So long!

It's been a while since i posted anything, just haven't been up to it for some reason or the other, maybe i'll give details in another post.
It just occured to me that the way i've allowed myself not to post anything is the same way we tend to sometimes forget about people we love and care about.
We are so busy attending meetings, making money and doing other important stuff that we unknowingly push people into the background.
It's not like we really intend to forget about them but we're just so busy, our tables are usually too full and we have to clear them.
Yesterday, out of boredom, i watched a home video where the guy was so busy building a business empire and neglecting his wife. Each time she mentioned that she needed his time, he either tried to buy her an expensive gift or told her he was busy trying to make their lives comfortable. Eventually when he travelled for 2 months, his wife fell into the warm embrace of their driver. Don't think i'm excusing adultery, no but hubby was nowhere to be found when his wife needed him.
In this age where it has become extremely important for us to build careers, we need to be extremely careful and check if we are not doing so at the expense of the most important things.
Take a scenario where you've achieved everything you want, you've reached the pinnacle of your career, won several awards but have no one to share it all with. I tell it will be very boring and miserable.
We need people along the way, not as tag alongs but as people we love and share genuinely with.
Today, try to make that phone call you've delayed for so long, send that e mail to the old friend, make a schedule of how to stay in touch with loved ones especially family. It keeps the journey interesting.
Have a fun weekend!

My Birthday With The White Dress

It was my birthday yesterday, you want to guess how old i turned? Then feel free cos i'm not telling at least not today! I just want to gist about the events leading to it and the one of the day. It's a bit long but pls i hope you'll read to the end

Friday

I got a call from my sister in law saying she had bought me a dress which she would like me to come and try on but i couldn't go because i was at work till 8 p.m so i shifted it till the following day.
That evening, hubby got back home from Abuja and asked what we are doing for my birthday and i said i don't know. I really didn't feel like celebrating. I have been having some dark moods recently (See my previous post). He said it's my first after we got married and he thinks i should try to have fun. I agreed

Saturday

We reached a consensus that we would have an outing with some family members and a few friends at a restaurant. It's afterall my birthday and it happens once in a year. I was getting in the moood, thanks to hubby. We ordered a cake that morning and then headed for my sister-in-law's to try the dress. It was love at first sight between the dress and i. It looked so divine in its white colour with the spaghetti straps. I love the dress so i decided to try it and lo and behold, the zip would not go up past the bust. It has a side zip and a band under the bust, the zip just wouldn't pass that point. I called her help to come do the zip, no luck, hubby tried it, no luck so i decided i would take to her office and have one of the tailors help with the cloth.

The tailor took one look at the dress and said "nothing can be done". How would a love affair i just started with this dress just end like that?? It had to blossom. So we went to look for my sister in law where she was making her hair in the salon, she was like she had an idea, we just had to bring the tailor for her to explain to him.

We had to go get my cake so we went to do that and by the time i got to work, i was five minutes late although we still didn't have it. I couldn't be bothered, it was afterall my birthday and i was even singing to myself "Go Writefreak, it's your birthday, we gonna party like it's your birthday".

Hubby picked me up from work and i saw the dress still in the nylon i left it before going to work. I decided to stay in a state of denial, i didn't want to believe it had not been fixed. My birthday dress!

So we got to his sister's and he advised me to bring out the dress, his oldest sister was around and she would help me into the dress or help the dress into me!!! Ha ha ha! So the battle of the dress started, the zip still would not budge, i tried not breathing, i tried to pull my flesh in so the zip would go up, no way! I'm sure you're wondering, writefreak, na wa for you o, all because of a dress, yes o! It was so funny, we were all rolling on the floor with laughter. It just reminded me of Gabrielle in Desperate Housewives Season 2 when she got pregnant and was trying to fit into a size 0 dress (please for my sake, go watch that episode if you haven't and you'll get a picture of what i am talking about).

I decided to give up when the dress got stuck in my suku and it took divine help for it to come out. In that space of time, it was so bad considering i'm a bit claustrophobic. There went my hope of wearing a new dress, i always wear new things on my birthday; celebration or not!

D day
We went to church and from there we went to look for a phone on the Island; hubby's birthday gift to me. I have this "half of an 1100 Nokia", (i call it half because i have used up its original lifetime) which everyone i know has begged me to change but i have refused because i made a deal with hubby that if i used it till my birthday, he would buy me a new phone. You know how we ladies are, we would still like our husbands to buy us things we can afford. We didn't get so we proceeded to Oceanview to make arrangements for celebration in the evening, we did that although we were told we had to pay N2,500 for cake cutting since we didn't buy from them (i told my husband, rubbish!). We then went for lunch where we talked about things that had been on my mind. I don't want to share the details

I didn't know i would have fun like that. I had so much fun just talking and laughing with friends and family i couldn't have imagined having it any other way. I don't take alcohol, or else i would have said i was tipsy. We all had chapman and some finger foods. It was a lot of laughter, a lot of joy shared and i thought look at me, why am i getting depressed? So many people would be envying me. Here i was having a birthday paid for by huby (God bless his dear soul) with so many people showing me love (i had only told them a few hours earlier and they came). I might want more but i definitely don't have a bad life.

I enjoyed my birthday, my friends in real life and blog world aloted and omoalagbede were there. Thanks so much guys and to everyone that was present. It was a beautiful day which hubby made happen for me. How do I say thank you now? I love the guy so much!!!

Addendum
Thanks aloted- I completely forgot to mention how I finally got into the dress! lol. After lunch on my birthday, i decided to give it one last try. So while hubby was in the bathroom, i locked myself in the room and was praying not to be disappointed. First attempt, the zip refused to move and i got some wisdom, why not turn the zip to the front and try the zip and voila it worked! I screamed and hubby was suprised to see me in it when he got out, so was everyone else who had witnessed the 'dress rehearsal' of the day before. My sister-in-law later told me she had an inkling the zip wasn't so good but she knew i would like it and would find a way to wear it. I didn't disappoint her! My persistence paid off!

The thoughts in my head

I have so many thoughts going on in my head these days that i sometimes feel as if i would explode with them. If my head had a typewriter built in and a printer attached, i think i would have spun thousands of pages in the past few days.

The first set of thoughts is the state if dissatisfaction i am in. I am wanting MORE and my head is always screaming it that i wonder if that's really ok. I'm not unhappy about where i am but i need more.

I think that's the way human beings are designed, we always want to progress and leave where we are.

When i was single and living alone, i wanted to get married and live with my man, then i got married and we started living under the same roof. And then work stepped in and took hubby away. So it happened that we became weekend husband and wife, phone bills increased (thank God for free airtime from my office).Then another desire stepped in, i want hubby back! Or i want to live where he is whichever way that will happen. It has become an all consuming desire, it's in my prayers, in my thoughts and my petitions.

Then, i am starting to want another job badly! I am so tired of this one, sometimes i just feel like sitting at home instead of coming to work but it pays the bills. I want to move from this mountain which i have been on for almost two years...Before now, i was kinda content but now i almost can't wait to get out. Maybe what i actually want is not really another job, maybe i just want a better expression of my talent and gifts, maybe i don't want another 9-5 or a shift job..So many maybes

It's also not helping that i am only six months married and everywhere i turn, there are questions about pregnancy. Can't people just leave other people alone? Will they train the child for us when we bring it into the world? Or will they help carry the pregnancy? Or is marriage just for child bearing? Well, that's a story for another day?

These are things that have me awake late in the night, thoughts that are plaguing and will not leave me alone. The loneliness is not helping, it makes me think more...

There are so many things i want that look very faraway....

Well, that's where i was a few days ago when i typed this, not that things have changed physically but update on my next blog

Half of a Yellow Sun

Chimamanda; an author i admire so much has won the Orange Prize for her book "Half of a Yellow Sun". It is an award well deserved because the book is a great read.

She lit a fire in me when i read the book and i am sure it is the same with a lot of other readers. Hubby bought it for me and i could not put it down til i finished!

If you haven't read it, please do, it gives a good picture of the Biafran war especially to those of use who were not present then....

Congratulations on the award!

My Big Fat Goof

I goofed this last weekend and it cost me a few things including money, thank God it wasn't more than what it was.

Somehow my work schedule was changed last weekend and i didn't have the full information. Normally i would work for six straight days in a shift cycle and then go off for three days. So when i was told that another cycle was starting on saturday after two days off for my office to run a test, i just counted six days and since I was determined i wasn't going to work weekend, i got a replacement to work for me, on Saturday and Sunday (it cost some money.I wanted to spend the weekend with hubby and family. I had no information that my team, would go off on Sunday and then resume for seven days.

I forgot my phone at a friend's saturday/sunday so no one from the office could reach me. I was incommunicado! On Sunday morning, i saw a colleague at church and asked why she didn't go to work then she told me NO WORK!

Alas i had done work that no one sent me and went uappreciated...plus i had to drop a few bucks. Not to forget the fact that my supervisor was upset with me and sent a very strongly worded mail to the team as a result.

I really felt bad about it but i feel better now. Just think writing about it would help and laughing about it like hubby suggested would help and i guess it has.

Updates on other things later

Proliferation of Religious Groups and Activities on Lagos/ Ibadan Expressway; Way Forward?

Going to Ibadan from Lagos has become a harrowing experience for travellers these days, one can never tell how the road will be. It can take up to 7 hoursl; the same length of time one would spend travelling to Abuja by road from Lagos. I for one have been a witness on at least three occasions.

The express has become a haven for many religious bodies and there are of the nuparticular weekends to avoid on the express especially the first and last Saturdays of the month. One merous religious groups will definitely be engaged in their activities on one of these Saturdays. At a few kilometres apart on the express, one sees signboards of different churches especially.

I am not averse to Christianity or worship. Infact i am a professed believer and i love to worship God but i believe that Christians should be socially responsible, maybe even more than people of other faith. Maybe this is why i get angry when i am on the express and i am wasting precious time because my brothers and sisters in Christ have just had a programme and somehow the roads are congested. You even find some of them driving one way!

Some of the bodies have gotten their acts down and cause not so much traffic anymore but the rest have to work at it and save Nigerians the stress we face. I remember a trip last year around the Easter period when a popular church had a programme, i spent 8 hours travelling to Ibadan, it made me almost hate the church, i was disgusted! "Why should i suffer like this because a church is having a programe?" were my thoughts.

One definitely cannot say all the groups should move, (although one wonders if the camp sites HAVE to be around here) but maybe they should find a means of controlling their traffic and people. At least some groups have come up with different parking spaces which has in a way solved the traffic from their end.

The religious groups on the express should rise up and become and become socially responsible and stop causing unnecessary traffic. Time is too precious for that!