alright...

I got a text from my love-friend Kim this morning saying 'today we're going to be aunties again, Emily's water broke and they're on the way to the hospital!'! I have been best friends with Em since, what, seventh grade? eighth? Anyway, she is now a mommy!! Such a happy, weird, surreal, and incredible day. And to add to the happy, weird, surreal, and indredibleness... I had a brief conversation with another good friend who is engaged and due to marry in about three months, and will soon be down the same parental path. I have known these two kids forever. Anyway, I am, quite obviously, having a weird day. I guess this is an attempt to figure out why the weirdness? I think, probably, I am weird because these two people, for so long, were always on the same path I was. And now they aren't. You know, your stereotypical post-high school-all-of-my-friends-are-getting-married weirdness. We were in high school together. Played sports together. Seminary. Dances. Proms. I always knew where they were, how they were, what was next, and why. Not only that, I knew because I was in the same boat. But now, I talk to Emily and she's so adorably telling me about the lovely bodily happenings of being pregnant. She talks lovingly about going to the movies with her husband at 10 o'clock in the morning. She is waffling back and forth between names for her baby, busy writing thank you notes for her shower, and doing run-throughs for what will happen when she goes into labor. I love her oh so dearly and call her regularly to hear all the updates. But when she is done and it's my turn to talk, here's what I say, "School is great. I love it. My family is good, yea. Oh, the boy's? Well, I don't know, I go and dates and stuff, but I just don't know." I guess I can't help but trivialize what I am going through as far as dating is concerned because, well, the men don't really much matter until 'the one' shows up. If I were more patient by nature, I would be more likely to face this situation with the thought that being in the process is just as interesting and fun. But I'm not patient by nature. And I'm not in a hurry to get married, I'm just hard-wired to always look at the end result. I so often forget to enjoy the journey it takes to get somewhere. So if I'm not even enjoying it, then why would Em enjoy hearing about it, right? well of course she likes to hear about it, I just get bored talking about it. I am the impatient one, remember? I feel like a broken record every six months or so, saying 'I'm dating someone, but I don't know." "I don't know". "I don't know". It's getting old.

But, it is too important of a decision and I want too good of a marriage to not be picky about it while I'm dating. Maybe there will come a point when I'm willing to sacrifice some of the must-have's just because I'm getting old and need to get married. But I am very very far from that point right now, and I'm going to be as picky as I have every right to be.

So, in the meantime... I am going to focus on what I do best, which at this point is all I know, to be single. And also, since I do not want to end on a sad note, I am going to name all of the things that I can do right now that married people pretty much cannot: go to graduate school full time, train for a 5k, spend ridiculous amounts of time on the phone with people I love to talk to and make me laugh, pick my little sister up from school, leave on a trip to Houston to see my niece for the weekend, get addicted to reality shows, sew, read, bead, oh, and keep up a blog...