Still the questions remain

"So, what do you do?" It may seem like an easy enough question, but this innocent inquiry really trips me up these days. What do I do? Am I a writer? A paralegal? A LEGO employee? What wording best describes my way of making a living? A lot of people asked me that magic question this weekend, and as pretentious as it sounds, I always said Writer first (and yes, with a capital W). Writer... Because that is what I went to school for, it is what I used to be, and it is what (in theory) I still want to be. I haven't had an article published in months, yet I still cling to that time when my life was filled with words. Pathetic much?

An upcoming assignment has prevented the Writer label from being a complete fraud, thankfully, though I still feel like I'm putting on a front.

A sticky situation

I spilled oatmeal on my laptop yesterday. Oatmeal... In the keys, on the touch pad, on my desk, on the clothes I was planning to wear to work. It upset me until I remembered some other epic spills I'd had in the past that were much worse than this. There was the time I spilled gallons of German chocolate cake frosting in the back of my car, never fully finding a way to get all of the coconut out of the carpet. There was one time while babysitting that I splashed liquid Jello all over the kitchen floor just minutes before the parents were due to arrive home. And how about that night in college when my roommate and I made margaritas and accidentally unscrewed the bottom of the blender while it was still incredibly full? At least oatmeal doesn't stain. It's probably not good for a computer though, right?

Indecent proposal?

One of my friends got engaged last week. How do I feel about this? Ridiculously happy for her, and, well, kind of old. I've obviously known other people who got engaged and/or married, but this is different because Kim and I grew up together. We were practically joined at the hip during the awkward teen years, partaking in all the time-wasting activities common to our generation (or at least the more innocent ones). We learned how to drive together, our families pretty much considered us their adopted children, we crossed state lines and back multiple times... We even lived together for a while after college. We were inseparable.

Kim turned 26 last Friday, I'll be 26 next Friday. Are we finally at the age where marriage and babies and careers and life begin? Two of my friends who started dating in college are heading down the aisle in July, and that seems weird enough, but this is someone I have known for more than half of my life. So, who's next?

Note: If you think this is an attempt to get a proposal of my own, you're wrong.