it was pretty good! I wonder if I can try a non-dessert yogurt without gagging; I’ve bought some and I’ll let you know how that goes.

I want to end this with a challenge: can you think of something that you don’t think I’ve done that I really should do? All reasonable suggestions will be considered, and by “reasonable” I mean any suggestion that won’t bankrupt or embarrass me. I’m not looking for thrills so much as things that will shake my life up a bit and provide me with great memories.

Updated to add:

A trip to Europe in 2011 or 2012
This is another sibling plan. I don’t know where we’ll go, but England (well, London more than anything), France or Italy are sounding good so far.

One of the aforementioned colleagues is no longer single, and is therefore no longer on that most wonderful of online dating sites, P.lenty of Fish. Because of this, when the following exchange happened I had to cut and paste it for the single colleague so we could both laugh at it. And when I meet up with Amanda next week, we will no doubt cackle about the stupidity of grown men.

I expect his final response will involve a racial slur or two and comments about how I am so fat it’s no wonder I’m trawling dating sites. I look forward to reading his words of wisdom.

(Confession: I hit a teeny bit below the belt, not because I was hurt (because quite honestly his childishness made me LAUGH) but because I am human and am not all zen and light.)

::The dialogue::

HIM
how are you ? i hust noticed your profiel and i think you look amazing my real name is d—- i would love to get to know you better than your profiel are you interested?

ME

Hey D—-,

All the best with your search…it’s not easy!

HIM

your dumb

ME
It’s sad that you can’t respect someone for being honest and you instead decide to respond childishly.

All the best in the future.

::My observations::

In his profile he says he’s not religious and he doesn’t want kids. I don’t go on dates with guys who want different things from a relationship than I do. Also, in his first message, he is asking me if I’m interested in getting to know him better. To me that means he should have expected that I might say no.

(At least I bit my tongue over the grammatical and spelling errors. After reading Marry Him I would of course not rule out a guy with poor spelling who seems like he might share important vlaues with me but since this guy clearly does not, I can call attention to the errors with impunity!)

::Edited to add his last response:::

HIM
Have fun god boy

Better response than I expected!

Most of all, I’ve found myself feeling grateful that I found the book at this age and not ten years from now. It honestly feels like how you’d feel if you went to the doctor for your annual physical and the doctor said “Hey, I have this neat little gadget here that spots the fatal sort of brain aneurysm months ahead of current technology. I know you’re not at all at risk but for fun, can I try it on you? I’m just too excited to wait for a more at-risk patient to come in.” You know where I’m going with this…the doctor uses the gadget and you find out that the gadget just saved your life. Dramatic, of course, but that’s my style, isn’t it?

The book is not telling women to settle, but it’s telling women to be realistic. A friend that I was gushing to online asked me to share just one thing I had learned and this is how that went:

Me:
just everything
our sense of entitlement
the fact that we see our “quirks” as cute and the fact that we’re the ones saying “hell no!” to guys as a sign that we’re fine the way we are and they are the ones who are flawed
when really they are just less picky than we are

She:
wow
guilty

That snippet probably doesn’t make sense (we might have our own way of communicating?) but I have noticed through reading this book that I have a sense of entitlement, at least in small measure. I don’t have a lot of body confidence but I know that I am a great human being. I’m not better than all my friends who are married but I know that I am not worse than them, meaning they are not married because they are better than me. I’m nice (most of the time), sometimes kind, very eager and willing to help, sometimes funny. I have family values and I was raised right. I don’t think I have a lot of obvious deal breakers. On the flip side, I know I’m unreasonable and bossy and set in my ways and somewhat used to getting my own way with some people, but deep down I see those as “cute quirks”, “part of what makes me me“, “take it or leave it” things, and I expect family and friends to do just that (of course they take it). And I see them taking it as proof that it’s not really that bad/bothersome to them…when really my loved ones probably just realize that a few ‘imperfections’ isn’t reason to toss the whole person.

But when it comes to guys, their less than wonderful traits or personality oddities aren’t seen as “cute quirks” by me…ever. I see them as huge gaping flaws that cannot be accepted because well, I can do better than a guy who doesn’t carry a wallet or who has a high-pitched voice. See what I mean by sense of entitlement? Instead of giving guys the same benefit of the doubt that my loved ones give me, I automatically discard them and scream “Next!”

(This may seem like I’ve suddenly lost all sense of being selective and having standards, but I assure you I haven’t. The book itself, despite its title, does not advocate putting up with someone you feel like you’re settling for, it’s more about looking at yourself and making sure that you’re not being unreasonable about what you expect because of an over-inflated sense of how fantastic you are.

The other thing that is hard to get used to is the idea of giving people more than one or two dates to grab your attention. A date that’s bland or boring doesn’t always mean the person cannot ever be your type. When friends have told me in the past that “Maybe he was just nervous/Maybe he doesn’t do well on first dates/Maybe you didn’t see his true self”, I thought they were telling me to settle. But going on a second date with someone who didn’t wow me on Date #1 isn’t settling, it’s being reasonable and accepting of the fact that we are freaking humans.)

I’m just past halfway through the book and when I’m finished I’m going to read/skim it again, making sure I note all the parts that will be easy to forget if I get asked out by a lackluster fellow and I’m tempted to be insulted by it.

A colleague bought the book and we’re kind of reading the book together, and sharing parts that have struck us. She suggested I share passages that impacted me and sort of give my interpretation or relate them to my life, and that is what you have to look forward to here for the next little while.

I was watching a show on hoarding last night, and this reasonably attractive guy in his mid 40s brought his girlfriend to his home for the first time. His home was in shambles. This woman appeared to be in her 40s as well, she was well dressed, owned her own home and was clearly well off. She wanted a man but didn’t need him to give her the kind of life (at least from a financial sense) that she wanted. After seeing how he lived, she decided he had serious issues and it was best to cut her losses.

I definitely think it’s her decision to make, and since I didn’t watch the show from the start, I don’t know if they had been dating for two weeks, months or years. What I do know is the following statement she made elicited a response from me that the pre-Gottlieb Jummy would not have recognized. She said “He isn’t going to change and I’m not going to accept that in my life.” Pre-Gottlieb Jummy would have cheered at the last half of that statement.

But the new me seems more sympathetic. The man is on this show, and as far as I can tell, he wasn’t nominated. He knows he has a problem and has made at least a feeble step toward getting help for it. The “new” me, in the same situation, especially if we had been dating for a while, would give the guy a reasonable time to change, and be willing to work it out before tossing the guy. If he can’t change, I know I would not be able to accept the condition of the house, but I would give him a chance.

Giving men a second chance? I almost don’t recognize myself!

I’m so thankful for the comments that were left on my last entry. The encouragement and kindness you showed, in spite of the fact that a lot of the entry is repetitive, is very touching. I will be reading the comments over and over as I try to keep myself on the right path. I also want to send you each a personal reply and I have sent a couple so far.

I was so excited to have three awesome ladies come over this past Saturday evening a full week ago for a much-needed girl’s night. We dined out then came back to my place for dessert and hot drinks. We had so much to talk about (it had been a while) and at the end of the evening I felt like I knew a lot more about at least two of them than I knew before. There were a couple of emotional moments, inevitable perhaps when you have so much history with someone.

I steered the conversation toward relationships, particularly this idea of settling and knowing when someone is the right for you. Of all my friends in my age range, only one pursued love the way our mothers may have, with a focus on picking someone that you could build a good life with and who you cared for rather than looking for that undefinable “zing”. I’m completely on the fence about this idea. I mean she wasn’t repulsed by him when she met him but he wasn’t the kind of guy she imagined she’d end up with. She says she loves her husband more every day, and for her that’s what makes sense, the idea that the spark or sizzle may not be there in full force on day one but grows from day to day and week to week, rather than it being overwhelming at the beginning of the relationship and then fading over time. I have always thought that spark is what makes you decide to get to know the person more and see if they have staying power, so I don’t know anymore.

I recently read a magazine that interviewed Lori Gottlieb, a woman who wrote a controversial article on this idea of settling, and I’m eagerly awaiting her book on the topic (Marry Him: The Case For Settling for Mr. Good Enough). The book is out but I’m borrowing it from the library so I have to wait and I can pick it up next week because I got the notification email from the library yesterday that it is in! Gottlieb thinks that women of today in their 30s have a sense of entitlement, where they think they should be able to find a man who has everything on their list, and also have that zing, chemistry or spark too. She finds that these women are unwilling to compromise and they are asking for more than is realistic, given what they actually want from marriage – a companion, someone they can build a life with and share common goals and of course, love with.

To be fair, she’s not recommending women “settle” for crap. What we ladies agreed on is you cannot feel like you’re settling: yes, the guy you end up dating longterm or marrying may not physically resemble who you thought you’d be with, he will likely not be as good on the some fronts as you hoped he would be and he may not have that sarcastic sense of humour you thought was so crucial, but you must feel like he’s still right for you. There must be more positives than negatives.

As a woman in my early 30s who knows she wants to get married, I’ve been thinking a lot about my expectations and desires of marriage, and trying to see if I’m being unreasonable. I am a generally demanding and unreasonable person, so this introspection is required. My desire for a fellow Nigerian, nay, one from the same part of Nigeria as I, is extremely picky, but my list of non-negotiables is very reasonable (no smokers, druggies, alcoholics or men with a history of any sort of abuse). Of course I have other desires in a mate but I’m somewhat flexible on them and trying to be more so as time goes on. And I’m increasingly willing to compromise on nationality if everything else more or less checks out.

I’ve thought about the guys I’ve gone on dates with in the last year and I remain content with my decision to not pursue anything (though I suspect Gottlieb would probably say they all deserve at least one more date, even the one who cancelled the date at the last minute). If I’m honest, the last guy I went on a date with would probably fit the bill but my heart isn’t in it for some reason.

I’m looking forward to reading the book and hopefully gaining some insight regarding what I should be focusing on as I seek a life partner (that phrase makes me feel about 60 years old).

How did you know your significant other was the one for you?

A couple of commenters were surprised that a guy I hadn’t met in person would invite me to his wedding but now that I have had time to think about it, I should tell you that we had been “getting to know each other” for a while. I feel horrid that I don’t remember exactly how long we talked for but to say it was around a year (I don’t think it was longer than that), and we spoke on the phone at least weekly. He was sweet: he sent me roses twice, once with a cute stuffed bear and once with chocolates, and there is little bad that I can say about him except that I didn’t think we were well suited because I was fat (and taller) than his super slim self (I know, it’s me, allllll me, because he wasn’t bothered by it), and I wanted him to ask me more questions about me and get to know me in the way I wanted him to get to know me, and I felt he wasn’t delivering on that front. Oh the coolest part was we had the same last name! I actually came across him online, thought he was related and contacted him and that’s how we met in the first place. Although we don’t think we’re related, he thought it would be cool if I came to represent the people with our last name.

Also, it’s not uncommon for a Nigerian bride or groom getting married to have complete strangers show up at their wedding (sort of like wedding crashing), so I might have more of a claim of knowing the couple than others who might attend the wedding (not that I have made plans to attend the wedding).

Anyway, I felt bad about the way I portrayed him, so I wanted to clear that up. I still am not sure about the motive of the phone call though; perhaps I have grown suspicious of perfectly pure motives in my 30s.

In that last entry I also mentioned that I seem to collect young Nigerian men like I used to collect coupons to the Michaels craft store. It’s really strange but Nigerian men between the ages of 19 and 27 seem to be drawn to me, not as that sexy older woman who fuels all of their fantasies but as a friend.

Of the following five young Nigerian men I am friends with, I met two through an online forum and three through my “Nigerian” blog. We just clicked, and developed a rapport that is effortless, falling into a teasing older sister-younger brother thing with ease. I am the girl they can tell anything to it seems, or seek advice from or bounce things off of. I’m not saying I’m the only person they can do this with but it seems to be the role I’m destined to play in their life.

J is 26 or 27, lives in Nigeria and I’ve known him for almost five years. A few years ago I sent him a wee care package, inconveniencing one of my cousins to get it to him. She was probably wondering why she had never received anything from me yet this guy was getting something. There’s something very sweet about this guy and I just have the softest spot for him. Gone are the days when I’d tell him to focus on school and his career and save running after women for a while longer, because he has a girlfriend now and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of his engagement soon.

A is in the US and reminds me the most of my relationship with my brothers, especially Brother #1. I sometimes get frustrated talking to him, but he’s gone through some things and he’s someone I’ll always want the best for. He has a tough guy exterior that hides a good person with a good heart full of good intentions. In some ways he’s the perfect blend of my two brothers.

S is also in Nigeria and is in the 25-27 year range. He charmed me with his enthusiastic first email saying that he wanted us to be friends. I misread his genuine enthusiasm and thought he wanted a piece of me and responded in a way that indicated that. I laugh now at my misguided self confidence, with me being all “You can’t have the Jummy” and he being all “I don’t want the Jummy; get over yourself woman!” His candor in explaining that he had a girlfriend and truly just wanted to be friends made me think he was so cool and I developed an instant crush on his soul. I was charmed by the way he communicated. He’s a computer geek which only increases his appeal.

T is in the 19-22 age range and he’s charming. He lives in France so I practice written French with him. We’ve discussed some pretty serious things and he has a fantastic memory which means I have to be honest with him, lest he catch me in a white lie!

K is a day away from turning 24 and he’s in Bulgaria studying medicine. He contacted me regarding a blog entry I had written elsewhere and wanted some advice for his own situation and now we’re buddies. He’s the one that I have the most teasing, lowkey, effortless rapport with; he’s such a kid.

And this week, another young Nigerian guy contacted me regarding something I had blogged about elsewhere and it’s looking like this will go in the direction the others have gone. I think I need a seventh guy who gives me that playful vibe I can’t get enough of, has the ability to charm me and who doesn’t give me that “older sister” vibe!

The day of our meeting, we were talking on msn and for whatever reason I asked him if everything on his profile was true. He said yes, that he would explain at our meeting. I thought nothing of it, because to be honest I don’t know why I even asked the question.

We met at a coffee shop that appeared to accept debit, but we found out later that it only accepts Mastercard. We ended up going for lunch at a well-known sandwich shop next door. As we ate we talked a bit (the usual pleasantries) and after finishing my sandwich I told him that he was not the age he claimed to be, 33. I told him he was older. He smiled and teasingly said that I was free to believe what I wanted. I replied that it was not merely that I thought he was older, I was convinced he had misrepresented his age. After a while he admitted he was in fact 36. I was not impressed, especially since my profile says that men up to the age of 37 can contact me. A day or so after the date we spoke on the phone for about 45 minutes and his explanation as to why he lied about his age (an inside joke between him and a previous contact on the dating site) just sounded ridiculous to me. I felt like if he could lie about this, he could lie about anything. I poured on the guilt, telling him how it was a big deal for me to be totally honest about my size in the written part of my profile, and to put up pictures that accurately reflected my size, and I felt that people should be honest in their profiles.

I hesitated to see him again, but a colleague suggested I give it a chance and see if I could get past the lie. I went into the second date certain the first words out of my mouth would be “LIAR!”, accompanied with my right index finger pointing at him, but I actually had a decent time on the date. We talked about general topics and I felt like he was someone who would accept me more or less as I am (good) but there wasn’t any sizzle or spark on my side.

So after a couple of weeks of sending text messages back and forth, we spoke on the phone and I told him that I didn’t feel the way I should feel about someone I wanted to get to know. I never felt like sending him a text message to see how he was doing; I was content to respond to his text messages. He told me I was resistant to his efforts for us to meet up and get to know each other better and he was right. I’m still trying to figure out why I was resistant: is it because I sort of like another guy who lives far far away or was I just not that into him? We haven’t been in contact in a week and I don’t miss talking to him, it’s more that I miss him not contacting me. Oh, the contrariness of women named Jummy!

And to make things more interesting, one of the guys I never dated sent me a text message completely out of the blue. We hadn’t talked in a while and he asked if he could call me. A number of years ago, I had inadvertently broken his heart. The thought that I could have done such a thing to anyone is unbelievable to me, but I felt like he and I were not well suited for each other so I told him that we should stop our regular communication. Like most men I have almost dated, he was unable to fulfill my desire for a man who shows me unequivocally that he burns to know everything about me. Maybe he (and others) did want to know all about me, but I wanted to them to express this desire in ways that I would recognize: by asking me questions, recalling things that I said to them in the past at appropriate times, or asking me more about my blogs (or trying to find my blogs) after learning I was a blogger. So calling me twice daily wasn’t good enough, though to the guy he probably thought that was a sign of his devotion. Anyway, I don’t regret not dating this guy.

Long story short, I jokingly/seriously asked if he wanted to call to ask me to be his maid of honour and tonight I found out that he is getting married and wanted to catch up with me and invite me to the wedding! Since we quite literally had not spoken on the phone for over four years and have never met in person, is it bad that a small part of me suspects he called (and is inviting me to the wedding) to make sure I know he’s done well for himself? Maybe I feel this way because I wouldn’t have called him to tell him of my impending nuptials. I’d expect him to see pictures on facebook and come to his own conclusions because that’s how it’s done these days!

Anyway, aside from these two events and my strong rapport with young Nigerian men (more on that later), not much is happening with me.

I printed it at the time, and put it up somewhere (my memory’s fuzzy). It got tattered, and when I tried to track down another copy to print I had no luck. I was so desperate to find it that in November of 2005 I emailed the cartoonist somehow and asked him for the link. Unfortunately the link was no longer on his website, but I could order it from another site as a print or on a mug. I didn’t act on it.

But then late last week, I thought of the cartoon again, and I remembered that I had contacted the cartoonist, but forgot what came out of it. I found the email (gmail totally rocks my world) and decided to try and order the strip as a print or on a mug, but I had to contact a different company that’s responsible for printing. I received a reply from the company saying they no longer had the cartoon in their archives, so I’d have to ask the cartoonist to add the print to their site once again, so that I could get it printed.

And guess what? This third party included a link to the cartoon! I was so excited to see it again:

When I read it, I just feel so optimistic. Thanks Shannon for sending it to me in the first place!

Here’s how I’ve done so far:

Sunday night: 3 hours of sleep
Monday night: 8 hours of sleep
Tuesday night: 5.5 hours of sleep

When you add a recent development of a runny nose and watery eyes to the mix, I feel very sleep deprived.

So tonight has to be catch up night (even though apparently you can’t catch up on sleep). After work I’m going to drop the car off at my parents’ place then head home. I intend to be snoring by 11pm, so that I’ll be fresh as a daisy when I wake up at 7:30am.

While I’m here, I need to update you on Sunday’s date. The plan was for us to go to a movie on Sunday afternoon. My job was to find out movie times, and he would call on the weekend to confirm the time we’d be meeting. It was nearly noon on Sunday and I hadn’t heard from him (and I had received a dinner invitation), so I sent him a text message letting him know which show I’d like to go to. His reply was “Sorry am not feeling well maybe next week?” If we ignore the obvious lack of punctuation and my personal dislike of using “am” when “I’m” or “I am” would do (hehe, I’m joking! I don’t judge men on the quality of their text messages), I was insulted that he didn’t let me know he was sick ahead of time. Since we had agreed on an afternoon movie, when was he planning on letting me know?

I don’t mind that he canceled; my problem is that I’m not sure that he would have let me know had I not contacted him. The reason I say that is if he was planning to let me know, when I contacted him a few hours before our meeting time, he could have said something along the lines of “I was just about to call/text you”. My reply to him was to not reply. It felt like the right thing to do.

He had called after our June date but didn’t leave a message, so I didn’t feel obliged to call him back. When he called tonight he asked why I hadn’t called him back and I told him that I don’t call back people who don’t leave messages. I think he got the message. I also told him about how distracted he appeared during our date and he apologized and told me that he is easily distracted and he’s aware of that. To be fair, he said the same thing during our date, after I gave him a pointed look or two.

He’d like to go on a second date. I’m amused because it’s been five months since our first meeting and I guess boredom led him to go through his list of contacts, see my name and decide to call me. We will be going to see 2012 on the weekend. I think best case scenario he wants a girlfriend, but he would also be happy to have someone to do things like go to the movies with. He was a nice enough guy and I have no fear that he will chop me up into tiny pieces so I said yes to the movie. He knows where I stand with regard to the importance of chemistry before I embark on a relationship and he’s ok with being friends, but we’ll see about that: he seems to feel that the best relationships develop from a friendship so he may be trying to try that tack with me. I plan to pay for my movie ticket and popcorn though.

I remember when I talked about this date with my single colleagues (more than half of whom are now in relationships!), the consensus was that he wasn’t worth going on a second date with, at least from the point of view of possibly getting a boyfriend out of the process. Back then I felt like I owed him a second date just to make sure that some of the things that raised my eyebrow (at least inwardly) weren’t due to first date jitters brought on by being faced by the beauty that is Jummy. Now I’m just looking at movies with him as a change from my usual weekend routine.

Between the pictures, the stories of proposals that gave me literal shivers, and the sweet expressions of love written on these sites from one half of a couple to the other, it was enough to make me want to cry. One of the men is such a fantastic writer that I would marry him, sight unseen, based on his writing alone (though it turns out he’s totally attractive and a medical doctor; be still my heart! Oh yeah, and engaged…to be married in December…right!). And of course each couple is so freaking accomplished and they look so perfect! I just can’t imagine looking as cute in pictures, looking as if the world exists only for my fiancé and I.

I hope my time will come, I think it will, but every now and then I wonder. I also greedily wonder whether my “story” will be one that I’ll share with excitement, and get shivers reliving. Then I wonder if, as I get older, I should give up lower my expectations on some of the more romantic elements of a relationship and focus on compromising with someone who I care about and who cares about me. Maybe that’s part of growing up.

A part of me will be sad if I don’t experience those feelings that I really want to experience (with regard to falling in love). A part of me will be sad if growing older means giving up on the idea of feeling giddy and completely silly, feelings related to falling in infatuation love, because I’m “old”. Sometimes I feel like I was born to experience a great love; other times I think all the books I’ve read and movies I’ve watched have done nothing more than give me unrealistic expectations that will never come true.

We’ll see though. I’m not quite ready to give up the dream yet.

No need to leave comments cheering me up — I’m fine! In fact, check out my thankful post on my other blog: I am thankful for our troops!