When did this happen?

I'm not especially bothered by the passage of time. At least, not yet.  I had some good times in the first few years of this past decade, but most of it I was busting my hump trying to get where I am now.   I don't love that I'm getting grey hair and it does feel weird to not be the target demographic for pretty much anything but strollers, but at least I have stuff.  Stuff is something I definitely lacked nine years ago--legit furniture, pots and pans that match, health insurance, whatnot.

The things I miss about being younger are cultural things that have just gone out of style.  What I'm basically telling you is that 1999 was my jam and I'm not ready to accept that it's over.  Does everyone pine for the time they were fifteen? What happened to 1990s J. Crew?  By the time I was old enough to afford any of it, it was a totally different thing. But I loved layering?!  Ally McBeal, my prophetess, where have you gone?  My law firm doesn't have unisex bathrooms, but I think of you any time my skirt is a little short.  I haven't thrown away my old cordless phone.  I'm just not there yet.

I didn't fully realize that I had passed the mark from young adulthood into full blown people-call-me-ma'am adulthood until I had a baby.  Getting a babysitter and not being the babysitter was a mind trip I cannot describe.  I feel like it was just yesterday (...said the old lady)  that I was watching someone's expensive cable while their kid slept and stressing about finals and wishing I could skip to the part where I had a nice house and didn't have to worry about mapping out my future.  Hello, 2005, it's me from the future. Hi!  Ease up on the eyebrow plucking.  

I've got expensive cable now.  I know now that parents have it because they don't ever get to go anywhere and it helps them feel less sad. HBO is the opiate of the people.  I don't have the freedom that I used to, but I do have stability.  Having had both, I'd take the stability every time.  That's what approaching thirty means to me.  Craig and were talking last Saturday night about that feeling we used to get in our early twenties around eight o'clock on Saturday.  That excitement that anything could happen and anyone could be there and ohmygod the stories we'll tell tomorrow.  Except, by eleven you realized it was the same people doing the same things and telling the same stories.  We still have nights like that, but they're fewer and farther between and end a whole lot earlier and less fuzzy, because the babysitter has to go home and we can't miss CBS Sunday Morning.  Fortunately, Charles Osgood is a confirmed robot and hasn't changed at all since the 90s.