Single Life Struggles: Episode 1

Hello, friends. I'd like to welcome you to what will probably become a recurring segment on the Iowa Girl Meets World show. It's called Single Life Struggles. In this segment, your host (me) will demonstrate a struggle or two in the life of a young single adult (also me).

This is the first time I've lived alone. Yes, I was alone in my University Lutheran apartment last year, but let's face it, you're not really alone when you live in the basement of a church. (Just ask me about that time two parishioners thought I was dead...) Anyway, it truly is a struggle to live alone. I have a lot of examples of this, but let's start off with this picture.

Single Life Struggle: when you have so few visitors that you don't do dishes for weeks (because who is going to see them?), and you are disgusted with yourself, but not enough to care until you really have nothing to eat off of and there is an unknown variety of mold growing in your sink, and you realize that almost every single dish needs to soak, but your sink isn't big enough for that, so you find a plastic storage bin and fill it with soapy water and put your dishes in it and still not all of them fit.

And then there's this:

Single Life Struggle: when you are living alone in a new place and you're trying to figure everything out (trash pickup, new doctor/dentist/veterinarian, good restaurants, taxes, insurance, bills, etc.) and you want to be a good citizen and recycle but that's another phone call you can't ask anyone else to make and you're just so tired of figuring things out that you save all your recycling (that's not even half of it) and keep telling yourself "I'll call tomorrow"... for five months.

This is what I mean when I tell people over the phone that I'm quite sure my house is messier than yours, thank you very much.

I know this is kind of a weird thing to blog about, but here's why I'm doing this. It's not to tell you that I don't like where I am. On the contrary, I love Enid and I love Redeemer. I'm sharing my Single Life Struggles with you because I feel alone a lot, and I don't think I actually am. These stories are embarrassing to me, but I don't think I'm the only person who struggles to wash their dishes. I don't think I'm the only person who doesn't like making phone calls. So if this strikes a chord with you, tell me. Maybe we'll both feel less alone.

(I feel like I should add - I'm sure these struggles aren't necessarily restricted to single people living alone. However, I think being single and living alone make these struggles not more difficult, but just... different.)

Mild Miracle

Hello, friends! A mild miracle has occurred today: my house is clean. I thought some of you might enjoy seeing some pictures of my uncommonly clean house, so here you go.

Exhibit A: My spare bedroom. I'm still deciding how I want to decorate it.

Exhibit B: My bedroom. Note the koala.

Exhibit C: My favorite room in the house, where all of my books are.

Exhibit D: My living room, complete with new love seat and chair.

Exhibit E: Obligatory photo of my backyard with my dog, because, well, she's cute.

Stream of Consciousness

Hello, friends! I hope you're having an excellent Thursday. It's actually my Friday, tomorrow being my day off. I've been relaxing (read: watching excessive amounts of the tv show Forever) pretty much since I left work.

Now, normally when I write blogs, I have some idea of what I want to get across to you, my readers. (Apparently, some of you are in Ukraine... Hi there!) Today, I've got nothing, but I'm bored, so here we are. Therefore you're going to get my stream of consciousness for awhile. :)

Work is interesting. Sometimes I know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing, and I do it, and I feel accomplished. Other days I sit in my DCE study and look around and think, now what? Today was one of those days to a large extent. Maybe this will clear up with time. Or maybe I'm just perpetually confused. Either one is possible.

Speaking of sitting around, I do a lot of that at home these days. I still haven't made a whole lot of friends in Enid. Anyone know of effective ways to make friends your own age in a new town?

On the upside, I do have my adorable dog. Today I gave her a couple of ice cubes. She chewed them up, but only after she spent several minutes chasing them around the patio because they kept slipping out of her mouth. I'm so easily amused...

Lindsey was amused by my dog, too. My dear friend visited last week, which was absolutely delightful. I have missed my twin so much. I can count on one hand the number of people who can make me laugh like she can. For example, she gave me a lecture on how I eat bread. In case you're wondering, I eat it like a barbarian. Or so I'm told. She's also still complaining about how I ate spaghetti on a particular night four years ago.

While Lindsey was here, we visited a museum that documents the Oklahoma strip land run. Basically, they had people register, then had them line up along the border with their horses, wagons, etc. They then fired a gun into the air and thousands of people rushed as quickly as they could into the strip to stake their claim. There were all kinds of injuries because, well, it was a horse race with no rules or referees. Also, there were four offices for these thousands of people to register their claim with, and these offices had three clerks each. People had to wait for up to a week in line. Can you imagine that happening today? Holy cow. I can hardly even picture it.

(Also, in the late 1800s, houses commonly had muslin hung from their ceilings to keep large bugs from falling on people's heads. Lindsey and I decided that we're okay with that not being a big problem today.)

(We were also mistaken for LDS missionaries, I guess because we were two girls together?)

Well, my stream of consciousness seems to be drawing to a close for the moment. I'm completely ready to settle down and watch another episode of the sadly and ironically short-lived show Forever. Goodnight all!