I Turned 29, Part 3: Happy birthday, from my perfect family

This is the final installment of my birthday stories, at least for this year.  In other birthday news, I was the recipient of a gift from my older brother last week.  This is scary because generally he doesn’t give me anything for my birthday.  He made up for lost time by pranking me pretty well.  It started with an email earlier that week saying “You are actually turning 30.  Mom and Dad just changed your paperwork for school.  Thought you should know.  Congrats!  baa-boo”.  None of this is ok.  I just turned 29, not 30.  Very funny, Big Brother.  Also important to mention here, “baa-boo” was what I called him when I was little because I couldn’t say brother.

As a psych major I can properly dissect this “baa-boo” reference and tell you that he’s trying to resurrect my long suppressed post-traumatic stress disorder of having survived a tormented childhood.  As big brothers do, he stayed true to his duties and would act nice to me one minute, only to turn around and reveal an ulterior motive which would leave him giggling like a girl and then teasing me because I was gullible and believed that he was being a sweet big brother.  When you think about it, it really is impossible for a big brother to be completely sweet.  Am I right, or am I right?

If you do not have an older brother, I will paint you a picture.  Spending the earlier part of my childhood in rural Tennessee, we didn’t have streets that we could ride bikes on.  We had highways, and the only bikes going on them were motorcycles.  Driveways weren’t paved unless you were older and/or well-to-do, which our young family was not.  Instead, we had thick gravel that would swallow bike tires.

To make up for the restlessness this caused, my big brother got his kicks by sweetly telling me about this game that would involve me chasing him in the yard while he rode off on his bmx wanna-be bike.  Skeptically, I would say “I dunno, that doesn’t sound like fun”.  He could sell an air conditioner to an eskimo back in those days.  He would say, “sure it’s fun!  You just have to try it.  You’ll see-this is going to be great!  I really won’t even go that fast”.

I would reluctantly agree, bargaining with myself “well, he did say he wouldn’t go that fast…”.  Then he would crank up his bike radio (yes, he had a bike radio, folks!) and take off.  I would then give it my all, chasing after him, determined to catch him (What a sad “game”.  What did I think I would do to catch him anyways?).  Then I’d get tired from exerting myself so much from the start and I would lag behind, feeling betrayed when I realized he never intended to go slowly after all.  He’d stop peddling and then call over his shoulder, “Come on!  I promise I won’t go fast (anymore).  You almost caught me that one time!”  Then my confidence would soar again and I would let the thrill of hope give me the energy I needed to catch this big brother, once and for all.  I’d show him!

No, what really happened was he would speed up just before I would catch him and off he’d go.  This was a process and all of it repeated several times before my hope was squashed and I’d decide that riding my tricycle in circles on our patio was much more fun than this.

Big Brother is all grown up now (he still enjoys cereal for dinner while watching cartoons in his underwear so age is relative, but this is a normal American family that I’m in so I’m sure everyone has this kind of thing going on, right?).  The prank he pulled was so good, it snapped me straight back to childhood.  I don’t get normal happy birthdays, I get the kind that keep me on edge because I need to be on guard for family members who will come around the corner and shoot me with a Nerf arrow.  Seriously, things like this motivate people to drive two hours!

In the words of Eminem, let’s “snap back to reality”, shall we?  After his delightfully clever little email, he sent me a “Happy 30th Birthday!” text on my birthday, followed by what seemed to be a demonstration of the emoticons he recently learned (he’s behind the times as far as technology goes, but his 13 year old daughter is quickly teaching him a thing or two).  Harr harr, funny funny.  Thanks for the text.  So thoughtful.

On my birthday, I highly anticipate opening the mailbox at home.  It’s what I do.  It’s what I’ve always done.  You know that today, of all days, will be the day that there are fun things from friends and family just for you.  If you’re really lucky, the insurance company and dentist sent theirs ahead of time so it doesn’t distract from the real deal.  So there I was skipping off to the mailbox, no different than if I were seven.  I saw a big purple package that filled the majority of the mailbox, which immediately made me giddy.  Instantly I recognized the handwriting and couldn’t wait to see what Margot came up with this year.  Then I saw two other cards.  Hooray!

I resisted the urge to open them right there at the mailbox and instead brought them out to the porch while I let the dog out.  The boyfriend even poured one of my raspberry Shock Top beers into my brand new pumpkin ale glass that he gave me earlier in the day.  I love pumpkins!  So there I am with my beer, pumpkin glass, on the porch, and the weather is awesome.  Oh yes, and I’m surrounded by things to be opened.

The care package didn’t disappoint.  There was a reusable shopping bag with an inside joke across the front, assorted bags of tea, and a magazine with all kinds of fall crafts and meals to be made.  It sounds dorky but it’s not.  Ok, I’m lying to you.  It’s totally dorky but I love it!  I opened it up and saw all kinds of potential.  I have little patience for cooking magazines because many of them involve ingredients I’ve never heard of, which get them filed in the recycling bin.  But not this one.  I’m looking forward to this one!  (Can I brag just a smidge and tell you that I have beef stew in the crock pot at home right now actually.  I love fall!  …and pumpkins).

So now who could the cards be from?  The handwriting is shaky and in cursive.  My little brother texted the day before to ask my address.  It’s probably from him!  He’s so sweet.  How thoughtful.  I opened it up and was appalled by the vulgar mentions of things to expect when turning 30.  “The music is too loud”. “You don’t get carded anymore”.  I couldn’t believe it!  I’ve been had and worst of all, I never saw this coming.  Chris never sends cards.  At least he hasn’t in years, but now I see that he’s found his way to the card section of the store and his cards with monkeys on the front have evolved into something so foul and grotesque.  And he’s disguising his handwriting?  Oh, that’s just low.

I quickly open the other card so that I can clear this before it ever gets stored into memory and then BAM!  My own mother got me!  Hers is a card in pink and white, full of frill and declaring “30 looks good on you!”.  The “30″ text is so prominent that it challenges ads in Times Square.  It’s enough to burn into your brain and thereby etch itself into your memory no matter how quickly you fling the card from your lap.  The other sick thing here is that neither of them wrote “Just kidding!” or “Gotcha!”.  No, they kept it going and ignored the obvious.  My mom even wrote a sappy message on the inside.  It’s obscene!  My mother never talks like this unless following it up with how she’s having a feeling that this is her last time in Vegas and perhaps we should live it up by going to see a burlesque show, “whatever that is”.

I did notice that my dad’s name was omitted from the card.  Thanks Dad!  Days later I received Little Brother’s card.  It also screamed “Happy 30th!” to me.  I will remember this, people.  I will remember this…

As you read this and think, “Oh, what a funny family!  That sounds like a neat family to be in”, let me leave you with this.  An email from my mother on my birthday (this was after she emailed me the story about her water breaking, and after the video she sent me of her and my dad with their puppy gone crazy).

Image pulled from Mom's email.

“Happy birthday from your perfect family!

Mom, Dad, Chris and Taylor”

I’m going to print this off now and frame for my desk, and try to understand why the older I get, the more I realize that everyone else has lost their minds.

I Turned 29, Part 2: The Halloween Birthday Party

Halloween has come and gone, regardless of how long I’ve dragged it out.  You can celebrate it as much as you want in October, but come November 1 the spiderwebs and decorations look as out of place as skis in summer.

I had my Halloween birthday party Saturday night.  There were so many highlights but I will try to sum them up here.  Nikki, who I’ve been friends with since first grade, drove down from Roanoke for the weekend.  Katy surprised me by showing up on my doorstep Saturday morning.  I was so happy that two of my best friends were there that I almost forgot there were other people coming to the party later that night.

We spent the day baking things like witches toes, mummy hotdogs, cupcakes, and eyeballs.  Nikki found a way to use every ingredient that was left over, so after making the gelatin bloody hand she decided that the best use for the excess would be to make jello shots.  Naturally.  The lesson to be learned there is that a) the more things change, the more they stay the same, and b) jello shots make everything much more fun!

The decorations looked stunning, and I spent less than $30 on them!  Everyone kept commenting on all of the details, which I took as a huge compliment.  I wanted a scary first impression when guests walked up to the door, I wanted the inside of the house to be immersed in Halloween, and I wanted continuity.  Even when people went to the bathroom they still found things like a witches broom in the corner, spider webs over the mirror, and (fake) broken, bloody glass shards around the sink.

Other highlights that evening were Katy doing the choreographed version of The Monster Mash and Nikki’s attention to detail with her zombie costume (tip- she used dried Elmer’s glue for her fake skin and it looked perfect!).  My friends Liz and Andrew showed up as characters from The Great Gatsby – which was adorable.  We also had witches and warlocks, Jason, and one person dressed as Al Borlin.  There were others who came, but they weren’t in costume so they sat on the sidelines and watched while we took pictures and played our parts by staying in character.  Well, everyone but Liz who became possessed by the Halloween slasher spirit and decided that having a bloody knife was a much more fun prop than a purse.

Determined to dress up on October 31, it was off to work I went in my Holly Golightly costume.  I thought it was pretty perfect because if I had to, I could remove some accessories and look like a normal worker bee.  Well, it backfired because no one else in my office was dressed in costume, some forgot it was Halloween, more than one commented that I was very dressed up for work, and most did not know who Holly Golightly was so I had a lot of mistaken identity.  By the end of the day when people asked if I was in costume, I resigned to telling people (with long black gloves and pearl necklace on) that this was my Monday look, and I always dress like this on Mondays.

Last night was the first Halloween that I stayed home and passed out candy.  Judging by my friends’ Facebook and Twitter feeds, I’d say they also did the unthinkable and stayed home.  Or, as some might say, we grew up and acted our age.  Whatever that means.  It would have been much more fun and exciting had there been more trick or treaters than the two kids that came at 9:15, but maybe the rain had something to do with it.  Or maybe parents wouldn’t let their kids come to our door because it looked like a murder scene.

All in all, my favorite holiday went off without a hitch, even with a few missteps here and there.  Now I have to transform the scary into harvesty and brace myself for the holidays.

I turned 29, Part 1: Uncle Ralph visits

First off, thanks to everyone who wished me happy birthday yesterday!  It was a great day made even better by all of the shouts out on facebook, the texts, the phone calls, the flowers to my office, the cards, and one particularly brazen care package.  I was a little hesitant when anticipating turning 29 (aka my last year in my 20′s) until I realized that I didn’t turn into a pumpkin or develop arthritis overnight.  So far so good!

A big birthday highlight was going to dinner with my very cool Uncle Ralph and his entourage of 25 students who were in town for college tours.  Have I told you about my uncle Ralph?  As a kid he was cool because he pulled quarters out of my ear and then made me “fly” to touch the ceiling.  As an adult, he’s cool because he has an awesome record collection, plays the drums (ok that always made him cool), puts on an outdoor Shakespeare festival every year with his students, he knows everything about history (seriously- ask him anything!), and among other things has a sense of humor that cannot be matched.

When I was born, my Dad says that the nurse came into the room to ask if it was ok before letting my Uncle Ralph in to see me.  He had more of an off-beat look in those days and I just smile when I think about how amusing my entourage has always been, even from day 1.

It’s only fitting that we reunited to celebrate 29 years later.  Ok, maybe he wasn’t in town just for me, but that won’t stop me from using that to guilt trip my parents later.  “Yeah, well, Uncle Ralph came up to visit me for my birthday.  He even took me out to dinner.”

Uncle Ralph is a teacher, both in his profession and in his personal life.  There is so much to learn from him.  If there was a lesson to be learned from him last night, it is that students create an instant birthday party and that uncles have full reign to talk about anything and everything they wish to share with you and your boyfriend, even if they were just introduced an hour beforehand.  From this freedom of speech, I’ve learned that I’ll laugh because the alcohol is lacking but the conversation is flowing, and how did we start talking about prostates and family trees where the branches, how do I put this, sometimes loop back around to meet each other?

In exchange for his company and wisdom, I traded him enlightenment by loaning him two David Sedaris books (“Holidays On Ice” and “Me Talk Pretty One Day”).  I trust that he will properly spew his coffee, as you should, when reading the comforting tales that remind us that maybe it’s not just our family after all.

On a related note…

Secret Agent L is someone who you should know about. She does all kinds of random acts of kindness all the time and turns them into exciting missions. She even has Affiliated Agents all over the world. They do neat things like get coloring books and crayons, bundle them with a ribbon and leave on people’s cars at parks anonymously with a little card that reads “This is for you! Yes, YOU!”.

She is currently working on one extra-special, top-secret mission and needs help. Get more details here.

My 29 random acts of kindness by Thanksgiving is more geared towards doing good deeds for people directly (or indirectly as the situation presents itself) and won’t necessarily require you to buy and arrange anything. However, if you film one of your good deeds and send her way (details for format on her website), I’m pretty sure that would count as two acts of kindness in one.  She can also accept a video of more than one person working together.

Bonus points:  She said she would make you an official Affiliated Agent if you helped with this mission.  How fun is that?

Birthday presents of a different sort

Hey everyone!  I thought of something really unusual but fun to do for my birthday.  In honor of celebrating my 29 years next week, I am challenging myself to do 29 random acts of kindness by Thanksgiving.  I’m hoping that not only could this interesting, but it will also be satisfying and inspiring to myself and others.

Here’s where you come in.  For my birthday this year, I want you to do this with me.  Puh-puh-paleeeasse?  I’m leaving the amount of acts up to you.  You can do 29, too.  If you’re younger, feel free to go with your own age to make it more personal.  If you’re older, no pressure to take on more than you’d like.  The point is for this to be fun and achievable – and hopefully it becomes contagious!  We could all use more good news in our day.  Help create it and move it forward.

Document what you do because you want to keep track, but I also want to hear (or see if you take pictures) about what you’re doing.  Don’t over-think it.  If you want to keep a list, do that.  If you want to start taking photos of some of these things, do that too.   This isn’t supposed to be so complicated that we find reasons to talk ourselves out of it.  Spreading kindness is supposed to be simple.  As it should be.

And did I mention that you should have lots of fun with this?  You all just might make the me happiest girl in the world if you do this, too.

October

October is many things.  It is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the month that the leaves change, the air turns crisp, and people seem to be generally happier before they go into hibernation for winter.  October is also birthday month for me.

Usually I celebrate in style, treating myself to that ice cream cone because why not indulge when it’s my birthday (month)?  I’ve been too broke to do much indulging this go ’round, which is fine.  I have been crafting, though.  Here is what has been keeping me entertained.

I’ve also fed my soul this month by getting a group of women together for my first ever book club meeting last Wednesday.  It was pretty awesome, and none of them knew each other well so I think this will make everyone feel accountable for being present and participating.  Book Club Version 1 was a complete failure and I think a large part of that was because we were all neighbors and people felt way too comfortable dragging their feet and not getting the books…ever.  Kind of like rooming with a friend.  Sometimes it doesn’t go as you thought it would, and things would have been much better had you paired up with a new person. (For the record, no one reading this fits under my disappointing roommate file).

In addition to the initiation of Book Club V. 2, I took my man on a date last week.   I’m very equal-opportunity (except when spiders and other scary bugs are concerned- that’s a pretty gender-specific role in my book).  I told the boyfriend to meet me by the one-armed statue on Franklin Street, trying to be mysterious but this translated to him as somewhat odd and instead he was thinking that I would need a ride home rather than to meet for a date.  Good thing he was completely surprised then when food from the legendary Pepper’s Pizza was involved.  Afterwards we went to another Chapel Hill staple – The Yogurt Pump.  Delightful.  The boyfriend is just so spectacular that I wanted to do something nice for him, but like most of America, we have been too pinched for cash to go out much.  Plus, after dating a couple years and then shacking up, I think it’s easy to forget the last time you’ve gone out on a date.  So anyways, date night was a success.  Then we went back home and watched The Machinist on Netflix.  It was good but disturbing, which was a compromise genre because he wanted horror and that I do not do well.  Not unless it’s daytime and one of my girl friends are present (I don’t know why, but those are the rules I’ve come to live by as an adult).

Saturday was spent partially at the library where I picked up my first book club book (for free – plus I love the crinkly sound of the covers for library books).  Afterwards I proceeded to get into a minor accident on 15-501, which is a major highway that everyone in Chapel Hill and most of Durham must travel regularly even though it is terrible.  Lots of stop lights and heavy traffic make for the perfect situation to get rear-ended, just like I did.  Oh well.  After collaborating with the other driver to pull my bumper out of the wheel well so I could pull off to the side, I realized our cars didn’t look that bad except for some scratches and an exchange of paint where our cars made out.  And an unhinged bumper.  No big deal.  I don’t even care so much that it happened to my car that I’ve only had less than 4 months.  It could have been so much worse, and it wasn’t.  Unfortunately I have a lil case of whiplash, which seems to be holding tight and not going anywhere. It’s probably nothing compared to the yelling that guy is getting from his wife who was dressed up to go see a movie at another Chapel Hill institution, The Varsity Theatre ($3 movies!).  He has probably heard “I told you to slow down!” so many times that he’s hearing it in his sleep at this point.

Since my Uncle (or Oncle as they say in France) Ralph is bringing students here on a college tour next week (woo hoo- birthday week!) and staying directly across the street from where I live, I would remind him that while this area has so much worth checking out, and much of it being for the budget-conscious, watch out for Hwy 15-501.  Lots of crazies out there on their way to the best that Chapel Hill has to offer.

Blame it on the Bisquick

Disclaimer:  This post was previously written, kept in a vault for months, and is now resurfacing for your reading pleasure.  That said, my mom’s surgery was a couple of months ago, so don’t call her.  She won’t know what you’re talking about.  That said…

I’ve been driving back and forth between Chapel Hill and Charlotte for the last few weekends to help take care of my mother post back surgery.  I’m happy to have handed her back over to my Dad, who was (because nothing in our family goes without complication) in Mexico for the 8 days after her surgery.  Before getting back to the point at hand, let me just say that 1) go to your parents and loved ones when they are sick.  At least let your presence be known by calls, flowers, or funny cards.  Support makes all the difference.  And 2) man oh man am I happy to have returned her into my Dad’s care.  She is a good patient while she’s heavily medicated and under anesthesia, but after a few days she gets tired of people hovering and looking at her.  That isn’t a personal assumption either- I’ve heard her say it many times.

So, I had a weekend to hang out at home here in Chapel Hill.  Let me just say that I enjoyed it thoroughly.

My dream mixer

The fantastic boyfriend bought me the Magnolia Bakery cookbook a couple of weeks ago (dropping any hints?).  I’ve been wanting it since returning from our trip to New York where we happened to rush into a Magnolia’s while seeking shelter and hot chocolate on a particularly cold night.  Hopefully my recreations in North Carolina will be enough to hold me over until the next trip to Manhattan.

As a result, I spent much of yesterday traveling from store to store in search of ingredients to make lots and lots of cupcakes and other baked goods.  I think that my lack of cooking skills was once an adorable little quirk to the boyfriend, but now that we live together (part of that “new house” change) I think he will encourage me however possible in my quest for mad kitchen skills (with guidance from a cookbook, that is).

My lovely sidekick Katy and I failed in our attempt to make dinners from afar once a week (Blame it on the Bisquick.  It was one recipe’s ingredient and apparently she doesn’t like it.  We’ve been best friends since 10th grade and now I learn that about her.  She’s not picky, except when you bring Bisquick into the mix).  It was fun to try, but it turns out that a lot more planning and coordinating would have to go into it, and neither of us have that kind of time (translation: persistence).

So I was all excited, correction - we were excited, but after leaving a fourth store without my last ingredient – self-rising flour, I was tired and cranky.  Once I find a store that has it, I may get carried away and quickly become that person with an actual use for giant, stackable cupcake carriers.  I saw one the other day at Home Goods (easily my new favorite store by the way).  I pointed and laughed at the pastel-colored containers and then had a glimpse into my future and thought “crap.”  That’s all there was to think.  That will most certainly be me one day.  The girl fumbling around with huge plastic cupcake carriers.

And then I’ll go home, put on a cozy pair of pjs and laugh shamelessly at reruns of The Golden Girls.  Seriously, how do these women get arrested for prostitution on their way to a Frank Sinatra concert?  That’s so like them!  (Insert canned laughter here)