Birthdays

44 days to go until Sara and I are married!!! Wow, what wild and crazy thought to have. Married. It truely is remarkable the thoughts that stick in my head over the years. I can distinctly recall swimming in my grandparent's pool in Los Angeles when I was about 11 years old. I was clinging to the side of the pool in the deep end counting every other year and trying to imagine what I would be like at that time. You see my grandparents would fly me out to their home every other year (my sister went the years I didn't) - so I wanted to figure out what I would be doing with myself so I'd know when to stop going.

13, wow I'll be a teenager. 15, I'll almost be driving. 17, I'll definitely be driving then, but wow that is 6 years away...that's more than half the time I've been alive. I don't think I'll be able to wait that long. 19... I'll be done with high school, I'll probably be in college out here at UCLA, so maybe I wont need the trips anymore then. 19. That's when I'll stop.

However, I didn't stop counting or predicting. 21...WOAH, that just sounds cool. I'll still be in college, but probably not married. I wonder when I should get married. . . 23, no. 25, God that is old. If I relived every single day I've been alive and added it onto every single day I've already lived I wouldn't even be 25!!! Most likely I'll be doing something very important. Dad didn't get married until he was 27, and mom was in her 30's...

27. That's a good age to be married. 29. That's a good age for kids. That's what I'll do, I'll get married at 27 and have kids at 29.

I'm sure I kept doing cannon balls off the diving board, swam until my fingers and toes almost imploded, had some dinner with my grandparents then went off to bed. This is maybe one out of five or six memories I have from this time frame in my life. Some random little day that I planned the course of my life.

The funny thing is that right now I'm 26. Getting married in 44 days, means I would need to have a birthday very soon in order for my spoken mandates about my future to actually become a reality. It's even funnier that when you are young, you can see your birthday coming 5 months away. One of my co-workers celebrated his 27th birthday just yesterday. I'm not sure why but whenever I learn someone's birthday who is close to my age I always will remember if I am older or younger than that person. Maybe it's the excel spreadsheet itemizer part of me, but I just love to know where I fall on the list. It wasn't until yesterday that I realized that my birthday is in 11 days.

I'll be 27 when I get married.

Makes me wonder what will happen when I'm 29...