Tonight when I was walking from the car to the apartment after our trip over to IL today, I saw a young girl outside.

She was trying to catch fireflies.

I smiled.

Days like today, when I am feeling especially old, and I see little girls playing in the twilight with dirty knees and knotted hair, remind me that it really wasn't that long ago that I was catching fireflies in my parents front yard.

And as I opened the glass door to our building, I heard her say, "Oh yea, I got one!" and she giggled.

I promised my daughter that we would do that the first chance we could, when she was old enough to toddle along beside me and catch fireflies in a mason jar.

And she can keep them in her room in the mason jar until their glow fades, exactly like my mother allowed my brother and I to do, summer after summer, night after night.

And she will sleep peacefully in their glow with dirty knees and knotted hair and summer on her skin.

Much like her own mother did many years ago.

Yes, I know. My blog title is not original, but I soaked up a lot of sun today and that always makes me think of the Dave Matthews Band.  Love me some DMB!

This is the quote that started my "simple" life almost a year ago. (Simple is in quotations because no one's life is simple, especially if you have a child or children.)

One late night, after all the homework was done, I was aimlessly wandering around the internet.  A friend of mine on Facebook posted this exact saying and a light bulb went off.  Let me give you a back story:

I lived with a friend at the time.  We had been friends for nearly eight years.    I found out I was pregnant while living with this friend.  After my pregnancy announcement, our friendship went downhill. It became unbearable to live with her.  She spent most of her nights out of the apartment and me, having already lived the crazy life, was a homebody.  I was perfectly content in my room, with my computer, books, and cats.  She stayed out late, came home drunk sometimes, and various other things happened and it's all basically irrelevant.  It was unbearable.

The girl was a magnet for drama.  She didn't know how to keep her nose to herself and was constantly in everyone else's business. Also, the friends she had (I use that term loosely because no self-respecting individual would have some of these people as friends.) just added fuel to her fire.  Something was always "wrong" in her life.  Something was always in chaos.  Something was always amiss.

Let me say at this point that it was not pregnancy hormones.  While some of my outrages probably were pregnancy related, I had put up with her crap for long enough and she had some of it coming.  She did.  I did all the housework, I made sure the mutual bills got paid, and I made sure there was food in the house.  She was a slob and a baby.  It was like raising a teenager.

This particular evening that I found the above quote, her and I were barely speaking.  I was seven months pregnant and just wasn't in the mood for her crap anymore.  I had secretly been looking for a place for the husband (then the fiance) and I to move to so I could get out of there.  I had stopped talking to her about these things because, every time I did, she got insulted and mopey and said I was ruining her life.  Yes, I was ruining her life. Oh please.  Save it.

Fast forward to the end of May/beginning of June: I packed my crap up and left.  The day I was moving out, she had her mother and grandmother come up and supervise my moving out.  I am pretty sure it was to make sure I didn't take anything that wasn't mine.  Oh please, she didn't HAVE anything that I wanted.  The day I was moving out, I got blamed for the mess in the apartment, how filthy we were living, and that they were going to sue me for everything I was worth.  Basically, it was drama that I didn't need being super pregnant and an emotional wreck about the whole damn thing.  I knew then and there that the friendship was ruined.  She had fed her family and her "friends" a line of crap and they had bought it hook, line, and sinker.

She threw away an eight year friendship so she could be the center of attention.  Again.  As always.

I should have known.

I haven't spoken to her since.  I refuse to speak to her.  I refuse to speak to anyone even remotely associated with her.  I do not want her around me or my daughter.  I don't have time for people like her in my life.

My life has been so quiet!  I no longer dread waking up in the morning and I never worry anymore about what my text messages are going to say when the notification goes off.  My life is peaceful and I am peaceful.

I have never felt guilty about the choice I made to leave.

Life is too short to be unhappy.

It's really too short to let other's make you unhappy.

Are you surrounded by people who make you laugh, are supportive, and would do anything for you?

Good.

If you hesitate to answer the above question with a yes, maybe you need to evaluate who you have in your life.

I know it did me a world of good.

Oh, check me out-I'm blogging.  Again.

I had a blog,yes I did.  It had a witty name.  It was called 'Life with Mom-Brain' and well, Mom-Brain actually took over and I totally forgot I had it.

*sigh* As is life finishing a degree, raising a child, and getting married. 

So now, I'M BACK!  I am going to try this blogging thing again at the urging of some friends of mine who think it would be a good idea.  (Okay, okay, I also think it's a good idea.  I need a reprieve from dirty diapers, crying-it-out spells, wearing baby food in my hair, and Bubble Guppies.) By the way, who comes up with the names of cartoons these days?  Team Umizoomie?  Bubble Guppies? WTH!? What happened to My Little Pony!?

I digress...

The quote above is how I have been feeling the past few days.  I graduated from college last week.  Yep, I sure did......after eleven years.....and a lot of money in student loans....and I don't know if I will ever recover from all the sleep I have lost over papers, projects, portfolios, and baby.  Now I sit and wonder...."Now what?"  Okay, so I apply to some jobs in my field...and wait....and wait....and apply to a few more...and wait some more...and....yes, this is how it goes. 

I start to wonder if I really will find a job in my field.  The economy stinks, my field is basically on lock down, and I have no experience except for what the college required me to do to get my degree.  Well, now, doesn't that sound like good odds?

I didn't think so either.

So, I have been in my head the past few days about the possibility of racking up all this debt, getting all this knowledge, and....not doing a damn thing with it. :-/  (<---- That's my concerned face.) So, what the hell am I supposed to do now?

I know I have reached another crossroads in my life.  I have been here before and I know what it looks like.  (Oh and here comes the Metallica song again..."Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel, was just a freight train coming your way...") I just haven't quite figured out what it all means yet. 

I'm actually quite scared.
I have really big goals for myself.  They are way up high on a shelf so they won't get damaged or completely broken.  I am only 5'1.  Those aren't very good odds either.

I have never been one to just sit and wait.  I was not born with patience. 

"But you took ten years to finish a degree!  You chipped away and chipped way until you actually did it!  You are to be commended!"

Yes, thank you, but I never thought it would get here and I thought I was going to go insane from BEING SO. DAMN. PATIENT! 

This is what I know right now:

I have a degree.
I am a wife.
I am a mother.
I am a daughter.
I am a sister.
I am a friend.
I have all this knowledge and talent and I fear it will all go to waste. 

Those are the worst things to waste.

The question I will go to bed with tonight, that I will ask the ceiling a hundred times until I fall asleep, is this:

"Do I go left or do I go right?"