RST: Ready? Set? Tempus Fugit!

Once again I must mete out apologies to the A to Z blogging community for dropping the ball on R and S.

R was for R&R. Rest and Relaxation. Y'see, last week my mate and I went for a much needed five day vacation to Lake Chelan. While I had set up my A to Z posts to run from Monday through Thursday, I foolishly thought I could come back Thursday night and be ready to run with a new post on Friday morning. Yes. Foolishly. As it was, I had to hit the ground running with card orders.

*cue shameless self-promotion*
What? Yes, card orders. For those of you who may not know, you can order all of my designs from me. I also do graduation announcements, wedding invitations, party invitations, etc. Either visit my etsy shop (here), or just shoot me an email (here).
*end shameless self-promotion*

So then, on to "S"...
S was supposed to be for shamelessness. I had a brilliant post in my head, one which I will actually write soon. I'll give you this much of a clue, the idea for the post was borne of watching little kids at the lake and the freedom (shamelessness) with which they dance, sing, skip, laugh, cry, and ask for what they want. Think about that kind of shamelessness.

Now then, we're at "T"... back on track, eh? T is for Time, and lately, tempus has been fugit-ing all over my life. What? Oh, very well. Tempus Fugit is Latin for Time Flees (often very wrongly translated as time flies... no, no, no... it flees; it is fleeting). I'm feeling a little caught up in a whirlwind. I've been looking back at the past five years since John died, and at just how much and how fast my life has changed. I've been working on graduation, wedding, and baby announcements for the children of people with whom I graduated high school. Like the song says, I haven't gotten any older, when did they? Yet, the gray in my hair belies my feeble protestations against the passing of time. I've suddenly realized that I've been living in Washington for fourteen years, and that it's been a quarter of a century since I left my hometown in Michigan to move to Maryland. I've started answering certain, "When did you...?" type questions in terms of decades.

The thing is, I'm not so very old. I'm... only... 50. And, yeah, before all of you write to me and say, "Age is just a number. You're as old as you feel." Just can it, will ya? I've heard it before. It may be just a number, but it somehow feels like it ought to have some kind of significance attached to it.  Some kind of you-were-there-and-now-you're-here brass marker to hang above the doorbell.

I keep chewing on the phrase that Hal Moore and Joe Galloway turned into the title of their book, "We were soldiers once... and young." I think that's where I'm having trouble reconciling all this tempus fugit-izing business. I was never young. I don't remember the innocence of my youth. At all. I don't remember being ignorant enough to want to learn. I was never one of those who planned for the life ahead of me. I was never young. It's almost a feeling of having only recently fallen to earth.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I'm merely pondering.

It's time well spent.