Author Archives: bonnybard

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About bonnybard

A weaver of tales of truth and fiction.

The – the things I’ve learned – Monday Listicle

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AH Monday, how I love thee so!

Ok, not really, but at least we have the Listicle to get the week started right! This week Stasha’s assignment is to list ten things we learned in 2012. If only my memory weren’t so shoddy… oh, wait… I have a blog! Every single thing of note (as well as the utterly mundane) has been recorded for posterity on the internet. Thank god! Otherwise I never would have realized that every month in the past year has brought some valuable (and, again, some not so valuable) lessons. Here they are, along with, if you’re interested and have an awful lot of free time on your hands today, links to the posts explaining them. (If you don’t have an awful lot of free time on your hands… (how shocking!) I totally understand.)

12 things I learned in 2012.

1. January – in January I learned that shooting guns is fun!

2. In February I learned that some people really do treat their pets as if they were kids and that disturbs me profoundly.

3. In March I learned that comments from readers are more valuable than I could ever have imagined.

4. In April I learned that men simply can’t pee within the confines of the toilet.

5. In May I learned that I don’t react well to the idea of anything permanent. Like buying a house. But then I got over it and now I have a house.

6. In June I learned that my kids can survive without me for a few days. I’m not sure whether this makes me happy or sad, but it certainly make me freer.

7. In July I learned that the very things I’d most like to change about myself are the things I can’t control.

8. In August I learned that people who work in Consulates are mean. And they hate me. Also, they’re mean.

9. In September I learned that everyone likes a good wedding picture (or even an entire series).

10. In October I learned that I absolutely, positively, don’t want to be pregnant (right now).

11. In November I learned that time doesn’t make loss any easier, it just makes it less painful.

12. And quite likely in December I will have yet again failed to learn that it’s not a good idea to go out on December 24th to get a few last minute gifts. But alas, we don’t always learn from past mistakes, do we?!

By the way… I got sucked back into the black hole for bloggers that is twitter, so please be nice and follow me. If only for my self-esteem… and yes, I will soon (soonish) set up the easy and practical sidebar button for just this here purpose, for now click on the link or search for thebonnybard or follow the smoke signals… please and thank you.

Boobies!

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The Boy is a lazy bug. He is NOT a morning person. When he wakes up I give him juice in a sippy cup (so he can drink it lying down), he then moves to my bed, and then I give him warnings every ten minutes for the half an hour it takes me to dress myself and the Girl like a gigantic automated snooze button, and then, when he finally gets up I have to tread lightly, and calmly. Because if I don’t, if I don’t follow this complex and frankly often annoying morning dance, he wakes up in a foul mood and I have to deal with His Grumpiness all the liv long day. This morning we apparently turned the lights on too soon, he was already lying in my bed, so we were well into phase two of operations, so he protests and puts on my eye mask. He’s a practical kid.

Later, when he was finally up and washed and getting dressed, I had to take the eye mask off to put his shirt on, and he looks at it for a minute, hmmms, and then the light bulb went on over his head:

I just had the best idea!

Hmmmm…. What…  Wait, hey! BOOOOOOOBIES!!!!

Boys.

 

By the way… I got sucked back into the black hole for bloggers that is twitter, so please be nice and follow me. If only for my self-esteem… and yes, I will soon (soonish) set up the easy and practical sidebar button for just this here purpose, for now click on the link or search for thebonnybard or follow the smoke signals… please and thank you.

Dear Dad

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I’ve been writing these letters in my head for a long, long time now, and just decided to write them down here as part of the “creating memories and family identity for my kids” project, that’s wasn’t really a project per say until I realized that I didn’t want my life to mirror pinterest, a long list of good intentions that never get done.

Dear Dad,

you’ve been gone six years now and, despite what everyone says, I miss you more each day that passes, not less. It feels weird to be writing you in English, because if I were talking to you it would have been in Italian, but Italian just doesn’t come when I write and I imagine you’re getting my thoughts, wherever you are, and those transcend language. Today in the car the Boy asked if I could put on Nonno F’s song, he wanted to hear “Ma che bella giornata di sole” by Antonello Venditti, I must have told him at some point that was one of your favorite songs, I just don’t know how he remembers these things. They listened to it over and over and they sang along to some of the words. It made me miss you so much. I remembered all the car trips when I hated the classical music you made us listen to, but I also remembered all the Puccini from when I was little, about their age in fact, and I loved it because they were like long, elaborate stories with singing. I still can’t listen to La Turandot without getting melancholy, and I thought to myself, I have to play some opera in the car sometimes, maybe on long trips, because at this age they won’t hate it on principle because it’s old. I want my children to listen to Puccini and think of you.

I wish you were here to see your grandkids cause they’re pretty awesome.

I still love you lots,

Your daughter.

Nighttime conversations about love

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I’m trying to get the Boy out of his nighttime diaper. I’m very relaxed about it, but I’ve started taking the first steps: cutting down his liquid intake before bed, getting him out of proper diapers and into training diapers so he can go to the bathroom by himself at night, and generally discussing how he’s a big boy now and is allowed to and should start thinking about getting up and peeing in the toilet now. Though I’m not in any big rush these first simple steps have already garnered some results… the Boy now has an excuse to get up and walk around at night. This basically means that after I’ve whispered the last “good night, I love you miles and miles”, indication that it is, in fact, bedtime, he manages to get up between five and ten more times every single night. Half the time I have to tuck him back in. It’s pretty annoying. Most of the time.

Today he’d been complaining that I hadn’t cuddled him enough. He’s probably right, his sister demands cuddles, if I’m sitting down she’ll just climb into my lap pushing out of her way anything that could impede her progress, he, on the other hand, tends to keep to his own space. He’ll take cuddles when offered, but he rarely comes asking. And tonight he complained of this evident inequality between them, though I constantly try to keep things even.

These two things are related of course, the peeing and the cuddles, because tonight on one of the thousand trips to the bathroom he came by my room and stupidly I didn’t ask him to come lie in my bed for a couple of minutes, as I usually do, I sent him packing straight away. And so I heard grumbling all the way back to bed and felt guilty. Luckily.

I went to lie with him in his bed a few minutes. And as we snuggled I said to him, you know baby, you’re so special to me because you were my first, you made me a mama. I wasn’t a mama until you came. And he said: you weren’t a mama? With surprised wonder in his voice, because, how can one conceive of such a thing. And I said: I wasn’t a mama until you came, I waited for you such a long time, I was afraid you weren’t going to come and then you did and I was so happy. And then I kissed him, and left. And he fell asleep.

Chit-Chat Tuesday on Friday (cause I can’t seem to get my shazit together)

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Off and on I’ve tried to write chit-chat Tuesday posts, as a sort of spin-off of the virtual coffee posts I used to do (on Moomser), because I liked just writing to chat and catch people up on (and remind myself of) all the mundane stuff we’d been doing. I haven’t been all that consistent. But then I figured, considering the scarce posting I’ve got going on on this blog anyway, I can probably chit-chat with my one or two readers on any unspecific day of the week as long as I’m posting something already. So anyway…

I’ve been watching two shows kind of obsessively lately. Now that I think about it, I seem to do everything obsessively lately. This summer I read obsessively, for example. No great works of literature, mind you, just easy, pleasant, reads. Over 300$ worth of easy, pleasant reads, in fact, as I surmised this week by looking over my amazon charges from June, July and August. Which is astounding, if you think about it, as most of the books I bought were on sale for 1.99. Then in September I started going to the gym obsessively. I went from not setting foot in a gym for the last six years to practically pitching a tent and moving in to one. I went everyday for a month, and now I go three to four times a week. As I said, obsessive.

But going to the gym has obviously let to other “spiraling out of control” behaviors like: obsessive tv watching. Because, you see, I hate the gym, hate it with a passion and honestly a healthy degree of supercilious arrogance borne from years and years as a “dancer”, the gym was for those other people. And now here I am, completely gym obsessed. But back to the tv shows. I need entertainment to go to the gym, otherwise I would want to shoot myself after ten minutes on the treadmill, so I started downloading episodes of “How I Met Your Mother” on my ipad and watching it when I do cardio-type stuff. It keeps my brain from realizing my body’s pedaling furiously or running (slowly) absolutely nowhere for 20 minutes.

I don’t know if/how much that show was popular in the US, though it’s on it’s 8th season at this point, so not too badly, I imagine. In any case, I think it’s funny and it passes the time, which is precisely what I’m going for, so it’s a perfect gym companion. Although the other day, I realized how badly it was trying to be Friends, but somehow failing at it, for some inexplicable reason. Barney channels Chandler constantly he even does the same arm flailing run out of the room that Chandler did, Ted wants to be Ross so badly but without Rachel it just doesn’t work, Marshall is a good, yet not quite as funny Joey, and Robin fails at Rachel just as badly as Lilly sucks at being Monica. It’s a Friends wannabe, but a good one nonetheless. And if you haven’t ever seen the show that last paragraph likely made no sense, so I apologize.

My mom was here last week, and she left me with a renewed lack of confidence regarding my cooking skills (she’s an awesome cook, and though generally I’m not a bad cook, when she’s in town most of the stuff I make ends up being inedible. I think it’s a passive aggressive method my brain uses, unbeknownst to me, to get her to cook for us.) as well as an awesome way to trick my ipad into thinking it’s in the US (something to do with IP addresses – if you’re interested email me and I’ll explain it) so I can now login to Netflix and Hulu and a whole host of other sites that are sucking away whatever small amount of free time I had left. In fact, I’ve started watching Scandal. I highly recommend it.

So between finally being able to watch American tv shows for free on my ipad and the gym, I’ve been obsessively watching tv. I need to get a life.

Another consequence of this health kick I’ve been on is that I decided to do one of those crazy insane no carbs, no sugar, just protein and certain vegetables, go into ketosis -type diets. Only for ten days, thank god, but right now ten days feels like just way too long. Although it’s getting better, the first three days were terrible I had a headache, I was jittery, I was cranky and high-strung, I craved sugar and bread to an almost uncontrollable degree, it felt, for all intents and purposes, how I imagine drug withdrawal to feel like. Now I’m just hungry all the time. For some reason, protein just doesn’t give me that “I’m full” signal, or rather, it does for like half an hour, and then my body and mind go into panicked “give me food, I’m starving” mode. As per several people’s suggestions I’ve been chewing a lot of gum. Even my jaws are getting nicely toned at this point.

I just hope it’s worth it. Also, I never thought I’d be excited about fruit, but next week I get to start eating fruit again, and right now fruit elicits the same anticipation and glee as chocolate would have. I know, that’s kind of sad.

Lastly, I’ve decided it’s time for the Boy to lose the diaper at night. I’ll let you know how it goes. Although, this decision hasn’t made it’s way from my decider to the actual physical world so let’s not hold our breath or anything, but I am starting to consider it and that’s a step in the right direction right? I just don’t want to be laundering peed upon sheets from now till kingdom come, you know? Now that I think about it… he doesn’t really need to be diaperless yet, does he?

And on that note…

I’m over, and out.

Monday Listicles – The Happy Edition

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I just had a crazy insane week. We had a huge and very important trade fair last weekend, my Mom arrived, the Girl got sick, Halloween happened, then I got sick, then a Halloween party, a baby shower, and my mom left. Right this minute I’m vegging out on the sofa, cars 2 on the tv, two kids that haven’t made it out of their pjs since the afternoon nap and a serious case of the sugar jitters all around from all the goodies from the shower. I love having parties. I also hate having parties. Having a party with my Mom in town multiplies these feelings by a gazillion bajillion. I’m a perfectionist, my mom makes me look like a slob, put the two of us together and you get party one-upmanship insanity of the “let’s make a diaper baby”, “oh, I’ll make a diaper cake!”, “sounds good, why don’t I make a diaper palace?!!”. We were up till two a.m. last night. And I made this:

I ended up making this cake and what felt like two thousand cupcakes, my mom made a diaper baby.

I’m posting it because I pinned it a few months ago and had been thinking about making it since, so this prove that pinning is useful. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it. (Also, if you love me, or even if you just kinda like me, you can pin it from here and I’ll link the original post with how to instructions here, yes I’m hawking my blog on pinterest now.)

Anywwwwaaaaayyyyy, let’s get back to the Monday Listicle. This week Stasha picked Ducky’s (batcrapcrazy) suggestion, which is ten amazing memories from a not so distant past. I’ve been wanting to write a bit more about my kids, so they have something to read when all the wonderfully adorable things they’re doing now will be replaced in the, apparently pretty limited, storage space in my brain with all the wonderfully adorable things they’ll be doing in the future.

So there ya have it, ten amazing memories related to the Boy and the Girl (mostly).

1. this is happening right this minute so I’m recording it in real-time and already it’s one of the things I want to remember: the Girl is feeding me Annie’s organic cheddar cheese rabbits (the modern mom’s version of the goldfish cracker, which, though much saltier, and likely less healthy, remains the superior orange animal shaped cracker) one by one, from her snack box, one for me, one for her. I’m also getting kisses here and there.

(She just slapped me on the nose, twice, am thinking of deleting this as an amazing memory…)

(Now she’s withholding the crackers because I won’t put away the computer. Very annoying child, luckily she’s cute,)

2. Their births: the two of them came out in two directly opposing manners but looking exactly the same which was weird, especially the second time around with the girl, cause it was like having the same baby twice. The amazing memory is, of course, of holding them in my arms, the Boy after a failed labor and emergency c-section and the Girl after a pretty standard labor and a barely missed home birth (as in I almost didn’t make it to the hospital). That brief moment when you realize that by God, you’re somebody’s mother, it’s wonderful and terrifying all at the same time.

3. Another pretty amazing memory, and this one a recurring one, was the feeling of relief when we got the results of the husband’s first bone marrow biopsy after the second transplant. Relief, but not release, because since the leukemia had come back once already we go through a certain degree of trepidation whenever he does the biopsies, but luckily the amazing memory is recurring as his biopsies have been clean since.

4. We’ve recently bought a “house”, the quotes are there because we bought an old 17th century barn which will become a house in the hopefully not too distant future. But that’s not my amazing memory, because the day we bought the house I actually had a mini meltdown, but I’ve already told that story. The first time I went to the house with the husband, with a bunch of crystals and some sage and lavender and I walked around and smudged it, that was the first time the house felt mine. Ours. That’s when it finally felt full of possibility and hope. (And so what if I sound like a crazed new ager!!!)

5. The other night, I turned to the kids after our bedtime routine and said “bedtime” and they both got up and got into bed, no further prompting needed.

6. Saturday I was getting ready for the baby shower I was hosting yesterday, decorating the absolute masterpiece you see above, and the Boy comes downstairs at 11.30pm asking me to walk him back to bed cause he had gotten up to pee. I walked him halfway up the stairs and then relented and let him hang out in the kitchen with his Nana and I and help make the frosting. It was just ten minutes, but it made him so happy, in fact, when I tucked him in he said: thank you mama, that was fun and now I smell like sugar. Can there possibly be anything better than going to bed smelling like sugar?

7. The beach a few weeks ago. There’s nothing quite as relaxing as going to the beach at the end of the season when the days are still nice but there’s no one around.

8. My mom surprising me with a visit last week (surprising because she called Friday and said, Hi, I’ll be there tomorrow), there’s nothing quite as comforting as the feeling of knowing my mom’s going to be here soon. Of course, it only lasts for about five minutes, before I realize that it’s, in fact, equal parts comforting, fun, tiring, and irritating.

9. The Boy sneaking into our bed last night at 3am because he was afraid of “the witches”, his warm little body snuggled up against mine.

10. This sentence uttered a couple of weeks ago in a very serious, slightly suspicious voice: mama, where are you going? You look beautiful. (The sense, of course, was, if you look beautiful it means you’re leaving me and I don’t like that, but who doesn’t appreciate those words, no matter what the meaning behind them is!)

Ok, so not all ten are about my kids, but close enough.  And let me just add that having to sit and think up ten positive memories just made me really happy so thanks Stasha and Ducky!!

Some things you simply don’t want to forget.

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The past few days have just flown by, I know, cliché but it’s my life theme, no time, no time, no time! The kids are getting so big, so big! (And yes, I’m getting so old, so old…) So I’m going to start doing something I had decided not to do on this blog: write monthly or weekly (or possibly daily) about my children. About how wonderfully wonderful they are, about all the things that tickle me and make me laugh and piss me off to high heaven.  Things I didn’t want to write about, not because I don’t think they belong on a blog, because they do, they absolutely do, I love bloggers that post letters to their kids, they make me happy. But me, well, I have a language problem, because you see half the cute (and infuriating) things my kids do are things they say and how do I do that when 99% of my readers are English-speaking and my kids do funny things in Italian and Portuguese and yes, sometimes, rarely, in English. I’m not showing off, I swear, this isn’t a – aren’t my children gifted and special because they speak three languages – post (they don’t actually even speak one language fully yet, though, you know). I know first-hand how easy it is and well, natural it is, to learn a language when from the day you come out into the world you’ve got people speaking to you in different languages. So really my kids aren’t all that special. (Even though they are, they so are).

But suddenly it’s more important for me to record, to indelibly imprint on what has somehow become the official archive, repository, library or what have you, of human… well, everything,  all the things I really, really don’t want to forget than it is to write posts that actually make sense to everybody out there. So, forgive me, in advance, but I’m sure you understand, the things they do, the everyday things, the magical, recordable things, must be preserved and my once impeccable penmanship has gone the way of the cassette player, I’ve given in to the fact that I’ll never write, legibly or illegibly, with pen on paper quite as fast as I can type with finger on keyboard. So there you have it, my childrens’ journals, elegant black journals, lie unopened under many inches of dust with only a few entries to their name.

On Wednesday afternoons I take my kids to baby basketball (for three to five-year olds) they play together, the Boy started it in the spring and the instructor told me I could bring the Girl in September even though she’s not quite three yet. So they play together, but the first lesson, now several weeks ago, I was on pins and needles the entire time because the girl was so obviously little compared to the other kids. She made a massive effort, chasing after the ball, trying to follow the directions, and generally having a grand old time, I, on the other hand, was mentally fixated on the fact that she ran so obviously like a toddler, slightly knock-kneed, with her feet off at an angle and her entire body rocking from side to side. It was so damn adorable I hate myself for not taking video of it. Now, less than four weeks later she runs like a big girl, it took no time at all, she grew up in such an obvious way in no time it all it blows my mind. And I almost missed it, I almost didn’t even notice that she changed the way she runs. I read this post today, go read it because it’s good, but it made me think that we never really do notice the lasts, we only notice the firsts, but the lasts are just as important.

That day at basketball, was probably the last time she ran like a toddler and I noticed, and I’m so happy I did. So that’s why I’m going to make more of an effort to record what they do and you, dear reader, will just have to bear with me (or ignore me).

p.s. tonight we were talking about stink bugs, because we are surrounded by them, every year right before the first frosts, they set up camp outside and try their damnedest to come inside, where it’s nice and warm.  All day, I kill stink bugs. Tonight I had just about had it when a stupid bug made a beeline for my head (they love my hair for some reason) and so I yelled at the husband to come kill the stupid thing. The stupid bug is called Cimice in Italian and for half an hour after the fact the Girl walked around asking to see the cimida (rhymes with timid, shy, which it so is not!), where was the cimida, was it still in the toilet or did it go for a swim? She even took her brother to the bathroom to explore the toilet bowl in case it was still in there.

Did this little story make sense to anyone but me? Probably not, but I totally want to not forget it. So there.

(also, she says yayeio for aereo – airplane, I’m so going to miss this baby talk part of their lives, especially cause it’s sure to be followed, after only a brief respite, by the cursing is cool part of their lives).

One line good, two lines less good…

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I had a bit of a scare today. One of those “holy hell I need to take a pregnancy” test kind of scare, and mostly, it’s the iPhone’s fault. You see, now I use an app to keep track of my period, whereas before Apple took over my life I used to just make little red cross marks on my day planner (remember those?). My day planner never once sent me urgent messages rife with exclamation points to tell me my period was one day, two days, three days late. In fact, when I got pregnant with the Girl it took me a week with what I thought was the never-ending stomach flu to realize I was maybe just a little late.

So, I’m only a week late but I had to go get the pregnancy test, despite the fact that we are insanely diligent now about protection and the Husband’s swimmers are 98% no longer working (chemo, radiation therapy and the meds he’s taking now, in case you’re wondering why) because the stupid phone kept obsessing about it. This little exercise in futility, made me sit and mull over a couple of things: first off, even though I’m not sure I’m ready to be done with babies, I’m absolutely, positively, not ready to deal with all the issues that would inevitably come up if I actually got pregnant “accidentally”. Because the likelihood that a baby conceived at this point of the husband’s recovery is healthy enough to get to term is pretty slim, and who wants to knowingly put themselves through that? I’m not ready to deal with the fact that I may have to terminate a pregnancy, or raise a child with severe health issues. Also, I’m not sure I’m ready to start over right now, I mean, I do want more children, but right this minute I need to enjoy at least a few months of uninterrupted sleep at night, and I need to get some of this “first two babies” weight off, because if I put a third baby’s weight on top of it I may never recover (from having to throw out all my lovely clothes!). That’s why we’re obsessive about contraception, and that’s also why a week of the stupid phone’s constant reminders that by God my period wasn’t coming kind of freaked me out. Hence the pregnancy test. So clearly, you all agree that my day was stressful and it’s all Apple’s fault, right? Maybe I should sue for damages…

 

Oh, and p.s., in case you’re wondering, the test was negative. Now I just have to figure out why I’m late!

Coffee and Chit Chat

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Hello dear friends, and welcome to coffee. If we were really meeting for coffee, I’d tell you about the last few days.

I’ve mentioned before that I have some really good friends here and the more I talk about it the more proof I have that it’s true. Last week we organized a girls’ movie night, one of our friends is going through a really crappy divorce (I know divorce is always crappy, but sometimes you luck out and the person you are divorcing is a mature, compassionate, sensible and responsible human being, in this case however he is an immature, irresponsible, arrogant, inconsiderate, piece of horse shit), so she needs regular distractions from her situation. So we decided to go see Magic Mike (which was still on at the theatre here). And why yes, we wanted to go see it for the articles.

First a note about the movie itself, for those who haven’t seen it: It was generally pretty horrific. The men though hot, were not really sexy… I don’t know, I just can’t get behind the whole man in a thong thing (pun intended!) and the parts where they aren’t stripping are pretty boring, so it’s basically the movie equivalent of Fifty Shades, that said, we had fun.

Seeing the movie itself was not without its obstacles, we decided to go see it last Friday, and last Wednesday they took it out of the movies. So I downloaded it on my ipad, but obviously, we couldn’t all watch it off an ipad. The only one of us (the soon to be divorcee) who didn’t have kids or a husband at home, didn’t have a tv built in the last century to which we could hook up the ipad (guess who took her new tv…). It took awhile, but we finally found a place to go laugh, and whoop, and act like drunk college students (or cougars, whichever you prefer), the Husband’s office. (He gets his own post about what a wonderful husband he is later in the week). He set up a big screen in his office, hooked it up for us, got us comfortable chairs and left us with the keys and the “don’t get too drunk” speech.

Today, another friend gave me an awesome belated birthday present, she invited me to her house for coffee, but was waiting for me outside, got in my car and directed me to an undisclosed location – her beautician, of whose massage skills she’s been waxing poetic for months. So I got a wonderful surprise massage instead of coffee today, and then we had a quick lunch. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world! (Also, the most relaxed)

I would like to go on, as I haven’t done a virtual coffee in a long time, but nap time is almost over so my time’s up. I’m going to try and get back into the swing of virtual coffee every week, I’ve missed it, and it’s a great way to catch up!

Till next time then, for now, toodles!

 

The, the more things change the more they stay the same, Monday Listicle

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Hello friends and happy Monday! It’s time for Stasha’s Listicle and this week it’s a really hard one: ten ways I am the same or different from my younger self, courtesy of Christine of Random Reflectionz. I’m not quite sure how to even approach this…

I don’t want to be too obvious, like I was thinner, younger, blonder (in every way)… eh, let’s go with the old standby of winging it and see where it takes us, which should be interesting as half the time I’m not even sure I can make it to ten with these listicles (and often don’t). So ten things ways I am the same and different from my younger self using the comparatives more and less.

When I was younger:

1. I was more arrogant, I thought I knew it all. Now I actually know it all, but in a completely non-arrogant way.

2.  I was less head-strong. In fact, I used to let everyone around me influence me. Now I don’t really care what everyone around me thinks. This is both good and bad because consequently:

3. I used to take more care of myself. When I was younger I wouldn’t leave the house unless my hair was done, and my nails manicured, and my skin as smooth as a baby’s behind. Now… well now I’ve got kids, so if my teeth are brushed I’m good to go.

4.  I used to be less discerning about men. Back then I had a crush on Luke Perry, who no one has ever seen again after 90210, now I have a crush on Matthew Perry who keeps doing awesome shows. (if you haven’t seen it, check out Go On).

5. I used to be more adventurous. The sky was the limit. Literally. In fact, the only thing I regret not doing when I was younger that I really, really, wanted to do is skydiving. There is no way in hell I’m going to do that now, because… well, I’ve got kids. Also, I’m now a scaredy cat.

6. I had less fun. Yes, this one is a little weird, but I used to have fun more often but less intensely because:

7. I was more self-conscious, and I embarrassed much, much more easily. Then again I hadn’t given birth in front of what felt like the entire hospital staff plus a few students.

8. I had less to lose. Which kind of explains the adventurousness. I guess the older we get, the more we appreciate the things we have and the more conscious we are of how easy it is to lose it all.

9. I have more love. I love more intensely, yet less dramatically.

10. I have less time. This one is really true, yet really hard to swallow, and also the only one I’d really change (along with the effects of age on my metabolism, and gravity on my body). I used to have all the time in the world, summers were endless, fifty minute class periods were excruciatingly long, now the years fly by at a steadily increasing pace and I can accomplish unimaginable feats of organizational prowess in only fifty minutes. So sometimes I’d just like to stop time for a moment and be able to simply sit and think, remember, and record, the sensations of a specific moment, to savor it, and really enjoy it, live it, before it’s gone forever.