If I so much as hear a peep about marriage, I am going to burst!
Is it the new thing of 2007 that people have to talk about damn marriages? hell, don't get me wrong, if marriage is ur thing, then kudos but i don't want to spend my whole day talking about it with u. And yea, this first five times u showed me ur engagement ring, I thot it was really cute, but every other time after that, it has taken patience i wasn't aware I had to keep me from shoving the ring down ya throat, and that is me being honest...
I am not tying to hate on anyone, but ladies, because u have been proposed to and are getting married doesn't mean I have to jump on the bandwagon right now as well. I mean, I always imagined I'd get married, but i thot I would be close to thirty, and would have sown my oats first.
This venting has been a long time coming. It started when I graduated from college some years back. After the ceremeony, we were taking pictures when people started making cracks about me getting married as the next step to graduating. well excuse the fuck outta me, i thot i was going back to school, get a job and find myself in the process, but shit if u guys want me married, then I suppose I can drop everything I'd planned and just jump on ur train.
Fastforward to thanksgiving...
My mom had come to town for the holidays and we had a jolly old time. popsie didn't show but we made the most of the time we had. couple of hours before i'm due to drop her off at the train station, she calls me into my room, sat me on the bed and
mom: so, bawoni (whatz going on)?
moi: bawo ni kini?
mom: ehn, so about ur husband to be, when are we going to meet him?
moi: oh, thatz easy! u'll meet him after i do, and when we've decided we are going to get married of course.
Mom: ok, if you say so, but are there any possibilities right now.
moi: (getting flustered) no, but i'll let you know ( n thinking i will when people start shitting monkeys).
mom: why are there no possibilities?
moi: I don't know. But I am waiting on God. ( and of course, I'm thinking it might be because I opted for the license-plate placard as opposed to one announcing my singlehood and desperate need for a husband).
I suppose after i'd told her I was waiting on God, she was persuaded. This wasn't untrue, but at the time, I was not worried about being married. Matter of fact, I considered myself way too young for that institution. I would get little comments about it every once in a while, and I always managed to brush it off. Living in different cities helped as well, as they couldn't get on my case everyday.
Then came the 21questions from extended families! Haba, these are people who made no impact whatsoever in my life o. I hadn't even heard of most of them until I came to live in the states, and all of a sudden, they deemed themselves authority figures on me living my life. Shio. I for cuss people out if I wasn't worried about giving my mom a heart attack.
Oh, and did I mention the family friends? And by these I mean my parentz friends. awon gboran mi deleru, adani duro de oni gbese eni (busybodies for short). again, these are all poeple i met when I came to live in the states, even though i'd heard about some from naija.
One of them in particualr actually sat me down when I was just 21 and said, i can do more than one thing at a time, meaning school and of course marriage. It all sounded so techincal and I couldn't help but be disgusted even though I know she probably said it cos she cares.
Everytime I come in contact with or talk to these people, I am subjected to the same convo, to the point where I would get on the defensive before they can even start, and I started to avoid them altogether. Sad! I know!
I happened to run into one of such women not too long ago and she accused me of not calling her. I wish I would have been able to tell her the reason, but as always, I kept it to myself.
Lately though, my dad's been the one on the marriage trip. hell, it's not like i'm shrivelling like some old prune, but pops been on the marriage bandwagon lately, and its knocking on my last nerve. I was home for a couple of weeks last month when he started asking questions. Funny enough, my mom is now of the mind that it will happen when it happens, and she usually is the one who bugs about things like that.
After i'd fended off different ways the question could be asked, he came home one day all excited.
pops: hey, i've got great news! ur friend in nigeria got married!
moi: I had tons of friends in naija, and some I still keep in touch with, but seeing as how he knows about the wedding and I didn't, whoever it was couldn't have been that close a friend.
pops: well, i suppose he wasn't much ur friend. well, actually, he's ur cousin on ur mom's side of the family thru so n so ( n he launched into my pedigree, most of which i still don't have a clue about).
moi: I still don't know him...
Pops: well, he went to school with ur younger brother, so he's ways younger than you.
At this point, I am feigning a yawn, cause there is no way I am sitting through a discussion where the main focus is where a 22yr old guy (give or take one year) just got married and my ass is still single.
Fast forward to last nite. I get another call, and it's my pops again. we chatted about random things and out of nowhere he said to me, "igbawo ni o ma mu oko e wa ko wa mowa o?" (when are we going to meet your intended...
I'm so stunned by the sudden change in convo, that all I can manage are a couple of ems. And pops, bless his heart, thinking i hadn't heard the question, repeated himself. I got myself out of my reverie to mumble a when I know, you'll find out. Thankfully he got off the phone, but not before reminding me that time waits for no man.
At this point, I was already seething. I don't know what I'm s'posed to do. In case people are not getting the memo, I like my life the way it is now. Single befits me, and I am happy! isn't that what should matter?
Hell, even if I wanted to get married three years ago and it didn't happen, would it kill people to not talka bout it all the time. I feel like I had to defend and explain my singlehood to everyone, and frankly, I'm shot of the idea...
the next person to ask me why i'm still single better pray, because i am jsut ready to get physical!
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Sunday, December 09, 2007
The Hero Becomes the "Heree."
Dec 8th, 2007... the hour is 1930
I started pacing the kitchen, frantically searching drawers and cupboards, while racking my brain with thoughts of what to feed my empty stomach.
I had opened up the refrigerator so many times already that the temperature inside it was close to the room temperature, and as stocked as the refrgerator seemed, there was nothing inside it that was even mildly appealing at the time.
While I was still trying to figure out how to quell the hunger in my stomach, in walks my brother, grumbling about how hungry for Chinese food he was and how he needed the number to the panda express two blocks over...
As I wasn't really in the mood for Chinese food, I convinced him to order instead from Banana Leaf, (an Asian-Thai restaurant) and to pick me up a serving of their pineapple fried rice.
A half-hour later, I went into the living room only to find my brother watching some kinda sports show on Tele, and on inquiring, found that he had not even placed the order with the restaurant. He had instead been so engrossed with wuteva sports was he was watching that he had simply forgotten about the hunger in his stomach.
I was "seeing red" at this point, and hungry beyond comprehension, so I thought I'd just give in and eat noodles instead.
I had just poured the noodles into the boiling water on the stove while talking on the phone to my older sister when I heard the back door of the house slammed close and a very loud thud reverberating through the kitchen.
I looked in the direction the sound came from and saw my brother curled on the ground, apparently hurt from a major fall. ( did i mentioned that it had snowed the previous day and even though the the snow had been shovelled off the grounds, the subsequent rain and the almost zero temp had made for nice sleet formation and the salt we'd poured on the grounds did not seem to have any effect. But I digress...)
The maternal (albeit latent) instinct in me kicked in as I hurriedly got my sister off the phone so I could go and help my brother up.
On openeing the door, however, I managed to slip on the ice as soon as I stepped outside and before you could say "hell-on-ice," I found myself taking a seemingly unstoppable tumble like Jill from the famous classic "Jack and Jill."
I hit my head hard on the first stoop, but just kept sliding down, and hurting my neck and back the whole way down.
I finally managed to stop just before hitting my brother who was still hurt from the fall and lay curled up on the ground still. It was then that I realized there was no way I could have gotten out of falling, because in my hurry to help out my brother, I had completely forgotten to wear shoes, and there was absolutely no friction between the soles of my feet and the gadem ice.
We both managed to get up fianlly and I was able to get out a weak are you ok? to him.
Holding on to the door, we made our way back into the house whereupon I started to nurse my head, while he tried cleaning the ginormous bruise he'd sustained on his arm.
Then, as if on cue, we both looked at each other, and bursted out laughing amidst fits of painful groans.
As, I finally popped a couple of caplets of aleve in my mouth, I was able to reflect on what should have been me heroic moment, u know when I gallantly rescue my brother from his fall, in a shining armor no less... and instead, I ended up needing to be rescued me damn self, and I was only able to conclude that that sucks
I started pacing the kitchen, frantically searching drawers and cupboards, while racking my brain with thoughts of what to feed my empty stomach.
I had opened up the refrigerator so many times already that the temperature inside it was close to the room temperature, and as stocked as the refrgerator seemed, there was nothing inside it that was even mildly appealing at the time.
While I was still trying to figure out how to quell the hunger in my stomach, in walks my brother, grumbling about how hungry for Chinese food he was and how he needed the number to the panda express two blocks over...
As I wasn't really in the mood for Chinese food, I convinced him to order instead from Banana Leaf, (an Asian-Thai restaurant) and to pick me up a serving of their pineapple fried rice.
A half-hour later, I went into the living room only to find my brother watching some kinda sports show on Tele, and on inquiring, found that he had not even placed the order with the restaurant. He had instead been so engrossed with wuteva sports was he was watching that he had simply forgotten about the hunger in his stomach.
I was "seeing red" at this point, and hungry beyond comprehension, so I thought I'd just give in and eat noodles instead.
I had just poured the noodles into the boiling water on the stove while talking on the phone to my older sister when I heard the back door of the house slammed close and a very loud thud reverberating through the kitchen.
I looked in the direction the sound came from and saw my brother curled on the ground, apparently hurt from a major fall. ( did i mentioned that it had snowed the previous day and even though the the snow had been shovelled off the grounds, the subsequent rain and the almost zero temp had made for nice sleet formation and the salt we'd poured on the grounds did not seem to have any effect. But I digress...)
The maternal (albeit latent) instinct in me kicked in as I hurriedly got my sister off the phone so I could go and help my brother up.
On openeing the door, however, I managed to slip on the ice as soon as I stepped outside and before you could say "hell-on-ice," I found myself taking a seemingly unstoppable tumble like Jill from the famous classic "Jack and Jill."
I hit my head hard on the first stoop, but just kept sliding down, and hurting my neck and back the whole way down.
I finally managed to stop just before hitting my brother who was still hurt from the fall and lay curled up on the ground still. It was then that I realized there was no way I could have gotten out of falling, because in my hurry to help out my brother, I had completely forgotten to wear shoes, and there was absolutely no friction between the soles of my feet and the gadem ice.
We both managed to get up fianlly and I was able to get out a weak are you ok? to him.
Holding on to the door, we made our way back into the house whereupon I started to nurse my head, while he tried cleaning the ginormous bruise he'd sustained on his arm.
Then, as if on cue, we both looked at each other, and bursted out laughing amidst fits of painful groans.
As, I finally popped a couple of caplets of aleve in my mouth, I was able to reflect on what should have been me heroic moment, u know when I gallantly rescue my brother from his fall, in a shining armor no less... and instead, I ended up needing to be rescued me damn self, and I was only able to conclude that that sucks
December '07
Welcome to the last month of this calendar year!
This here is praying unsurmounted blessings and divine annointing for everyone during this special time...
This is the month that the Lord hath made, so let us rejoice and be glad in it.
As the special day that is christmas draws nearer, remember in prayer those dearest to you and those less fortunate than yourselves.
Spread the tidings of great joy, enjoy your gifts, count your blessings, and like someone said to me in an email, remember that Christ is the reason for the season...
This here is praying unsurmounted blessings and divine annointing for everyone during this special time...
This is the month that the Lord hath made, so let us rejoice and be glad in it.
As the special day that is christmas draws nearer, remember in prayer those dearest to you and those less fortunate than yourselves.
Spread the tidings of great joy, enjoy your gifts, count your blessings, and like someone said to me in an email, remember that Christ is the reason for the season...
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