Happy Birthday to Me

I turn 25 in two days and I have a birthday present request.

If you graduated from high school the same year as me, please do not have a baby.

I am so so so not ready for my peers to be having babies. COME ON. Not only are we in the prime of our lives, ready to experience and do and meet and go out and have fun, but for Christ's sake(!) we're in the middle of a horrific financial depression! Are you not watching the news? People everywhere are losing their jobs. I have a dual bachelors degree and an advanced degree and am going to be working a less-than-minimum wage job. Hello?! Not a good time to have a kid. Those of you in military relationships are somewhat excused from this rant just because you have a fairly guaranteed job at the moment. You're only somewhat excused because I still think having a kid right now is silly. And you're freaking me out because I'm nowhere close to having a kid (I feel the need to add, "Thank God," to this comment).

I had a plan to write out some sappy, "25 things I want to learn in the next year," or, "25 things I learned over the last year," etc. But facebook baby pictures and announcements slapped me in the brain when I logged on, so I ranted instead. Maybe I'll get around to that sappy one between now and Thursday. Eh.

(Disclaimer: If you consider yourself my friend and found & are reading this somehow...I don't mean you, obviously! I think it's awesome that you two are having a baby.)

Falling Into Place (Update: Or Not)

Update: I am not nearly as positive now (at 4:55 pm) as I was when I wrote this this morning. I found out some things about the space that are less than appealing. (Take for instance that the "studio apartment" is a room with a bathroom--ugh.) Luckily I have my dad to keep me somewhat stable. Trying to picture it as a cheap hotel until I find something that will work better. General sentiment now: UGH!

Two days ago I had a job offer (with no pay - to start off) in a new town, and nowhere to live with a very tight budget to find something. Today I have a place to live, well within my budget, and all on my own! Let me explain that by saying, I have lived alone for the last 3 years so having a roommate, or being a roommate, wasn't exciting to me.

I got the place through M's dad. I told him that I truly couldn't have done this without him. He just looked at me, like always, and said, "I'll do anything I can, anything my dad can, to help you." Then he said that maybe this experience will help me understand his life a little bit better, at least the fact that I had to wait and let things fall into place. I laughed and said that this is not my typical life strategy. I'm not the best planner and I love to procrastinate, but I don't like the unknown. Especially when the unknown is something important -- like say, a roof over my head. I really had to just hope things would work out on this one. I was as proactive as I could be, and then things were in someone else's hands. Lo and Behold, it worked out. I told my dad I just needed some mini-sign that I was doing the right thing. Here it is.

So, all this to say, I have a new place to live in my soon-to-be new city. Now, if I could just get used to the idea of not seeing M whenever I want...

Today

I'm sure there are a million 9/11 remembrance blogs getting posted today. I'm also sure there are a million blogs getting posted today that have nothing to do with September 11th, 2001. I'm not one to think this is a wholly terrible thing. I think that it has been 8 years. I think that a lot of healing has gone on for those who can heal. There are those whose lives have been left with a hole that can never be filled. The rest of us have reached some stable level of insecurity. A feeling of a lack of safety. But life goes on, even if it is in some mutated form.

My mom said to me that day (or one of the following days, they all ran together--then and now), "I thought your generation would never go through something like this." We didn't either. We grew up in such a bubble. I was 16 on September 11th, 2001. My birthday was just two weeks away. I was a senior in high school. On September 10th, 2001 my Girl Scout troop had booked a end-of-the-troop trip to New York City for December. I was in the process of procrastination from working on my college application.

Life was totally normal. And then it wasn't.

All of a sudden it was scary and unsafe. In Arlington, VA, parents (including mine) and friends, and neighbors work in the Pentagon and travel out of Dulles Airport daily. Everything is federal government centric. School was closed. For days afterward, instead of the regular air traffic over head (I grew up in a flight path for Reagan National Airport), we heard nothing but fighter jets. I had no idea how comforting that sound could be.

Life wasn't normal. And then, slowly, it was.

Normal took on a different meaning. Our college application deadlines were pushed back, but they still existed. I was accepted. I shopped at The Container Store with everyone else. My Girl Scout troop went to New York. We paused in silence by the gaping hole in the financial district and we saw the Rockettes. I went to college. We went to war. I dated a soldier. I graduated from college. I had friends who came home from battle, no older than 23. I got a Masters degree. We face a major recession. Life goes on. Normal is different, but it is still normal.

And so, here we are. Eight years later. Eight years of war. Eight years of mourning. Eight years of healing. Eight years of shifting normal. We can't forget. It seems so cliche. It is, really, but it would be such a disservice to the victims, to us, to forget. To forget would be to let something happen again. We also cannot dwell. This, too, is a disservice. There is a difference between remembrance and dwelling. Life. Goes. On. When we do not move with it, it moves without us.

So, normal is different. So, many blogs will not be about 9/11. It is somewhat of a comfort to me to think that thousands of people will wake up tomorrow and realize it is the 12th. In that moment they will pause and remember. It's fitting. The 12th is the day after. Eight years and one day after. Normal.