Something blue

So it's been a slow day here at [redacted as it turns out my bosses do know what a blog is] and I'm trying to keep myself from falling asleep directly on my keyboard so I'm trolling the internets and I found the e-mail Cougar sent me with the pictures from my cousin's wedding in it that I never really bothered to give a good look too.

For the sake of brevity and my fingers, I will refer to the bride as my cousin although H (the bride) is not actually my cousin, she is my first cousin once removed (aka My Mom's cousin, aka My Grandmother's brother's kid) but she is exactly my age (we're 4 days apart) and her dad is actually my grandmother's half brother and she's actually adopted so we'll just call her my cousin.

I've spent the past 45 minutes looking at her pictures and I keep having these waves of various emotions; jealousy, sadness, contempt, disdain, immaturity -- I'm pretty much like my own Pandora's Box over here.

We weren't particularly close growing up. She's always lived in CO, we met for the first time when we were 12 and had a great time of it, then saw each other maybe 4 or 5 other times ever but our family is fairly close-knit and I've always felt quite the bond with her, particularly because I've always felt that my older cousin (who is 4 years older than I am) found me annoying and always picked being a "grown-up" over hanging out with me and the next in the line of succession is my brother (4 years younger) so I never really had anyone to be close to (and on the other side of the family I'm the oldest, and then its 4 boys, then 'Bear-- so that's fairly useless in the bonding department). I've always felt like H and I were on the same wave-length, being that we were the same age. Granted, she went half way across the country for high school, dropped out of college and did that whole "growing up early 20's" thing a little differently than I did, but different strokes, right?

Anywho, she is married now. Cousin H with whom I had a matching mint green chenille Gap sweater and who once convinced me that we could dye my hair in a bowl of tea now has a husband. Something about this sentance doesn't really compute in my brain. Looking at her pictures isn't really helping because instead of thinking, "Wow. H's wedding, sweet." I'm thinking, "Oh look, H got someone to take pictures as she had a pretend wedding." Which is really twisted and bizarre on my part, but how I'm feeling. Can you imagine waking up next to the same person for the rest of ever? I mean, obviously in this millenium, that's not really the way it works, but I feel like were I ever to take that giant plunge, I'd want it to be for keeps. Except, the idea of "keeps" is crazytown to me.

I just feel like the future is coming at me quite quickly these days. Although after looking at her pictures I found myself at the jcrew.com wedding site, which if you've never been, is like a big old scoop of crack-cocaine. I would stay away from the flower girl/ring bearer page unless you want to have a big old pang of uterine hurt. But while I plan the wedding, its still a total hypothetical to me.

I just feel like the future is rushing up at me.

I had a moment at Gap last weekend as I breezed past all the maternity stuff I alighted on this dress and had a biological clock moment of, "Oh WOW that would look so cute if I was pregnant and glow-y" and I left the store in a haze of dreamy, "maybe it would be kind of fun to be pregnant" clouds when halfway down the block my brain slammed on the breaks and went, "Hold the fuck up. After you're pregnant for nine months you have a BABY that you have to live with and provide for and love for the rest of your life." While this is a fairly obvious statement to most people, it was the first time I had ever really pulled it all together.

Little black maternity dresses maybe cute and weddings maybe a beautiful and expensive game of dress up but they still seem so grown-up to me and yet, not distant. Does that make sense? I feel like I'm on this bridge to grown-up-hood-dom and its kind of terrifying in a very pretty flowers and sparkles kind of way. Its the ultimate strange man with candy. "Hey little girl, I have a pretty white dress and some crab cakes for you. All you have to do is get in my van. Permenently."

Yikes.

I also have no idea why all of a sudden at 22 and a half this has suddenly become a huge thing (seriously, people, I find myself thinking about babies and weddings and buying houses and all that shit all.the.time). Maybe its because other not-so-fun parts of my life have started speeding up. I had a nightmare about health insurance last night (wtf?), I realized I need my job, and when I look into the horizon and think, "where will I be in 5 years?" the empty road isn't a gleeful adventure as much as it is a stomach-dropping-to-your-shoes terrifying exercise in procrastination.

For reals, yo

I think I may have written my name on one of the forms... other than that, its all you.