No time left for tea.

tempus fugit
exclamation
1. Time flies (used to draw attention to the rapid passage of time). – Oxford Dictionaries¹
2. Latin for “Good god, I’m starting to sound old…” – The Nut

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On my tenth birthday, my grandfather gave me a notecard he had drawn by hand to mark the occasion. It depicted a stick figure girl running at approximately Mach speed past a short obelisk inscribed with a Roman numeral X, helpfully annotated with an arrow pointing to the obelisk and the comment, “This is a milestone, not a tombstone.”

Thanks for that clarification.

He also wrote a lot of nice inspirational things about growing up, capping it off with, “As the old saying goes, ‘tempus fugit.'”

Time flies.

As you can imagine, that sentiment was almost entirely lost on a child of ten, for whom an hour of clothes shopping with Mom at the mall might as well be an eternity.

Now, of course, at the age of almost-thirty-two, “tempus fugit” is a daily mantra.

Am I seriously turning thirty-two in two days? Tempus fugit. I don’t feel thirty-two. I don’t even feel like I’ve reached thirty. In fact I kind of feel like I just stopped aging altogether after twenty-six.²

Have I really been married for four years already? How did that happen? Tempus fugit.

When did all these grey hairs sneak onto my head? Last time I looked there were just three, now I’m sporting a goddamn melanin-challenged minefield. Tempus fugit.
(Note to self: hire hair bouncer to stop greys from letting more of their friends into the party. Or, y’know, just buy another box of dye.)

This constant need to remark on the passage of time is the only thing (okay, the only thing besides the greys) that seems to confirm my age. Every time I find myself saying, “Is it seriously Thursday/April/2015/the dawn of the Robot Apocalypse already?!” I imagine a child somewhere facepalming because, “Adults, man. They’re just, like, so OLD.”

And it’s kind of mean, because as a kid you’re constantly wanting time to go faster.

Why is Mom making me spend my whole Saturday in a shoe store…ugh, my friends will have died of old age by the time I get out of here.
You can’t ground me for a whole week, that’s forever!
Can I please be done with the sixth grade already?

Then one day you finally get your wish, and suddenly you’re scrambling for the brakes.

Some people like to tell you that childhood is the best time of your life, and that you’ll never have it that good ever again. I must respectfully disagree with those idiots. I am happily married, financially stable, and I own a working car. As far as I can tell, this is the best time of my life. For now, at least. Someday down the line I will also hopefully own a home and a dog and then that will be the best time of my life.

So I’d appreciate if tempus could maybe give all the fugiting a rest for a while and let me sit down and just enjoy a goddamn cup of tea without feeling like I’m wasting precious seconds.³

But it won’t, so I’ll have some cake instead.

There’s always time for cake.

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Today’s blog post was brought to you by the letter T, the number 32, and the GreyHairVIPRoom Challenge, AKA the Blogging A to Z Challenge.

¹ “tempus fugit.” OxfordDictionaries.com. Oxford Dictionaries, 2015. Web. 23 April 2015.
² The fact that I got ID’d while ordering a celebratory drink on my 31st birthday didn’t help quash my illusions any (bless you, you absolute saint of a waitress).
³ Although I just remembered that I took tomorrow off work and have a massage booked, so tempus, if you want to fugit a little bit so I can have the tension chased out of my back by hot basalt rocks sooner rather than later, you have my blessing.