sift...

It's funny and strange at the same time. I was rifling through today's mail and suddenly it occurred to me...

I had this instantaneous flashback to a random evening during a random week of a random year when I was young, carefree, curious, naive. My father was standing in front of the trash can in the kitchen, sorting through the huge stack of mail, haphazardly tossing envelope after envelope into the garbage with an authoritative "junk...junk...junk" after each one disappeared.
"Dad, why are you throwing all those away?" I remember asking, being at that impressionable age when I thought hopefully every day that something would come in the mail for me.
"Oh, just bills, punkin'. You'll understand when you're older..."

And suddenly, I was in that same position. Bill...bill...bill. Phone bill, credit card bill, student loan bill... You know you're an adult when you no longer enjoy getting the mail.



I spent the day today - my day off - running around taking care of some things that needed being done. Since I've moved back home, there has been an endless orchestra of shuffling papers, and making phone calls, and changing personal information, and this and that. I went to speak with an auto insurance agent today. I called my student loan company today. I bought a day-planner today. A day-planner... I debated between paying with either my debit or my credit card today at CVS because I wasn't sure how long I'd be able to stretch out my cash supply before my next pay check, and I really wanted a cup of coffee in the morning on the way to work. I realized today that I now so much more appreciate the weekend, and now I realize what everyone means when they say the weekend is too short and they have a case of the Mondays.

How did this happen? How did I suddenly turn into an adult? How is it that it feels like just yesterday I was sitting in the Cooper Library studying for finals or midterms or writing an impossible paper...and now I'm thinking ahead to my next paycheck and realizing most of it is already spent?