Babies here they come

Hey do you ever feel like everyone is having babies but you?  I am being to think its in the water (should I be worried?).  The last place I worked over the last two years has seen the production of something like 10+ babies! Yikes!  I guess that's what happens when thirty-somethings finally get full-time jobs with maternity and paternity benefits...they have a baby and cash in their family benefits.  

Sometimes I feel like I am one of the few people who isn't and perhaps does not want one...a baby that is because I am all for the job with benefits. I find it all a bit funny because even some people I swear a few years ago were like "oh no we aren't having kids, have had one."  It's fine and I am happy for them but I find myself trying to come up with excuses to not have to attend a plethora of baby showers.  Something men are lucky to not have to attend.  Count your lucky stars men because they can be scary.  

I recently with a friend attended a baby shower and having known the "new mum" since I was 5  but having never met any her friends after having reconnected recently myself and a mutual friend were slightly unsure what to expect at her baby shower.  Were they going to be scary diapers filled with melted chocolate bars simulating baby poo?  Were we going to have to guess what it was or even worse eat it? Was there going to be a huge swan made out of diapers?  If the truth be told we were a little worried....

However, we didn't need to be.  When we arrived the hostess greeted us with full arm tatoos on both arms and we both breathed a sigh a relief.  It was a good baby shower we basically ate really good food, didn't have to hold the baby and laughed lots.  It was fun and if all baby showers were like that one maybe I wouldn't mind them or babiess.  Kidding but not really.  I even at my approaching 36+ years do not feel the biological clock ticking or any sort of hankering for babies....I am definately ok with that but its just adds to the social pressures.  I remember when one of my friends had her first baby her husband immediately asked me like day two of the baby's life when I was going to have one.  I thought he was kidding turns out he wasn't.  My reply was "I think you a) need to have sex first and b) a steady income also helps." Whatever I am sure if it is meant to be sometime before I hit the guiness book of world records for oldest mum ever I will have a kid.  But I hope to have plenty of practise with copious amounts of organims and birth control first!

Food For Thought

"Now the thing about having a baby - and I can't be the first person to have noticed this - is that thereafter you have it." ~Jean Kerr

Update on Urbane Beaver

Greetings,  Sorry I haven't had any posts recently.  I am currently stressing about writing exams and preparing for interviews with the federal government.  Its a bit stressful but I am hoping all my hardwork of apply for jobs over the past 10 or so months is going to pay off.  I will be back next week with some more blogs.
 

Christ-mass Trip Udpate

I am happy to report that my friends and I have successfully booked our trip to New Orleans over Chirst-mass! And we were able to find a hotel where we each have a bed and we don't have to share.  However, we are only worthy of double beds.  I guess in order to get a Queen you have to be one?  I am not sure.

I am getting really excited to spend this years holiday season with friends in a new and exciting place.  I have spent 2 other Christ-masses away from the family but this is one that I am actually really excited about.  

 

The first Christ-mass I spent away from my family I was in Australia...we had curry and spent the day in the Sydney Royal Botanical Gardens....sleeping.  Because our hostel had been taken over by the many many rowdy Brits (no offense) who had cooked this huge turkey feast and took over the entire hostel and who had kindly (not) invited anyone who was not associated with the Union Jack to help them eat it. Plus our roommates had absconded and drank all the bottles of champagne the hostel had nicely provided to their guests as a nice Xmas treat.   

The second Christ-mass I spent in my one bedroom basement suite in Saskatoon because 1) I didn't really want to go home and 2) it would have cost me an entire months rent to fly home to BC.  So a good friend came from Calgary to spend it with me.  She endured the Greyhound bus trip for many hours so we could avoid BC and our families and spend Xmas the way we wanted to.  I cooked a turkey and invited another friend of mine, who was in town for the holidays.  And later we sat in my landlord's hot tub drunk on homemade spiced wine, my Swedish friend brought, watching the snow fall.  It was great!

This year though, I am really looking forward to spending my holidays on an actual holiday.  In a nice hotel with complimentary bathrobes, good food and a rooftop pool hopefully with a bar.  We will be dining on  some good chow not super cheap curry at Kings Cross surrounded by porn bars and shops. And will we be enjoying the spirits of holiday cheer with spirits!

Yes I am truly looking forward to this trip. Look out New Orleans here comes Singletown X's 3!

Food For Thought

"There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it" 

~ Charles Dudley Warner

Losing yourself in coupledom

Have you ever noticed that when some people get into relationships they tend to lose themselves?  It's like they get sucked into a void - the relationship void and they lose sight of who they are.  I have seen it happen many times and have to admit that in my early twenties I was guilty of doing it myself.  However, I vowed after that relationship it wasn't going to happen again and it hasn't maybe due to the fact that I have spent a significant amount of that time in Singletown. Or maybe because as I age my standards for relationships and partners increase.

I know it may seem unfair to judge others but I wonder why people put the other person in their relationship and their needs above their very own.  I have seen friends stop doing the things they love doing such as sports, attending concerts etc. because it didn't suit their partner. Well too damn bad is what I say you should do them anyways.  I mean there has to be some kind of compromise(s) in relationships but sometimes its seems that one person compromises all the way and the other person not at all.

I have to admit that I often find it hard to not voice my opinion about it.  If you know me you how incredibly hard that is for me.  I am not very good at censoring myself. 

Now that I am older and supposedly wiser I have set standards and expectations for myself one of which is not to lose myself in a relationship ever again.  I thought this would be an easy task for most people.  I mean as we age we become so entrenched in who we are that it is a) hard to change and b) why would you want to, you are you.  However, that is not the case. I  know plenty of people my age (thirty-something) and older who are still losing themselves in relationships and both men and women do it so I know its not gender specific.  

When you embark in a committed relationship is it a something wonderful....or at least I am told often by couples.  I agree it can be amazing but not so much if you let it cost the most important thing, yourself.  When did being a couple mean that you had to completely give up yourself.  Many people seem to do it.  I guess I was lucky to grow up with parents who did many things together but also respect and love each other to realize that they need their own time, friends and interests.  However, despite that I fell into the void anyways.  But I am older and wiser and I think it is important in relationships to be able to hold your own.  To not cater all the time to the other person and to make sure you are happy in your relationship with you.  Do people really want to be with someone who is happy for you leave yourself, the real you, at the gates of Singletown while you go running into Coupledom as someone else? Is being in a relationship that important? Personally I don't think so.  I am happy to have many friends who accept me and let me be who I am and if I can't find someone to share my life with that feels the same way - so be it. I will happily be found Singletown.   

So to all those of you in Singletown I say this is a really good point, one of many, to use as leverage against all those couples who wonder why we are still single and why it really isn't all that bad. 

Food For Thought

"First, all relationships are with yourself-and sometimes they involve other people. Second, the most important relationships in you life - the one you have, like it or not, until the day you die - is with yourself. ~ Peter McWilliams

Thanksgiving Move

Food For Thought

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them.  ~George Bernard Shaw

I decided to put the food for thought at the beginning of this blog because I just spent Thanksgiving with my parents.  In Canada we celebrate Thanksgiving the second weekend in October unlike American Thanksgiving celebrated on the third Thursday of November.  Canadians celebrate thanks for the harvest where as Americans celebrate that the pilgrams were saved from starvation by the American Indians.  Whatever, however, and whenever you celebrate this holiday it is a feast of turkey, stuffing and the trimmings and it is great. The only hiccup, is it is usually spent with family.....This year I spent my entire weekend helping my parents move...actually it was more like cleaning their house, packing and re-arranging the one of two storage units they have as of today they are homeless... well not really they are renting until the house that has it all comes up for sale. And that friends is an entirely different story.  

Sixteen years ago when my parents last moved I missed out on all the fun and glory . I believe my brother helped with that move though the amount of help he gave is still unsubstantiated,  I was fortunately out of the country.  However, I really wonder if it was truly as painful as this move.  I think not!

This time around my parents are 16 years older and that equals 16 years more of stubbornness to my father's personal attributes.  I shouldn't complain after all they have helped me with many things over the years given my "singleness".  I really realized and at one point actually said out loud to my dad "oh what fun Matt gets to miss".  That's my brother whom these last few years has conveniently relocated off shore and out of the country I personally believe it is to avoid these precious family times together though he says its for the weather.

Like many fathers mine generally thinks he is right and will argue to the point where you are just wasting your breath.  I mean do they really need to keep and store the pup tent purchased in 1980? I mean seriously!  Even a thrift store would turn it away!  That and the 30 year old sports equipment that has accompanied them for so long I think its considered family.  I can imagine them saying "We have 2 kids and of course that doesn't include the extended family of tennis rackets! "

I have to say that my mum was really good about purging...unfortunately she is fighting a losing battle against my dad who will look through thrift store boxes and take things out.  She has succumbed to hiding and burying things at the bottom just so my dad won't find them in the boxes and remove them. After 4 days of packing, moving and cleaning I had had enough and they were done...for the most part.  I love my parents but seriously I wanted to gouge my eyes out many many days during the weekend.  If it wasn't for my mum.,my dad and I would likely have several more "spats".

It really makes me think that in order to "like" your family you have to spend significantly more time away from them than with them! Maybe its just me but really this is so true for me. 

Another trip to coupledom

OK  I know I tend to rant on about the single versus couple thing but really some days it just pisses me off....so bear with me.  My latest adventure - traveling.  Myself and two friends are trying to book a trip to New Orleans over the "holiday season" to 1) avoid another pathetic holiday season spent with married siblings, parents and 2) avoid those pitiful looks from people at social gatherings commenting about how sad it is that you aren't spending the holidays with a loved one blab blab.  Whatever!  At least I will be spending it with people I like and not drinking myself into oblivion to avoid those "cheerful" family forced dinners.

We are three single professional gals who are independent and after spending almost every Christ-mass that's right I said Christ-mass you now the mass celebration where you spend most of the time thinking at least to yourself Christ how did I survive this last year?  Well the three of us have decided to venture out and actually spend it how we want to...enjoying copious amounts of food and liquor as per usual however, this year it will be with people we choose and whom we like and in a fun and exciting place, where I don't have to dress in my thermal underwear just to get to the car. 

So in my research to find us a decent place to stay in New Orleans I have come across a rather disturbing yet not too shocking discovery.  The plight of the singleton or singletons to find a decent hotel that doesn't cost me an ovary or first born child.  

I don't know what goes down there in Louisiana but it is really hard to find a decent hotel room for two or more people (friends) who do not wish to engage in close quarter sleeping arrangements in other words sex.  In Canada it seems rather easy to get a hotel room with 2 Queen beds, however in my search I have come across a plethora of rooms with either the choice of A meaning 1 King and/or  1 Queen bed, romantic and family vacation packages and even a "rock star" room.  What I have had a hard time finding is a room for us singles that isn't outrageously priced or forcing me to share a bed with a friend.  Something I find rather ironic in a country and state that doesn't recognize same sex marriages or unions! 

What I find incredibly frustrating is that my friends and I whom had decided on the reality of 2 adjoining rooms because of space and bathroom reasons are getting shafted.  And not in a good way.  It is almost impossible to find a decent room with 2 beds or a suite for 3 adults and guess what for that extra bed(s) not person(s) but the bed the rate is a lot more.  Like hundreds more! Depending on your length of stay! Which I think is incredibly insane I mean its like you pay more for being single and/or not wanting to sleep literally or figuratively with your friend(s). 

It's just another example of how couples get things for cheaper because they do.  I mean I think it's nuts that myself and my friends have to pay more money to occupy the same space as a "couple".  

That being said one of my friends seems to have found us a nice option a hotel with a suite that will probably work for us... though one of us will most likely be sleeping on a sofa bed because another extra bed adds like $100 a night!  Whatever.  We can handle it!   But I would be a lot happier if society would change its attitudes about singles.  I am getting really tired of living in Coupledom. Sometimes Singletown feels like a bad suburb where we pay extra taxes and get jack for it all while watching Coupledom recieved nice new curbing and safer lights at our expense.  Oh well.....maybe one day people will say "Oh your not single" That's really sad"

Food For Thought

"Being single is pretty good. It’s a nice sense of irresponsibility."~Michael Douglas