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Sarah Simpson Column: Being a proper adult sucks

I’m talking about the slog of everyday life realizations.
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Krista kindly sent me a copy of her post. She doesn’t even work here anymore but she’s still keen to get you the right information. (Krista Siefken photo)

Do you remember Krista Siefken? She was a popular young reporter in the Cowichan Valley who decided that life was too short, and there was no time like the present to shake it up and live out a dream of hers by moving overseas.

We’ve kept in touch. She now calls England home, is married, and has a young daughter.

A while back she posted something on social media that cracked me right up. It was one of those disappearing posts so I can’t remember the exact quote but it was a photo of a new, fancy Dyson vacuum cleaner along with a comment about how she and her husband sold their video game system to buy it.

She said she now feels like a proper adult.

Forget the fact that she’s had a successful career, has seen the world, is married and has given birth. Forget all that. The vacuum sealed the deal for her.

“Sarah! It’s so beautiful,” she said. “We’re actually excited about cleaning!”

Krista and I got to talking about how curious it is that the things we think will change our perspectives on life quite often aren’t the things that actually do. Or at least, they aren’t the only things that do.

I’m not talking about the big aha moments (why did my mind immediately go to Oprah when I typed that?) like holding the child you just gave birth to for the first time, or realizing what your true calling in life is, I’m talking about the slog of everyday life realizations.

“It’s ridiculous because even after I had my daughter, I didn’t feel like a grown-up….but now? The Dyson changes everything,” she said.

I totally relate.

I felt like a total adult when I shopped for my built-in vacuum. The house was roughed-in for it but I needed to get the actual unit. Nothing says grown-up like comparison shopping for vacuums. (Never mind that I needed my dad to help me install it. Ignore that part.)

Krista said that it was the purchase of their own fridge that brought her husband into adulthood. I relate to that too. I felt very grown-up when deciding whether or not to go with the double oven or a standard one.

“Can you even fit a turkey in the double oven?” I remember my mom asking.

“You need to be able to cook a turkey…” she cautioned.

Questions like that prove she’s a true adult and perhaps despite the mortgage, husband and two kids, I’m still an adult in training. Though something tells me that when it comes to moms, their children will always be adults-in-training.

Did you know there’s a working toy replica of the Dyson ball upright vacuum? I just had to look it up. Much like the real thing, they’re not cheap. Amazon.ca has them from $83.70. I love my kids through and through, but not enough to buy them an $80 toy vacuum even if I truly believe there is a house-cleaning gene passed down through generations on my mother’s side of my family tree. Vacuuming is almost a cure-all in my family.

(I already wrote an entire column on vacuuming and the fact that I find myself writing about vacuums again only solidifies that point.)

SEE RELATED: Sarah Simpson column: Vacuuming definitely doesn’t suck

Krista made a good point of her own though, when she told me that “if they start to think of household chores as fun with toys, maybe they won’t ever feel like proper adults, either?”

So, I’m skipping the toys and teaching them how to use the real vacuum because, sad but true, the road to responsible adulthood, in my family anyway, quite often begins with a clean house.



sarah.simpson@cowichanvalleycitizen.com

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