So we reconnected after literal years of not talking like that and it felt great. She’s very easy to talk to and it was fun to try and remember snippets from each other’s lives to ask about. It helps that we’re Facebook friends though we don’t talk on there except for our birthdays and her wedding and birth of her baby girl. This entry is triggered by my usual feeling after reconnecting with people I admire and swapping info about our lives: I always feel like I’m not moving fast enough. She’s married, her husband relocated from halfway across the world to be with her, she’s a mother now, she’s got her job, her little family seem so sweet. I’ve done things too but not enough for me to be content. I am not where I wanted to be at this stage of life. I want to buy that car (the one I’ve moaned about for ages), travel all around the country and into the USA, marry a man who loves me, make a baby or three. I feel these things will happen but my 32nd birthday and whatever’s triggered this evening’s sense of wistfulness makes me feel like it needs to happen very soon or I’ll burst into tears.

This feeling will pass and I will once again focus on what I have been blessed with. In fact I intend to share a post on the things I am grateful for on my other blog.

*My girl crushes aren’t at romantic: they’re people whose personality, life, or story I totally love. If they inspire me in some way I officially crush on them.

Ok, I’ve finally found a solution to my desire to share some tales about the fella I fancy but not on this blog. I have sent the link to a brand new blog to readers who have expressed interest in knowing more. If you would like to have a link to this blog, let me know in the comments and I’ll send you the link. To those who got to read one lonely entry back in January and then didn’t hear anything more, I would like you to know that I spent the afternoon and some of the evening preparing scheduled entries that will appear once a week starting this coming Monday (at 8:00am EST, Monday mornings) up to and including May 2, 2011.

Ahhh.

I’m going to be quite busy in April, May, June and July. One of my blog projects, the Nigerian Blog Awards, will be entering its second year at the end of May and there is quite a bit of setup required. I already know I will be using one or two work days to handle the administrative aspects of running the blog and crying myself to sleep at the mean comments some yokels who’ve never tried to manage such a thing will leave on the blog. Thankfully I have four weeks of vacation this year, and so far none of those weeks are going to be sucked up with a trip to Nigeria.

Speaking of work, I celebrated five years of employment in November, but received my award for the years of service last week. The award night fell on the same night as the surprise retirement party for a colleague who has been employed for what will be 39 years this December. As another colleague mentioned it kind of makes my five years of service look puny! But I was part of the committee that organized the party and my colleagues have been so gracious in commending us for the work we did. It was a great evening, though the lead-up to the event was slightly stressful (you know what group work is like!).

I started swimming lessons last week! After years and years of saying I wanted to learn to swim, one of my best friends and I signed up for lessons together. And I also signed up for Zumba, which is a workout and a half so far…my body ached for days after my first class and I felt completely uncoordinated and inept. Thank God for spring and a desire to move my body…I can assure you I would not have been tempted to move four months ago.

I fell asleep crafting my April Fools’ blog entry, but here it is. I could save it for next year but I’ll probably forget if I try that:

Three long years ago, I ran but mostly walked a 5km, inspired to raise money for the Canadian Diabetes Association, an organization that is close to my heart. This year I decided to sign up for the same race, but it and the 10km were sold out. As a result I’ve signed up to walk and run the half marathon for the same cause, and I have eight weeks to train for this.

Scarier than the training is the $2,500 that I will have to raise. Sure, they give you until the end of July to raise the funds but that is a large chunk of change. I’m hoping I can count on your very generous support. Please click here to support me. Any amount will help!

So, that’s what’s up with me…what’s up with you?

I just wanted to say that I dislike structure and accountability, evidence, perhaps, that I’m not ready to grow up. When I feel that I have to do something, a part of me rebels intrinsically. Work, thankfully, seems to be the exception, and I actually like order at work (my desk, admittedly, says otherwise).

So, don’t be surprised if you never read another monthly progress report on the accomplishment of those goals I had (What? You had only ever seen the one?). The goals have not been forgotten; I’m just in a phase where I’m rebelling against their very existence.

To answer the question left in the comments of the last entry, I have a lot to say on that topic and I’m trying to figure out the best way to share that info. Once I do, you’ll definitely be the recipient of much drama and gushing on my part.

I wonder if when I look back on my life, the year 2010 will stand out. I often tell friends experiencing disappointment in matters of the heart that this year will be just the tiniest blip in their entire life but some disappointments, no matter what wonderful things come after them, are tough to handle.

I just want to know if I’m going to have a boyfriend while I still have a libido…that is not too much to ask, is it?

Quite unexpectedly, about six weeks after I wrote the above, hope did come. And this is why I’m glad I have a blog: it allows me to look back on things that were causing me stress and see how the situation has been turned around in what ends up being a short time, relatively speaking (but only in retrospect).

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I’d love to say that to someone someday…and mean every word of it. I’m excited at the thought of feeling this way about someone.

My to do list (click to make bigger) for last month was largely incomplete though I made some feeble efforts: I managed to pay my property taxes (although the money still hasn’t been removed from my account which makes me wonder why they haven’t processed my cheques), I tried to get a charity organization to pick up the television in my livingroom and the vacuum but they don’t pick up those items, and I went looking for curtain rods on three occasions. I bought this one for my bedroom and it just needs to be installed. However, I managed to injure my back, presumably while measuring the other windows in the house, so I’ve been dealing with back issues for about a week, though thankfully it’s getting a lot better. If a miracle occurs, I may be able to coordinate hanging the rods, but chances are I won’t. Thank God my home is not on the main level…you’d have to stand quite far across the street to be a proper Peeping Tom.

I want brushed metal (steel?) curtain rods for the other rooms of the house, and finding them seems near impossible — silvery-painted curtain rods are everywhere but that nice steel (or similar) look that I want is nowhere to be found. That’s not exactly true: Ike@ has these, but I’m not ready to pay sixty dollars for the length I need.

I have a few loose ends to tie up before I leave, things I didn’t have to think about last time because my dad stayed behind and looked after it all. Now that I’m a home owner, I have extra bills to ensure are paid, I need to find someone to collect my mail from the two locations, and I just learned that my home insurance requires someone come to the house to check on it in my absence every few days. I also have to make sure my fridge is emptied of perishables.

To calm my ever-present trip-related jitters (due mostly to my fear of flying), I’ve been making lists but I have at last count five different lists, some that overlap, and none of which are the “ultimate list of everything I need to address before I go”. I keep dreaming that I forgot my shoes and I had to go around in these particular flipflops that Nigerians call bathroom slippers.

My family has a disorder that renders us unable to pack lightly, and I’m trying to fight this genetic predisposition this time around. (unlike last time, where we were charged $70 USD per overweight luggage which we had three of). Since I’ll be away for a while, I have to find a good balance between “packing every summery article of clothing I own” and “not packing so lightly that I look like I’m wearing a uniform”.

I’m excited about the trip, though the intended highlight of the trip was supposed to be meeting a fellow that I’d been talking to by phone and online for about eight months. Unfortunately, things fizzled before the end of the summer and I can accept the role I played in the demise of our friendship. Over the past few weeks I’ve gone from not wanting to see him to recognizing the advantages of meeting up with him as a way of moving toward closure, even if I’m the only one who needs it.

All of that to say I’m going on a trip that I’m really looking forward to, and I’m going to have a marvelous time and come back just in time to get my toes frozen off by our city’s November weather.

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?