How to Know When You've Started to Grow Up

1. You're no longer indestructible.

In the past I use to believe that nothing bad would every happen to me. The faster I drove and the more reckless I acted didn't really matter. It's not like anything bad would actually happen. Now that I'm starting to grow up, I realize that I was dumb. Bad stuff can happen. It can also happen to me.

I'm not going to say that I've completely slowed down, but I do try to wear my seat belt more...

2. Life really isn't THAT short.

It's not. It's long. It's really, really long for the most part. All of the quotes and sayings and whatnot that say, 'life is short, live it to the fullest,' I get it. But let's be honest, the average person lives like 80 years and that's A LONG TIME.

So, yes, live live to the fullest, but also enjoy it and take a nap. You've got a lot of years left.

(God willing.)

3. Staying in on a Friday night seems like a great idea.

I've had the revelation recently that being at home on a Friday night isn't the worst thing to ever happen to me. Though the busier I am, the happier I am, I'm also learning how to unwind when I need to and sometimes that means a movie, wine and staying in on a Friday night. Especially when it's cold outside.

4. You start out a sentence, 'remember when...'

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Remember when you didn't say remember when?

5. You get on to children who aren't behaving.

We have a pretty flexible work environment and sometimes those with kids will bring their kids to the office for a little while if school has been let out early or if it's summer vacation. It doesn't bother me because all of the kids are pretty well-behaved. One day, two boys were acting up and running around the office a bit, when something happened and I quickly snapped my fingers and told them to stop running.

Stop running? Really? I've become that person.

Apparently I have.

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5 Questions I Am Asking Myself

1. I have one tomato left from my parents garden that didn't decide to produce until October. Can I really go a couple of more months without a real, fresh tomato?

2. Everyone where I work, reads. They read a lot. I read Shape magazine and Southern Living. Is it time to expand my pallet of readings?

3. I've been eating 2-3 oranges a day since I bought 5 lbs of them. Will I start to become an orange? Or will it make me a cutie? (They are called, 'cuties.')

4. It rained today and it was grey which made me happy. Is that weird?

5. I genuinely enjoy watching the Biggest Loser and eating supper at the same time. Is that backwards?

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My Irrational Fear of Coconut

Coconut. I feel like it's one of those things in life that you either love or hate. I remember the first time I remember not liking coconut. It was at a birthday party for a friend when we were around seven to 10 (Your guess is as good as mine right now.) As we are at the birthday party and playing games we are all having a good time. For one reason or another I had to leave early that day for a prior engagement. (Such the socialite I was between seven to 10, huh?) Anyways, as I'm leaving the party, my friends mother hands my mother a piece of cake. 

But this isn't any normal cake. This cake has white stuff on it. This cake looks like snow. Why was there snow on a cake? Had I had coconut before? No idea. But this is definitely my first memory of it. So, I looked at the cake on the paper plate with the saran wrap over it and just shake my head. We go do whatever else we had planned to do that day and take the cake home with us.

The plate sits on the bar with the coconut cake still just sitting there. I look at it. Try to figure out why someone would ruin a perfectly good piece of cake with all that stuff. That wasn't frosting. It wasn't sprinkles. It was weird. 

I look at the cake. I look away. I realize that IT IS CAKE. What was I doing? I get out a fork and think, it can't be that bad can it?

When you think, "It can't be that bad," you might as well set up yourself for disaster. It was that bad. The taste, the texture, the smell. Nope. Not happening. Luckily my dad likes coconut. *ewwwww*

So since I was between seven to 10 I have stayed far, far away from coconut ... until last week. Last week I was given a Santa sugar cookie with coconut. I figured it had been plenty of time since my last coconut indecent that I was mature enough to give it a try. So I did. I ate it all but the coconut part. Then I tried it. 

It wasn't as bad as I remember. It's still not something that I'm going to jump for joy, but maybe I won't cringe when I see it either. 

So maybe my irrational fear of coconut is now just a 'eh' feeling. Will I cook with it? No. Will I order it? Probably not. Will I continue on my path of destruction for its existence? Nah. I'll find something better to do now.
 

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Forever But Not Always

"Darlin, forever is a long, long time, and time has a way of changing things."

- Big Mama, 'The Fox and the Hound"

The first time I watched The Fox and the Hound I was around eight-years-old and sitting on a couch at my parents house. I'll never forget crying while watching the movie and thinking how could time change people that much and why would two friends let each other go. Though it took about 16 years for me to be able to watch it again, I'll never forgot what Big Mama said, "Darling, forever is a long, long time, and time has a way of changing things."

Maybe I'm reading way too much into a Disney movie, or maybe it's the quote that hits home, either way, I completely understand it now. 

Forever doesn't always mean always. And time can drastically change everything. 

I've written before about how much my life has changed just in the past year. And  how in the past five years, I've graduated college, moved to Atlanta, broken up with a long time boyfriend, moved back to Arkansas, started a new career and finally found who I was looking for. Myself. 

Throughout that time, there have been friendships and relationships that have changed. Some have been created,  some have faded and some have remained steady and strong. I've also realized that at the end of the day, it's my life and I can the only person I have to answer to about the decisions I make is me. Now of course, I want to do well at my job, as a friend and a daughter, but I've learned that life really is what you make it. 

The friendships that have faded are the ones that I never expected to lose. The ones who I thought were going to be there for forever, have moved in different directions in life than I have. No one tells you growing up that your best friend might just become an acquaintance one day. 

I guess Big mama was right. Time has a way of changing things. It does. Sometimes for the better and sometimes just for the different.

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