My Life as a Barenaked Ladies Song

So yesterday Rob and I are enjoying a nice V-day dinner in, admiring our new kitchen floor (more on that later), and Rob pointed something out to me that made me say Holy Crap on a Cracker. Yesterday was our tenth Valentine's Day as a couple. TENTH. This June will be our fifth wedding anniversary, and this September will be our tenth anniversary of when we started dating. MAN. More than the whole turning-29-next-month thing, this makes me feel like we're getting older.

Then I started thinking about how long it's been since other major events in my life. If it's been almost ten years since I met Rob, then it's been about nine years since I've been friends with Fumi, Beth, Chloe, Peter, and Jess. That makes it about 19 years since I've been friends with Cindy (we met in sixth grade)--whew. And now her sister, who used to drive us to junior high on her way to high school, has a baby and is a professor at Johns Hopkins. Jeez.

It's also been almost ten years since I spent the summer working in London; the same ten years since I was saddled with the Great Depression of '95-'96, following (but caused only in part by) the Disastrous Friendship Breakup of '95. It's been almost nine years since I got my B.A.. Almost seven years since I finished my Post-Baccalaureate year at the Art Institute; almost seven since the Post-Bac review committee decided that my work "was not appropriate to the graduate level," and that "there is not enough work and the work presented needs to be more developed conceptually" (after a year working with them, whose fault is that? and can you tell I'm still bitter?). Almost seven years since the direction of my life was completely altered.

Almost exactly five years since I quit my job at IGN. This summer, five years since we moved to Modesto. That one's hard to believe. I still feel like it's not exactly home. Or rather, I'm in denial that it's not actually the furthest outskirts of the East-East-Bay. 12.5 years since I first moved out of the house to go to college--that's a trip right there. 6.5 years since we got the cat.

I guess I was in a taking-stock kind of mood. There's also the 15 months I've been attempting to get my novel published, and the almost-two-years since finishing graduate school that have resulted in not so many publication credits. But I'd rather not think about those things. They're still works-in-progress.