Happy summer! Happy solstice! Happy roughly ten weeks of zero public school drop off, pick up, stand up, sit down, fight fight fight!
(And to my longtime readers/framily, happy “We know you’re going to be posting with the regularity of a cheerfully confused wombat” season to us all!)
As I enter into this highly anticipated season with my kids, the wind-down of the school year has allowed my brain to acknowledge some rather unusual things about myself that have started to emerge in my- ahem- older years. Here are three.
Unusual thing #1: I’m suddenly, you know, kind of a birder.
Like, I get disproportionately excited when I see something avian that doesn’t usually exist in a Chicago backyard. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never been anti birds before, but I didn’t really care overmuch about them either way. I’m not sure when this happened, but maybe it’s around the time when the rest of the world started seeming SO awful and SO loud that the mere presence of a tiny yellow bird with striped wings could cause a sentence like “you guys, you GUYS, this is way early for that kind of migration and it’s SUPER rare to see one north of Ohio!” to be gratefully uttered.
I don’t know. Just a thought.
Or maybe it’s because I’m finally channeling my inner Bob Ross [even more].
Unusual thing #2: My conspiracy theories have gotten way more self-centered.
When I was a little kid, I was able to raise my right eyebrow clear off my head in the way that youthful muscles are wont to do. The other day, however, when putting on makeup I noticed that my right eyebrow sort of…drooped a little. Sure, I could make it stand at attention if I really wanted to, but it seemed to require a ton of effort. Aging? Maybe. But may I present my first thought? The very first explanation that ran through my head?
I must’ve had a stroke and nobody told me.
Like it was some sort of V.C. Andrews novel and something so traumatic had happened that, while I was in a coma, they faked my own death or erased a few years from the calendar and, when I awoke, pretended I was my own sister or it was now 2010 or something.
Totally normal thoughts.
Unusual thing #3: I’ve given up competing on highways.
Truth time: I hate the express lanes on highways. I used to make a game day decision when traveling- would it be faster? Is it really worth it?- but now I stopping pressuring myself to even play the game. I know that at the very end of my trek in the express lane, I’d definitely have to cut right across four lanes to make it to my exit. Same goes with the entrances on 90/94 that merge you in from the lefthand side like a monster. (Who chose this? Who thought this out? The slowest cars, having very little idea what the highway situation is, careening into the midst of high speed traffic?!)
I’d rather drive in the slower lane- or drive four blocks south to enter the highway at a different on ramp- to avoid the lefthand madness. I acknowledge this about myself. I currently enjoy this about myself. If I don’t have to stress about merging across four lanes, then I don’t have to return my heart rate to normal immediately after merging across four lanes.
SELF CARE.
Happy summer, you guys. Live your best life.
(And celebrate all of those wonderful things that 20 year-old You would be downright weirded out by.)
Please share: What unusual things are emerging as YOU age?
Comment below!
***
And hey, unsolicited PSA/shoulder squeeze o’ solidarity: News feeds around the globe are full of truly terrible events unfolding in real time. (I won’t even go into specifics, because there are at least seven keeping me up and weepy at night lately.) That said, we can all do something. A little something, a big something, a something something. My kids and I are battle-planning our summer right now to have a heavy emphasis on HELP. You know? Because, while I can’t solve rising water levels and inhumane treatment of immigrant children in one fell swoop today, I can take steps to be part of many, many solutions. And if we all baby step our way towards doing what we can, when we can, as much as we can?
I think we’ll all sleep a lot better at night.
(Which is great, because I’m getting old.)
Speak Your Mind