HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

My birthday was last week and I've just turned 20-something, lol! Boy time does fly by so fast doesn't it? I'm quite very close to my thirties now and all of a sudden I'm feeling mature, wiser, and old-enough (to do damn near e'rythang!). Usually I'm one of those people who has to celebrate every birthday in some way shape or form, but this year there wasn't much of a celebration. Bolaji and I are in seriously saving mode for the wedding so every celebration is quite muted. Earlier in the month we celebrated our anniversary and in times past we would have gone out to a really fancy expensive restaurant and bought it each other all kinds of gifts, but this year we just went out to a nice little Italian restaurant here and had a quiet time of it. We have a little tradition we started which is that I get a new Jewel By Lisa outfit on my birthdays (great tradition right? I love JBL) but this year I just told my babe to hold off on the JBL for now, later when we have a bit more cash he can buy for me. I could tell from his eyes that he was really appreciative of my thoughtfulness and he promised to get me something really fabulous once the wedding/rent bonanza next year is done.

Even though my birthday wasn't filled with monetary abandon, I still managed to pack in a lot of fun. Hung out with friends and family and took in a few concerts that had me sleeping late for most of the week and just completely exhausted by the end of the week. Bolaji was joking around with me saying that it's because I'm old and don't I know that the body is not like it was before? He's a joker jo. At the end of my birthday, my babe went to buy me suya and Moet Nectare Rose and we opened up the suya on the bonnet of my car, a few of my very close friends were with us and we just stood outside in the parking lot at Oceanview Restaurant eating suya and drinking champagne out of plastic cups and even though that wasn't very glamourous I was very happy in that moment and had everything I coulda ever wanted.

Speaking of getting old there's something that has been tugging around in my mind for a while now. I spoke to the fiance about it and it didn't seem to freak him out as I though it would but it kinda freaks me out. I think I'm hearing my clock ticking, and the ticking is just getting louder and louder even. It has always been a desire of mine to have at least my first child before I'm thirty, I just didn't think thirty would come so quickly! I don't know maybe it's because I'm getting married and I'm going through all these changes emotionally and psychologically that I'm feeling this way. I've learnt since getting engaged the true meaning of the saying "life is in seasons". The season of childhood is there, then the season of being a student, then the season of being a young single person working and making your own money, etc. You never think of it being so different at least I never did, but boy accepting that ring and putting it on your finger ushers in a whole brand new season of life. It's been fun many times, it's also been challenging a few times. You can almost forget how life was in the previous 'season', like for me my life now is SO VERY MUCH DIFFERENT from my life as a single, carefree woman. And I'm not just talking of getting engaged, but when I was truly a single young woman, working and living in Lagos. Now I have my soon-to-be husband to think of and take care of, I have my in-laws, even my relationship with my siblings has transformed. Now I also think about building a home, building a family, laying foundations for our future, and yes of course, thinking about children. This is not a bad thing. Everything you've done in your life as a child growing up, as a young adult has been to prepare you for this particular season. In this season, you TRULY start living.

I look at Bolaji sometimes and I am just so proud of who he has become just as we embark on this journey of life together. When I met my babe he didn't even believe in marriage AND he wasn't too fussed about ever having kids. He actually told me in his words, he could see himself growing old without kids and maybe just co-habiting with a partner. Knowing my babe I know he felt that way at that time simply because those things were so out of scope for him that he just couldn't picture it really. He had just moved out of his home for the first time ever and his fridge was full of food his mother had made for him. He was very much a carefree, high-flying, workaholic, bachelor banker. You wouldn't look at the man and think, ok, the man is ready for a commitment such as that of marriage. But over the years it's like he's blossomed and grown so much into a man. He takes care of me even! Every responsibility that's been thrown at him he's taken it in stride without looking back without complaining. He has changed seasons right in front of my eyes. Anyway let me digress here...back to what I was saying, my clock has been ticking. I told the fiance as much and he just said, "yea?". We've been saving so much for the wedding/rent bonanza that we're also looking forward to October next year when we can start treating ourselves a little bit more, we want to travel a bit etc. Now what that means is that I have to find a way to keep the ticking on mute for a few years. I don't know how I'm gonna do that and we'll see how it works out sha.


Wedding Update!

So I booked my venue this week which is very very exciting! I've also commissioned my dress and I'm currently building our wedding website which is very important as we are having a destination wedding and I'll like to give people as much time and info as they need so they can plan ahead. My colours are apple green, black, and white. What do you think? Green is my favorite color and I think black and white gives that clean, crisp, and classy look. I'm having trouble picking a dress for my bridesmaids though and will need help so if you guys come across nice options that would match my color scheme please pass them along. I'll be booking my photographer and florist next week. As for the trad (which is in 5 months!!!), I am entirely clueless. I think I'm going to go asoebi shopping with my cousin in October, then aso-oke shopping in November, I'm booking my hall next week though so that's good. The traditional is a bit hard to plan without my mother being here so I'm not sure where to go and who does what etc. I am starting to get very excited about it all though!

Bittersweet Homecoming

I'm so upset right now I'm not quite sure what to do or how to behave. What's interesting though is that my blog family is really becoming like family because one of the things I thought of when trying to figure out how to cool down is that I should bring it here knowing that I would get good advice here.

Let me tell the whole story so it'll make sense a little bit. My family is odd. Not in an extremely odd way but you know in that way that I'm convinced everybody thinks their own family is especially...different. On my mom's family there are TONS of them and they do everything together. If you can think of the quintessential happy-go-lucky Yoruba family, that's my mom's family. They do family die, lol. My Dad's family on the other hand, well, they are just special. Suffice it to say that they just kinda prefer to live their lives with a loose, sometimes thin, awareness of kinship. Nothing serious. Their wahala and drama CAN be so much that the best method everyone employs is to just be cordial at best and keep it moving. Which I kinda like anyway. So what's the point of all this family history? In the course of my relationship with Bolaji, it's only natural then that Bolaji has interacted so much with my mom's side of the family. Like they know him and he knows them and everything is good. However my favorite cousins and the ones that we hung out with most often while i was growing up are from my Dad's side of the family. In fact my FAVORITE cousin bar none, just had his second child and the last time I saw him or his wife and first child was at the naming ceremony of their first.

Okay so for about two weeks now I've been telling Bolaji, please I want us to go visit my cousin and his family o. I kept on saying it and saying it and we planned it for today. This was two weeks ago. I even told one of my cousins and she said she will come along that she will come to the house early this morning, we'll go to church together and then go to my cousin's house together. I ran it by Bolaji and everything was set for today. You should also know that this my cousin lives on the same street as my family house (my father's house) which has been locked up for a while and I was supposed to go and open and air it out but I haven't had the time for so long and to top it off, Bolaji had never been there before. I had told him many times that it meant something to me for us to go there and know my house abi? also I'm thinking of having our traditional at the house but I wanted to get his opinion because he would have a clearer eye as to whether we can actually do the ceremony there. (trust me the place is far and hasn't been lived in for over 12 years!!!). So we had planned this whole day.

Bolaji on the other hand, takes polo lessons had been telling me about the squad championships on Saturday (yesterday) for a while too. We just thought okay we'll have a busy weekend it seems, you have polo championships on saturday and we'll go visit my cousin and see the house on sunday. Everything was set and honestly I had been looking forward to this weekend all week! Yesterday coming back from polo, Bolaji tells me..."I'm sorry I didn't know but Polo championships are for two days and will continue tomorrow" of course meaning he's gonna cancel on our (my) sunday. I was soo bummed and I told him so, it put a damper on my spirit. Later on in the evening I'm talking to one of his team mates and he says to me "Bolaji was really great today, do you think he'll be able to make it tomorrow?" But he says it in a way that makes me think it wasn't all THAT compulsory for him to be there. He could have backed out! This made me even more upset like you knew how important this was to me and you obviously and consciously decided to choose Polo over our plans.

We didn't argue or anything, in fact we went out with some friends and partied and had fun but everytime i thought of it I got kinda sad and upset (not you know, anger o, just upset). When we got back home, I called him and just told him that I had to bare my feelings. The minute I told him, the whole emotion was just let out of the bag and I was so down the rest of the night. Bolaji usually hugs and kisses me every morning before he gets up but he said this morning he tried to hug me and I just turned to the other side (i don't remember doing this by the way) so we talked about it again and I told him that I felt hurt and disappointed and felt like because he wasn't too jazzed about going to my family's it was very easy for him to commit himself to the second day when he should have just told them he couldn't make it because of family commitments. I also felt that if it was something he considered important he wouldn't have blown it off easily, like work, or some other thing HE wanted to do but since it was me, it was easily brushed off. Also I told him about the rule we have: We don't do any extended family runs alone (or parent runs for that matter), the other person (spouse) has to come along. Always. We talked about it and everything, and he's gone now, but I just am so down and can't shake the feeling. I know he has apologized and he has said he's sorry he made a mistake and he'll learn from it and not do that again. I accept that. What else can I ask of him abi? He's said what he SHOULD say. But still I'm finding that that is not wiping the disappointment from me. I keep trying to tell myself he just made a mistake and i'm his fiancee and I should forgive his mistake and move on from it but in my heart I'm still down. I really wanted him to come since it would be the first time he would be meeting anyone from my father's side of the family.

Ah well. I have to just learn to stop holding on to hurt especially if the person has sincerely apologized. But it's hard and I'm praying to God to help me.

WORK WORK WORK

Hello Blog Family! The following pictures accurately depict my last two weeks:






To say that work has been crazy is an understatement. Two of our clients at work decided last minute to accelerate their timeline as a result of something else that was going on so everybody was on extra stressed work time alert. I can tell you that save the past two days (it has taken me two days to come back to normal!), i mean during the past two weeks I think I probably slept a total of 20hrs that is 10 hour each week. I think that was my average. I'm just very glad things have eased up a bit and I can finally update my blog!

Yes where did I leave off? Ok, yes. Bolaji has found out but he's promised in quite an earnest fashion that he wont come on the blog again, like EVER. I believe him. So that wasn't the reason for the lapse in posting. Generally we've been good! Last week was our anniversary and I'm so happy to have this wonderful man in my life. :-) But I just have to tell y'all, that boy doesn't know romance if it hits him over the face haha. My babe tries and when he does do something sweet, it is usually at a time unexpected by me. Our anniversary comes and because I know he is not the romantic type I've been hinting him for about two weeks before the date. Just subtle hints about how this particular one is so special to me and how I want to do something special. First off, my fiance is an investment banker. If you don't understand the full implications of this, check out this website: DABA. The website is highly satirical but some core elements are there like bankers notoriously are married to their job and their time availability follows this. If a banker sets a date for Friday at 7pm, the probability is higher than normal that he'll have to cancel, he'll have to push the time back, or he'll show up late. We know this and we just love them despite it all! Back to our anniversary, Bolaji's boss schedules a meeting for 7pm! Story short, my boo and I go on our romantic dinner around 10pm. Couple the banker lifestyle with my fiance's lack of knowledge about romance and you get a pretty normal anniversary! He is cute though because after that we went to walk by the water, hand in hand and just talking the night away, talking about our love, our marriage, our future, our kids. It was nice. Normal, but very nice. I love my babe, he's my rock and my light. I truly don't understand why people wouldn't want this if they can? I have friends who say they're not looking. They are very happy being by themselves. And I just think about my babe and his love for me, I can't imagine giving that away. This is an absolute journey, a trip, and we're gonna go it hand in hand.

FOUND OUT!

Bolaji has found this blog!

I've mentioned here before that I didn't want Bolaji to read this blog. I told him when I was starting it up so he knows I have a blog but I told him he's not allowed to look for it, or if he finds it, to read it. I'm not sure I was too shocked when last week he finally admitted to me that he did look for the blog, and he read this post. I was not very surprised because I know who I have. The Bolaji that I know is extremely curious about everything. The worst thing I can say to him is, I'll tell you when you get home. He just simply has no patience for that. Now, I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it's just one of those things I've put in my 20%, i.e. no one's perfect right? lol. Thing is I'm actually quite the opposite. You can leave a box with me and tell me not to open it and until you come back to collect it, it will remain unopened. I don't know how I became like that because as a child I was a curious person, but I think I just decided one day that if you go and put your eye into something they didn't call you into, then whatever you see is your own wahala o. So since then I've just lost that extra curiosity.

Back to the story though, so last week Bolaji and I were just talking and he confesses that he found the blog. I was so depressed and down. I wasn't angry I was just depressed. I really wanted this blog to be like an open diary where I can write everything straight from the heart without having to look behind me or having to explain myself to boyfie. Sigh. At first I thought I would close the blog entirely, then I thought I should lock it so only those that register would be able to see it but I think it's important to me to keep it relatively open. So for now, the decision is to keep it open. Bolaji has PROMISED not to stray back to this blog. Let's see. I half don't believe him I think (knowing who I have) but let's play it by ear shall we?

An update from the previous post is: I'm keeping the white wedding! So the destination wedding is back on and I'll keep you guys posted. We went over to my future in-laws house over the weekend once again an attempt to get a final budget commitment from them but like the other times we went there we end up talking and talking and at the end not getting a figure commitment. When we got engaged, Bolaji and I decided that when it comes to in-laws, neither of us will show up alone. So whenever he goes to his parents I HAVE to come with and vice versa. I think this is why they haven't given us a financial commitment so I've asked him to go back to them and ask point blank for a monetary commitment. Bolaji's mom is so preoccupied with our sex lives I think. It is true that the beau and I have decided to be celibate but we don't wear that decision on our sleeves but my new Mom keeps mentioning it and has forbidden us to travel together. Now, THAT for sure I don't think is going to work because we have to travel together for the first planning trip to the destination wedding. I need to let her know and understand somehow that we are both adults and we can VERY MUCH vacation together without sleeping together. I mean we live together. Jesus, please help me and teach me and guide me in which way to go and the things I say with my mouth. Amen.

PS - for those who can't leave comments on my blog :-( I don't know what's wrong with it. I've tried to fix it but it's not working and I don't want to change my layout. Please let me know once it's corrected itself. OR if you become a follower, I think it allows you to post automatically.

Ok, I have so much work on my desk right now, I'm gonna stop blogging at this minute.

White Wedding OR Court?

Ok, so I've said here that I've been planning my destination white wedding. Well the experience so far has been anything but pleasant for me. I don't think I'm one of the girls who dreamt about her wedding day from the time she was a little kid and has obsessed about it from the time she turned 23. Let me just digress a little bit and tell you the story of one of my friends who till date is the most wedding crazed girl I know. She is 29 and she has her ENTIRE wedding planned to the hilt, but the rub is that she doesn't have a boyfriend. She's not even close to being in a relationship with anyone right now. Yet homegirl has the venue, the church, the decor, the color scheme, the dress, the bridesmaids dress, everything planned out. She actually wanted to book a venue but I had to stop her! She wanted to book the venue and church because she says the church she wants has a long waiting list (like a year or so) so she wants to book it now so that by the time it comes she won't have to worry about the place being unavailable for her desired date. Isn't that funny? I was always look at her and just shake my head. The only non-close family wedding I've been too, she's the one that dragged me there. Funny girl.

Anyway back to my post, so the long and short of it is that I have never been a "wedding, wedding" kinda girl. I don't think I've ever really dreamt of my on day, or of me putting on a wedding dress. It's weird, like I like watching all those shows on the Style network but I never imagine ME doing all those things. It was like a mystical event that happened in a parallel universe where grown women act like complete princesses and spend tens of thousands of dollars to do so, but it was just never the scope of reality for me. Attempting to plan my wedding so far has just brought all of that to the forefront. I don't get giddy with excitement about all the little details of planning and really, it just drives me nuts and makes me go bonkers. The other day I went to find out prices to print invitation cards at the Wedding Store in Ikeja and the lady there brings out these 3 huge binders of samples, I truly was bored by the tenth page of the first one! It WAS quite boring. Then there are colors and different shades of green and fuschia and gold and on and on and on. I mean how is someone supposed to actually make a choice? The way I see it is that there are so many options out there that it actually doesn't really matter which one you pick, you can just close your eyes and point and the likelihood that you will pick something that's alright is very high so why the drama? Even the wedding dress that I think everyone says the bride is so into, I'm not so into. I picked a dress, mostly because i was tired of looking through theknot.com's parade of like 3000 dresses, and sent the picture to my mom and she freaked out and sent it back because it was too "simple". And all this and I haven't even started talking about dealing with potential vendors. I email a couple of so-called wedding planners and they never emailed me back which to me is rude, I should NOT be begging anyone to be my wedding planner, it's not charity now, abi? I'd be paying so I thought they should show a little more enthusiasm for collecting my money. Same goes for the venue, after going back and forth with them for two weeks (i confirmed availability of my date even before that) they started trying to play games with me and the guy says there's another couple "competing" for my date and tried to get me to throw in some of their other services. I just got disgusted and really uninterested in the place. Sunday night, after not hearing from me for two days, the venue guy then sends an email that the venue is now available and the other couple has picked a date! Lies! I don't want to work with liars!

So that has brought me here: I don't want to plan any wedding. I'd rather have a court wedding and a marriage blessing after. No reception. At least so I think. I told my mother and while I don't think she understands it, I think she's willing to let me have my way. We haven't decided completely though. Some of my considerations are that our rent comes up mid next year, it's $25,000 and we have to pay for two years plus service charge of $8,000! If I have all my white wedding trimmings now, how will we pay rent next year enh? And we don't want to cash out any of our savings or investments for the wedding, we'd rather keep that money in an education trust or something. The other consideration is that I want to go here for our honeymoon:





Yep! That's the Maldive Islands, so beautiful. The problem is it's very expensive and the ever cash conscious beau will NOT be going there if we continued with our destination white wedding. The last consideration is my ring. So my engagement ring has diamonds around the band as well as the solitary stone in the middle, so a couple of weeks ago Bolaji and I were talking and I mentioned to him that I'd like a matching wedding band as well, meaning a wedding band that also had diamonds around the band as opposed to a plain wedding band. he voiced some concerns about being able to afford it so I dropped it. But now I told him, I said if we do a court wedding, then i AM getting my diamond band and he agreed! Really what it boils down to is if we cut the white wedding out (which I don't want to plan anyway), then we can afford to do a lot more and still save money.

So ladies (and gentlemen?) what should I go for now that I've told you all my considerations?

Court Wedding?



Nice, chic, classy, ceremony, where I'll wear a nice 50's style short dress with my hair back in a bun with a flower and nice white pumps. I think I'll wear something like this (minus the veil):




and then I'll do a marriage blessing service at my church. For those that don't know much about it, a marriage blessing is traditionally done in an orthodox church if the couple has already done the civil ceremony. The order of the ceremony is almost exactly like the one for a wedding except there's no exchange of rings (the rings are just blessed instead), the couple enter the church together, and there's a prayer of penitence. I'm a methodist and I've already spoken to the Reverend about this (he thought we were pregnant! we're not!). For the marriage blessing service I'd wear something like this:




OR

White Wedding?

Destination wedding in a beautiful wine estate. The entire wine estate will be rented out by our wedding party which means about 22 of our guests would be able to stay in the guesthouses. The wedding itself will look like this:










A couple of things to keep in mind:

1. court wedding allows me to have my maldives honeymoon, diamond wedding band, and not have to move from "the island" to "the mainland" lol.

2. Most of Bolaji and I's close family members live outside Nigeria so will have to travel either way

3. Full white wedding in Nigeria is NOT an option. NEVER. EVER. either blessing or destination wedding.

Ok so what do you guys think? I'm going to make up my mind fully by the end of the week and I'd like to have your opinions it would really help me decide. I've been praying about this as well. I think I know what God told me yesterday but I'm still praying.

The "Husband" List

There's is something I've always wanted to share with all my girlfriends. I don't know how many of the readers here are single ladies but I'll share an insight from my experience that seems to be consolidated with other people's experiences that I've read about.

I think it's pretty normal behavior these days for us young women out there to at least voice out and be vocal about our "independency", and not needing any man. Believe me, I understand this completely. But one of the biggest "aha" moments I've had in my life was in my Feminism class in university. The teacher said to the class on one of the first days of that course "true feminism is no bra burning, or looking down on domesticity, real and true feminism is the giving/allowing a woman the right to choose WHAT and WHO she wants to be at any point in her life without feeling guilty about either choice". In essence what she was saying is that if a woman is at a point where all she wants to do is have babies, sit at home and raise those babies and cook for her husband, that's fine and no one should begrudge her that, and on the other hand if a woman is ultra-career oriented with no time for children, husband, housework, that's fine too, and no one should begrudge her that. Then, what is important for all women, is to find their balance, and be comfortable with that. This single thought changed my life and the way I saw things. I started to see that it's okay to want or need a partner in your life, it's okay to look at babies and feel that clock ticking, while at the same time keeping an eye on making my own money, and charting my own destiny.

I'll tell you why I'm saying all this. I think a lot of the times we as young ladies in this generation, we get carried away and when we get to this our age, I'm talking mid-twenties to mid-thirties, we still find it hard to admit to ourselves that YES, i'm independent modern woman, BUT i want a man, a boyfriend, a husband. Unfortunately I think this is the first step to getting a good one. I think what we have to do is be very honest with ourselves as to what we want in our lives. I've noticed that everytime I speak to a young woman who is in a happy relationship or marriage they tell you that yes, before that relationship, they admitted to themselves that they want a boyfie/hubby and acknowledged that feeling and took it to God somehow. Now I'll tell you my little story in this regard.

After moving back to Nigeria I think I "dated" a lot of frogs. Nigeria is just another kettle of fish it seems. Abroad I think there were setting "codes" of dating I was quite used to and aware of. Not that men didn't play games, they did, but in Nigeria I think men are used to being the boss, and getting their own way with EVERYTHING so there's not even the extra level of trying or sincerity I thought (everything here is just my humble opinion). There are large displays of "love" like buying you things, but I felt they almost approached it like a computer program: grandiose romantic gestures+i-want-to-marry-u=easy sex=leave girl high and dry. It was all just so complicated for me and I quickly got tired of that race so consciously, I knew I was tired and I wanted something real. I had read some excerpts of TD Jakes and I knew that I was interested in reading more about what other people thought of relationships and how to navigate the waters. So one day I was in the bookstore and came across this book:



It's called Love Smart by Dr. Phil. I know I know, there so much that many people reasonably don't like about the cliche of Dr.Phil but this book had so much common sense about it. The kind of common sense that is not so common perhaps, the kind that ladies KNOW but willingly ignore or make excuses for when faced with a tall, dark, handsome man with a killer smile. Reading the book made me confront head on a lot of my issues. One of them being that a jerk is a jerk is a jerk, regardless of whether he is pretty, or hot, or makes me coffee in the morning. If he never picks up my phone, or never keeps to his word, then he's a jerk and he's gotta go. No compromise. I had to face these things head on. But one of the most important exercises in the book is to really think deeply about what you want in a man/partner and actually list them down. And it's not a vague list that you come up with yourself but there are different categories of attributes listed and you have to think deeply and think of which one you would like in a partner. I did this exercise and some things actually surprised me. You start to think what's more important to me, a man that saves money almost to the point of stinginess or a man who gives you the world but at the end of the day you're both broke in the bank. Or how religious do you want him to be? goes to church every sunday?? once a month? tries to go to church? still figuring himself out? I had to list all these attributes down. Once I did the picture became clearer and I really felt I could make better decisions. For example if I met a man who was a fiiiiiiine man but lacked some of those qualities i thought most important, I just didn't follow through and at most we would just become friends. I did not compromise on my key list AT ALL. Of course the books also mentions the 80/20 rule, meaning there's not one human being out there that's gonna have the entire list of qualities but he SHOULD have about 80% and the most important 80% at that. Do not compromise on this.

So knowing what I wanted, I also began (like the book instructed) to think about that man and what about me would attract that kind of man. If i said I wanted an outdoorsy kinda man, then I should start learning outdoorsy things too or cross it off my list. If i said I wanted a man who was very serious about his walk with God, then I have to buckle up on that aspect too! If i want an outgoing, social kinda guy then I've got to be outgoing, and find out if I'm the sort of person who could stand an outgoing man. In essence, I began to work on ME. And it's not changing yourself to suit any man, no, but more of finding out more about yourself, and then becoming a better version of you. I started to concentrate on teaching myself to get closer in y walk with God, to listen better, to learn how to make a few dishes perhaps, to meet new people and learn about new things, to read more perhaps, to be more confident, etc. Things that actually make me a more well rounded person.

I have to say once this process was started, that's when Bolaji came into my life. He just waltzed in really. No drama. I wasn't attracted to him at first, I didn't even like him like that. And he pursued me, I mean REALLY pursued me. Not in the annoying drama-filled ways people do but he was just there for me and like he said, he just said to himself, "i want this woman in my life and i'm going to be patient, and I'm going to learn all about her, and I'm going to be there for her and support her as a friend even if she doesn't want to date me. I just want to be a part of this woman's life". For me I just started to notice that, wow, this man has A LOT of my qualities that I wrote down. I even went back to the book to re-read the qualities I checked off and stack them up against Bolaji, and my eyes just opened! I just saw that hmm, this girl, you better give this one a try, this is what you've been looking for.

So I just want to encourage everyone out there, that's truly fed up of the dating circus and craves a real relationship without the drama to just first sit down, even if you feel silly, sit down and right down what exactly it is you want. There are no right or wrong answers, right EVERYTHING down: tall, killer smile, religious, calls his mama but is not attached to his mama, wealthy, has a car, a house, whatever, just write it down, the shallow and unshallow. Know this man, then set out to know yourself, and ask God that he should bring this person into your life, AND he should help you and work on you so you'll be a good mate for this person.

True love, is a beautiful thing and never give up on finding it.

Internet Service

Hello everyone! I've got great news. Bolaji and I finally decided to set up a wireless internet service at home so I'm very pleased to say that I have actually very good service all day now and will most likely be blogging more often. I'm still upset at no comments though :( I'm thinking maybe the news of the co-habiting has knocked me off some few readers list. I'm just joking about this by the way but I hope that's not the case still. I miss the comments and the interaction and maybe now that I have easier access I'd be a lot more active in blogworld in general.

Bolaji and I had another minor incident yesterday but like all the others it's been solved immediately. I actually dno't feel like going into details on this one but I think it's something most people should be aware of. I think the minute you say "yes", then maybe a lot of things start popping up. I actually believe it's the anxiety that both parties start feeling concerning this new step in their lives coupled with all the drama of bringing two completely different families together and planning a wedding (or TWO ceremonies if you're Nigerian). I have to say thought, that I love my boo ever more each day and our love takes on a new dimension with every passing day and I can see how couples that have been married for 20 years just can't imagine life without their partner. That moment in the morning when we both part ways and go about our respective jobs is the hardest part of the day. Just before I came on blogger just now I just looked at the time and saw that it was 4pm and I hadn't spoken with my babe since 11 in the morning (!) and I just HAD to get on the phone and call. It's weird to describe the feeling even, like I couldn't take another breath until I spoke to my fiance.

Wedding planning is...exciting and exhausting at the same time! We're actually having a destination wedding and since our date is a very busy period for them I know I have to book early but finding a venue is hard job o! For us especially to do this mostly on the internet is just bananas. But I think I've finally picked a venue now and will possible book before the week is out. I feel like once that's out of the way, then the other things will be more exciting and fun since booking the venue usually means you have a semi-finalized budget already by that time. One thing that kinda messed up my day today is that all this while I'd been planning based on the exchange rate we used the last time we travelled to this destination but today something just told me to re-check, so imagine my surprise to find out that the exchange rate has gone up!!! So my budget in naira is not exactly going to cover all the things I had been budgeting for. So now I have to revise it. I just spoke to Bolaji now and explained everything and he says we'll think about it some more and work it out. The exchange rate snafu added 1million naira to the budget..yikes!

I'm thinking of making this blog a wedding planning/relationship chronicle blog now. I don't know. What do you guys think? More wedding stuff or more relationship stuff? I feel like our lives right now is extremely busy and we're being pulled in many different directions that not very much is happening.

Ok, I'm going to head back to work now. I'd like say a big CONGRATULATIONS to Yankee Naija Babe on her court marriage. In 20/30/40/50/60 years you'll look back and with a smile on your face know that marrying your now husband was the best decision you made! Enjoy your mini-honeymoon girl!