Soon, I'll be 29.

Last year on my birthday, I wrote this.

I've been thinking about it all week, as I frantically ran around at work during summer training and tried my darndest to get everything on my to-do list done.

I decided weeks ago what I'm planning to do tomorrow, which consists of exactly what I did last year: dinner and drinks and karaoke with very close friends. Hopefully, the weather will hold up. (New England has had a wicked heat wave, and today the humidity finally broke with a thunderstorm.) I intend on eating dinner outdoors, so it better not fucking rain.

I even spent last weekend shopping for birthday ensembles and I'm getting my hair did tomorrow before going out.

What's interesting is that, a couple weeks ago, I wouldn't have been able to identify a significant occurrence that happened at 28, and that would have blown my whole everything-changes-every-7-years theory.

I've been working very hard for a year but most of that has been just chugging away...

But these last few weeks at work have been pretty transformative.

Here is the Reader's Digest version: My parents split when I was 3 and they shared custody of us. I hopped from house to house every week to two weeks. The issue of "home" has dominated a lot of what I do and feel and live since, then, really. At 14, my folks moved me across the country where I stayed for 8 years but never really felt settled.

After college graduation, I moved back to my childhood home, hoping somehow to reconcile an unsettled childhood and ended up being the most miserable and depressed I've ever been. I figured out that I'd have to keep searching for home and eventually ended up here, studying in graduate school and hoping to work with kids.

During my time after undergrad, I kept using the word "heal" in terms of what I was trying to do in the place I grew up. I didn't have the tools or support to get it done when I was 22. But settling into a career here, where I've been for almost 4 years, has been the most healing thing I could do for the little girl that didn't even know this is exactly what she would need one day.

I'm grateful I figured all of this out when I was still 28.

The fact is, realizing all of this has made me feel the most settled and content I've felt in a very long time.

Tomorrow, I turn 29 and who knows what this year will bring me?

Overheard at Work, vol. L

This week was our last week of after-school programming for the 2011-2012 school year.

It's been an emotional couple of weeks, and I think everyone was feeling it.

Yesterday, a group of seven girls I've been working with since January presented a play that we conceived, wrote, and rehearsed about bullying. We had two shows and performed around our End of Year Banquet, which includes dinner and awards for every kid. Aside from slight mishaps and usual chaos, it was a great night!

But I'm glad it's over and that I get a little break from making plays for the summer!

(Also, how is 2012 almost half over?)

Teen: Annie, what's your last name? Rosenberg?
Me: Why? Do I look like a super Jew to you?

Teen: What if I punched you in the solo plex?

Me, mishearing my colleague: All I heard of what you just said was "sneeze" and "tackle."
Colleague: That would be a good name for an allergy and fishing store.

Colleague, to a kid: I hope you were just eating yogurt. Otherwise, you might have rabies.

Kid, as we set up a large set of blue doors to act as backdrop for our small play: Are you turning the Ed Center into Sea World?

Kid, begging every staff member he could find to hand over one of the noisemakers we used at the awards night: CAN I PLEASE HAVE IT?
Me: No! You don't need a noisemaker.
Kid: Why? Because I am one?

Kid, as she read the congratulations card we gave her in celebration of the play: "You are so gifted. Thank you for your endless hard work and positive attitude...you are going to be a sofa." WHAT?...OH! You are going to go so far!

Overheard at Work, vol. XLIX

This was one of those weeks where you wake up early on Thursday morning and are pretty sure it's Saturday. Then you have to run to the school you've been working in for 8 months to put on a short play in a conference room instead of an auditorium.

Yeah.

"Personal time on the toilet is when you get me."--10-year-old, pontificating mostly about where she gains the greatest personal understanding of herself.

After a bout of incessant teasing, my coworker, to me: Maybe you'd like some of this buffalo cheese on your eyelids.

8 year old boy, during homework hour: Can I go to the bathroom badly?

7 year old girl: Annie, can I come do my homework up here?
Me: Why can't you work at the back table?
Girl: I'm kind of lonely.

8 year old boy, while playing a computer game: I got lost in my own place.

How poetic.

Overheard at Work, vol. XLVIII

Spring season is winding down swiftly!

Work has been much quieter since the fundraiser came and went. But, somehow, the quotes aren't coming fast and furious, so I collected a few over a couple weeks this time.

While discussing Lady Gaga's performance artistry:
Me: And she can really sing. Did you know she's only 23?
Colleague: She seems to have her stuff together. I mean, look at...Jewish overdose girl.
Me: ...Amy Winehouse?

Discussing dinner at Boloco (a wrap/burrito place):
Me: I bet you got the Mexicana, or whatever it's called.
Colleague: Is that a comment at my taste in women?

Me: That sounds like a euphemism.
Colleague: Did you bring your THEE-ORUS today?
Me: THEEORUS?
Colleague: That's how I pronounce it!

9 year old: You smell funny.
Me: Do I smell bad?
Him: You smell like...the world.

13 year old, as I came down the stairs: You look like a goddess!