I know people are often talking about the way in which we see our children growing up in a manner that seems too quickly to us. I know it is an incredibly cliché saying, too. Over the last few days I have looked at my kids and seen them as incredible little people and the lengths in which they've grown in just the last year blows my mind. Come the start of the school year I will have a 5, 6 and 7 year old. Preschool, kindergarten and 2nd grade. I was noticing this last week how incredibly long my 7 year olds legs are. She is my daughter. I noticed today, how much personality my almost 6 year old son possess; a quality of his that has been previously overlooked, call it middle child syndrome if you will. My sister told me today how THIN my almost 5 year old is; he no longer possess that baby fat and solidness that comes along with a healthy toddler.

They are growing so fast and maturing so quickly and all I want to do is bottle up these moments I have with them so that when they're teenagers with cellphones and friends and cars and sporting events to get to, I can take those bottles out, drink them up and soak in the love that is being the parent of a small child.

I wonder, too, what will come of me when they do reach that age where I no longer am the highlight of their lives. I think about my own parents and the limited time they had together, neither retired, both having to work, one grown kid still living at home and 2 grandchildren with a 3rd on the way when my dad was diagnosed with his cancer. I don't want that to be the life I have once my children are grown.

I think often about how young I was when I became a mother, just barely 21. I had my 3rd a month after my 24th birthday. My family, complete and 2 of them with severe medical conditions and the death of a parent under my belt before I even hit 25. I know I have often referenced those circumstances here, but to see where I am now and having been the one to live through it all, I still cannot, at times, believe me, being the woman I am, lived through all that and a divorce.

I think about the things I want after I am done raising the children I've made and have let them to live their lives the way they choose to, hopefully with the insight and kindness and intelligence I've tried so hard to instill in them. I think about what I want then.

I know I want to be happy, but that is so mundanely generic to say...because what is happiness and do we even know what we want, individually, to make us "happy"? The first thing I think I know I want is love. I've been in a mess of relationships, all of which I think I caught a glimpse of what love is, but clearly none of which were because they otherwise would have stuck. I love the idea of being in love and romanticism and being meant for only one other. I think some of it is cheesy and sad and irrelevant when it comes to the things that really matter, but I think there are some guises of "love" that are necessary for the true thing to emerge and grow.

Well...as you've most likely guessed, if you know me, I am having a very restless night. There are too many things on my mind and consequently there have been a slue of cocktails preceding this post. Regardless of that fact, I am laying in bed, watching The Big Lebowski and contemplating the life I've chosen to live.

Yes. I am THAT woman.

And don't piss on my fucking rug.