Today has been a great day so far. I feel great. That spacey feeling in my head is subsiding and I feel as though I’m thinking a bit more clearly. I don’t feel as tired either and even woke up at a reasonably normal time without an alarm or the threat of unemployment looming over my head. It’s been a productive day too. While I haven’t finished everything on my list, there’s still tomorrow. The weekend is only half over! Normally I don’t feel this good until Sunday night, just in time to go back to work.
Okay, so I didn’t get to the mall, or do much housework. I did work on my freelance story that’s due and I did run several errands.
I also joined some girlfriends – two of the three Tinas – for dinner. We ate at Governor Stumpy’s and then rented a movie (a chick flick of course) called “Must Like Dogs.” I’m not sure if Tina J. liked it much. Admittedly, I could have done without a few sections, but on the whole it was cute. Sometimes chick flicks are a little hard for me to watch these days. I’m a romantic at heart, and romance has left my life and it seems unlikely to return.
I never say that out loud because it’s met with a varied chorus of “you don’t know thats” or “God has a plan” or whatever else people try to say when they’re trying to be encouraging because they think you’ve got a bad attitude. I don’t want to hear it, and so I don’t talk about it. The reality is in the dating world I’m out of time, out of place, and I’ve got a moving van of baggage – realities that are conveniently overlooked by well-meaning friends whose greatest obstacles in the dating world can be remedied by meeting more people or getting their hair done. Don’t misunderstand, if God intends me to be with someone, I’m sure it would happen – but he’s going to have to cook up a miracle to pull it off.
There’s a scene in the movie when the main character tries to buy a chicken breast from the butcher, just a chicken breast. He goes on about the sale they’re having, and how she could have two chickens for just a bit more. After trying to politely refuse and just get her chicken breast, she says something like, “Look. I’m single. I generally eat out of containers while standing over my sink. I don’t want a whole chicken. I don’t want to freeze a chicken. I don’t want chicken parts around for weeks. I just want a chicken breast!” Man, I felt her pain.
Supposedly 25 percent of people in this country are single, but I don’t believe it. Many in this figure aren’t really single, they’re just not legally married. I think few people really understand how hard things can be for single people much over the age of 30 without kids or families. I often feel like I’m out of step with the rest of society. That’s partly because of HPS, and partly because of some of the turns my life has taken because of HPS. I wouldn’t be single today were it not for HPS (a circumstance which is, admittedly, because of events in my own life. I don’t mean to say that people with HPS won’t find love. Most do.)
I’ve got a wedding to go to next weekend. Please don’t get me wrong. I happy to buy wedding gifts for friends and I celebrate their happiness. But, there’s something about weddings that our culture doesn’t seem to have caught up with.
These days most people don’t marry until later. Usually by that time they’ve started to establish house holds of their own. Yet, suddenly, because they’re married everyone’s consumed with whether they have enough household items to set up a life together. Why don’t we give wedding gifts that have a more symbolic meaning for the occasion instead of blenders and toasters and towels that match?
Why don’t we have coming of age parties for people in their early 20s getting their first apartments? It used to be people got married then and set up their first apartments as a couple. Now, you get a bunch of household items at your wedding (albeit fun I’m sure) when in actuality you really needed the help with such things years before when you were paying off student loans and making close to minimum wage in your first job. Does that sound like a bitter old maid?
Okay, so I didn’t get to the mall, or do much housework. I did work on my freelance story that’s due and I did run several errands.
I also joined some girlfriends – two of the three Tinas – for dinner. We ate at Governor Stumpy’s and then rented a movie (a chick flick of course) called “Must Like Dogs.” I’m not sure if Tina J. liked it much. Admittedly, I could have done without a few sections, but on the whole it was cute. Sometimes chick flicks are a little hard for me to watch these days. I’m a romantic at heart, and romance has left my life and it seems unlikely to return.
I never say that out loud because it’s met with a varied chorus of “you don’t know thats” or “God has a plan” or whatever else people try to say when they’re trying to be encouraging because they think you’ve got a bad attitude. I don’t want to hear it, and so I don’t talk about it. The reality is in the dating world I’m out of time, out of place, and I’ve got a moving van of baggage – realities that are conveniently overlooked by well-meaning friends whose greatest obstacles in the dating world can be remedied by meeting more people or getting their hair done. Don’t misunderstand, if God intends me to be with someone, I’m sure it would happen – but he’s going to have to cook up a miracle to pull it off.
There’s a scene in the movie when the main character tries to buy a chicken breast from the butcher, just a chicken breast. He goes on about the sale they’re having, and how she could have two chickens for just a bit more. After trying to politely refuse and just get her chicken breast, she says something like, “Look. I’m single. I generally eat out of containers while standing over my sink. I don’t want a whole chicken. I don’t want to freeze a chicken. I don’t want chicken parts around for weeks. I just want a chicken breast!” Man, I felt her pain.
Supposedly 25 percent of people in this country are single, but I don’t believe it. Many in this figure aren’t really single, they’re just not legally married. I think few people really understand how hard things can be for single people much over the age of 30 without kids or families. I often feel like I’m out of step with the rest of society. That’s partly because of HPS, and partly because of some of the turns my life has taken because of HPS. I wouldn’t be single today were it not for HPS (a circumstance which is, admittedly, because of events in my own life. I don’t mean to say that people with HPS won’t find love. Most do.)
I’ve got a wedding to go to next weekend. Please don’t get me wrong. I happy to buy wedding gifts for friends and I celebrate their happiness. But, there’s something about weddings that our culture doesn’t seem to have caught up with.
These days most people don’t marry until later. Usually by that time they’ve started to establish house holds of their own. Yet, suddenly, because they’re married everyone’s consumed with whether they have enough household items to set up a life together. Why don’t we give wedding gifts that have a more symbolic meaning for the occasion instead of blenders and toasters and towels that match?
Why don’t we have coming of age parties for people in their early 20s getting their first apartments? It used to be people got married then and set up their first apartments as a couple. Now, you get a bunch of household items at your wedding (albeit fun I’m sure) when in actuality you really needed the help with such things years before when you were paying off student loans and making close to minimum wage in your first job. Does that sound like a bitter old maid?
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