For Julia

I have a friend that is a few years younger than me that has followed a similar path to the one I've been traveling for a while. She had a serious relationship in high school and through college when everyone else was partying and being crazy. When that ended she started dating and all that goes with it - as a newbie. She is now been doing that for a bit and starting to feel like there is no end in sight. I can completely relate and wish that I could offer her more concrete advice than 'it will happen when the time is right'....but I can't. Everyone's time table is different and I am not going to pretend to be all-knowing. (About this anyway)

What I can offer is all the great things about being single in your later twenties. Even though it wasn't a cake walk, there were things that I loved about being single for a few years, things that I am sure will be hard to let go of as I enter into a new relationship. For me, it was the period in my life where I felt like I had the most freedom to try new things, express myself, (anyone else singing Madonna here?) and focus on just being the best 'me' that I could. So without further ado.....

Great Things About Being Single After 25

1. Time. You have so much more time to do the things that you want when you exit a relationship. You have even more time if you don't think about men AT ALL for a while. I gave up men for Lent last year (true story) and it was a great experience. I gave up flirting, dating, kissing, chatting online....all of it. If you weren't overflowing with estrogen then I avoided you for forty days. All of a sudden all that time you were spending talking to your significant other/man of interest, doing things he liked to do, running his errands, meeting up with his friends and family....all that time is now yours to do anything you want with! Even if whatever you want is simply to veg out on the couch in your pjs and watch Friends reruns all day without anyone giving you a guilt trip.

2. You get to make decisions without consulting anyone. This was a ton of fun - actually my Busia gave me the best advice about what to do when I became single. She told me to take advantage of being able to be independent and to travel like crazy. I didn't go crazy, but I did travel TONS more than before I was single. I went on two cruises and saw the Caribbean, Mexico, and Honduras. I conquered my fear of heights and went parasailing in Grand Cayman and it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. I went to Denver, to DC, to Nashville, to Aspen...I spent more summer days than I can count in my bathing suit and a pair of shorts with a cooler and some sunscreen and no destination, just daytripping to whatever beach my Jeep ended up at....all with no one to answer to. I am unbelievably glad that I got to do all of these things. Busia - you were so right.

3. You (most likely) have more resources now than when you were younger to play around with. You don't have to enjoy yourself like a college kid following cheap draft night from bar to bar or living off the dollar menu at drive thrus. You can indulge yourself and have new experiences. If I were in a relationship and building a future with someone I would not have had half the spa days or wine trips or vacations. I didn't have to share my financial resources with anyone and there was no one to object if I went shopping on impulse or spent $40 on a bottle of wine.

4. You get the house (and more importantly, the bed) to yourself. Now, at first I didn't appreciate how fantastic this would be. At first, it just made me feel more alone. But as time goes on, it is amazing to leave the house and then come back later and find it in exactly the same condition as you left, to leave a yummy snack in the fridge and know it is still waiting there for you when you come home. It is awesome to be able to indulge my strange obsession with rearranging the furniture whenever I want without having to (pretend to) listen to someone else's opinion. It is fun to take a day off, lock the doors, close the curtains, and live all day in my ugly, comfy, ancient pajamas while eating all my meals out of an ice cream carton and shunning the shower. And now that I have had the pleasure of stretching out on my queen size mattress all by myself, I don't know how I am going to go back to sharing. (Ask Chet, he is less than fond of this habit.)

5. You get to focus on yourself. Don't underestimate this one, it was highly instrumental for me to get to the point where I am now. Not to sound like I am a saint here - but I am, by nature, a giver. If it is in my power to give you something that you need, I will. And for the people that are very close to me, such as a boyfriend or husband, that meant that if I had a choice to do something to benefit myself or them - I routinely chose them. On a regular basis I chose to not put myself first. Now, I am not whining about this or regretting the choices that I made. I am the person that I am, and I can live with all that. But once I was on my own, I didn't have to make choices like that anymore. The majority of my choices became all about my best interest. I began to take care of myself in a way that I never had....I got healthier, I kicked bad habits, I worked with causes and projects that were dear to my heart, I followed my gut and traded in a career path that has made me so much happier. I got to know myself and believe in myself in a way that has made me a better person. Like the Mastercard commercials.....priceless.

So Julia, while I know that this does not make you feel better about being single at this point in your life while the rest of the world seems to be pairing up and procreating.....you have an opportunity to have experiences that maybe would have been closed to you if you weren't single now. Instead of dwelling on all the things you are missing because you are on your own, look at all the amazing things you can do and fill this time with 'you' stuff. Enjoy yourself, pamper yourself, treat yourself like a princess or a diva or whatever makes you happiest. And if you are looking for a travel friend for some time this summer...I am sure Chet will be happy to share me for a girl trip or two! :)

Kansas

I have John Black on the brain. Partly due to the holidays, but mainly because I saw him the other night. We went out driving, checking out holiday lights and talking. I haven't seen him (other than a totally random what-the-hey moment in Meijers one time) in well over a year. We do talk on the phone or on the great, big, social network giant of Facebook from time to time - so we pretty much keep up on each other's lives, but we haven't been face to face hanging out in a long, long time.

It was great, but a little weird. Like I just got time warped or something. It was late, dark, and as I climbed into his car (the same one he had when we were together) it was seriously like a mini time machine. It was the exact same scene that we had played out hundreds of times before - just with a big chunk of time missing in the middle. I can't even count the numbers of mini-adventures or drives we took in that car - we were a great road trip couple. With the exception of Kansas.

Kansas is by far the funniest car story I have with John Black. It is also the funniest travel story that I have with anyone. John Black has a brother that lives in Denver. About a year or so after we started dating, we decided to road trip out there so that I could meet them and he could see his niece and nephew. It was a great idea! But it was a loooooonng drive - one that we were determined to make in a straight shot, no stopping at a hotel along the way. Now, I am a fantastic road tripper. I am always the girl that scoops out the fun facts, has the driving guides, knows the best spot to stop for food, and I am an unparalleled navigator, even if cannot instantly tell you which is north at any given moment. (Hello people! That is what signs and maps are for!) However, I am not the best driver. I will say that I have gotten much, much better - but at this time in my life I still hated to drive at night or in crappy weather. I also hated to drive if I couldn't sing to the radio at the same time, which didn't please John Black when he was trying to sleep. So naturally we left at six o'clock at night in the rain.

There are two main routes you can use to get there; one northern that goes through Chicago and heads out towards Nebraska or another southern one that goes down to Indianapolis and heads west from there through Missouri. We decided to stick to the northern route because technically it was supposed to be a tad bit shorter. Here is what I remember from the drive there. Sitting in stand still traffic in Chicago among about fifty six gazillion truckers all trying to get through the city into the heartland and trying to decide over and over again if we were in the truck lane or the car lane. Listening to the Counting Crow's Hard Candy CD so many times that I probably was singing it in my sleep. The utter and complete darkness of middle America at night, where there are literally no major (or semi-major even) cities along our path from Chicago to Denver. Also, and this is important, there was a giant, green dinosaur that John Black wanted to climb on and get his picture taken. I begged to keep going because we were about twenty hours into our trip at this point and all I wanted to do was sleep. So we moved on, made it to our destination, and all without any serious issues. One week later - we climb back in the car to head home.

We decided that I would drive first, having learned our lesson on the way there after we both stayed awake in the beginning and I proved to be a bad second wind driver. So together we found our way to the highway junction in Denver, discovered our particular highway number, and John Black curled up in his bucket seat to sleep. I happily drove along, singing, of course. to Counting Crows as quietly as I could - thoughtfully skipping all the high notes so that John Black wouldn't wake up. (Which is a bigger sacrifice for a soprano than I think he appreciated.) I was faithfully following my highway number which was supposed to stay the same for at least the length of a state or two. All was calm until about just before dawn. The sun was just starting to peek up through the corn fields when John Black woke up, yawned and asked how my night shift went. I gave him the good news first - we were making truly excellent time. Then I gave him the bad news - we're in Kansas, Dorothy.

I will give you a quick moment to consult your mental atlas - or go find a physical one if you haven't had geography in many years. Kansas is not on our northern route. Not even one teeny, tinsy tip of Kansas touched our northern route. John Black was understandably confused and pissy. Not the way to start off a day where you are trapped in a car with each other. When we had left Denver, I had on-ramped my happy little self onto the right highway BUT I took the southern ramp, not the northern one. If you have driven around Denver, you understand this is a completely believable accident. There are highways everywhere! But on this morning, John Black was not in an understanding mood. We stopped at several different backwoods gas stations - you know, the kind with two working pumps and a 'convenience' store full of hunting supplies and camo souvenirs? Have I mentioned John Black is the antithesis of Hunting Man? So the grizzly gas station attendants basically laughed at us, shook their heads at John Black's awful luck to be stuck with a woman that did this to him, and told us we might as well keep on trucking on the southern route because we were already parallel to our old route and it would just add a few hours to our trip if we tried to cut across and rejoin the northern highway.

Now I looked at it like we got the unexpected bonus of seeing the sites in about five new states - to this day I love unplanned exploring jaunts. John Black looked at it like he wanted to wring my neck. It ended up taking us almost six hours longer to get home; mainly because we were so exhausted we ended up stopping many more times that on the way out there - we even got all the way to Flint and literally neither one of us could finish the drive so we slept in a truck stop in Flint. Yup. Flint. Truck stop. And we lived to tell the story. It also took us a while because we were completely stymied by the belt loop of Indianapolis. By the time we figured out that the highway circled the city, our sleep deprived brains already let us go around it twice. (In my defense as a navigator, we had no plans to be in Indianapolis, so I had no fun facts or maps.) We also stopped in Missouri at literally the best Pizza Hut in the United States. I think it was so good that we said if we drove again we would go south simply to have that Pizza Hut again, it was that good. Okay, maybe that is a lie, but it seriously was the best cheesy bread we have ever had to this day.

So what lessons did I learn from this adventure? One. Get cheesy bread in Missouri. Two. Bring more CD's. Three. Always get extra navigational tools for the times when you take a wrong turn and end up in Kansas. And Four. If you don't let John Black stop for the crazy, green dinosaur picture on the way to Denver, promise him you'll get it on the way home, and then subsequently miss that state on the way home.....you will hear about it for the rest of your life.