Skip to main content

35 Years of Wisdom-Right Here, For You

I'm going to be 35 soon. And by soon, I could mean tomorrow, next week, later this month, or later this year. It doesn't really matter to me. If it does to you, just look it up on facebook and wish me well on my wall. Some people seem upset to be in their mid-thirties, but not me. I'm really happy about it. I think that, besides the decade of 0-9 years, I'm the happiest I've ever been, even if the skin on my neck and elbows is starting to get loose. We all know that wisdom comes with age, thank heavens, because I was pretty dumb in my younger days. Through trial and error, and a lot of hard lessons, I'm very wise now and I look forward to how much wiser I'll become as my skin continues to lose its elasticity and droop toward the ground. This is what I know about life, particularly my life, as I see it from 35 years of age.

It is bad to drive your car when it has a flat tire. Don't do that. P.S. AAA is awesome.

You have to cook eggs for a certain amount of time before you eat them. Raw eggs are gross and nobody likes them.

If you are in a slide, steer in the direction you want to go in. Or is it, steer in the opposite direction of where you want to go? Oh shit. Stay off the road when it is snowing.

Life is a big game of telephone. What you meant to say will be interpreted as exactly the opposite of what you meant to say. Either way, what you said was stupid and it is really important to listen more and talk less.

You have to wear a bra out in public even if you don't really think you need to.

Drinking a lot of water is good. Drinking a ton of alcohol is bad, especially when you have little kids who wake up at 5 am. As an aside, drinking a lot of booze is directly related to saying stupid things.

Everything my mom said was right and even if that's not exactly true, it's not worth arguing.

It's the burning that makes the metal stronger.

The five second rule can be extended when nobody is looking and especially if it is for chocolate.

Stripes going a certain way make you look fatter. Who gives a shit?

Don't try to put contacts in your eyes after you left them out on the sink all night. Your eyes will hate you and it's overall a very, very bad idea.

If your kid falls, don't freak, run to them and scream, are you ok? are you ok? Instead, act all cool like it's no biggie. Even if you know under that mouth of blood could be a loose tooth.

The customer is always right. Your spouse is never the customer.

Minutes go by like hours. Years go by like seconds.

If your windshield wiper falls off because of ice, don't slam down the blade. This cracks the glass. Do you notice how much car wisdom I have?

I get by with a little help from my friends.

All you need is love, love. Love is all you need.

If you are mad, and you bang on a glass window, it will break and shards of glass will get stuck in your hand and your mom may whip your bum, too.

Being a little sweet helps you more than being a little sour.

Roller skating down a paved road with tons of sand on it will land you on your face.

If you are on a bus in a rural, Central American country and your bus breaks down and a dude with one arm rolls up in a golf car to fix the bus, it's going to be a while.

Everything you need to know in life can be learned by watching Saved by the Bell.

Your best friend is your mom, or your cousin, or the girl you met at gymnastics, or in college, or the mom at mommy group, or your spouse, or co-worker. Friends accumulate. Friends are good.

Sharing is caring. Unless it's your Kindle and then it is ok to hide it and pretend that you can't find it.

Look in your shoes before you put them on. Your brother may have put dog crap in them. While you are at it, look in your socks, too.

If you miss the last train home from New York City, you will have to stay up all night. Listening to really loud techno music will help you stay awake.

If you are eating candy before dinner and your kids ask you what you are eating, you can tell them you are eating broccoli.

You can wear your wedding dress at home while doing the dishes. It's ok if you can't zip up the back anymore.

Frosting is really good from the can.

There is no such thing as the boogeyman. There is such thing as the laundry sock monster.

If you buy a cake from the store, and put it on a plate, and you are a bad baker, people will know.

Beauty comes from within. So does puke, before it comes out.

I hope that you enjoyed my wisdom. I've got a lot more but the kids are now home from school and I can no longer ignore them while they stack laundry baskets up in an attempt to hang from the ceiling fan.

In summation, I'm ok with being 35. At least today I am. Ask me again when it's my birthday, whenever that may be.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Charlotte's Story

What can you do in seventeen minutes? Watch an episode of your favorite sitcom without commercials? Run two miles at a good clip? Eat a meal, or in Andy's case, microwave a meal and then eat it? Have a baby? Because that's what I did. You heard me right. I birthed a baby in seventeen minutes because I am a machine. I am a machine ! I am a baby birthing woman of steel. I am not much of a bragger and you may recall that I was never good and never bad at anything. I have no particular achievements to tout, academically, physically, professionally or otherwise except baby birthing. I'm really good at this and I'm pretty darn proud of it and I'd like to brag about it to you now. This is Charlotte's birth story. For the first four or five months of my pregnancy with Charlotte, most people forgot that I was even pregnant. This does happen to you with multiple pregnancies. I never forgot that I was pregnant. Morning sickness heart burn and frequent bathroom t

Spoiler Alert!

It's no big shock that I opened my mouth and got myself in trouble earlier this week. This time it was my virtual mouth, and we all know that can be the worst. Saying something stupid, online, is like spreading a highly contagious virus. Speaking of which, with all of my recent coughing and sneezing, I've been really good at spreading a germy virus around. I teach students to be social media savvy, and gosh darn it, I did so as recent as yesterday. I provide them with some rules to protect them from looking like a virtual ass, but low and behold, I fall victim to assiness every once in a while. How am I supposed to know every single rule in life, and particularly online? I'm just a simple human being, with a big mouth, who wants to over share! So, here's what went down, if you didn't get pissy pants over my FB faux pas. I watched the mid-season finale of The Walking Dead on Sunday night. Andy was in the can and I just needed to talk about the episode. I needed t

The guilt epidemic

Women are wonderful at time management and I've been told I'm tenacious about time-on-task and follow-through. Parenthood has really put a damper on my ability to follow a rigid schedule that enables me to do everything. When morning sickness showed up at week 5, I hung up my a.m. workout sneakers. Those shoes continue to collect dust although I'm proud to say they are dusted off once a week for 30 minutes. Just getting to the gym for that short amount of time has been a major accomplishment in a world full of parent-guilt. Guilt. A feeling traditionally reserved for Catholics has been spreading into the female parent population for the past fifty years and has become increasingly prevalent over the last decade. Lucky me to be raised Catholic, born a woman and now gifted with parenthood. I had a .01% chance of escaping the guilt-disease. I have "attacks" or "flare ups" when I decide to do something for myself. In addition to going to the gym once week, f