Rave On

My birthday was this past Saturday.  I am officially 26...and looking at what I just wrote, who the hell in their right mind would want to be unofficially 26?  Perhaps a crazy person...yes, only a crazy person would want to go from 25 (which we all know is a whole 'nother ballgame) and pretend to be 26.  The only way I would do it is if there was a large monetary compensation, or something equally awesome.

Like, I don't know, maybe this badass pegasus.

I'd consider it then.

But seriously, I'm 26.  Four more years to 30.  Ouch.  I suppose 26 is a grand achievement.  If I lived in the 1600s, like in Jamestown or whatever, I'd have like ten years left in my life before I died a horrible death from cholera or smallpox.  I'd have 54516561 kids by now, all named after virtues and kings and whatever, married to a guy named James Blacksmitherson and living in a leaky shack shittily constructed out of logs and mud and no windows.  I'd be all about sewing and hanging out with my equally fabulous friends, Rebecca and Prudence.  We'd have the best gray bonnets in the entire village.  The bitches would be jealous.

Oh yes.  They would be jealous.

But anyway.  Christmas is coming.  Tres exciting, no?  I am proud to announce that I finished my shopping for Nicky an entire week ahead of schedule.  I usually am rushing around on the 23rd, hating myself for waiting until the last minute.  This year, I finished on the 16th.  I think that warrants a high five...so I totally just gave myself one.  (I usually do this so that I am not left hanging, by well, myself.  Denying someone a high five is such an asshole move, and I am not an asshole.)  Perhaps this early shoppage is a part of turning 26?  Perhaps.

Or I just remembered to do it early this year. 

Tinker Toys

Real life conversation that just happened:

(Quick backstory: Nicky is telling me how old his cousins are and how he doesn't want to grow up.)

Me: Nicky, how old are you?
Nicky: I'm six.
Me: And how old am I?
Nicky: Um, probably around a thousand.
Me: What?!?!?
Nicky: Oh, I mean twenty-five.

I hope you all had a great Fourth of July!!!

Stop This Train

I'll be 25 in about eight days, and I've begun to think about how I'm getting older and how at 25 you're supposed to be "grown up" and living the adult life. I won't lie when I say that I've had my fair share of early quarterlife crises, where I've sat here and been like "oh my god I'm going to be 25 in X amount of months and I have absolutely nothing to show for it." And to me, in the traditional sense, I feel as though I don't. I'm a freshman in college, I still live at home...it seems silly, but it bothers me that I've never lived on my own.

The Great Recession, however, has leveled the quarterlife playing field. College degrees don't automatically signify a sweet high-paying job and a guaranteed spot on the awesome rung of the adult ladder. A lot of twentysomethings have moved back in with Mom and Dad because they can't find a job and the costs of living on their own are too high. I'm no longer the uncool single mom who is struggling to financially get through college and still lives at home. A lot of my friends have moved back home, right back into their bedrooms from their childhood.

So now I'm worrying about the other prong of the quarterlife crisis: I'm getting old. Scoff if you must, but high school still only seems like yesterday, albeit yesterday through a dirty glass. It seems weird for me to worry about dull skin and wrinkles and an entire skin routine. I've always been a low maintenance kind of girl when it comes to beauty routines. I don't have the time or the energy to worry about three steps to clearer skin or whatever. But now, now I have to be a little more structured with my skin or I'll pay for it down the road. Suddenly I'm worrying about those bad sunburns I got as a kid and my two separate but brief stints in the tanning bed. Suddenly I'm reading the descriptions on my face stuff and looking for alpha hydroxy acids and antioxidants. It's a bit daunting, but I figure it'll be worth it ten or fifteen years down the road.

I looked in the mirror a few weeks ago and I noticed that I had lines under my eyes. They weren't overly pronounced or anything, but they were enough to make me regret all those years of not wearing my glasses and squinting to see. I was kind of like a Latin American revolutionary when it came to wearing those stupid glasses. I'd rather die than wear those nerdy plastic welfare kid glasses, so I stayed vain and cool and popular and squinted my way through my childhood. I've since then bought eye cream, and I try to remember to apply it religiously twice a day. I tend to forget, but I figure if I do it enough it'll become a routine habit.

No gray hairs yet, thank sweet baby Jesus. I'm going to cross my fingers and hope I get a few more years out of that.

More on getting old tomorrow when I wake up. It's like 1:41 am and I have to go to sleep 'cause I have work at noon. XO.

Do You Remember

Hmm.


Nostalgia. It's a funny thing.

I found a bottle of body spray (Bath and Body Works Sweet Pea) in a pile of junk in my room. One whiff of it brought back sooo many memories.

Like bam.

I was suddenly back in the math hall bathroom at St. Joe's, doing my makeup before we all went to the mall during our study hall. My friends and I loved the smell of sweet peas, and I think most of us wore that fragrance a good chunk of those four years.

Thinking of that made me flip through the mental catalog of memories from back then--some of them are a bit faded, but others are still as vivid as when it first happened. I remember dancing to Li'l Jon in Mrs. Knittel's room before Theology class started ("From the windoooows to the wall!"), breaking the crucifix (behind the scenes) in the freshman Theology classroom and putting Jesus back together with Sticky-Tac (I'm sure I'm going to hell for that one), sagging our skirts because at first we thought it looked cool and then out of necessity because we had four years worth of 3 for a $1 gigantic chocolate chip cookies at lunch...Standing in the echo circle after school and yelling dirty words and cracking up hysterically.

I actually got a little sad, because I only talk to a few girls from St. Joe's now...I know it's been five years since we graduated, and people grow apart, but...Those were some of the greatest times in my life (how can you top that choir trip to Disney World junior year or getting drunk on that nasty plum brandy with Leah and watching American Pie over and over til we almost peed our pants from laughing?), and once you enter the more "structured" adult world, things change. People grow up, go to college, get jobs. Some of us get married, some of us have kids, and then there are others who do some of these things and just tumble endlessly through life, not really having a fixed point in the world. It takes those people a while to figure out their purpose in life.

I think the hardest part of growing up is realizing that the image of adulthood you had as a child isn't always going to be what you actually achieve. I'm trying to reconcile the dream with the reality myself, but it's hard to shake off the bright-eyed idealism you had as a teenager. It's all too easy to become jaded and say that you were dealt a bad hand--I could easily say that myself, seeing as how I got pregnant right out of high school, goofed off so that I had to go to summer school and not graduate with the rest of my class (I got my diploma from the school secretary. That is classy.)...Got dumped by Nicky's dad seven months into being pregnant, had Nicky at 19, floated in and out of college several times without any real concrete idea as to what I wanted to be...Got back with Nicky's dad, got dumped again when Nicky was 10 months old, had to work 40 hours or more a week at Burger King to try to cover everything because his dad didn't pay his child support.

But it wouldn't be rational for me to sit there and give up. That's not who I am, that's not how I was raised. My parents could have thrown me out at 18, but they told me they'd like me to live at home until I finish my undergrad degree. I quit Burger King, got a much better job at the dealership doing something I enjoy with people I enjoy...I finally decided I want to become either a family lawyer or a child advocacy lawyer, and am going to get back into the swing of things this fall when I start school again. Nicky's dad still doesn't pay child support or come around, but I've gotten over that and still bust my ass working 40 hours or more, six days a week. I think it'll make Nicky appreciate things a bit more when he gets older. Maybe not, but I'd like to hope so.

I used to think that life is like water--you try to grab it with your hands, but it just runs through your fingers, completely unaffected. It's frustrating, but you have to realize that life goes on, just like the water...You can either keep trying to grab at the water or just let it go. I kept my sense of humor and grabbed a fish tank--because you can't catch it with your hands, but you can with a container. That, my dears, is the secret. Life keeps going no matter how hard we try to control it, but you can adapt to it and make the most of it.


Huh. Maybe I should write a book about all this deep Zen-like wisdom. Call it Musings of Life Over McDonald's. Could be a bestseller.

[A big thanks/shoutout goes out to Nashe from Where Did All The Pecans Go? (http://yourcookiejar.blogspot.com) for inspiring me through her last entry. Thanks!]