It's Birthday week! The hubs and I were born five days apart, did you know? Well. Nine years and five days apart. But to me, it's just five days and it's the best of five days!
Birthdays are for two things: making you feel special all day long, and CAKE. And in my humble opinion, birthdays are the best holidays of the whole year. My birthday, Dan's birthday, mister J's birthday. They are my very favorite days. And why not? Because we are celebrating the births of my very favorite people in the whole entire world. It just makes sense.
Growing up my mom sure did birthdays right. Every year on our big day we woke up to the house decked out in decorations. Colorful balloons taped to the doors and floating from the ceiling, a gleaming "Happy Birthday" sign tacked in a half circle above the fireplace, yellow crepe paper streamed around the stair railings. And the candy poster! Always a candy poster sitting on the coffee table, filled with candy bars and gum packs and cute little sayings like "you are my very favorite [insert box of nerds here]!" and "I hope your day is filled with [insert good & plenty candy here] fun!". The candy poster was my very favorite tradition of all. We always went out for a fancy dinner followed by opening presents and eating store bought cake covered in thick, fluffy frosting. We always felt special.
I love birthdays.
So in two days we will begin birthday celebrations, kicked off by my very own. We have big plans of heading to the city, shopping and lunch, a day date at the childrens museum with my very favorite toddler, and then a big family dinner at a fancy steakhouse with ma and pops and brothers and sisters and a big fat rare steak on my plate.
And anyway, enough about me. But actually let's keep talking about me for a minute, do you mind? Because I've been reflecting lately. The thing is, this year I am turning twenty-nine. It's the last year of my twenties! And would you know, I am so excited for the last year of my twenties. I'm ready to be done with them, these twenties!
My twenties have been a roller coaster ride. They have been trying to find myself, over and over and over again, and then finally discovering that the truth is, you don't find yourself at all. You create yourself.
Twenties have been up and down and learning and growing and maturing. Do you remember being nineteen and thinking about how excited you were to turn TWENTY. Twenty years old! Leaving the teens behind! It was thrilling and it felt so mature and grown up. But I'm an avid believer that until you turn thirty, you won't fully understand how little and naive you were in your twenties. How much you had to learn. I'm an avid believer that our twenties are made for learning things the hard way, just enough so that we can be sent into our thirties feeling well prepared. Because those thirties man. That's where it's at.
I mean, I've never been thirty before but. You know.
If we're being honest, I feel that I was always meant to be in my thirties. I am thrilled to soon be done with twenty anything. I'm just now feeling like I'm really entering life. I'm really going down the right path. I'm really happy. Really, really, really happy.
But let's not jump the gun, hmmm? I'm not turning thirty, not yet anyway.
Twenty-nine. Does that sound fun? It does to me. It sounds like the end of an era, the transition into a new one. I'm so ready to live up the last year of my twenties, really party hard and make a fool of myself, and then move on. I'm so ready for thirties. I have a good, good feeling about my thirties. And now they are a year away, in arms reach but just far enough away that I can adjust to the idea.
So now really, enough about me. Until Friday, when the whole DAY will be about me.
And birthday cake with loads of frosting.
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