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could i have ever been this small and cute?

Today is April Fool’s Day. And in 28 days, on April 28th, I will be 28. No fooling. I never, ever, thought I would be this old. Ever.

When you are growing up, you tend to think of the next big birthday as the life-changer, like suddenly you wake up in the morning and “I’m ten! I’m double-digits! Everything is different!” or “I’m 13! I am a teenager! I am angsty and moody and no one could possibly understand me!”

Or we think that once we wake up and we’re 16 years old, we’re responsible enough to drive.

Wake up at 18, and you know how to vote (which, as an adult, kills me now because very few of us at 18 are fully supporting ourselves and can understand what taxes and big decisions really mean). You can go fight wars now for the rest of us.

Wake up at 21, and you can legally drink, like something has changed and you can now make good decisions and have self-control.

And then that’s it. I never looked past turning 21. Benchmark has been reached, and really every birthday is a bit of a letdown after that. At a certain point, you realize you’re getting older and weird things start happening. For me it was getting hangovers and saying stuff like “oh my knees/ankles/I’m so sore from that hike/I’m always tired/I want a nap.” Now I don’t look forward to the birthdays so much, but more the life events. The end of grad school, getting engaged, getting married, having babies, being a grandma, wearing sweatpants every day until I die. My dreams are pretty small.

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27 looked like this

But 28 on the 28th…golden birthday status! This is a birthday to look forward to. I get to see my favorite all-time band, Better than Ezra, TWICE. I will be on Spring Break from my grad program. I’m going to TWO Giants games. My bestie Traci is coming to visit. Lent will be over and I will eat cheese again. It’s gonna be great.

So as I prepare, I thought I would share some of my favorite quotes. I love quotes. I used to spend evenings on the floor of Barnes and Nobles, with a diet pepsi, a ziploc baggie of goldfish, rifling through reference books and speech guides and quote anthologies, scribbling them into my journal. Years later, I can still rattle off my favorites. Here are the latest:

Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise. – Margaret Atwood (I love this.)

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee. – Marian Wright Edelman

God doesn’t require us to succeed; He only requires that you try. – Mother Teresa

Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it. – Tallulah Bankhead.