Kids These Days

Or should I say, people. 

I got a reminder yesterday of the dumbing down of all of us. I loaded up my Amazon cart with some pretty serious books - Gogol, Plath, Chaucer, Michael Chabon(I'm a nerd and it's free shipping once you hit 35 bucks) - and before I was allowed to checkout my screen filled with an offer for a college student credit card.

This tells me two things; 1)that college students must be the last remaining readers of such classics and 2) that cookies, or whatever it is that keeps an eye on your spending habits, may be good at guessing what a target audience is for what, but it's really bad at math. 

I mean, I made my first Amazon order 13 years ago. I was teaching myself to cook and ordered a Le Creuset pot - grown up. I also had it delivered to my work, the first real job I had after college - also grown up. 

And that brings is back to college. Why are college kids the only people reading books that should be read by, well, everyone.

Bums me out, man.

I Am Not A Cool Mom

Much like I 'found myself' in the years after high school, I feel like I'm finally settling into who I am as apparent and, dare I say, as an adult. And yes, I am forty years old, married, have kids and own a house yet am only just now getting used to being an adult. So, like in those years after high school when I realized I was a coffee shop loving bookish writer and not a sorority girl, I'm finally getting it.  I'm a bit late, but I'm here. Sort of.


All that said, there is a pang of jealousy at realizing I don't really belong. The platoons of expensive stroller pushing moms out for a morning walk/jog; the small cadres of hippy moms wearing their babies while their biggest kids play nearby in a park or playground; the hipster working moms or hippy stay at home moms at The Boy's preschool drop-off. I am at best invisible to most of them and, to the horror of my inner middle-schooler who wants to be liked by everyone, eyed suspiciously as 'other' by a depressing number of them. At first I thought it was because no one wants to hang out with the crippled mom, but now I'm pretty sure it's because I am now, and have always been, a dork.


And hey, if being a dork worked for me before it can work for me again.


Working on it.

The End of an Era

It was The Boy's last day of preschool today. Per tradition, he wore his jammies and I cried a little. 

I am so very proud and can't believe how fast the time has flown.