What You See is What You Get

My whole life I have always felt like a kid. Maybe because I am my mother’s baby, or maybe everybody feels that way, I don’t know. I do know that as I graduated from high school and then college and then got my first adult job I have always felt like a bit of a poser, pretending at adulthood.

Just recently this has changed, like I went to bed one night and woke up the next morning with a whole other mindset about life and the role I play in it. I am starting my fifth year teaching, people I went to high school and college with are having babies, I just bought my second car without a parental co-signer and I pay a mortgage. It snuck up on me but suddenly I see myself as belonging to the world of adults.

I can tell that I’m old now because I can’t stay up past ten or sleep in past nine without suffering physical consequences. I’d rather pay down my credit card balance than purchase an iPhone and if I did accidentally get pregnant it would no longer be scandalous or disastrous. I have friends my age and friends twenty years older than me and I feel like I relate equally well to all of them; in my mind they are all peers.

I’m not sure how this happened to me, but I do take comfort in the fact that I am not completely matured yet. It still drives me crazy when my mother asks me where my coat is (and it still drives her crazy when I tell her it’s in the car!)

What started off as a way to pass the time at summer camp and then a nice way to make a present for my sister’s baby has turned into a full-fledged hobby. I now do things like google for “crochet pattern” and browse the books at Michael’s alongside the old ladies.  I have also graduated from a couple of plastic shopping bags to this lovely plastic box (that conveniently slides under our couch.)

Of course it remains to be seen if I will be really interested in this for awhile and then never touch it again or if this is a more persistent kind of love.

At summer camp I learned to crochet from one of the kids. Since then I have been laboring to complete a baby blanket for my sister (which I have had to start over quite a few times) and starting/abandoning a number of smaller projects. On Etsy I found a lady who sells ADORABLE patterns for crocheted toys, and this fishy is my first-ever completed project!

There is not much that annoys me more late then the stupid Wendy’s Baconator commercials bragging about the SIX (6) strips of bacon on the sandwhich.  I love bacon more than most people, but SIX strips of bacon is absolutely, disgustingly excessive.  Combine six strips of bacon with the beef on that burger (we’re not talking extra lean here, I bet) and you’re consuming over 800 calories in the sandwhich ALONE, not to mention almost your ENTIRE DAILY LIMIT of fat and OVER the daily limit of saturated fat.

Those commercials literally make me ill.  What is it about our society that drives us to such excess? Why can’t we be happy with occasionally indulging in 2 strips of bacon?