Yes. I’m spoiled

I just realised something: I haven’t made dinner for as long as I can remember. How lucky am I?

T gets home before me everyday (including, obviously on days he doesn’t work). And for weeks now, he’s had dinner ready or in the works by the time I get home. All I have to do is eat it and then clean up the kitchen. It’s a far cry from two years ago when I would be in class all day, get home at 9 and find that I had to make food because he hadn’t bothered to – or worse, was out with his friends. Not that I’m saying that he shouldn’t have a life, or anything, but couldn’t he have hung out with them on the days that I didn’t work late instead?!

Honestly, I also get kind of a strange kick out of having a boyfriend who kicks my ass at cooking. Is that weird?

Young love: a horror story

I’ve blogged a couple of times about the love lives of some of my flatmates (all guys, slightly younger than me and T). No kidding, their dramas make me feel like a total grandma. And of course, grateful to be well past all that BS.

The youngest – let’s call him X – is a total pretty boy, and he’s had a tempestuous on/off relationship with GF1 for over a year. During one of their recent off periods, he got with GF2, and when he and GF1 reconciled, he kept seeing GF2 in secret. I’m talking coming around to the house, hanging out in the lounge, putting her hands all over him, but NEVER being allowed in his room because that’s where he kept photos of him and GF1.(And for some incomprehensible reason, she likes to bring over one of her equally skanky friends as well – is this a new thing, tagging along to your friend’s boyfriend’s house to watch them get it on? Where you don’t even know anyone else who lives there?)

At first we stood back and looked on, shaking our heads at his nerve and wondering when the house of cards was gonna come tumbling down.I mean, surely one day he was bound to have one of the girls turn up and catch him in the act. Especially when he went to a party where BOTH of them were in attendance and both knew the host.

And then I found out that BOTH girls knew about each other. And neither had pounded the other to death. In fact, they were both fine with it – they seemed happy to share.

I have nothing more to say. Just had to share. You’re welcome.
Photo / Katie Tegtmeyer

Wearing your heart on your sleeve

One of our flatmates picked up a girl on the weekend. Three days later, she turned up on our doorstep when he was out. She was in a bit of a state – agitated and twitchy, and against my better judgement I let her in to wait for him.

And holy hell! I unleashed a monster. She launched into a monologue about how she’d been sitting at home going mad waiting to hear from him, how he wasn’t answering his phone, how she didn’t know what the deal was with them and she NEEDED to know, how she already missed him, on and on and on…

It was all a bit intense, and way too much TMI for me. I really didn’t care about their relationship of lack thereof; I still don’t even know her name.

That being said, I do grudgingly admire people who are that open, who can be that that transparent. Who can get things off their chest without caring what others think.

And sometimes we’re the most painfully honest when we’re at our most desperate. I’ve been there: I’ve done that. It was a relationship based on physical attraction and further built on shaky ground. We really had no business being together, but I clung on to some romantic ideal and refused to let go. On the day it all fell apart, I made a last stab at saving us. It was probably the most honest I had been in our entire year together.

Me and the boy

Inspired by Amber’s post!

What are your middle names?
Neither of us have one!

How long have you been together?
Since December 2005.

How long did you know each other before you started dating?
Technically, we’ve known (of) each other since we were about 10. Probably the first time we ever talked to each other was when I was sent to “time out” and he was there too.

Who asked whom out?
He asked me out.

How old are each of you?
Both 21. I’m three months older.

Whose siblings do you see the most?
His. I have one younger brother, he has two younger brothers, an older brother and older sister. One of his little brothers comes over every Sunday to watch wrestling.

Which situation is the hardest on you as a couple?
Money. And lately, the whole life direction dilemma. He’s good at a whole range of things – he’s a great cook, he’s good with his hands and practical things, he is quick to grasp new concepts, and explain how things work, he’s good at trades work and was a great sports coach. But he still doesn’t know what he wants to do career wise.

Did you go to the same school?
Sure did – went to the same primary school for two years, to separate intermediates, and then the same high school.

Are you from the same home town?
Yeah… I’ve been in Auckland since I was eight, and he’s lived here his whole life.

Who is smarter?
Academically I’m the better performer. But we’re both smart in different ways. He’s much more practical and logical. I have more of a flair for writing and creative ventures. He knows a lot about everything – has a good general knowledge, but doesn’t care for current affairs and news (that’s more my area). Honestly, I think he’s more intelligent and has the more useful smarts.

Who is the most sensitive?

Me.

Where do you eat out most as a couple?
Hmm. Probably Chinese, to be honest, even though I’m not a massive fan. But he never gets sick of sweet and sour pork.

Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple?
Up north to Whatuwhiwhi - that was about five hours. We’re looking forward to travelling overseas together, though.

Who has the craziest exes?
Oh, that’s a tough one….I don’t actually know any of his exes, and I only have a couple. One of mine was pretty unstable, though.

Who has the worst temper?
We can both get pretty stormy. But he gets over it quite quickly and is always first to apologise. I’m probably more dramatic when I’m angry, but when he’s REALLY riled up he puts on a real show.

Who does the cooking?
He is by far the superior cook. I used to do the majority of the cooking, but now I get home later than him, and he usually has dinner ready for me by then.

Who is the neat-freak?
Definitely me. I do not understand why he leaves towels lying around, and how to train him out of the habit! That aside, I think we’re both fairly laid back, but like to keep things tidy. I don’t leave dishes lying around more than a day and like to keep the floors unsticky and the bathroom clean.

Who is more stubborn?
…..Me.

Who hogs the bed?

Me, apparently.

Who wakes up earlier?
NOT me. He’ll literally be awake hours before me and lie in bed next to me or watch TV. I really need to get him into reading or some other hobby so he can use that time more productively.

Where was your first date?
I couldn’t honestly tell you. We hung out so many times before officially dating. The first time we met up after that party where we connected though, I think, was one night late after work. I’d just finished up at Eden Park (I was working events with a catering company and there was a game on) and bussed to Blockhouse Bay. He met me at the bus stop in jandals and socks and walked me the rest of the way home to New Lynn.

Who is more jealous?
Hmm, we’re both pretty level headed. I’m probably more likely to get angry, though.

How long did it take to get serious?
A few months, I guess. It was a little difficult as we only had about three months together before he left for the army. We moved in together at 18 when we’d been together about a year which was too soon IMO, but it worked out okay. 

Who eats more?
We both have huge appetites. But his varies wildly – sometimes he’ll eat and eat and eat, and other times he literally won’t eat a thing all day until dinner. Mine’s pretty constant.

Who does the laundry?
Me.

Who’s better with the computer?
Me, unless you’re talking troubleshooting

Who drives when you are together?
Definitely him – he’s a far better driver and has his full licence now. I can’t even drive our car, really – it’s one of my goals for the rest of the year!

Money and relationships – when it all goes pearshaped

One of my flatmates and his GF have broken up.

I’m quite sad – she was lovely and sweet. She had a fondness for bourbon and pornos, but was surprisingly intelligent and unskanky for a westie type (if you’ll pardon the stereotyping, but they exist for a reason…and I consider myself one as well, to a degree) and incredibly giving. To a fault, actually. Her generosity extended to going halves with him on a car (I think to the tune of $500), and advancing him $800 for the bond on our new place, despite the fact she didn’t even live here. She did it to help him out, that’s all.

Now he’s found himself some hobaggy little blonde and ditched her.

I have no idea what’s going to happen with all the money he owes her; BF says she gave him literally everything she had, and wiped out her savings. I don’t imagine the breakup would have been pretty in fact, he had been seeing the blonde possibly even before dumping her… we just suddenly stopped seeing the GF around the house and saw the new chick hanging around.

Poor taste, I say.

NB: Tomorrow’s post will be protected – I’m talking about work related stuff and don’t want it to be all out in the open. You can email me at eemusings(at)gmail.com for the password

Army wives

I was very nearly an army girlfriend. Thankfully – and I don’t say that to belittle those who are, it’s just not a lifestyle I want for myself – T chose not to continue down that path.

But the army still holds a sort of fascination for me. I often come across blogs written by army wives/girlfriends and devour them for reasons I can’t quite articulate. I guess I admire them, while thinking “I’m glad that’s not me”, because I couldn’t handle the separation. I recently dealt with one of the defence spokespeople regarding a feature we were running on NZ troops in Afghanistan. He was pleased to hear about it; he said there were a lot of army families out there who were “hungry for news”.

I know there are many people out there in relationships with soldiers. I can’t imagine how hard it must be.

I can’t imagine being apart for months at a time, with only the occasional letter, and having to hear about events through the mainstream media. When T was down in Waiouru, and then Christchurch, I got letters from him basically every week. That wasn’t too bad. Being stationed in a whole other country though… it just wouldn’t be that simple.

We had been together for about two months before he left. He was in training for six months. I went down to visit him a few times, and it was always so horrendously awkward. I didn’t know how to act around him, having not seen him in so long, and having his family around whom I barely knew.

I loved his letters. It was like an old fashioned courtship. I still have every single one, including most of the envelopes they came in, because he often wrote little quotes and sayings on the back of them. He also misspelled my name on lots of the early ones, which is sort of endearing. Sort of.

It sounds stupid to say, but I became extremely emotional during that time. I don’t really know why; maybe it was the isolation, who knows? I never used to cry at soppy ads or tragic movie endings. Now I find myself leaking tears at any remotely sad TV show. And when I watched The Perfect Storm? Or the Green Mile? I bawled for about twenty minutes straight.

Shortly after he was first approved for unemployment, WINZ tried to send him on a short army course. (I think it’s pretty much what the TF [territorial forces] goes through for their training). He explained he’d already been through much, much more than that. Which of course begs the question – why leave?

For me, I would’ve said (aside from obviously despising the regimented routine) not wanting to die in the line of duty. For him, it was more like not wanting to be trained and paid to kill others.

His stint in the army still provides endless conversation fodder for him. And sometimes it is tempting – cheap housing, albeit in the middle of nowhere, generous retirement, steady job.

But the army life isn’t something I want, and I’m glad I don’t have to be the one to make that choice. I remember how hard it was for T to readjust to civilian life when he came back to Auckland. Not just in terms of the weather, and clothing, but being around people – SO many more people – and living daily life. The stress manifested itself physically, and it was weeks if not months before he got used to the routine and could sleep and go out normally again.

Looking on the bright side

I caught up with a friend the other day. We mostly talked about me, I’m ashamed to say. And now that I think back on it, I think he might have needed to get something off his chest. Two or three times, he brought up the fact that I was really lucky to be “sorted” in the relationship department.

Recently I’ve been focusing on all the bad things about relationships and how hard they can be to maintain, so today I’m making a list of all the great things about them!

1. Someone to share the cooking with. I fed myself and myself only for over a year, and I don’t really know WHAT I was eating. I remember surviving on jam sandwiches for lunches (can’t touch the stuff now) as I was living on a shoestring. About $30 a week kept me fed – half of what I spend today, four years later. I assume I ate a lot of pasta and stirfry… and eventually learned to give up on looking for packages of meat small enough for one, and just buy larger packs and freeze half of it.

In Whakatane, I didn’t eat a lot – mainly because our days were so busy, I barely had time to eat my fruit, muesli bar and sandwiches. I did not cook once my entire time there. The first night I was nervous, the second I was anxious due to having a bad first day, so all I ate was a tiny salad. The other nights we either went out or cooked group dinners. Cooking for one was just not appealing.

2. Hugs and cuddles when you need them…! And someone to warm the bed.

3. Someone to look after you when you’re sick. Who wants to make their own soup, get up to turn the light off, have a shower, change the channel, etc? And, in cases like today, take me home, make me a saltwater mouthwash and conjure up lunch after I got THE most heinous mouthache after eating half a Moro Gold while grocery shopping. (No, I didn’t eat before paying. Shell was doing $1 chocolate bars when we stopped to gas up.)

4. In my case – someone to drive me around

5. Someone to bounce stuff off. I imagine it’d be pretty lonely living alone (or with crappy flatmates) and not having someone on hand to constantly  act as your sounding board on dramas and dilemmas of all kinds.

6. Someone who’ll do all the fun chores, like change lightbulbs and take out the bins.

7. And last but not least, someone to take turns at getting out of bed and retrieving late night snacks from the kitchen …

Sad money tales

You read some bizarre tales on the MSN money boards. You really do. You even get attached to the posters, and hope they make the right choice and do the smart thing with their finances. Whether it’s to do with houses, cars, children, relationships.

This was one was a real doozy. Basic story – deadbeat BF, didn’t want to take the steps to deal with the fact that someone had stolen his credit identity. (Possibly his own mother). Wanted to take on a car payment which would take half of his income. He was 20. A mechanic. Yet he wanted to sell his car which kept breaking, for a new one. It was only a couple grand worth of repairs, and a fairly new car at that.

We didn’t know how old she was, but she was still studying, and presumably they were about the same age. But they’d been together SEVEN years. And somehow in that time, he’d cost her $25k. On what, who knows…but 25k? It’s amazing that someone so young would a) have that much, and b) fritter it on a boyfriend. A boyfriend who wouldn’t help out when she needed it but held out an open hand when the tables turned. A boyfriend she no longer loved but wasn’t ready to break up with.

X and Y

Krystal’s post the other day about losing one of her best male friends touched a nerve with me.

I have a group of girlfriends – whom i love DEARLY – but don’t see all that often. My go-to friends are all guys. They’re the ones I hang out with, the ones I call my best friends. (Some of them, I found out, originally got to know me because they had a bit of a thing for me. Which was weird, but you know, it’s all in the past) We’ve never had a problem with them and girlfriends, but what about when we get round to the marriage stage? Is that going to change things? I hope not. I don’t think it will, but I suppose you never know.

I honestly believe men and women can be friends. It’s really not that hard.

That being said, I learned that the hard way. One of my best friends growing up was a boy we’ll call C; at one point we “went out” for about six months in which absolutely nothing happened, and I mean nothing. We “broke up”, I got a real boyfriend, he tried to get me to break up with him. Anyway….some things happened, I had to essentially choose between them, and I chose the boyf. (That relationship lasted just over a year. Both guys turned into completely different people and I’m happy to have neither of them in my life today) Looking back, I don’t really know if it was the best choice. Probably, as they both became …. I don’t know, *insert word of choice here*. I learned a lot from that year – my first serious relationship – and god knows where’d I’d be today otherwise, in fact.

Sometimes I wonder, what if we were still buddies? What if, what if? I was really sad to lose him as a friend. But now I think that just ran its course – he was a part of that period of my life, and that part only – and now I’m surrounded by people more appropriate for the now. I hope I’m not going to lose them to jealous partners someday. T knows he has absolutely nothing to worry about, and I hope my friends’ future gfs will be able to understand us better as to not feel threatened by our friendships.

Field trip and missed skiing opportunity

I’m down in Whakatane for a week, from Sunday.

Why? Well, my internship is now over, and part of second semester involves going on a field trip and spending  a week working on the regional papers.

I get back on the Friday – the same Friday a group of friends are going down to the snow for four days. Obviously we won’t be going. We don’t have a grand lying around to blow, I’m not sure about driving down there, I will still be away on the Friday, and after a week away from home I would just want to spend the weekend at home, regrouping. And to be honest, I’m glad. Even if it was an option, I don’t want to go with the people who are going. Two of them are a couple, who are good friends of ours (although not so much since a certain drama at the start of the year. Awkward). Most of the rest are friends of the couple and by default BF and to a much, MUCH lesser extent me. They’re all lovely! Don’t get me wrong. It’s just there are a couple of other people (okay, girls. Man I sound like such a woman hater, especially after that recent post about bitchy so called friends) who I’m not really friends with and not super keen to spend time with. They’re just not my kind of people – nothing personal – and four days is a long time.

Very proud of BF, though. First he was all, “We need to find a grand in the next month!” Something he knows we can’t do. His friend jokingly suggested selling the car. Guess what BF responded with?

“Ah, but that would need to go towards paying off the old car.”

OMG!!! LIGHTS! APPLAUSE!

That’s the most PF-y thing he’s ever said! The boy is learning. I’m so proud of him.

He added “It’s nearly paid off.” Which is true, I suppose. Less than $2k to go, from just over 4k.