Because time is sneaking up on me, I realize that I need to do a few things with my life before I reach ‘retirement age’.

As The Kid will be starting high school in two short years — you know how time flies when you’re having fun — I realize that the need for me to be a stay-at-home-mom is becoming less of an important thing.

And because Hubs plans to retire at about the same time The Kid goes to high school, you know I do not wanna sit home and babysit him.

Girl please...

Soooo ... rather than take up the lucrative career of being a phone-sex operator or pole dancer, I decided that perhaps it’s probably a good time for me to further my education.

I did manage to graduate from high school by the skin of my teeth, thanks to the most feared teacher on the planet who admitted she liked me, so thankfully I have that under my belt.

Having said that, I flunked Algebra 1 twice.

How odd that I find myself helping The Kid with his homework and suddenly reliving nightmares from the past.

They’re doing pre-algebra in sixth grade. And in college.

The same questions keep blaring at me: “Who cares what kind of angle this is?” “Why do I need to know the square root of fifteenhundredtwentyseven divided by eight and multiplied by sevenfifteenths?”

You understand my plight, don’t you?

I manage to keep it in check because I don’t want The Kid to take advantage of my not being confident about solving the problems.

Fortunately, when he sees that look of pure “duh” on my face, he rolls his eyes and takes control of the situation, handily figuring out the work without my help.

God bless him. Just what I hoped he would do.

So anyway, I’m sitting at the computer looking up pointless baloney when it dawns on me that I should really be doing something more with my time and with my life.

I look up the local city college to see what kind of programs are available and find two that pique my interest.

Well, most of them piqued my interest but I had to narrow it down.

Navigating around a college Web site when you are a first time student is not easy. Especially when you have been out of any kind of academic setting for as long as I have. Most high schools prepare kids for getting into college and helping them maneuver the system due to all the forms that have to be filled out and how so much information is now online.

Never mind that a lot of high schools also allow for juniors and seniors to take college courses while attending high school, which is a brilliant idea.

But I digress.

So I look up the two programs that I am interested in and figure “Piece of cake!”, right? I’m older, wiser and can probably skip a couple of the classes because I’m so danged intelligent.

Hardyharhar. The laugh is on me.

When I start going backwards through the myriad of applying for college, that’s when I find that I can’t just jump into a course like I can through Adult Ed. I actually have to have the prerequisites met.

I actually have to take the General Ed classes.

Say what?

I gotta take Computer 101. I gotta take at least two math classes. I gotta take English 101 (which I figure I can get a pass for). I gotta take a biology class. I gotta take ... heckalmighty, I gotta go to school for a year before I can go to school!

What I thought might be a relatively inexpensive college experience — and truth be told, it would be — is certainly adding up to be not as inexpensive as I reckoned.

I drove over to the campus with some paperwork in hand and had some nice young kids direct me to the proper places I needed to be.

It was weird to walk around all those kids. I’m old enough to be their momma, or grandmomma in some cases.

I thought for a minute how glad I was that the programs I’m interested in are online programs, because I’d have a heck of a time navigating around the skateboards and bicycles if I had to be on campus all the time.

The most daunting aspect I could see with campus life would be parking ... what a miserable hair-pulling piece of business the parking situation is ... no wonder they all use skateboards!

I am still planning to go forward with it, mainly because I realized, that given my age, the amount of time I haven’t worked, and no degree, I probably couldn’t even get hired at McDonald’s.

The big problem looming large is how to hide this from Hubs and The Kid.

I don’t want them to have any inkling that I’m going to school, or attempting to go to school. They want me right where they want me, but ... you know ... it’s time to git ta gittin’ when I can’t even figure out The Jumble anymore!

It will be a nice surprise when I invite them to the graduation ceremony.

Ten years from now.