I was out shopping at the big box store that starts with “W” (for toothpaste actually, thanks for asking)by myself earlier this week and I had a revelation while paying for my items (everything BUT toothpaste) that made me realize that no matter how old and mature and past it I think I am, I’ll never be one of the ‘cool’ people. There were two soccer mom types, close to my own age, having a loud-ish conversation right behind me as I checked out and even though the women didn’t do anything to make me feel weird, I kind of did. I’m sure I didn’t even register as a blip on the radar (and I’m not saying that I want random strangers to acknowledge my very existance either. That would be really…strange and a little creepy) of either of the women, but I just realized how different from that ‘type’ that I really am. I wouldn’t really stand out in a crowd as the lame one (okay except maybe for my hair and that’s only because of the length–it really is almost waist length and I really need to cut it, but I just keep putting it off) and until I open my mouth to talk, most people can’t sense that my inner dork is just waiting to spring out and make me say or do something that will completely betray how lacking my social skills really are.
Do you ever really get to a point/age/frame of mind that its really okay that you aren’t with it and hip and aren’t a social lemming? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not really wanting to be so…mainstream and…bland. I think diversity is a wonderful thing–it is what makes things interesting. I just always assumed that the whole popular/unpopular ‘thing’ would end after the microcosm that was high school (which, even though I wasn’t ‘popular’, I actually had alot of friends and enjoyed) was over. I was wrong. The popularity contest didn’t end after high school, everybody just has a better car now.
Does it bother me that I’ll never be that perfectly dressed/size 2/tanned/with cute flippy hair/soccer mom? Sometimes, yeah, I will admit, I want to be a lemming. The rest of the time, I’m okay being me, even if that means that I’ll never join a mom’s group and other people think I’m ‘weird’. I just hope that by being my own kind of individual, I’m able to show my kid(s) (Owen and any potential future offspring) why it is good to be different and not that being different automatically means that you’ll always be picked last for kickball.

First things first–I got re-admitted to the class that I was so rudely dropped from. Apparently you don’t have to have the stupid orientation thing in order to take a distance learning class. I think this whole experience just made me age almost another year. At this rate, I’ll be well on my way to 40 by the end of the semester.

On another front, I have noticed that, disturbingly, I have started to crave candy, specifically chocolate on an almost daily basis ever since I had The Baby. I’m usually not a candy person and really not a chocolate person at all. Yeah, I’m a little weird–usually if I’m craving something it is either going to be really sour or really salty or a little of both. It wasn’t until I got pregnant that I started craving really sour candy–Sour Patch Kids and Sour Tangerine Altoids were about all I ate (along with an obscene amount of saltine crackers) for six weeks while the morning sickness was at its very worst because they seemed to help make the nausea just a little bit better. The sour candy craving kept on througout my pregnancy and I think I ended up eating more candy in almost 10 months time than I had for the past three years combined. I fully expected the candy thing to go away after the baby was actually born…but then the chocolate urge started. I don’t know if it is some strange offshoot of exclusively nursing (ha ha…makes it sound like some special club…the breast friends club…for memboobs only…membership dues a nipple apiece…okay maybe I’m the only one laughing here) the baby or what, but I do know that the urge to eat chocolate really needs to go away and soon! Other than the fact that I really don’t even enjoy the chocolate while I’m stuffing my face with it (how weird is that to crave something but then hate it while I’m satisfying the craving?) I don’t think that the daily chocolate fix is going to help my losing my final 15 pounds to get my weight exactly where I want it. Maybe I just have a brain tumor and instead of having some random smell/sound/optical thing, this is how it is manifesting itself?

Step 1. Find nice thick brick wall

Step 2. Bang head repeatedly against brick wall

Step 3. Feel enlightened…or light-headed or something. Anyway, feel better.

It’s probably a good thing that I don’t have anywhere that I have to be at today because I’d probably scare people what with all the growling and mumbling under my breath and all. I’m probably making faces too, but luckily they just seem to make Owen smile more.

This semester is shaping up to really suck be challenging in a new and different way. It all started about 4 weeks ago when I waited one day too long to try to add a class in graphic design that I really needed. Thursday it was open and stupid me decided that I could wait until Friday to add it. Except…on Friday, oops the section that I needed to take was closed. I tried to wait-list, hoping and crossing everything that could be crossed that someone would drop…but no luck. So on the last possible day at almost the last possible moment, I added a different class that I don’t really need for what I’m working toward, but would still stimulate and challenge my mind (Or at least remind me that I’m an intelligent adult when talking baby talk to The Boy for the millionth time during the day).

I thought I had managed to add everything okay and was working my tail off to catch up (I was about a week behind) and went in last night to take the next quiz (luckily this class is all on the computer so I never actually have to ‘attend’ in the classroom) when lo and behold, it appears that I’m not enrolled in the class anymore. After a long night (made even longer…or shorter by someone not going to sleep until after 2am) I quickly made some frantic phone calls this morning to find out what was going on. Apparently, by registering late (but still within College deadlines) I missed some stupid orientation quiz that the College requires. Even though I have been doing all the other work for this class, I still got dropped because of the missing orientation stuff. The professor is going to see if I can just skip the orientation stuff because of extenuating circumstances…but in the meantime, I can totally see how banging my head a few hundred times against a wall might be a bit therapeutic.

When I’ve felt nostalgic (usually in the fall when they start to roll out the school supplies–something about the smell of pencil erasers just makes me pine away for school) about attending college the first time around, I forget about garbage like the above paragraph and how frustrated I felt being shuffled from one department on campus to another, getting a different answer depending on who I talked to. I guess I’m glad that I’ve never gone on to graduate school. I can only imagine the (potential) massive headaches involved with that. And I’m not talking about the classes either–those are the easy part.

Keep your fingers crossed for me that the professor is able to work some magic and I get re-admitted to this class.