As my husband got into my car last night, I looked at him and said, “Holy Cow, did you shower in fuel?” Here’s your sign your husband might be Surface Navy (or a gas station attendant).

My husband works with a lot of young men and women in the 19-21 year old range. He has recently come to the realization that he is almost at the age where he joined the Navy before the new sailors were born. He has also realized that some times, he has no clue what they are saying (jodizzle, anyone?) or I have no clue what they are saying to him that he is later relaying to me, either way.

I say, when in doubt, consult urban dictionary. And there have been times where he has, just to decipher what they are talking about. I tell him, it would be really funny if he went to work and used all of those words. I bet everyone would be asking themselves what universe they were living in, because he’s not really a slang kind of guy, unless he’s joking around.

I looked up his name on Urban Dictionary and it said, “A term used to refer to the coolest person in a group.” I’m not joking…that’s really what it said.  I thought that was really funny, so I looked up my name, “party goers who have a bad habit of flirting with other peoples boyfriends however on the plus side they can make a mean cheese on toast.” Um…yeah. What is cheese on toast? Is that grilled Cheese? I can, in fact, make grilled cheese. I don’t foresee myself flirting with anyones boyfriend though, that’s kind of weird.

I was talking to him about a week ago about aging (as he has aged about 10 years in the last 18 months…kind of like how all presidents get gray hair, that is apparently the case here as well). My oldest daughter drew a picture of him and drew his hair brown and gray, I thought it was hilarious, he said, “I don’t have gray hair.” Eh…maybe not after he shaves it all off, but after a week, you can definitely see that it is there. I asked him what happens if my butt starts to sag. Do they sell a harness for that type of thing or do we have to wear spanx? He laughed, shook his head and told me that I’m crazy.

I am no where near an age where I would consider myself to be ‘aging’, nor do I really worry too much about it. I’ve found some gray hairs…named them child one and child two and went on with my day. The prospect of getting older, is actually quite exciting. However, I have found that getting older is a little bit misleading.

When I had my oldest daughter, people asked me if I feel like a mom. What exactly is that supposed to feel like? I had her, she’s mine, she calls me mom, but I still feel like me. Every birthday people ask if we feel older, but I still feel like me. I don’t feel older, nor do I feel like a mom (though, perhaps I do and I just don’t realize it. I can be a big, bad mommy bear when the situation calls for it).

I think I was mislead to think that when we grow up we know it all, we can do it all and that’s that. But that is not at all the case. I still have no idea what I want to do when I grow up. Luckily, my husband doesn’t really care what I do, as long as I’m happy doing whatever it is that I want to do. It seems that as we grow and get physically and perhaps emotionally older the only thing that happens is that we become more confused, definitely wiser, but a little bit confused.

About a year ago I picked up my husbands phone after it had buzzed about 80 times, thinking that something must be terribly wrong and it said something like this, ‘IINM (name), iz DKEAF ATM BEKL.’ An alarm went off in my brain, DNC…does not compute! Does.Not.Compute. WHAT?! I asked my husband what on earth was going on and he laughed, he doesn’t know, I don’t know. Why is ‘is’ now spelled ‘iz’. That is two letters. Is it harder to text an s? I’m so confused. Please friends, when texting in english, please use old english, otherwise…I will not respond because my head will be spinning around trying to figure out what you’re saying to me. I get LOL and OMG and JK and a couple others, but whoa…all those other letters, I have no idea. I also understand a lot of military acronyms, the texting stuff, it’s just way before my time apparently.

I am taking a guess here, but I’m assuming the reason I am confused is because I’m getting older. This is probably a lot like how my mom felt when we bought a computer and had to show her how to turn it on. In a couple years my kids are going to think I’m ancient because I can’t text 100 words per minute and I’m still speaking ‘old english’ (which is going to be the english I grew up learning). My concern with getting older, is not that I am actually getting older, but that I will become more confused about what is going on. My husband still has an LES from when he first joined the Navy (that was…1995). It’s a paper LES. Like…he didn’t print it from MyPay…no, they handed him a LES, paper paper, real paper. It showed me and my first comment was, “Holy crow! You made $100 that month!” My second comment, “Did you print this from mypay on this funny paper?” Yes, even between my husband and I there is a generational technology gap.

Is that my sign then? I see high school students texting a million miles an hour and I’m completely amazed. I was in high school once, I don’t remember feeling techy. I can text, yes. I can use my cell phone to surf the web, email, facebook, blog, etc. I can even make phone calls from my cell phone (which seems like something of the past, my phone rarely rings and when it does, it’s usually one of three people, the rest just email me). We set up PCS moves online, claim damaged items on line (or you can…if you are a PC user…us Mac users, we’re left in the dark, trudging off to JPPSO), my husband now enters his leave chits…on the computer. It’s crazy!

All this technology, has helped us all keep in touch with each other. I can easily email friends that I’ve made across the planet and get a reply in less than 24 hours. I can email family, post pictures of my kids so they can see them. I can blog my way through a mountain of chocolate and even better, when my husband is deployed and he calls…he can call my cell phone, where ever I am, he can get in touch with me. And, he can email me, something that was unheard of during World War II and Vietnam. Even better, skype. You mean…I can actually SEE my husband half way around the planet?!

To show everyone that I am down with the lingo, I really can make a mean Cheese Toast, remember this?

I think that’s cheese toast, and my name is Cait…there you have it. Today feels like a soup day and I have a can o’ soup with my name on it. Not nearly as good as homemade soup, but it will have to do.