What's ordinary?

I hate even the thought of being ordinary. I think I have a pretty interesting life - not the usual, that's for sure. There is the (sometimes lamentable) absence of two full-time gainfully employed people in my household. In fact, at the moment we lack even one full-time gainfully employed person. But so far, so good. I guess that is not very ordinary. I do not many people who have husbands that spend the summer in Africa while the wife had crazy American adventures on this continent. (Hello? Car purchase, cat death, two broken-down cars, nutty job to name a few.) So that doesn't seem very ordinary at all. My career field is interesting, and I love it, which doesn't seem very ordinary. But somehow it's still not very attractive right now.

Today the quarterly Luther College alumni magazine arrived. I always enjoy cruising through it, reading about people I know and the happenings in their lives. (I.e. Brother-In-Law '05 is director of bands at County-Seat-Western-Iowa-Town High School or Classmate '03 gave had baby girl, Beautiful Nordic Miss, June 2006.) There are always lots of people earning law degrees, plenty in the Peace Corps, lots of people getting married (gay and straight are recognized in the publication, hurrah!), and the inevitable child thing that I just can't relate to. Somehow I really love reading about people and the things they are doing, though the accuracy of the information can occasionally be called into question. It's cool to see what classmates are up to, and also what people are doing who graduated 15, 20 or 35 years ago. It gives me hope for the future to read about people who are retiring or earning awards for their many years of service to their career field. None of that seems very ordinary, and it's all pretty rad.

My husband had a high school pal find him on MySpace. I kind of love it when that happens. Seeing that a long-lost Iowa friend graduated from college, worked in the UK, has pictures from a honeymoon in Portugal, lives in LA and is moving to Austin makes me feel really boring. I wonder what perfect strangers read when they see my info and read "unemployed, unbearably crazy work situation again" on my data sheet. Makes me feel... Well, ordinary.

But what's ordinary? There's nothing ordinary about living in Florida and knowing that it's going to be in the 30s tonight. There's not much ordinary about being miles and miles and miles and miles away from where I thought I'd be when I "grew up." It doesn't seem very ordinary that I don't know what my next life step is, and certainly not ordinary that I could somehow look forward to a part-time job interview at Macy's. No, my friends, that's certainly not ordinary.

Since I can't reach any conclusions about ordinary, I'm left to ponder normal. I suppose I can't classify myself as normal, either. But I don't think I've met one normal person yet that I actually liked. Sigh.