4 Reasons Why Working at a College Makes Me Feel Both Young & Old at the Same Time

4.Walking around campus to grab lunch takes me back to the late 90’s when I was completing my undergraduate degree at Shepherd College (now Shepherd University). I feel like a 19 year old student again — except better because I don’t have required classes, tests or an annoying roommate that sheds her hair all over my stuff.

3. Imagine me with a cane, white hair and a pair of fabulous orange polyester pants when I say this… What the heck are kids wearing these days? In the winter it wasn’t that bad, pretty much every girl wore some version of the exact same skinny jeans and boots combo. Well, now that it’s above 60 degrees apparently the new uniform is the shortest pair of shorts you can find, a blousy top and flip flops or boots. There are just so many butt cheeks on display that it makes my inner old lady want to scream at them to put on some darn pants!

2. Passion. Instead of everyone just sort of trudging to work and then dragging themselves home at the end of the day, people actually like working here. And the students like being here too. I mean, not necessarily during finals week, but in general people walk around with a spring in their step and a smile on their face. Being around this kind of work passion (hmm… that kind of sounds a bit naughty) just makes me feel like I’m starting my career all over again. Oh, and as for the other passion – I totally saw a couple students full-on making out the other day.

1. Overhearing conversations like this one on my walk to the student union for lunch:

Extremely tall basketball guy #1: “Dude, I’m totally going to cry. I mean, I wouldn’t actually CRY. But dude, I’m going to cry. But I’m not like a big crier. But it’s YOU, you know. Dude?”

Basketball guy #2: [big pause] “Yeah”

Or this one:

Guy: “Didn’t you take that scuba certification course?”

Girl: “Yeah, I took it but I didn’t do the final test to get certified”

Guy: “Why not?”

Girl: “Well, I was going to, but I murdered my cat”

Guy: “What?”

Girl: “The day of the test. That was the same day I murdered my cat.”*

Priceless, right?

 

*This was the point that they veered off the path I was on to go to another building. Ever since I overheard that conversation, I just can’t get it out of my head. I mean, what kind of story was she about to launch into to explain why/how she murdered her cat??!!

If You Think Being a Mom is Easy, Don’t Bother Reading This Post

With my very first Mother’s Day now behind me, I have now crossed over and joined the ranks of “real mom”.

And one of those “real mom” truths is that motherhood isn’t always easy. When our baby spits up on us or we find poop in weird places, we aren’t always totally thrilled to deal with it. When we get home from a long day of work (or a long day of working as a stay at home mom), we are not always ecstatic to know that we have a full night ahead of us of baby-care before we do it all over again. And we sure as heck didn’t realize how much harder it would be to just pop in a store for one item… with a baby in a carseat.*

Don’t even get me started on the days when daddy doesn’t have the patience to deal with a crying fit and hands the baby back to me after I’ve been on mommy duty all day long (and all night before).

Anyways, my point is that even though we absolutely, positively LOVE our babies. It’s still hard sometimes.

This is why I’d like to point you towards a wonderful new blog written by a friend of mine, Live Wonderstuck. Today’s post really resonated with me and a bunch of other moms out there, so I wanted to share it with you: “Happy? I’m Too Tired to be Happy“.

Enjoy!

And for the love of god, when you see that frantic look in the eye of a mommy who hasn’t peed all by herself in days, please offer to hold her baby!

*By the way, I will NEVER be shopping at CVS again due to their ridiculously small shopping carts. In order to stick my baby in them, I have to balance his carseat in the main cart area — leaving no room to purchase anything. Totally not worth it for whatever “bargain” they’ve used to lure me there in the first place!

Double Mother’s Day

Even though I’m in my 30’s, I still kind of feel like a kid when it comes to my parents. Although we’ve had our rough patches – mostly during those hormonal teenage years – they’ve always been there for me and my siblings.

I actually really enjoy my family and love it when we are all able to go on vacation together. We went on a cruise a few years ago, that was pretty freaking awesome. I’m hoping that this summer we’ll all be able to get to the beach so that Jack can join in on the fun.

Now that I’m kind of a grown up, I realize how lucky I am that my parents have been there for me whenever I’ve needed them.  And it really feels strange now that I’ve been inducted into the parent’s club myself. Now that I’m a mom, it’s like I’ve finally realized that moms and dads don’t hatch from an egg somewhere with the ability to be a good parent.

This is the first year that I’m celebrating Mother’s Day as both a mother and a daughter. And now that my eyes are open about exactly how much a mom really does, I feel like I appreciate my mom even more.

All my supplies — ready to go. I have Jack’s bathtub ready too in case he goes all crazy on me and ends up covered in paint.

Of course, now my mom is even better than *just* a mom… she’s a grandmother. She has not only been an awesome mom to me, my two sisters and my brother, she is now watching my son a few days a week while I’m at work.

So this Mother’s Day, I wanted to get her a little something from Jack.

So I got my supplies together:

  • 2 small canvases
  • finger paint
  • paper towels
  • a beach towel.

Oh yeah, and a mostly naked baby. You totally need one of those for this project.

Check out this pose — oh la la!

I put a glob of finger paint on Jack’s foot and squished it down on the canvas.

Of course blue ended up being the most difficult color to wash off…

Now, in case you didn’t know, babies are really squirmy, so it took me a few tries of this to get it right. Luckily the paint easily wiped off the canvas with a damp paper towel. After getting a good print with one foot, I washed it off and then repeated with the other foot (and a different color).

After a few tries, I had this:

I made two of them – one for me and one for my mom. On my mom’s canvas, I really wanted a quote that would illustrate how important she is in my son’s life. So I did some googling and came up with the perfect quotes.

Here is what I ended up with:

Happy Mother’s Day to my mom!
Happy Mother’s Day to me!

Happy Mother’s Day mom!