I write some of these blogs, like they are a teenage diary and forget that people are out there, reading them, so if this is too much of a ramble, I’m sorry about that, but I wanted to put it out there, so I can reflect on it later.
I met Lovely Bloke on a Thursday and that weekend I was working, so I didn’t see him again until the Tuesday night. He came to my much loved flat in Biggleswade and stayed the night. I still have the custard cream wrapper from that date, when we sat next to the river with a takeaway coffee and biscuits, chatting. I went to his house on the Wednesday and didn’t spend another night in my flat again. That was it. Decision made.
This was a risky thing to do and caused lots of people to roll their eyes at me – not least because I’d met someone earlier that year, decided to be “spontaneous” and move to Leeds with him, until he admitted that whilst he’d been up there and me in Welwyn, that he’d been having what amounted to friends with benefits sex with a work colleague, because he couldn’t just have sex on the weekends. And after that, I’d met the Tesco bloke, who I got on with really well, incredibly well. The fly in the ointment there was that he wasn’t sure he wanted to have children and I knew I did. So that one hit the buffers as well.
All these blokes – 14 of them – (in 9 months, ahem…) were met via internet dating and I was having lots of fun along the way – adventures, exploring new places, meeting new people, it was brilliant. But then when I met Lovely Bloke, his life was all set up. I used to ask him if his real wife and children were hidden under the stairs, in the cubby hole. He was attractive (and still is), had a lovely home, a settled work life, great friends and all that was missing was someone to share it with. I couldn’t work out why he wasn’t already with someone – was there something wrong with him that he wasn’t telling me?
Nonetheless, with 2005 being my year of experimenting and trying new things, I decided to go for it with Lovely Bloke, because I really liked him and couldn’t find anything wrong with us being together. The latter bit was just as important to me because I’ve got a very problem orientated brain… I never looked back, until after I’d got rid of my flat and thrown away many of my belongings, because they weren’t as nice as Lovely Blokes, and didn’t really fit in his grown up house. I wasn’t going to be painting a random duck in the corner of his bathroom like I had done in my old place. It was a grown ups house.
And that’s what I’ve got now, a grown ups life, a grown up relationship, a family – bringing with it, grown up responsibilities.
Picking a kitchen, from scratch, has been a big project for me, with all sorts of layers of significance to it. What colour shall we have, where should we put it, should we build an extension whilst we’re at it, what’s a reasonable price to pay for a cooker, do we want a real wood floor or not, is it morally ok to pay £3,000 for a worktop. All sorts of decisions to think about. It’s made me realise that I’m a grown up!!! And I’ve got to stop questioning that fact. It is what it is, a grown up life and I’ve got all the benefits of it, so I have to accept the responsibilities that come with it. Including working out where cups, plates, bowls and tins of tomato soup should go.
So on that note, I’m going back to it. I’m so proud of Lovely Bloke for having the vision to get this done. I couldn’t visualise what it would be like, but he could, so I went along with it. And now I’m pleased I have, because it’s lovely. Just lovely. Shame he never reads my blog because then he might know how grateful I am to him for all his hard work, persistance and patience, long after I had chucked my toys out of the pram over it.
Maybe I’m not quite a grown up yet after all…
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