Falling

Over the last few days, I feel as though I am descending into a murky area known as "life after 30". Following are some examples of this descent...

-I am eating my own words more and more often. For example, I used to never understand how people could let their kids get covered in food when they eat. What were these people doing? Were they just lazy? They just didn't care? The control freak inside me said, "this will never happen, not in my house". Fast-forward to this morning when my son, now a card-carrying member of the Terrible Twos Club, decided to swat away my attempts to feed him oatmeal with a toy and then rub the residual oatmeal on his hands, face, in his hair, etc. Oatmeal went everywhere - the high chair, the floor, the table, my chair, his clothes. I was still picking dried oatmeal out of his hair this morning as we sat in the church parking lot before heading into MOPS.

-I am more forgetful. Yesterday it took me a full hour to really get going in the afternoon. I left the house, got all the way to the store, hopped out of the car and noticed that my purse felt frighteningly light. I checked it and I had left my wallet at home. So I drove back home to get it. Jumped out of the car, went inside, grabbed a soda for me and a bottled water for OBB, hopped back in the car and started going back to the store. One problem - no wallet. Halfway to the store, I realized again I didn't have my wallet so I stopped in a high school parking lot to make sure. When I realized I didn't have it and went to leave the parking lot, OBB started screaming because he thought we were at the park and I wans't letting him go play. So I went back to the house, got my wallet and finally after an hour of driving back and forth to my own house, got to the desired store. I felt ridiculous. To add insult to serious ego injury, there are some men working on drilling a new well for one of my neighbors at the end of the street and every time we'd pass them, I'm sure they were saying "That lady is a moron. All she does is drive around".


-Instead of the starer, I've become the mother people stare at. While eating lunch at Cracker Barrel today, as our meal was coming to a close (mostly because OBB had had enough and was starting to lose it) I noticed more than one patron looking my direction with a look that said "you really should do something about your child shrieking like that". I used to be that person. I used to look at people with unruly children and think "why can't they do something about that?". Ahh, but now I know better. The same way a mother of one will never truly be able to relate to a mother of three...you just have to experience it.

So there you go...I'm living my own special version of fall this year and I guess the upside is that I won't know what will come next. What little surprise is in store for me right around the corner? Could it be creaky bones? Gradual hearing loss? Perhaps unwanted hair popping up in surprising places. Who knows? I'll just have to wait and see.