Is everyone here married?

So I'm pretty sure everyone in this town is married. Which sucks because married people are scared of single people, so I'm probably not going to have any friends.

I work with a girl who got married before she graduated high school. She's a sweet girl and I already love her to death, but I want to shake her some times and ask her what she was thinking!!!

The topper: one of our coworkers who is married and has a two-year-old was talking about wanting a second child, and the younger girl pipes in and says that God has been giving her signs that she should get pregnant. We both stopped and told her to WAIT! And she seems to have listened. I even gave her my stock pile of Plan B, which I don't need 'cause I'm too fat to have sex right now anyway.

She wasn't on the pill because she tried it once for a month and the one she tried didn't work for her. She then informed me to never go on the pill. I told her I've been on it since I was 18 and it has worked wonders for what I need it for (skin, long periods). Imagine an 18-year-old socially conservative bride giving me birth control advice! Crazy, I know! I'm a huge fan of Planned Parenthood, since they've helped me so much. In fact, if it weren't for free family planning services from blue state governments, I wouldn't have seen a doctor in more than three years.

Anyway, it kind of saddens me to see such young girls latched on to something so totally with out any knowledge of what life is like alone. And a husband is just as fleeting as any other relationships, there's just paperwork involved to get rid of him.

We'll see how my single girl journey shapes up in a town where most of the girls my age are married with a kid or two and most of the men have migrated to work in the oil fields and whom I'm told to stay away from.

And don't forget to check out my new political blog ( I realize that many of my posts here have gotten WAY too political for a cooking-cleaning-single blog) Blue State Girl Living in a Red State (I'll rename it when I think of something snazzier).

Moving

Moving sucks. Moving sucks even more if you live alone, because there's no one else that obligated to help you move. Luckily I have awesome family and friends that helped me move and put me up until I found a new place.

I moved from Chicago back to Bemidji, MN, where I attended undergrad. I liked it here, it's very quiet and great if you like to spend most of your time outdoors. But the thing about Bemidji is it's family-friendly. And family friendly usually means single-unfriendly, which is totally true. It's a family-friendly college town, which means that it's not the best place for single renters, especially single renters with pets.

There are very few one-bedroom cat-friendly apartments in this city. Which is partly understandable in a college/redneck town as most renters are either college students or white trash, most of whom won't actually take care of their pets, but it sucks for the rest of us who don't want to or aren't in a position to buy but still take good care of our pets.

It also sucks that the few places that do accept pets want extra money for them. Putting down an extra $20/month or a $300 one-time pet fee won't guarantee that your property won't get ruined or that your tenant is a good pet parent. In fact, making it a non-refundable fee rather than a deposit might do the opposite, I mean, the money's already gone whether the dog chews up the trim or the cat scratches the corners, so why not let them run amuck? But if you might get your money back, you'll probably take better care of your apartment.

And money again doesn't guarantee a good pet parent. I have never had a landlord ask me to see my cats' vet and vaccine records. Seriously? Don't you want to know that the pets that are living in your building are healthy and well taken care of? If the pet is well taken care of, so will the apartment. It's not healthy for the a cat to have a dirty litter box or a dog to be swimming in its own feces.

So, rentees of Bemidji, please, reevaluate your pet policies. There are good people who have/want pets, just ask for the right things, and money isn't always the right thing.