Thoughts on Adulthood

So no one told me life was gonna be this way...

Now that I'm settling into what I suppose you could call "being a grown-up," I find that I have a lot less time to think, or at least to fully work through the thoughts that I have. So that's what I'm going to take a minute to do now.

Bear with me and this brain-dump of a post.

• Money is very abstract. Especially when you bank entirely online and pay primarily with credit/debit cards. Suddenly you look at your account statement and go: I spent how much now? It's so much easier to keep track of how much you're actually spending when you pay with cold, hard cash. 
• On a somewhat related note, why can't the US just get with the program and have chip readers everywhere? I can't get it right! I try the chip reader, they tell me to swipe; I try to swipe, and they tell me to use the chip reader. UGH.
• No one loves their job 100% of the time. And that's tough for me to accept. It's not just that some days are more challenging--challenging is fine. When my day is challenging, I feel rewarded and accomplished at the end of it. It's the days when I get home and I'm just so completely drained--mentally, physically, and emotionally--and the last thing I want to do is get ready for another day tomorrow...after several months of doing whatever the heck I wanted in Europe, it's especially rough having days (rare as they are) when I basically hate everything ever. 
• Since getting home from my trip, though, I find myself going out and actually doing things more often than I did before going to Europe...I guess I just got used to doing so much cool/fun stuff every day that it's become something of a habit. (Which is GREAT.)

Throwback to awesome things that I did in Europe.

• I hate other drivers. I used to think that Virginia drivers were terrible, but now I realize that it's actually just everybody. Turn signal? Speed limit? What are those??
• I am a sayer of "yes." As in, whenever anybody (especially at work) asks a favor of me, I say yes. I want to be agreeable, I want to be helpful, but at a certain point, I need to realize that saying yes to everything means that nothing will be done as well as it should be (or if it is, I'll certainly be worse for wear as a result).
• Having a new (well, 2015) car is amazing. All the fancy features are great--hello, back-up camera and Bluetooth connection!--but it's especially nice not having to worry whether I'm going to make it to Point B from Point A, and how long I can put off the next expensive but extremely necessary repair. (RIP Babs)

• Adulthood is a constant state of simultaneously needing to do things that you don't particularly want to do and daydreaming about what you would be doing if you won the lottery and never had to go to work again. 
• Adulthood is also realizing just how messed up this world is and just how daunting, discouraging, and difficult it is to make any sort of progress toward fixing it. 
• It is very hard to say no to my inner child. She keeps tugging my sleeve, saying things like, "We should eat ALL of the ice cream RIGHT NOW!" and, "This Fart Blaster is AMAZING! We NEED it!" And I have to say things like, "No, we'll get a tummyache if we eat all of it, plus also we'll get fat," and, "It's too expensive; we don't have the money for that right now." Basically, I'm no fun anymore. 

So there ya go...consider my brain officially dumped. (Thank the universe the weekend starts now.)

Anyone else have these thoughts? Any advice for a rookie adult?

Spring Break!

The week leading up to Easter was my first Spring Break as a full-time employee, and let me just say that it arrived in the nick of time.

The closer we got to Spring Break, the crazier my students got, making me even crazier in turn. All of this added up to making Friday the 7th felt more like Friday the 13th. At least until the O's game.

By this time, I was also feeling the itch to travel again--it's true what they say: once the travel bug bites, you're infected for life.

However, being still somewhat broke from my big Euro trip, I decided that a low-budget road trip was in order. I hit the library to stock up on audiobooks and beach reads and plotted a course for a small North Carolina beach town called Kill Devil Hills.

I'd chosen it for its relative lack of popularity, because city beaches are typically far too crowded for my introverted taste. I got up for the sunrise each morning, parked myself in a beach chair, and lounged by the water all day, taking nap breaks in between novels.

What the beach looks like at sunrise.

What I look like at sunrise.

It was a blissfully uneventful four days, and by the time it was over, I was recharged and ready to be around other humans again.

The five-hour drive to Greensboro flew by, and I was soon in the company of one of my favorite dogs (and her human).

We were craving pizza for dinner, and since we'd gone to Sticks & Stones the last time I visited Greensboro, Syd and Brian decided to introduce me to what they insisted was a North Carolina institution: Mellow Mushroom. (It turns out that the chain actually started in Atlanta, and there's even one in Maryland, but that's beside the point.)

The pizza was amazing, the beer was a revelation (it was called Bitter Unicorn Tears, for crying out loud), and the company of Syd's friends--fresh from a spelling bee at a nearby bar--was delightful. (Side note: spelling bees need to be a thing at bars everywhere. I'd totally be down to switch it up from trivia night every once in a while.)

After polishing off the pizza, we moseyed on over to a local brewery called Gibb's, a magical place with $5 brews, friendly bartenders, and Christmas-lit outdoor seating. Our night ended with bad dancing to even worse karaoke.

We laid low on Friday, with aspirations to go for a hike giving way in favor of laying in the sun and drinking coffee. Syd's cousins, Lee and Margs, arrived that evening, and we made a smorgasbord of fajitas (and maybe a blender or two of margaritas to go with).

The sun rose bright and early Saturday morning, and--in spite of our late-night Coldstone run--we weren't too far behind. We got on the road back to Maryland, the boys and Rue in Brian's Hyundai, and me, Syd, and Margs in my car. It was probably best we divided that way; we ladies ended up belting out Taylor Swift for most of the drive.

Except for when that turkey ran in front of the car in Middle-of-Nowhere, VA.

Luckily, no animals were harmed in the making of this blog post. (I braked in time for the turkey.)