Friday, 29 February 2008

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  Take a flying LEAP!

  Happy Leap Day!

  And, welcome back to my blog!  I'm blogging again--yay!  The leap year made me do it.

  No seriously.

  Leap Day is fantastic--like New Year's Day or that bonus hour you get at 2 a.m. on some Sunday in the fall when Daylight Savings Time ends. . . but on crack.  Today doesn't really "count"; it's some strange conglomeration of lots of other days from the past four years, or the next four years, or something very Quantum Leap-ish like that.  Plus, if you go to McDonalds before 10:30am today, you can get a free Sausage Burrito (with purchase of a medium or large drink)!!

  But seriously . . .

  Beyond this atemporal thing (which I totally acknowledge I am a bit of a freak for obsessing over...whatev), Leap Day has me thinking about what my life has been like on previous Leap Days.  And it's really remarkable how much things change in four years (and how much things stay the same...oobladi, ooblada, oobla...yaddayaddayadda).  Let me review:

  February 29, 1984:  age 1.5;
  I really can't say much about this Leap Day, as my only memory from this age is the time my cousin Chris (also 1.5) bit me because he wanted to play with my baby glowworm.

  February 29, 1988:  age 5.5;
  I was a proud kindergartener, taking cake decorating classes with my mother, plus ballet, tap, and jazz classes.  Oh, and I was eagerly anticipating the arrival of my baby brother so that we could be a real family (with a mom, a dad, a brother, and a sister--just like the Barbie Heart family).

  February 29, 1992:  age 9.5;
  I was in Mrs. Jenkins's 4th grade class, sporting serious bangs that are only rivaled by my latest look.  Oh, and I was huge into sweater dresses and leggings (but the kind with stirrups) and ballet flats.  I was soooooo seriously ahead of my time!

  February 29, 1996:  age 13.5;
  Hello Junior High.  Hello boys.  Hello cheerleading.  Hello ruling the school (after all, I was in 8th grade--I was invincible!).  Oh, and hello 2nd place in the regional Power of the Pen contest :)

  February 29, 2000:  age 17.5;
  My senior year at WUHS, and I was sooooo checked out.  It probably didn't help that I had a boyfriend who I was toooootally into who was a freshman at OSU.  In fact, you can bet that I spent the better part of my Leap Day this year online IMing or emailing or on the phone with Tryg.  Unless I was busy kidnapping Mrs. Stewart's kitty-cat clock.

  [EDIT:  What was I thinking?  We didn't have IM; we were totally ICQing!]

  February 29, 2004:  age 21.5;
  This was my first senior year at OSU.  Current major:  English, with an emphasis in Renaissance studies (though I'd soon be switching that to an emphasis in Education).  I was taking Syntax, Sanskrit, Organic Chemistry, and HipHop Dance.  And I was gearing up for Spring Break in Panama City Beach, FL, wear I would discover my horrible allergies to pine pollen (though I wouldn't realize it at the time and would heavily overmedicate on Nyquil) as well as my horrible inability to apply sunscreen evenly.

  February 29, 2008:  age 25.5;
  Now here I am, in my third year at Stanford doing a Ph.D. in linguistics.  Who'da thunk?

  The moral of this story is, four years is HUGE, and each Leap Day represents majorly different life stages.  I'm sure that eventually this curve starts to flatten out, and things won't have changed that much from one Leap Day to the next.  But I can't really see that happening anytime soon.  In fact, it's not clear to me that my next Leap Day (February 29, 2012) will be spent in the same place, with the same people, or even with the same version of mySELF as any of these previous Leap Days, including today.  Which means my life is changing, it's going somewhere...and I'm gonna make sure it goes somewhere GOOD.

  So, since today is kinda atemporal (at least in my head), I'm gonna try my next four years on for size.  I'm going to be me-er today, doing and saying everything that comes to me without holding back.  So world, beware.  (Blogosphere, too.  I'm back!)

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