When I was young I romanticized everything. Everything was a grand adventure and something wonderful to be discovered, even the tedium I didn’t want. I don’t do that so much anymore. These days the only time I get like that is when I’m premenstrual and the hormones are raging an all out war for control of my mind and body. If at home when that happens the noise is drowned out by endless chores, yipping dogs, squabbling children and Law & Order.

Did you know? Sheep can detect other sheep faces like humans do. They can remember up to 50 sheep faces.

If in my car during an assault, in the rain with the radio blaring, then my thoughts turn to those of fancy and things get decidedly more interesting.

Funny how when you’re 22 and premenstrual, feeling the ebb and flow of a million different emotions tugging a thousand different directions you find yourself huddled around a campfire, surrounded by your closest friends. The radio cranking out mellow tunes to set the mood. Maybe the woods about you are thick and heavy, dripping with rain and the unfamiliar sounds of nature. Maybe you’re drinking or high – such things don’t seem so consequential to you then. You light up a cigarette and follow the conversation into the lofty heights of Coltrane versus Monk, Nietzsche and Kant, Superman versus Batman. Such is the uninhibited, carefree essence of a twenty-something on the cusp of reality.

Among the Buganda people of Uganda, the widows of a deceased king have the honour of drinking beer in which the dead king’s entrails have been cleaned. True story.

At the time, of course, I was too stupid to enjoy it. I was plenty intelligent, but I was young and naive and lacked the confidence to fully realize what I had. I had the smarts, but not the confidence to know what to do with the smarts. I was full of useless knowledge. A veritable font of wisdom and no where to put it.

Then, suddenly, I’m a thirty something with the confidence but without the smarts. All that knowledge I had has just been swallowed up by the noise of a million different things that have to be done, none of which include a fire pit in the middle of the woods, a joint or discussions of Nietzsche and Thelonious Monk. Superman and Batman, perhaps. But Kant? Definitely not.

This is the way the world works. We get to the place in our lives where we look back, take inventory and realize “Oops! I may have left some things behind back there. In my haste to evolve and grow up and have children and get a job and make a living and get the casserole on the table — I didn’t take care.”

On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents every day. Every day.

You don’t know what you’re missing, not being a woman. You just don’t know. We awake one morning, a caricature of our former selves, in a fog of regret and longing. We ache for a quiet place and a pencil that doesn’t feel heavy when we sit down to write. Words that flow. What we long for, we give away. We sacrifice and pray the voices aren’t silent forever, the ones that whisper romantic notions from time to time — lending small comfort.

But suffering is overrated and we are not interested in being martyrs. We are content with our lot. It’s just that we always thought it was a life to come when in actuality it is a life that has already passed us by. Now, more than ever, we have the whole world at our fingertips. More opportunities. More knowledge. More everything. Except time. All the anti-aging serums and microderm abrasion mini peel whatchamahoozits the market pumps out day after day to fool us into thinking we’re actually combating those wrinkles and lines that mark the passage of time? It’s a sham. Still it goes on. Tramples right over the top of us. You can’t stop aging. You can’t stop time. Better to sit back and enjoy the ride. Let it come.

I’m of a mind to let those romantic notions sweep right over me. Let them wash me away in a sea of blissful ignorance. Or agony. Or joy. Or whatever those notions may bring. Why should I fight them? I’ve only got so much time to enjoy them and no good reason not to.

Fact: If you put a drop of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.

Did you know? What a romantic idea!