Grown Ups

I'm almost to the point where I'm closer to 40 than 30. It's just a few months away. And I really don't mind. But I've started to take a step back and observe how I live my life. The things that I'd like to accomplish. One of the things that has often bothered me is there are many things around the house that are in a perpetual stand still. In an emotional sense, my house is our home. But if you looked around here, you would know we lived here, but I haven't exactly set it up like it's a permanent residence. Part of me thinks it's because I think of home as where my family is, rather than the dwelling we happen to reside in. But I go into other people's homes, and I like when they're lived in. I like when I see pieces of who they are up on the walls. I'll also admit I like it when I get that what's there (a piece of furniture, a knick knack, etc.) tells a story that everyone in the house will understand, but I won't... unless I ask. I love that aspect of families. The history. The affection. The fondness.

Although I realize in 3-4 years, we could be residing somewhere else. I've also faced the fact that it's put any further education plans I have on hold. Instead of spending money on my college tuition, we'll be saving, saving and saving for the possibility that we might be moving to central California. In which case, housing costs will be 4 times what they are here. This gives us time to plan.

It also means that this morning we took advantage of the low interest rates and refinanced our house. We put more money into it. We dropped our interest rate two points, and we lessened it from a 20-year mortgage to a 15-year mortgage. It was all very grown up.

Following the signing of our mortgage (our fifth in 10 years -- since we've refinanced this house twice now in the three years we've owned it), we took my car into the shop for a 20k mile inspection. I've owned the car one year and one week. MacTroll has owned his car for six years, and he's at 26k miles.

Tonight after dinner at Kofusion, I took MacTroll to the mall. We were trying to remember the last time we went shopping together just for us, without one of us having X-man and the other running around trying to get things done as fast as possible... We couldn't remember. There was a glimpse of doing some kind of Christmas return at Bergner's once upon a time, but we both agreed, it wasn't shopping. It was a quick trade and go over the lunch hour. There was also a quick drive by shopping trip to Oakbrook when I was pregnant, so MacTroll could hit the Apple store and I could hit the Motherhood Maternity (before we had one in Champaign). But we weren't really in the same store together.

In fact, the last time we went shopping together was when we lived in D.C. somewhere between 1999 and 2003. Tonight, MacTroll got a new pair of jeans -- not from the Gap Outlet, which is a first. He also got a new grown up dress coat.

I struck out at trying to find wide calf boots. But my husband actually voiced an opinion, which I agree with, which was: "Go all out, or go home." So, here I am searching the internet to see if we can have wide calf and at least 3" non-wedge, non-chunky heel.

But it was still nice to have someone to go with, and I'm liking the fact that he and I are doing much better at scheduling time together and talking to each other about things that matter rather than just about our day. You start to feel like you've got someone on your team, which is very nice.