some things i've been thinking about: in ten years, between my last thanksgiving at home and what will (hopefully) be my last thanksgiving in this home, i've learned a ton of things about life, myself, marriage, and most recently, motherhood. in no particular order...
1. i will never be martha stewart, no matter how hard i try. i'm neither classy nor whitebread, and i have a distinct lack of domestic skills even though i have tried for years to cultivate them. i can't knit. i can't crochet (oddly though, hubs can. this make me giggle). sewing? nah, not even. i can bake really well provided it's nothing complicated. that's pretty much where it ends. when i see cool heart-shaped felted arm patches in pinterest that say DIY, of course i think, hey, i could do that. but who am i kidding? i don't even iron.
2. some "treasures" from thrift stores are just that, but most of the stuff i find at the goodwill or salvation army is unsalvageable crap. unless you happen to have mad crafty skills, which i do not. i may think i've found something tres chic at the time, but i usually get it home and in the light of day it's covered in sweat stains and there are buttons missing and maybe a sleeve is falling off. no dice.
3. kids can actually be funny. like, little kids say stuff that makes me laugh and not just because it's ridiculous or nonsensical or horribly inappropriate. but sometimes that's why. like when stenni is giggling in the library for (seemingly) no reason and when the librarian asks her why she just yells "mama's boobies!" or when she asks if i'm going to leave her in pennsylvania, and when i say yes (what parent woudn't?) she says "gross!" i agree.
4. unless you are specifically asked, nobody really cares about hearing your opinion. for real. it's hard for teenagers to grasp this fact, especially in a world where everyone wants to tell you everything they think every minute of the day on facebook or twitter or whathaveyou .in my day, it was AIM. i'm pretty sure that as a teenager i thought that everything i thought up was pure gold and someone should know about it, but thinking back? not so much. but it took me a long time to figure that out. (and now i blog, so you can just navigate away if you don't like my very important ideas or whatever nonsense i'm spewing that day)
5. hair grows back, no matter how short you cut it.
6. "scary" takes on a whole new meaning when you have children. like even though i still can't watch pet semetary, i'm more scared of the busy road than people coming back from the dead. mostly.
7. every single person should know what looks good on them. we each need a power outfit that looks awesome and makes us feel like four hundred bucks. and for us ladies, that means one at the size you are now. not pre-pregnancy -not to be a downer, but you may never get back there again (i haven't). so, not the size you were in high school. not even last year. you should still look fabulous, because you probably are. what looked great on me in high school (or at least, what i thought looked great) is much different from what i prefer now, and that's as it should be.
8. pets will always love you. even when you're a jerk. even when you're a mess and you can't get off the couch to walk the dog, she'll still want to kiss you. even when you want to institute a closed-door bedroom policy because your 20-lb cat steps on your hair at night, or nibbles on your fingers or puts his whiskers in your nose, they'll all still love you. there's no human comparison.
9. not everything you think is cool at 17 will be cool at 27. not even close. when i think back to my giant platform sandals, i want to yak in my mouth a little. but on the flipside, some stuff will still be even awesomer. like the fact that i can now afford to see bands that i like in concert and i no longer have to carpool with 8 people to get there.
10. anyone can bounce back from anything. i didn't always think this. after my grad school application got rejected from the only school i bothered to apply to, i was crushed. like my life was going to go nowhere because of that one single thing. but when i had my first miscarriage, it kind of put that into perspective. that was crushing, in that i literally felt like my heart was going to cave in for a long, long time. but after a while, things started feeling almost normal again. you don't always have to come back bigger and better, you just have to come back. and you don't always need to learn a lesson, or believe that things happen for a reason. some things don't make sense, and life's not always fair, but it always goes on, no matter what
and one bonus: honesty really is the best policy. as in, almost always. the occasional little white lie of the the "no, i totally didn't eat cake for every meal yesterday or have any breakfast beers on vacation" sort is perfectly acceptable, as is the "you look totally awesome in neon colors" type, even if the wearer doesn't look fabulous, because if it's not that awful you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings (but obviously if it's terrible and they really don't know better, tell them. it's your friend duty). but really, in all serious things, honesty is the only way to go. lies will only lead to more lies, and that can never be good for anyone.
what have you learned in the past 10 (or 100 ) years, and what would you like to share with others? i'd love to send this list to my 17-year old self, but i think she'd have chucked it out the window of her old beater car right along with that cigarette butt (oh, and i'd also tell her to quit smoking earlier. she'd never believe how expensive cigarettes are going to get).
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