Three Thoughts Thursday #2

#1--This one isn't so much a thought as it is a little piece of advice. "ALWAYS LOOK BEFORE YOU DRINK." That's right, folks. You never know what might be in that tall glass of yours. If I had heeded this little piece of common sense, I never would have ended up with a spider in my mouth this morning. And I'm not talking a little tiny jumper. It was at least half an inch big, and that's how I caught a blurry glimpse of something brown going in my mouth as I was taking my last gulp. Luckily, I had enough wits about me not to swallow, and after a second or two of blinking my eyes, wondering what the heck was floating in my mouth, I decided to spit the water back into my glass. That's when I saw the creepy critter, flailing its legs helplessly in the shallow pool of water in the bottom of my glass. I'm quite proud of myself that I somehow maintained composure instead of reacting how I normally do to spiders, which is to scream like a 2 year old who's had their cookie confiscated and to jump on the nearest chair. My still-sleeping family would not have appreciated that, I'm sure. I'm still kind of grossed out by the whole thing though. Ted and I are such big wussies when it comes to creepy crawly things. Cadence, on the other hand, hasn't learned to be afraid of them yet, and we're hoping to foster that lack of fear so that we can designate her the household bug remover (we don't squash—we relocate).

#2--In a couple of days, I will be celebrating my 35th birthday. I just can't believe how old that sounds. I mean, I remember watching the show thirtysomething when I was younger and thinking to myself that those folks were really old. And now, here I am. Not merely thirtysomething, like thirty-one or thirty-three, but undeniable and securely in my MID THIRTIES. Holy cow.

I have to admit, though, that I've always felt kind of old. I distinctly remember the last day of school in June of 1980. I was walking home, report card in hand, with all my little friends, when I had an epiphany. "Wow," I thought to myself, "I'm going to be in the 3rd grade in September. Now I'm REALLY old." And at 25, when I became a quarter of a century old, I grieved the loss of my youth and was convinced that any age greater than 25 sounded so egregiously old.

#3--Speaking of lost youth and being a kid, I sometimes wonder about all the events of my life, how so much was meaningful to me in that moment, but now, however, there seems to be so little that I actually remember. What happens to memories when you forget them? I suppose that by definition, they are not memories any more. It makes me wonder what juicy morsels of my past lie hidden in the deep recesses of my squishy brain. What friends have I forgotten, who were at the time so totally going to be my BFF? What heartache did i suffer that I was totally convinced I would never survive? What joys did I relish, not realizing then that the memory would someday fade? I wonder…