Which, while necessary, was really (for me, anyway) an excuse to get some good Hot Fresh Now.
We don't have any good doughnut bakeries in my little town, but college town has Hot Fresh Now Krispy Kreme. Glazed heaven.
And no, buying myself some hot fresh glazed doughnuts is NOT on my list of things I have done for myself.
There has been some discussion as I prepare to compose this list as to the definition of terms. Things I have done for myself - intentionally? or just things I have done with other motivations that have turned out to be good for me? Patrick and I decided that these things didn't count. That leaves out a lot. Another question: just how recent do these things need to be? Most of what I have done for myself, I did 25 + years ago. I'm going to include some of those, since that may be the only way we'll actually get up to five. And I'm only considering things that are significant enough to have made a real impact on my life. So let's do this thing.
Five Things
1. I went to Boston. In the early spring of 1982, when I was a sophomore in college, I had an opportunity to help a friend drive up to Massachusetts from Macon, Georgia. It would require that I skip a whole week of school, since the timing didn't coincide with Spring Break that term. She was to be in a friend's wedding somewhere in central Massachusetts, but I wanted to go to Boston because my boyfriend at the time, Rohan, was attending MIT. I went, spent the week with him, did all manner of interesting things, and had a wonderful time. I ended up flunking one of my classes, but I had taken it Pass/Fail anyway, since I did not get along with the professor, so the "Fail" didn't affect my GPA. I'm no dummy.
About a week after my return to Macon, I met Superman. That changed the course of my life in a most astounding way, but I had no active role in the arrangement of that meeting. It doesn't count as one of the five.
2. I married Superman. Hell, I backed him into proposing to me. (I might tell that story sometime.) I will include this in my list because it was an active decision on my part, and I guess I did it for me. The truth of the matter is that I just had to marry him. Not "had" to marry him as in I was "in trouble." When I called my dad to tell him we were marrying, he asked with a snippy tone of voice "Are you pregnant?" No, I wasn't. I just couldn't live without the man. It was compulsory that we marry. He proposed on November 2nd, 1982, and we married on March 17th, 1983.
I stayed married to him. That isn't numbered because it technically doesn't belong in this list. It was a very good thing to do, and it benefited me greatly, but that's not what I was thinking when I made the decision(s). There were a few times in the first few (10?) years of our marriage when the thought of leaving his sorry ass did cross my mind. Deciding to stick it out was motivated by my unhealthy martyr complex more than any good will toward myself. As it turns out, being married to Superman is the best thing about my life now.
3. I put my kids in public school. I did it for me, but also for them. There again, I had pushed myself to the brink of insanity with homeschooling the older two and trying to care for the toddlers/preschoolers Diva and Sproing. Those two have never been easy to parent. Keeping them out of trouble while successfully educating Light and Twitch was more than I could handle. I put the two oldest in middle school, and the next year Diva and Sproing were in all-day kindergarten. The 2003-'04 school year I was without specific employment. I enjoyed a year off. The following year, 2004, when the kidlets were in first grade, I took the bus driving job.
4. I quit my bus driving job. That was only last year; March of 2008. Really, though, I should have stopped driving the bus at the end of the previous school year. By the time I finally did quit, that job had sapped nearly every bit of emotional stability out of me. After Spring Break last year (March 2008) I just could not make myself get back on the bus. I figure this entry is a little bit fudged because, like getting married, it seems more like a compulsory action than a self-benevolent decision.
5. I went back to college. That, obviously, is very recent. Since I graduated from Mercer U. in 1986 I have wanted to return to college. I really want my master's degree, but right now I'm getting a second undergraduate degree. That has more to do with where I live and what's available to me than what I really want to do. The idea is that when I earn my second degree I will go into a graduate program more to my liking, both in academic subject and geographic location.
So there you have it. I think only the first and last items really belong in this list, since the middle three I only did when I had finally worn myself to a complete frazzle and didn't have too much choice in the matter.
What do you think?
