Growing Up: a post that isn't about the kitten I found.

I am growing up and it terrifies me.

Numbers I get, numbers I have been counting for all of my life.  I understand that 25 is equidistant from 20 and 30.  But what I wasn’t expecting was how different they are and that 25 is being caught in the growing pains of wanting a totally different life.  

I am more limited now.  I am aware that the choices I make will be the stories I tell.  I have less potential energy.  I won’t be a surgeon, an astronaut, a linguistics major, or a scientist.  I have made decisions that lead me to a path so deep in the woods of life that I can’t navigate my way back.  And the forward forest is of fewer roads than I had seen before. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I still want to act and make art that gives people hope in being alive, that is the ethos of who I am… but I’m still not doing it.  Not enough at least.  It is not what pays my bills, it’s not all that I do.  So I could make that my focus, and really do more each week to take advantage of this great city I am in; but I also want to travel and have enjoyed uprooting myself each year and starting over with a new piece of myself that I had gained.

So that is the 20 year old in me.  Wanting everything and trusting it’ll work out.

Now the 30 year old…is who confuses me.  The 30 year old hears this and worries about health insurance, affording rent, knowing that I can make rent the following month, and longs for…dare I say it…stability.

I am someone that warns my friends when I meet them that I at some point will leave, eventually to France, and will do so happily.  And yet now I’m sad that I don’t come home to someone I have known for years.  Or that I don’t have enough spots where I am a regular.  Or that I have twenty different addresses saved in Grubhub/Seamless/Amazon.

I don’t want to settle down, there is still so much I want to do…but I also am longing to have a staycation where I get to really relax at home.  It confuses and overwhelms me to want so many different versions of the same story.  I just hope I land on one worth telling.

Spencer is TWO!

Today is my little crab’s birthday.

My little bug is two.  Two whole years with this little one.  I couldn’t be more grateful for the time I’ve had with this little crab.  I’ve been preparing for his birthday for a few months now, giving him pre-birthday treats along the way because you never know with these pets.  In the wild they can live for decades, in captivity it could be months, so you really don’t know how long you’ll have together. 

Of course that’s terrifying, but at some point the fear becomes customary enough that you can think about what it really means.  I live in the present with this crab.  Who knows what tomorrow will bring so I might as well enough now as much and as fully as possible.  And all I want in life is someone consistent to love, so it’s been a joy to spoil this little crab.

He has three water dishes (purified, salt and electrolyte), two sponges, two food dishes (he keeps outgrowing them), currently he has four extra shells in his tank (but we’ve definitely been through at least a dozen), a climbing branch, his hermie hut (half a coconut with a carved out entrance), a humidity gage and temperature gage, a humidifier and heat lamp, two kinds of food, two kinds of dirt, and a giant plastic tree (the one he was in when he was missing), 

So what else is there to get him for his birthday?

- A new kind of food

- A new shell

- Organic maple wood rings that I’ve read they like to chew

- TWO reptile hammocks

- An extra sponge

- And a new food dish (which is glass so it’ll be easy to clean and he can’t get too big for it and I’ll be able to hear when he’s eating and clawing for more food) 

We also have activities: a photo-opp with the three little hats I made for him, as well as an art project: I got acid-free, non-toxic, pens and I’m going to tape them to him and have him walk across canvas for special Hermit Crab Art.  It’ll be great once my nocturnal bug wakes up.