MY HAIR EATS STRAWS.
Um-hmmm, that's what I said.
Oh, and crab quesadilla make my belly MAD at me...

Being a responsible grown-up is what's going to kill me. Ironic, isn't it? Being a responsible grown-up is what kills just about everybody. And have you noticed that those who deny gtowing up seem younger and have more fun? Although, I guess it's all in your definition of fun. "Depth" and "meaningfulness" are increasingly more important to me. Apparently that's what gets us all in the end.

Finding the last card that my Gramie was physically able to sign her name to made me feel a lot of things. After I cried like a baby and poor-me'd over how much I miss her, I realized that her life was something that my life just might turn out to be - an outline for loved ones that we leave behind to follow. A blueprint from which I can trace shape into my own life and fill in the blanks with what is real to me. We all wallow around 80% of the time trying to figure out the meaning of our lives and the purpose that we are to fulfill while we are here. Maybe it's way too selfish to expect that we'll ever know what we've been sent here to accomplish. Maybe we are here to drop little pebbles behind us as we go for the next ones to follow. We may not reach the grandest scheme, if we're not meant to. But maybe we're paving a path for those that are.

Having said that, I'm perfectly ok with being way too selfish. I want the grandest scheme. I will always tilt my ear towards heaven for God's instructions, and doing so makes me expect to do big things. I can only hope to create a legacy that my children and grandchindren want to be a part of, just like my family has done for me.

And I'm learning how to do that from great people. I am humbled and envigored daily by my faith. My love is constantly tested but proves to be tempered steel...made stronger every time it's shoved into the fire. My friends amaze me with the lives that they are creating, the brazen way that they face life, and the love and faith that they invest in me. I promise that your investment is sound, and I will make you proud. My family inspires me with the understanding that there really are good people roaming this earth. No matter how much I question humankind I am cast to my knees when I look into my cousin's eyes and see pureness and hope and mischief, when I am in the prescence of the deep faith of my grandparents or the inate sense of honor, respect and commitment that my Mom and Dad posess in their lives.

So, I might never be a rock star or a rocket scientist or Secretary of State or Queen of the world, but it will be known that I was here. Even if I just have to make a really big sign that says "Kelly was here!" If it comes down to that, it is my constant prayer that there are little souls who are meant to come after me and reckon with the good that I swear is here to find.

That's the challenge, and God I love every minute of it.