Here it is, just a few days away from my birthday and it’s about to be one of the busiest and most stressful times for me this year. So busy in fact, if it weren’t for Luisa trying to make plans, I might have actually forgotten it was my birthday at together.
You see, as I take a break from packing, my birthday lands on a Wednesday this year, which of course is a school night filled with an anthropology quiz and stuck in class until 8:30pm. Not to mention, I have my take home mid-term that is due the next class along with a portion of my 3-5 page research paper. While that doesn’t seem too daunting, lets throw in the fact that I am moving this weekend. The thought of how high my stress levels are going to be have kept me paralyzed at times to avoid it all together. But tonight I have created a giant black trash bag of Goodwill items including clothes, shoes and movies as well as packed over 12 boxes with many many more to go.
You know, maybe it is the high stress time between school and my life but I really don’t care about this birthday. Not as much as I think my father does. You see my father has had it set in his mind to “get his daughter married off” most likely as I am getting “old”. In the course of two weeks my father has tried to set me up with two different men. The first is the guy at the Verizon Wireless store. He was so proud because he didn’t give the guy my cell phone number, just showed him my picture and got his information. If I was a desperate single woman I might have jumped at the chance but with my life being so busy, I don’t have time to fit in half my friends let alone a new man. Then there was the staff member at the wedding last weekend. Yes, you heard me, the banquet server who lives in Fort Collins that worked my nieces wedding. What is worse is that my own sister, (yes you Becky) and my mother, left me hanging and having to publicly decline my fathers pushing and the boys offer to take me dancing after the wedding. Seriously?! You just asked to take me dancing as I just came off the dance floor at the event you are working? Are you asking to dance at my nieces wedding or go someplace to dance at midnight? I would add in more details however I have a feeling that would make me come off looking like a stuck up witchy woman when in fact I would just be telling the harsh truth. The episode did at least make for comical conversations for the next 15 minutes between Becky, my mother and my niece Jenn joking about what our “how we met” story could have been like.
As I enter into the last year of my twenties I am actually OK with where I am in life. I have dropped the desperation level of wanting children as I have accepted my life for where I am and the road that I am on. That I am ready for a relationship but right now, I just haven’t found the man that is ready for me. I know that I can be a lot to handle; a brain that runs at full speed causing me to “think too much”, my hormones sometimes taking a ride on an emotional roller coaster and then there is always the social anxiety that still creeps up every once and awhile but the right man will think all of that is nothing hard to handle or put up with when you add in all the good things that I provide. If in 5 years that I haven’t found someone, then I can start feeling the need to procreate with an anonymous sperm donor. I appreciate my father trying to help but the type of man that he is looking for and what I am looking for are two different things. Even I struggle with what I want that luckily Luisa is there to call me out every once and awhile and remind me what type of man can really put up with me. *wink
So with the next week this birthday will pass by and I am just fine with that, I celebrated big last year and next year I can do the same for my 30th birthday. To me it is just another day, just another birthday that will come and go and no one will notice, maybe not even myself. As for me, I have got to get back to work as this place isn’t going to pack itself (but that would be a pretty awesome birthday gift. A girl can dream, right?)