Being Alone

This park is near my office.

On days when I am responsible enough to remember to bring my lunch, I grab a book and my food and come here. I sit under this tree and eat, and read and watch the ducks waddle around.

They don't mind me and I don't mind them.

I people watch, making up stories about the people I see.

The couple meeting for lunch, the two old ladies walking around together, the women with their children, and the ones who, like me, are there alone.

It's a simple thing, but it makes me so happy. I come back to work in such a better mood. It's finally nice outside in the middle of the day, and sitting under a tree between two big beautiful fountains with a book and a sadwich is pretty perfect.

Not long ago, this is something that would have made me a little sad to do by myself.

Now, I don't think I would invite anyone to come along. At least not most days.

It's quiet and it's cool and I'm starting to like being alone. At least more than I used to.

I think for a long time I depended on other people for my own happiness quite a bit. I wanted people around me, I needed people to talk to, I wanted someone to spend the majority of my time with who wasn't a toddler.

But I'm learning to make myself happy on my own.

Not that I don't need anyone, that's ridiculous.

Everybody needs somebody sometimes and anyone who says they don't is a damn liar.

It's more that I'm alone more these days because I choose to be, not because there was no one to hang out with. And if there's something that will make me happy, I usually just go and do it, or think it or say it myself, rather than waiting and hoping someone else will come with me, or say what I need to hear.

So far, I'm pretty happy.

I still need to be held sometimes.

I still need to be told that everything will be OK sometimes.

But I'm trying to learn to make everything OK on my own, and make myself happy regardless of who's coming or going in my life at the time.

I've learned too many important people can be far too temporary.

Feelings change, needs change, people leave.

I'll always be here with myself though, so I'm learning to be OK with that during the times when that's all there is.

Just me.

25 Thoughts on Turning 25

I turn 25 in exactly 1 month from today.

It's weird, this birthday this year.

I was in such a different place last year when my birthday came, that it's hard to believe I'm where I am now.

Hard to believe in a good way, like if someone gave you a million dollars for Christmas. You would barely be able to believe it, but you'd be happy about it, savvy?

Last year before my birthday I did 24 thoughts on turning 24. 

Thinking I would keep with tradition, here are 25 thoughts about turning 25.

Just like last year, but with 1 additional thought. 

YOU'RE WELCOME.

1. This will be the 4th birthday that I've had since I've met Bill, but the 1st where we will be an official couple for it. That's simultaneously weird, and completely normal to me now.

2. 4 days after my last birthday I got engaged to someone I barely knew. Here's hoping that doesn't happen this year.

3. I still hate telling people what I want for my birthday. I've always hated it, but somehow I guess I thought that at some point I'd be less embarrassed by it. I know girls {and guys} that are totally fine emailing out wish lists to their entire families and all their friends around their birthday or Christmas. I get itchy if I am forced to mention even one thing I'd like to receive. 

I feel like it makes me materialistic, greedy or selfish. Or demanding. Even though I don't see other people who ask for specific things that way at all, and I get super irritated when people won't just tell me what they want for their damn birthday {side eye: Bill}. 

4. Every year for the last 3 birthdays I've had, I've gone to a bar and gotten hammered with some friends. This year I would be overjoyed if I could have a really delicious dinner with Bill, and then see a movie or take a day drive somewhere or something. I'm down for drinking, but I think I have arrived at the point of hating bars.

5. I don't feel 25. But then again I didn't feel 24 either. I've always felt older. I wonder if I'll ever arrive at an age that feels appropriate to me.

6. If I buy myself a birthday present, it will either be a new TV or a dining room table. Exciting, I know.

7. Sometimes I wonder if I've become more boring with age. If settling down has made me safer, but also duller. It's kind of a fear of mine.

8. There was a time in my life when 25 seemed really, really grown up. Like I'd have it all figured out by now. I wish I could go back to that younger version of me and tell her  "You'll never know what the fuck you're doing"

9. I've never ever wanted a surprise party. Something about them gives me anxiety.

10. An absolutely ideal {and completely unrealistic} birthday weekend, would be a surprise trip to Vegas or Sedona with Bill. In a perfect world it'd be a road trip, because I love road trips, but it's hard enough to get Bill to sit in a car whilst you drive across town. I'm pretty sure he bought a plane so that he'd never have to drive across state lines again. If I couldn't have that, waking up to banana pancakes and good coffee would be a very close 2nd. 

11. I still don't know where I stand on the idea of legal, traditional marriage. I know that a forever kind of commitment to another person would be fine with me, but something about the whole legal marriage thing just throws me off. I don't really know why. Isn't promising to love another person forever the same thing whether you sign a marriage license or not? Why am I OK with the commitment but scared of a piece of paper?

12. I still feel a lot of guilt over the way I handled everything around my last birthday. How openly I flaunted my new {and ridiculous} rebound relationship, without simultaneously having the balls to admit any of it to Bill. It's hard for me to read my birthday post from last year without cringing at myself. I was trying so hard to be OK. I could not have looked more broken.

13. When I was little, basically up until my 10th or 11th birthday, my favorite cake and ice cream combo was strawberry cake and rainbow sherbet.  Now I'm a pizookie kind of girl.

14. I've started checking for grey hairs this year. Yep. 

15. Nice try mirror, but, clearly those are my mom's boobs you're showing me.

16. If you do want some ideas of what I'd like for my birthday, look here. No pressure or anything.

17. It's harder than I thought to come up with 25 things about being 25. 

18. Yes, there is a china hutch on my "wish list" board on Pinterest. I told you, I've become boring.

19. This time last year I was a midwifery apprentice. Now I'm a department coordinator for a real estate developer. Talk about polar opposites.

20. After we got back together, Bill gave me a necklace for my birthday last year that I have taken off a total of 1 time since he put it on me that night. 

21. For the first time in my life, I hope nothing changes between now and my next birthday. I am just exactly where I want to be.

22. There is no 22

23. Birthdays are my favorite holidays. I love my friends birthdays, and my kids'. I like trying to make them as special as possible. There's just something very sweet about celebrating and making a big deal out of the day a person was born.

24. I love cheesecake. Just saying.

25. Last year I wondered what it would be like looking back on that birthday, this year. I think I've done a lot of that recently. So much has changed. And I think all for the better. That's the first time I've ever been able to really say that. 

All I want is for things to keep getting better. To keep the people I have now, and maybe add a few more to love over the next year. But by my next birthday, I want to be able to say that I'm still where I always wanted to be. The ground didn't fall out beneath my feet, there were no major losses or forced life changes. Everything has just flowed forward the way life should.

A girl can dream.

All These Buckets of Rain

Today's blog post is brought to you by the word: Change and the number C.

In the last week I have been repeatedly tripped up, thrown off and spun around by how quickly things can change. Change in ways I may have seen coming....Change in ways I never expected....Change from the only thing I have known for 2 years...and change back to a place I seemed to be 10 years ago.

By nature I am someone who is freakishly used to change.

My life has changed more times and in more ways than I even care to count anymore.

But lately it's been more than I can digest all at once.

I'm overwhelmed.

In the last week I found out my roommate of almost two years, the famous and faithful Roomie, will be moving out. Moving away....

At first when it was brought up-nay, more like discovered, it was supposed to be down the road, a couple months, blah blah blah. And while a couple months still wasn't very far away considering how long we have lived together here in this crazy little condo with these crazy little kids as....I shudder to say the word....a family, still, I thought I had time to get ready for this. But now, he's leaving in a month.

In one month, he's leaving....It's a lot to take in. This is gay, this is corny, this makes me a HUGE vagina, and I totally know that because The Roomie is not my boyfriend, he hasn't been in like two years, and he's not the father of my children, and he's not the person I want to spend my life with, but he's my best friend. He's been a better friend than I've deserved at times, and a better friend than I expected, and even when we were at each other's throats, he was always there. And that's a hell of a lot more than I can say about too many other people in my life. He was always, always there. Blood relation, DNA and legal marriages or romantic relationships aside, we were a family. That's something I've never had, and always wanted. Just thinking about what this place will be like without him, without his voice, without seeing him walk in the door everyday after work and smile at us, rush into the kitchen and eat whatever I made for dinner, watch T.V. with before bed, and talk to when I've had the worst day ever (I can tell him anything)....It's too sad.

Another huge change that has come my way has been with my business. It's slowed, way down, and at this point I am looking at going back to work in a "normal job" after quite a while of working for myself. What is this going to mean? Do I have to give up my apprenticeship? Do I have to stop taking clients altogether? How do I attend births and work a full time job at the same time? And what about money? Paying for daycare is no easy feet, that shit is expensive. And Tiny starts school again soon. Who will get her either to school, or from it if she's not in part time daycare? So that means I'm paying for daycare for two...full time....And in case you didn't know this, I don't get child support. Yet. That's another thing I need to tackle. Another huge change. Communicating again with my children's fathers....asking them for money....money I deserve, and the kids desperately need, but still, money all the same....possibly even court hearings.

My goodness....

And finally, the last and most interesting change of all...The way something that has been long gone for ten years, something you thought had disappeared and would never return, the way some old part of you can light up again after so long, and change everything....

It's all just so....interesting. I guess we'll have to wait, hope and see where everything goes.