A Week in the Life of a Single Girl

By: Erin Ann McBride, the single girl in question, and Juli Hiatt Caldwell, sitting on the sidelines watching with a bucket of popcorn

How Busy Can You Get?

Some people think that being a young single woman is all roses and chocolate hearts. How glorious that would be! The references people make about how easy my life must be and how difficult their lives are just because they are married and have a family drive evoke a range of emotions in me, from driving me crazy to twinges of jealousy. I have no brood to yell out my anme with delight when I walk in the door, although the fish bubble nicely when they see me…if I’m carrying the canister of fish flakes. When the some married women disdainfully imply that they have full lives and all I do is go to parties and get pedicures, I want to trade lives with them for just one week. Let’s see them keep up!  

Sunday-

9:00 a.m.  Younger brother speaking in family ward.  Go to family ward. 

1:00- p.m.  Go to my singles ward. Meet with FHE committee during Sunday School to plan tomorrow night’s FHE activity. Feel guilty for skipping out on Sunday School.

5:00 p.m.  Church got out an hour ago, but got stuck talking in hallway with visiting teacher. Rush home, eat frozen dinner.

7:00 p.m.  Conduct music at fireside. Hope no one notices that I can’t lead 6/8 time.

10:00 p.m. Call sister in Utah while doing the dishes that built up over the weekend. Have a hard time hearing her over the yelling in the background. Constantly interrupted by her stopping the conversation, turning away from the phone to say, “Dallin, please stop hitting your brother with the race car…  No, he does not like it.  I said stop that!” or “Please take the carrots out of Daddy’s nose. He’s sleeping.”  In the end, I felt much closer to my sister but am very grateful I’m not near them or the carrots at that moment.

12:00 a.m. Talk to roommate, go to bed. Collapse in exhaustion.

Monday-

6:30 a.m.  Wake up, get dressed, and fight traffic while singing Steve Miller Band’s “Jungle Love” at the top of my lungs. Grateful for sound proof cars.

8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.  Work all day. Stayed at desk during lunch so I could make doctor’s appointment and check personal email. I notice 50 new messages in my inbox since Friday. Am I popular or on just every single’s List Serve in the United States? 

6:00 p.m.  I stopped getting paid at 5:00 p.m. but had too much work to do.  Now running late for FHE. Quickly run to Wal-Mart to pick up the materials for FHE project tonight.

7:15 p.m. Arrive at FHE fifteen minutes late, but at least I have everything for project.  No one else was on time anyway.

9:30 p.m.  Clean up apartment after FHE hurricane has rushed through the apartment.  Clean-freak roommate will be home shortly. Better vacuum to preserve the peace.

11:00 p.m. Upon entering the bedroom, I realize I am out of clean clothes. Start laundry with quarters harvested from beneath couch cushions.

1:00 a.m.  Fall asleep with lights on. Laundry still in dryer. Roommate kind enough to turn it off when she came home.

Tuesday-

5:45 a.m. Wake up, get dressed, attempt to exercise and read scriptures simultaneously. I’m not so good at this.

7a.m. – 6 pm.  Go in to work early, stay late.  Worked through lunch as usual. Bought plane tickets for four upcoming meetings around the country.  Forced self to stay awake during most the single most boring conference planning session ever.

6:00 p.m.  Drive-thru dinner, fight traffic, rush to class. Exhausted.

7:00 p.m.-10:00 p.m. Class. Fight to stay awake as professor drones on incessantly. 

11:00 p.m.  Feeling guilty over not starting project for class.  Study for 45 minutes before falling asleep on book in living room.  Roommate wakes me up at 2 a.m. when she gets home from her boyfriend’s house. Too tired to chasten her for late hours. Will remind her tomorrow that the Spirit goes to bed at midnight. Hopefully she won’t call me a hypocrite.

Wednesday-

5:45 a.m.  Wake up, get dressed, attempt to exercise and read scriptures simultaneously. I’m impressed; my balance has improved today. Not falling off exercise bike like I did yesterday.

6:30 a.m. Fall asleep reading scriptures on the couch.  Feel guilty.

7:30a.m. Fight traffic, get to work 20 minutes late in spite of waking up 45 minutes early.

8:20-6:00 pm.  Work. Do favors for half the office. Home teacher emailed and wants to fit in an appointment tonight. Wave magic wand over Blackberry and create a half hour slot before Institute. Work can wait, right?

6:30 p.m.  Meet home teacher at his apartment. 

7:30 p.m.  Institute. Cha cha cha! Sat next to cute new guy in class.

9:30 p.m.  Meet visiting teachee after Institute. Companion never shows up. I need to get home and work on project due on Friday, but visiting teachee just broke up with her boyfriend and needs a shoulder to cry on. I better get blessing points on my project for this!

11:30 p.m. Get home for the first time today. Roommate has left note informing me that I need to clean the bathroom. Check voicemail. Three phone calls about parties over the weekend. Not one cute boy called. I’m not surprised.

Thursday-

6:30 a.m.  Have given up hope on waking up early and doing exercises before work. Get dressed, listen to scriptures on tape, forgot to put on makeup.

7:30 a.m. Leave for work, eat breakfast in car, fight traffic, call mom from cell phone in car. Woke mom up. Oops!

8:00- 5:00 p.m. Work, work, work. I’m really not giving my job the stress level justice that it deserves. No lunch. Really, who has time for food?  Five hundred people are flying in for a conference that I am somehow in charge of.  Sneak in twenty minutes of phone calls planning ward activity.

5:00- 6:00 p.m. Stay at desk and type project.  It’s due tomorrow by noon.

6:00 p.m. Fast food dinner again. I miss real food. I can feel my arteries hardening already.

7:00-10:00 p.m. Class. Secretly work on project while professor drones on.

10:00 p.m.-12:00 a.m. Go home. Finish project. Notice that I have no food in the refrigerator. Well, maybe. What can I make out of mayonnaise and dill pickles?  Fast food is suddenly appealing again.

12:00 a.m. Glance at planner and realize that I am teaching Relief Society on Sunday. Realize I should probably quickly review the lesson. 

1:00 a.m.  Actually go to bed in my room with pajamas on. I should make it a goal to do that at least twice a week.

Friday-

6:30 a.m. The snooze button is my best friend. 

7:00 a.m. I still love the snooze button. 

7:15 a.m. I love the person who invented the snooze button.

7:30 a.m. Leave for work, fight traffic, thank goodness for casual Fridays. Did not shower. I hope my shoes match.

8:00-11:00 a.m.  WORK!!  Chaos has hit the office.  Begin stressing because I have to deliver my project to the professor by noon. 

11:00 a.m. Call courier company to pick up my project and take it to school for me.  Call and cancel doctor’s appointment.  Pay courier service $30 to take my project to the professor. Feeling very tempted to let my company pick up the tab for the courier service…but I’m a good girl and don’t. Still have to pay $25 to doctor’s office for the appointment I can’t make. Just paid $55 to stay at work. Something is wrong with this picture.

11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Work, work, work. 

6:00 p.m. Go directly home from work for the first time this week.  Fall asleep on bed with shoes on. Just checked—yup, they match. Thank goodness!

7:30 p.m. Cell phone is ringing incessantly.  Agree to meet friends at party later.

7:30-8:30 p.m.  Buy groceries. 

9:00-midnight. In spite of complete exhaustion, go to party with friends.  It’s the only time this week I will get to do something fun or for me. Talk to cute boy from Institute the other night. Hope there aren’t bags under my eyes. Hope I remember my own name.

Saturday-

8:00 a.m.  Sleep in for two beautiful, glorious hours.

9:00 a.m.  Ward service project. Rake leaves in park. Talk to friends. I am so glad I went!  

12 noon. Walk from apartment to local café to eat salad. Feeling very metropolitan. Also trying to save money by not driving car so much on weekends. 

1:00-3:00 p.m.  Clean apartment because roommate is about to commit mutiny. Pay bills. Consider hiring a butler and/or maid to do all household duties for me.  Do butlers also run social schedules? Some people have wives. I have me. I need a wife, actually better yet a husband, to do the cooking and run the errands for me.

Sunday- The drill begins all over again!

Are all singles this insanely busy? Let us know if this comes close to describing the mayhem that is your life by emailing us at erinandjuli@meridianmagazine.com. We can’t wait to hear from you! Juli, who has traded in this sort of crazy schedule, would like to point out that getting married means you trade one kind of crazy life for another. She humbly suggests enjoying each day as it comes. One day, when the kids are climbing in the fish tank to play with the algae eater and testing out the new crayons on the wall, you’ll miss that sort of busy. Some of our readers are single parents, and they have Erin and Juli’s types of busy all rolled into one unbelievably hectic life. Our best advice—keep praying for strength!  (And find time for a nap!)

Your Thoughts…

An anonymous reader emailed us a story about a young man she met at a single’s conference who sounded quite a bit like the man in the stories we ran last week. Being a kind girl like her mother taught her, she decided to befriend a guy in the corner to whom no one paid any attention. She had recently returned from her mission and wanted to meet as many new people as she could, while checking out what was available in terms of eligible LDS RM’s. 

During the conference, she says, “The young man I had befriended on the first day, whom I will call Ivan, dogged my every step. I was annoyed by this constant attention but being polite, I made small talk and tried to include him in the conversation when no one would talk to him. At the same time I tried unsuccessfully to make friends with a young man I was interested in. The young man in question and other people for some reason kept giving me strange looks and a wide berth. It all came to a head when a member of the group with which Ivan had come took me aside and asked what kind of person I was and why I was treating Ivan so shabbily. I asked the guy to explain himself, he answered that as Ivan’s fiancé I had no business going after other guys. I could not believe my ears! Wow I was engaged and I did not even know it. I told the person that I definitely was not the Ivan’s fiancée; I did not even know Ivan existed before the conference. I asked him how he could believe that I could be engaged to a person I barely knew and in only 4 days. He told me that Ivan had told everybody at the conference that he and I were engaged and that was the reason of the funny looks.”

She confronted Ivan to demand an explanation. His response?  “You were nice to me, and you talked to me when no one did, so I thought you liked me. Girls come to conferences like these looking for a boyfriend and I want to get married. Now you are all angry at me and I do not know why.” Astounded, she tried to explain to Ivan that one just does not go to a singles’ conference like one goes to the market, that he could not shop for a spouse the same way one he shops say for a pair of shoes. Somehow, he still didn’t get it.

Huh. Makes perfect sense to us. It would be much easier that way! Can’t you see it?  How cool would it be to pull up to a drive through and place your order? “Yeah, I’d like one husband, brown hair with no genetic history of male pattern baldness, no history of disease, brown eyes, sense of humor, minty fresh breath, interesting conversationalist, intelligence, nurturing personality, high sense of adventure, and current temple recommend. To go, please.”

Your order taker would tally it all up and ask, “Would like a side of kids with that?”  You consider for a few moments, then politely refuse. “No thanks, we’ll be back for the kids when we’re done with our master’s degrees.”

“Okay, pull around to the first window and we’ll have your total there.” That simple! How great would that be?

Apple Quote- a New Favorite

Katie sent us some sage advice for women who are frustrated that it’s harvest time, and no one is picking them! She sent us a copy of an email that was sent to her. “Women are like apples,” it said, “and the best ones are at the top of the tree. Most men don’t want to reach for the good ones, because they are afraid of falling and getting hurt. Instead, they just take the rotten apples from the ground that aren’t as good, because it’s easy. Meanwhile, the good apples at the top of the tree wonder what’s wrong with them, but in reality they are amazing! They just have to wait for the right man to come along and pick them, the one who’s brave enough to climb all the way to the top of the tree to get rewarded with the best, shiniest apple.”

Rarely do we use this column to tease our friends.  But sometimes the opportunity presents itself, and we just can’t let it pass us by.  We shared this quote with Sister Julie Markham, currently serving a mission in Ghana with her husband.  In return she had this to say about her son (and our friend) Sammie, “I guess I think some men are looking for the apples at the top of the tree. Men don't go around picking up the apples on the ground and then change and start climbing the tree.  They keeping hoping one of the easy apples will actually turn out to not have many worms. The ones climbing the tree, in my observations, want to look at each apple, though, trying to find the shiniest, prettiest one, not realizing they've got a couple of bad spots themselves...”

We realize that this apple quote could apply to both men and women.  So to Sammie and all singles everywhere, we say this- stop looking at the apples and just pick one!

What do you think? We’d love to hear advice from harvesters and those waiting to be plucked alike. Send all harvest stories to your friendly neighborhood farmers at erinandjuli@meridianmagazine.com. We want you to know, no matter how frustrated you are over the pickings, we know you’re the cream of the crop.

Happy Dating!