All We Need Is Just a Little Impatience

I'm not a person with a great deal of patience. In fact, I'm more of an immediate gratification kind of girl. I've shown a surprising amount of patience when it comes to dealing with my daughter, but that pretty much exhausts the supply of patience I tote around in my snazzy diaper bag. (Insert countless stories in which I harangue monumentally stupid retail salespeople, waiters in U.S. restaurants who don't speak English, and credit card company representatives who insist that my maiden name can't possibly fit on their credit card along with my first and married names.)

In light of the no-patience thing, it shouldn't surprise anyone to hear that I'm not a big proponent of hanging around and waiting for something to get better. It's just not my style.

So you remember that job situation that I've been ruminating about for the last few months?

I quit.

Mr. Metropolitan, who's reading this over my shoulder as I type, just pointed out to me that I didn't quit with the Fear. (You remember that Friends episode where Rachel has to have the Fear to goad her into pursuing her dreams, so she quits her job at the coffeehouse before she has her next gig lined up? That's the Fear he's referring to.) That's true -- I didn't quit with the Fear, because I didn't need it.

If there's one thing I've realized this year, it's that I can't thrive in an environment where I'm not valued. So while I was sitting around (impatiently) waiting for my bonus check to hit my bank account, I went ahead and found a new job. And so when I quit, it was far from hat in hand, admitting defeat at the hands of those who think urban mommies can't handle a high-powered professional career, but rather with my next job lined up and ready to go. A job, incidentally, that 99% of the people I work with would dearly love to have.

Wow, said one person who's been the bane of my existence for the last year, how'd you make that move? Everyone here wants to make that move.

Who needs Fear when you've got Impatience?

So here we go. Hold on to your seats, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

BABY BANANA HAS ARRIVED!

We are happy to report that Baby Banana has arrived safe and sound! Lola, Mr. Banana, and Baby Banana are all doing well.

I'm sure that Lola will have a great deal to tell everyone once she's back online, but for the time being, we just wanted to let everyone know that we officially have an actual Urban Mommy in the Banana family!

Why Yes, I'd Love to Marry You, But Could I First See a Copy of Your SAT Scores?

Citing a report about a British study of IQs and marriage rates that concludes that smart women have trouble getting themselves married off, Ann Althouse (a university of Michigan law professor who writes an entertaining and interesting blog) posted her own thoughts on the real losers in the marriage sweepstakes.

The most unmarriageable folks, in her (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) view? Stupid men, whose intellectual equals have been scooped up by men looking for women just a bit inferior to them, and whose intellectual betters won't give them the time of day, because women really aren't looking for men who are dumber than they are.

Althouse has a couple of fun follow-up posts on the subject here and here.

My own experience during my pre-marriage years was that the smarter the circle of people in which I found myself, the better my dating prospects became. High school was fine but retrospectively somewhat meh, college was an improvement, and law school was the dating jackpot, culminating in the gloriously happy relationship that would ultimately make me Mrs. Metropolitan. I couldn't tell you whether this upward trend was the actual result of being surrounded by smarter guys who were more inclined to date smart girls, or whether it's just a happy coincidence tied to the fact that my hair got progressively cuter after high school, hitting a peak of maximum cuteness during law school.

(And, incidentally, Mr. Metropolitan's SAT scores were 50 points higher than mine, a fact that he likes to mention at opportune moments.)