I was doing some cleaning within my email file folders the other day when I ran across an email I had saved from 2002 (yes, Virginia there was internet way back in 2002).  The email included a list entitled – 25 Signs You’ve Grown Up.  I cannot recall why I saved that email so many years ago, but I surmise it had to do with waiting to grow up to see if any of the signs applied to me.

Well, almost a full decade later I thought perhaps I would be able to better identify with the signs in the email.  Amazingly, over the past ten years of getting into mischief I unknowingly “grew up” – at least according to the measurements in the email.

So, I share a selection of the signs with you who reside in the new forty (or on either side of it – the new thirty or the new fifty) that I think are fairly general.  See if you too have grown up while you weren’t paying any attention. 😉

Your potted plants are alive, and you can’t smoke a one of them.

You keep more food than beer in the fridge.

6:00 AM is when you get up, not when you go to sleep.

You hear your favorite song in an elevator.

You carry an umbrella and watch the Weather Channel.

Your friends marry and divorce instead of hookup and breakup.

You go from 130 days of vacation time to 7.

Jeans and a sweater no longer qualify as ‘dressed up.’

You’re the one calling the police because those  darn kids next door don’t know how to turn down the stereo.

You don’t know what time Taco Bell closes anymore.

You feed your dog Science Diet instead of McDonald’s.

Sleeping on the couch makes your back hurt.

A $4.00 bottle of wine is no longer ‘pretty good stuff.

Are you grown up too?  Yeah, I suspected as much…I heard your favorite song in the elevator the other day. 😉

Day eight hundred and thirty of the new forty -obla di obla da

Ms. C