Circle of Life, US Mint style

I finally completed my set of the 50 State Quarters. The program ended in 2008 but it took me a long time to get that final Hawaii quarter. I had one last summer and accidentally spent it. A year later my sister gave me one when we were shopping together.

It was an odd feeling looking through the book. I put the first quarter in it in 1999. The dot-com market hadn't crashed yet, let alone the housing market. The twin towers were still up. Skirts were short, unemployment was down. More personally, my mother was terminally ill but still alive. It was two years before I would meet Eric, and Rylee wasn't even a dream.

The antepenultimate quarter is Arizona, a state I never imagined I would move to and my state of residence when I put the Arizona quarter into my book.

I've been putting quarters into this book at four different homes, doing five different jobs, in two different states, single, married, childless, pregnant, a ma-ma, a mommy.

I can't think of anything else that I've done for 10 years. I've only been married for eight, never lived at a single address more than seven, never worked a single job longer than four. I felt a weird sense of accomplishment.

And then I popped out the first eight so Rylee and I could buy carrots to feed the giraffe at the zoo. Because come on, it's over ten bucks and I'm no sucker.