Dear Kelly Sue

Today I am linking up with Jake and Holly to share my letter to my 21-year old self. When I was 21, I was still in college, working towards a degree in music education.  I was getting married, and then trying to start a family.  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity ... who knew a Tale of Two Cities was all about my twenty first year? Chuck D., that's who.

Dear Kel,

It's totally like this.  It's like you all
get hit by chicken.  Literally.  In the
gut.

1. You are going to spend every Friday this year with your future mother-in-law learning to cook. This will be an amazing experience that begins a lifelong friendship.  You will also gain some much needed culinary skills and even condescend to touching raw meat without rubber gloves once. These edible masterpieces will be fed to your fiancee and two of his buddies.  However, the day that you run into one of the few grocery stores in the downtown area of Detroit and can not believe your luck at finding ten pounds of chicken for two dollars - walk the heck away.  Do not pass go.  Do not collect two hundred dollars (even though it could buy one thousand pounds of that chicken).  That chicken will be consumed and the experience will still be talked about about twelve years later. Totally not worth it, dude.

(Actually, though, it's a hilarious story, and one of my favorite cooking anecdotes.  So go ahead and buy the chicken, just feed it to Brian and the rest of the guys.  David ends up marrying Lauren, and she will become your bestie, so he has to forgive you.  Shaun marries Rachel (not Sister Wife Rachel, but Rachel that Looks Like Meg Ryan) and you will help organize their house, so whatever hard feelings will pass.)

2.  You want to get in shape for your wedding.  I get it.  But that water aerobics class you registered for is for senior citizens.  Don't keep showing up because you don't want to admit you obviously didn't read the course catalog thoroughly like the instructor initially hinted.  Let it go, and instead, maybe think about giving up Taco Bell.  Just a thought. 

3.  This link will change your life.  Within two weeks of this discovery you will consume approximately 20 pounds of watermelon. You're welcome.

4. The internet does not go away.  Right now you are a little pissed that certain professors insist on emailing assignments because that means you had to actually obtain an email address and check it everyday.  But pretty soon everyone will have email on the phones that they carry in their pockets all the time.  (Remember when Eboni got a cell phone and you thought it was awesome to be able to call someone from the middle of Wayne State's bookstore but when she let you use it she had to keep telling you to quit yelling? That will never go away. Mostly because you are a loud person.) 

5.  It's not too late to try and meet Jack White.  (Although, because of your lackluster internet skills, it may be a bit of a challenge still.) Do your best, because he lives right by you and in a few years he is going to blow the heck up.  Figuratively, I mean.  Try to get in now and maybe you can take Meg's place in the White Stripes. Or be a roadie* for them.  Whatever.

* I still think, in a parallel universe, you would be a really good roadie.  You are super organized, and like putting everything back in it's place.  You also like walkie-talkies, so, win-win. 

6.  You are going to spend a lot of this year stressing about babies.  You will gain 50 pounds on fertility drugs and become really discouraged because you are working out at the YMCA an hour and a half every morning.  Keep doing this because without that treadmill time you might gain 75.  And when that elderly man on oxygen walks 5 mph on the treadmill next to your 3.5 mph, chin up, Buttercup, them's the shakes.  I don't even know what that means, but since we share a brain, I trust that you get it.  Eventually there will be babies.  Four of them, so far.

(Also, quit thinking you're busy.  You're not.  Not even close.  Yeah, it's tough to go to school full time and have a job; and it's also hard to run your own house for the first time, but you know how you think it's insanely excessive that you have to sweep the kitchen like, twice a week?  As soon as those little darlings show up you'll be sweeping after every meal. Usually more than that.  And don't even get me started on playdoh.)(Also, Moon Sand is the devil. Just file that away for later.)

7.  You are not going to get cast on the Real World.  The open audition is promising, especially when you leave the line and pretend to be a journalist, walking up to interview others who just want their chance to get drunk on tv become MTV Famous in a time when not that many people were.  Those you interview will think you are an undercover producer and you will do nothing to discourage these thoughts.  But you will blow your cover when the local radio DJ calls you aside for some on-air time and you flip the heck out and lose all your cool points with a wussy "WOOOOOO!" (You will never learn to "WOOOO!" but you will learn to convincingly fake it.)

I think I've covered all the important points.  Keep on, Sister.

Love,
33 year old Kelly