Feeling all grown up

There are moments in life, I'm learning, that give you this certainty - sometimes exciting, sometimes uncomfortable - that you really are a grown up. Of course, there's all the other times, too, when that simply isn't the case. But I digress.

Signing mortgage papers was one of those moments for me. "What? Are you crazy? That's an awful lot of money to trust me with!"

Leaving the hospital with my first child was another. "What? Are you crazy? That's a very small person to be trusting me with!"

Leaving the hospital with my second child was almost as bad. "What? Are you sure this is a good idea? Um, alright..."

Seeing the spending limit on a personal credit card was a huge moment. "What? Are you crazy? Did you even look at how much money I make? No wonder our economy's sliding into a big cesspool of ickiness right now!"

But sometimes there's just a momentary glow of honest pride. It happened this week for me when I bought my first internal hard drive. It was the sort of store where you walk in and have to know what you want because they've wasted no frills on colored advertising or sales signs or anything as frivolous as an updated font. Just little technical packages sitting in styrofoam racks with data-font stickers on metal racks.

Now lest I overinflate your opinion of me (Wow - she's so awesome - braving a computer supply store like that...) SG was holding my hand (literally, at one point). But I smiled knowingly at most of the right spots, I made the final 500GB decision and I paid for it myself. It was even debit, not credit. And I glowed with honest pride.

Of course, now I have to return it because my motherboard manual was WRONG but still...