Turn and Face The Strange...

So, it's actually happening.  My oldest child, my "baby girl", my firstborn is flying the coop...leaving the nest...abandoning me in my advancing years...

Too much?

Yeah, I'm actually pretty excited for her.  I remember the first time I lived on my own.  I was 18, and I moved in with two other girls in a town about an hour away from where I grew up.  One roommate was my very bestest friend and the other had been her roommate elsewhere for awhile and had a few...issues.  She also had an AWESOME closet full of clothes which we borrowed regularly...usually without permission.  I justified this as her payment to me for all the damages my lungs suffered from exposure to her Aussie Sprunch Spray addiction.  She had some impressive bangs.

We were slobs and did dumb stuff but man did we have fun.  We couldn't afford eating out, but going to dessert was doable...if we split it.  We "wallpapered" the kitchen with contact paper once out of boredom, and it was like Christmas the day we got a microwave.  We feasted on microwaveable dinners and microwaveable popcorn that night.  If it could go in the microwave, we nuked it. 
Good times. 

I learned some life lessons from those months:

*I learned that your first roommate is going to impress themselves on your heart for the rest of your life.

*I was never as poor in my whole life (before or since) as I was for the first 6 months I lived on my own so I learned to budget and be creative.

*I was alone a lot in new situations so I learned to suck it up, face my fears, and do what needed to be done.

*I learned that sometimes you have to kill your own spiders.

*I learned that you never have as much toilet paper at home as you think you do, so it's always best to grab a few more rolls.

*I learned that some roommates (especially those with big bangs) don't like it when you label your food in an attempt to keep them from eating it, which led me to my next discovery:

*When a steak is dropped in the "dead zone" between the fridge and the stove, you can just wash it off and serve it to unsuspecting others and they won't die.

Yep.  We did.

So to my adorable offspring, you are embarking on a journey that you will never forget or regret.  You will surprise yourself with your strength, courage, and creativity.  You will make memories to last a lifetime, and you will probably run out of toilet paper. 

You will survive it all and you will be a better person for it.  You make me proud kiddo.