I have free time on my hands today. So shoot me.

I’ve been pondering my grown-upness lately.

I don’t know about you, but I rarely feel very grown up. Well, I take that back. I do feel grown up, when I do something grown up and did it without feeling weird that I did a grown up thing. Like phone places.

Do you remember when you were a kid and your mother called places? And it seemed like such a grown up thing to do, and how are you going to manage to grow up and CALL PLACES ON YOUR OWN without your mother to do it for you?

“Hello I’m calling about my daughter Amy. She’s had a fever and I would like to speak to a nurse about whether I should bring her in or not. Thank you.”

“Hello, this is Mrs. Xxxxxx, Amy’s mother and I need to make her an appointment for her teeth cleaning.”

“Mrs. Rawlins? Hello, it’s Mrs. Xxxxxx. I wanted to call and RSVP for Heidi’s Barbie Doll Birthday Slumber party, Amy is very excited and wouldn’t miss it.”

Grown Up phone calls were seriously something that I would tremble to think of doing. There are a variety of Grown-Up calls that need to be made through the course of one’s life, and it’s weird to think, here I am at 31, making Grown Up calls with no trouble whatsoever. In fact, when the Grown Up calls involve chewing someone out, I kind of enjoy them. Like when there is an error by some huge corporation and it affects me and isn’t my fault whatsoever, I love to call and chew them and their huge corporate asses out. See? Very Grown Up! How did I manage to do that without trembling?? The mind boggles.

I had a roommate in college named Amy (yeah, and this was the SECOND Amy that I roomed with in my college years. Phone calls were a bitch. “Hello, Amy?” “Yes..” “Oh hey, was that design thing-” “Hang on. You want the other Amy.” They were always for the other Amy. However, this Amy was really cool and I didn’t mind that she was always getting called and me not so much.) and we used to discuss things the things that we were expected to handle, now that we were grown up. Grown Up phone calls was one of them.

I still kind of cringe when there are a pile of Grown Up calls that need to be made. Even though I know how to do them now, I still wish they didn’t have to be done. There are more ways that one can resist Growing Up as well.

Throughout my formative years in my parents house, I wore jeans and t-shirts and flannel and didn’t bother much with hair or makeup except to dye it (the hair, not the makeup) red whenever possible and fiddle around with it (the hair and the makeup) when I was bored and it was fun. I often heard, “You’re going out like THAT???” from my mother, or “Can’t you do something with your hair?” that only gave fuel to fire to look as much like the flannel wearing garage band listening grungy growing-up-near-Seattle teenage was SUPPOSED to look like. I kept it up in college and my twenties except when I wasn’t allowed, like, at grown up jobs. Lots of my jobs have been at places where jeans and thermal-weave shirts (i graduated from flannel) were perfectly acceptable.

Anyway, I guess it was a few years ago that I made a conscious decision that I need to take a bit more care with my appearance. I mean, hell, I watch “What Not To Wear” – I can see that half the transformation is just a good haircut and some makeup, but even then the clothes go a long way too. The fact was, even though in my head, my strangely bleached jeans with the bottom hem lopped off (so that it would fray all cool and punk) and random t-shirts and thermal weave shirts looked totally cool and hip, the fact is I just looked weird and old and the whole “don’t bother combing your hair for three days, just shove it into a barrette or ponytail” didn’t help much. Plus, I had great skin as a teenager. People on the street would always tell me how beautiful my skin was. However, at near 30, no one was rushing up to inform me of my great skin anymore. One can’t just hop out of the shower in the morning and walk out the door looking like a Neutrogena commercial at 29.

Anyway, so I made more of an effort with my personal appearance. Which also clued me in and made me start Project Skinny, which on the whole was a lot like the whole in-my-head thing not being in ANY way proportional to my actual appearance. But lately, the whole grown up clothes and makeup and whatnot have been sliding. I think it’s because I need a haircut. You see, you go and get a haircut and the stylist gets all fancy and styles your hair with foamy mousse-y stuff and large barreled hairbrushes and pointy blow dryers and then they get out the curling irons and the hair spray and you watch really closely so that you can try to duplicate their efforts in your own bathroom and it really is kind of motivating! Look! If you spend 20 minutes on your hair, YOU TOO can look like the goddess of Love and Beauty! After I get a haircut, I’m all motivated and I think, HEY! I can do this! I can look like a grown up and not be a scrungy-on-the-outside but really thinking-i’m-so-hot-and-punk on the inside.

So first a few months go by and the motivation fades out and the hair doesn’t’ get blow dried. And then the whole makeup comes and goes. And then sometimes you don’t even bother combing your hair after you get out of the shower and so it dries in weird crazy medusa styles that look like the locks of hair are trying to escape from your head, even when you shove it up in a barrette. And start to stop bothering with the nylons because whoever invented THOSE was just sick and besides you think you’re allergic because where exactly is that RASH coming from around your knee?

Then one day you come home from work and run upstairs to change out of your grown up job clothes into comfy jeans and a t-shirt and you catch a glance at yourself in the mirror and realize that your boss is probably wondering where the ever-so-grown-up looking girl they hired a few months ago went and when did this medusa haired, not-good-skin having, non-make-up wearing, non-nylons wearing*, weird girl come from??

* instead I choose ATHLETIC ANKLE SOCKS. WITH A SKIRT. 6am is not a good hour for me to be making fashion decisions.

In short, it’s time for me to get a haircut. And thus, some motivation.

However, there is a downside to looking all grownup. That being, that if you look all grown up and responsible and very Molly, then people look at you and expect that to be what you actually are inside. But no! I want to cry, I’m not Molly! I’m not grown up! Really! I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what I’m doing with this life! It’s all an illusion! I just got a good hair-cut, that’s all I SWEAR!

It’s the same thing with the whole house issues I have. If I get my house all fixed up nice, then people will make assumptions about what kind of person I am. What if they’re wrong? What if I am not like that at all? Just because I have no idea how to choose a style for my house and pick something WRONG do I have to live with that the rest of my life?? OH THE AGONY!

Ok, that’s probably enough of amy inflicted on you for one day.

I will tell you, however, that it is supposed to SNOW TONIGHT YAY IS ME AND YAY TO THE WORLD AND PEACE ON EARTH GOOD WILL TOWARD PANDAS!

Ooh, and everyone pray for the government to shut down, because if it DOES!!!! NO WORK FOR ME!

amy likes the feel of those latex finger grippy thingees that help you turn pages