As time goes by...

Finished the first draft of my paper. Whew. Takes a huge load off my chest. Gotta do the references, but that can wait a bit. Right now, I'm just going to do silly things without an ounce of guilt (all right, maybe a teeny-tiny ounce, since I'm not officially done as of yet). It's been an incredibly long week, mostly coz I was covering for my bro at work and had to get there at 4 a.m. Seriously. Who hires a proofreader for four in the freakin' morning? I checked the stuff and two minutes later, I'm looking at it and going, "Who the heck lets this blatant subject-verb disagreement get by?" That would be yours truly. It's darn embarrassing to listen to the news and realize I forgot to change "high-ranked officials" to "high-ranking officials". And there's not a thesaurus in sight! I can't be expected to think up a synonym for "target" at that unholy hour. I'm not scraping the bottom yet, but I'm not my usual chipper self. Hahaha. Not that my "chipper" self is all that chipper, but she's not overly grave. Anyhow, apparently, my next birthday marks my Jupiter return - a pretty big astrological event according to my research. Big things are supposed to happen, in my work life, my love life and my life life. We'll see. My father keeps reminding me to pray before I leave the house. He and my mom are getting a bit weirded out coz I'm almost twenty-five. Twenty-five is the cursed age for Thais. Apparently, lots of really awful stuff happens to twenty-five-year-olds. My dad thinks it's just one of those beliefs people made up so that overly-zealous upstarts turning a quarter of a century old didn't do anything stupid, but that doesn't mean he doesn't want all the bases covered. Ugh. I can't believe I'm going to be graduating soon. It's so unreal, having a master's degree and a job and all that stuff. Every day, it's hammered home to me that I'm not a kid anymore. That creeps me out no end. The other day, my aunt was asking me if I was dating anyone. "God, no, I'm just a kid!" I told her. She gave me this weird look and said I shouldn't hide it if I was dating anyone. Dating? Puh-lease, I can barely take care of myself and my own emotions, how on Earth could I handle anyone else's? And as for that love thing, I'm pretty through with it for now. Sometimes, I just wish I could jump in a time machine and go back to being my parents' little girl. Playing with dolls, fussing over vegetable consumption, being a pouty brat; going back to when it was halfway cute when I sulked. But of course, that's silly, isn't? Time moves forward, not backwards.

Final thought: Time and tide wait for no one.