Everybody Needs a Plan B (although I could use a Plan G!)

I've got some good ideas for a few new posts so keep checking back in the next week or so. But first in response to my nunnery post, my friend sent me a great story about the ideas she and her friends had come up with about their own spinster commune. They have some great ideas, I especially like the one about having a patron to fund the whole thing. So without further ado here is Plan B.

"Ok, so Plan B.
First you have to realize that this was cooked up in the mind of me and my high-school friends who really had nothing better to do with our time.

I think you'll appreciate it though, since it relates to your whole nun topic.

So, to explain. To every one of us, in some form or other, about the same thing had happened: we had gotten the "talk" from a guy that we liked but apparently didn't like us back in that way. You know, the talk that goes something like this:
Guy: You are so great.
Girl: I think you're great too.
Guy: I feel so close to you. You're like a sister to me.
Read: There is no chance ever that we will get together in a romantic way.

So one of my friends had recently gotten that talk from a guy and he actually told her that he thought of her as sort of a secular nun. Meaning, I guess, that he envisioned her as celibate, but not Catholic. Which of course meant that he couldn't see getting together with her.

So all of this spawned an "order" of sorts where we called ourselves the Secular Nuns. And in planning for our future, Plan B was born. Basically it was something that we liked to fantasize about because, again, we had nothing better to do with our time. But I guess it's a way of talking about our fears without really going off the deep end. The secular nuns always planned on wearing fabulous prom dresses as their habits, of course. No blah habits for us.

So the plan is this: our friend T always wanted to be a doctor (which she is now, by the way) and doctors make a lot of money, right? So we figured that if none of us got married, we would just live together in a big house and that was Plan B. It's not unlike your idea of getting together and sharing a place. Here are some of the details:
-- Our mansion is located on the Oregon coast.
-- It's large enough for each person to have her own wing of the house.
-- However, there are some shared facilities that we all enjoy, such as a library.
-- Oh, and did I mention the bowling alley?
-- And the waterslide. The waterslide is actually an enclosed one and it goes through the library. So when you are sitting quietly in the library and reading a book, every once in a while someone comes down the waterslide...
-- I think there was something about each of us having our own servant boy or cabana boy or something, but you can fill in your own ideas about that.
-- Although our rich doctor patroness basically provides for our every need, for pocket change we make little souvenirs to sell on the beach. You know, the ones that are like rocks and shells with googley eyes? Cheap souvenirs like that.

So that is Plan B. Every once in a while we would just sit around and talk about what was going to be in our house and that was our way of having fun. Or commiserating. Or both. :)"

Thank you, dear reader friend for the story. I also love the waterslide idea. Who says spinsters can't have fun!

Plans Schmans

We spinsters are a transient lot. I myself haven't lived in any one house or apartment for longer than 9 months since living at my parents house. It seems I'm always moving for one reason or another, either I'm looking for better accommodations or I'm leaving for the summer or I'm moving away. I have had many many roommates, (62 counting my family and mission companions) some have been great and some have really not been great. But I'm not the only one, I know many girls who move around a lot. I don't know if its out of their desire or out of necessity. I would actually love to settle down and have my own house and plant a garden and stop being so transient, but it isn't that easy. It's hard for a single person to earn enough money for a house.

Some people think of being not married as having a lot of freedom, they think we can just pick up and go anytime we want. But the only problem is money, we have to get a job and support ourselves. I never really thought I would have to.


In Young Women's they prepare you for married life and that is what I planned on. I had a whole timeline of my my life drawn up in my journal when I was like 14. At 18 I would graduate from H.S., 21 graduate from college, then go on a mission, 23 get married, 25 have twins-Christopher and Madeline and so on. I hadn't decided whether to have 4 or 5 children, but I had covered the most important events. I never really planned on a career and having to support myself for the rest of my life. I think guys have it easier sometimes because they always planned on having a career so they have a headstart in knowing what they want to do and making that happen. At 25 I was like, 'what do I want to do with my life?' Well I knew that I wanted to have a family, but since that wasn't forthcoming, what else do I want to do? It's a question that I'm still asking myself. What now? The world is open to me, I can do just about anything I want to do, so what do I want to do? The number of options actually makes the decision harder instead of easier.

So what have I been doing, I worked for a few couple of years in Boston, because I thought it would be an good "experience". Now I'm back in school furthering my education. But what about when I'm done with that? Good question, I'll find a job and who knows where I'll end up-another move. I guess it's true that there are very few people in life who know exactly what they want to do and never deviate from their course. It might be nice to be one of those people, but it may also be true that plan N may be better than plan A, although you would never have guessed it. Maybe it's nice not to have the future set, it's more exciting and suspenseful. You just never know what could happen.