It is officially the last night of my 20s, folks! Tomorrow I bid farewell to 29 and join the brigade of the 30-somethings. I believe that means from now on I will need to check a different box on forms – no longer part of the 25-29 demographic!
I always thought I’d feel worse about turning 30. Everyone holds it up as this hideous looming doom as you move through your 20s, every birthday peppered by comments about how you’re on the downward slope, not long now, enjoy it while it lasts. But really, your 20s are just hard work. Sure, there’s a lot of fun times, and the ability to stay up all night without falling in a heap for a week afterwards is sorely missed, but mostly it’s a lot of existential angst and wondering what on earth you’re going to do with the next 60-80 years of your life.
I had one momentary pang of anxiety and sadness just before when Simon was teasing me about getting old, but that’s just the usual anxiety crap that bubbles away in my brain awaiting a horror thought to latch onto. For the most part, I’m not fussed. I think a lot of the dread is that you won’t have your shit sufficiently together by the time you hit 30 (whoever set that as the aspiration should be given a swift clip up the back of their head). Surprisingly (and I am surprised), I have been fortunate enough to get my shit together – I’m actually really happy with how my life is at the moment. The anxiety voice immediately tells me not to say that because something awful will happen to take it away, but I’m going to hush that for a moment and comfort myself with my move into 30-dom.
One thing that is both wonderful and highly stressful at the moment is our house. I think I mentioned in my last post that we bought our first home. The plan was to give it a freshen up – new paint, new curtains, maybe re-polish the floorboards. Oh my. That turned into a full blown renovation! There was some asbestos in the laundry & toilet (normal in houses of that era here), which we knew about and Simon’s parents insisted on having removed. In the process of doing that, it became clear it was in the bathroom too, so out comes the whole bathroom! Which was a big deal, but we’d planned on doing the bathroom at some point (in a few years!), so it just moved that forward. But by taking the walls off, we could see the wiring. Luckily for us, Simon’s sister’s partner is an electrician and he took one look & saw the whole place needed rewiring. Though I’m not sure we needed a sparky’s opinion on that – there were a couple of wires literally bandaided together. I mean with an actual band aid. Wtf.
Plus the heater had to come out, so we’re doing ducted heating. And a whole bunch of other things that are a mix of our ideas, other people’s ideas (I reached the point where I said ‘no more thoughts on things!’ to everyone), disasters that need to be remedied and dodgy building stuff that needs to be fixed. All of which is great and means we’ll have a safe, nice house to live in, but has meant we’re watching our accounts bleed away and a lot of work has had to be done by everyone. I’ve had a few meltdowns, but Simon has been very supportive for the most part, and last night took me through an imaginary journey through the house to help me emotionally reconnect with it, which was exactly what I needed.
One interesting experience for me, as a feminist, however – I have noticed that as a woman, every time you voice an opinion on something in a building, or contribute to a discussion about something, people immediately cast you into the role of nagging shrew. If I disagree with Simon about how the shower head should be positioned, it’s greeted by the tradies (friends of the family) with ‘Oh no, better listen to the missus or there’ll be trouble’ etc. etc. At one point, the guy doing our plumbing said ‘Yeah mate, when we were doing our house, I did our whole bathroom, but I still had to check everything with the missus or I’d be in trouble!’ I retorted with ‘Well, it is her house as well’, which was completely ignored. Simon and I have a very fair relationship, so we discuss things as equals. I’m paying for a lot of this house, and we share a life, so my opinions about what the house should look like should be treated equally. And they just weren’t – not even by non-tradies, and not even by the women in some cases! It was quite an eye opener, and really pissed me off. I told Simon what was going on, and he admitted he hadn’t noticed but could definitely see what I was talking about. It was really good to hear him say that it was quite derogatory and that he’d stand up for me the next time it happened. I wish he didn’t have to, but since then there have been no more issues.
Anyway, I’m going to go, as I’m pretty exhausted by the craziness that is life at the moment, and I’m really craving some time in front of the TV – I have so many shows waiting for me on the IQ. Good night!
The feminist housewife 