Happy Birthday, Elizabeth

Weekly Update - November 19, 2022

Typically, the weekly update comes out on Friday, not Saturday. I am a day behind this week partly because I feel like I have been a day behind on everything all week. Have you ever had one of those weeks? It feels like I have been playing catch up the whole time. So that's part of the reason. The other part of the reason is that today is a special day, and I wanted to recognize it.

Today, our 4th child, Elizabeth, turns 18. That means that we will have four adult children. And a 6 year old. Every single part of that is mind-boggling to me.

When I was a kid, I thought that being an adult was a thing that happened at a specific time, and that it was marked in a defined way. There was some kind of tangible marker of adulthood. You got a driver's license. You bought your first beer. You registered for selective service. Whatever it was, you did it and then... BAM! You were officially an adult.

And when you were an adult, I thought, things would be different. In some ways, dramatically different. I knew that you couldn't be cool anymore as an adult. In fact you wouldn't even have the potential for coolness. The good news is that while coolness was off the table, you would be rich. You also wouldn't really know what it meant to have fun as an adult, I thought, but that wouldn't really matter because, you know, you'd be rich. 

And you would know things. I figured as an adult I would at least know how to do my taxes and what to do when the "check engine" light came on. As an adult, I would be able to buy tickets to the R rated movies, and not have to sneak in to North Dallas Forty with a ticket to The Black Stallion. 

As time goes on, you slowly start to realize that