Milestone Birthday

I will turn 30 in a few short hours. After several months of wondering what I would do for my 30th, I'm feeling very content and celebratory. I had a fantastic party last night with the people who have made San Diego so special for me, and I felt very loved and happy. And I would be remiss not to mention that my girlfriends and I went through five bottles of champagne. And maybe J. Ram and I sang along to N*Sync songs and did a little ridiculous dancing at 2 in the morning. Everyone also enjoyed making fun of my fat cat Ollie, who is too slow-moving to avoid such humiliation as this:

It was a wonderful evening of talking, hugging, laughing, and just enjoying the bubbly chemistry that arises when a bunch of awesome people get together and get along. I posed with some gorgeous birthday flowers...

And wore my own party hat...

As I said earlier, for the last several months, I've been putting a lot of pressure on Turning Thirty. I felt like I needed to do something grand, like take a trip out of the country or stay at some luxurious local hotel. I'm glad I stopped feeling that way, because this weekend has been absolutely perfect. I'm so thankful for everyone in my life, and I'm also grateful that I am where I am.

I know that my 30th birthday is, for all intents and purposes, just another day. But it's also the turnover from one decade of experiences to another. I've been feeling very introspective these last few weeks, especially after a visit last month to my parents' home in Pennsylvania, where I went through years of The Memorabilia of Jill's Life. I have a hope chest that is filled with assignments and notes and journals from elementary school all the way through college. And I have another chest filled with the same from my post-college years. And last week, I skimmed through my journal from my senior year of college and the first year after, which gave me an amusing refresher on who I was nearly ten years ago.

In my very early twenties, I was fairly boy crazy. That's pretty much all I wrote about and thought about, when I wasn't angsting about what will I do with my life? When I was 20, I broke up with my first long-term boyfriend and commenced an epic crush on an unattainable fellow student, a charmingly weird guitar player my friends eventually christened my "Ungettable Get" after my overtures of affection were rejected. When I was 21, Ungettable and I became friends, I dated a bunch of not-right-for-me boys, and then I fell for someone again. Things were great, then they were not great, and at age 22 I suffered a notably painful broken heart, which I followed with a string of bad decisions. Fortunately, I lived through it all and became smarter and wiser and all around better, and at 23, I met a new boy. Over the next four years, we laughed, declared our love, adopted cats, and got married. He is what was waiting for me on the other side. It's weird to go through my journals and not find him in there, because I feel like he was the right one all along. As I said to him once, "Why would I ever look for anyone else, when everything I ever wanted is right here?"

T was with me when I applied to grad school and ultimately decided not to go. He was with me when I had a starring role in Our Town and then when I auditioned for show after show only to never get a lead role again. He was with me when I got my first 9-5 job, a temp-to-hire position in a department with the funniest, kindest coworkers I'd ever had. I left them for my first Big Girl job in an academic setting, which is where I was when T and I decided to move to San Diego together, and where I suffered serious separation anxiety when T moved six months before I did.

I think for a lot of people the 20s are about finding out who you will be. That was certainly the case for me, and it wasn't a smooth ride. Finding a job after college graduation was difficult and disheartening, and an internship that was supposed to springboard a career (that I wasn't even sure I wanted) ended early and I spent a summer in Philadelphia living alone with no money. I had some fun in Philly, sure, but mainly what I remember about living there was watching a lot of Sex and the City and eating Ben & Jerry's for dinner. Perhaps I was not the wisest 22 year old. I moved home after that and did temp work for a year, all the while wondering when my "real" life was going to start.

And the thing is, all the experiences in my early 20s created this wonderful little path that led me to where I am today. I couldn't see the path at the time, of course, and I felt like everything I was doing was boring and sooooo haaaaaard why can't life just be eeeeeeasy, but it was actually the perfect path for me to take. A year ago, I started grad school, and I've met some amazing friends who I would otherwise have missed had I gone to grad school at 24. The hours I spent at rehearsals as Portia's Servant or Random Character With Four Lines showed me a different appreciation for theatre and allowed me to let go of my striving to be the star. My first job in academia led to my first job in San Diego, and pretty much all of my experience -- theatre, academia, writing -- aligned when I applied for my current job, a position that makes my heart happy.

There is always something to strive for. In no way do I feel like I have everything figured out. But I do feel like I can leave my 20s proud of what I've done and who I've become. I think the past decade was a good starting point of learning from my mistakes, trying to be a good person, and pushing through the anxiety that comes with being human. It's a good blueprint for the next decade.

Sigh.

I'm such a curmudgeon.

It's a holiday weekend, which means the very nice neighborhood in which I live becomes a REPOSITORY OF NOISE. And I hate it. Right now we've got the all the occupants of the house on the corner and their associated friends and children hanging out in the front lawn, with the kids all running around and screaming. Hooray for children playing outside and all, but cripes. Couldn't they be a little more quiet about it?

Then there's the neighbor who has a new bench press. He's using his weights in the alley behind our house, and every time he put the weights down, it sounds like the T-Rex from Jurassic Park is on its ominous path to destruction.

And at Weight Neighbor's house, shitty 80s rock is drifting out the front door. They are out to get me, I swear to God. These neighbors are also the owners of Barky McBarkerson. They actually seem like very nice people, which makes me wonder why they are so painfully oblivious.

Now, okay, I understand that it's Saturday afternoon and it's a holiday weekend and people are allowed to live their lives and make noise. Logically, I get it. But viscerally, it makes me want to throw a temper tantrum.

Anyway. I hope you're all having a good Memorial Day weekend. I intend to, after I cram in some earplugs and settle in with the best book ever. I'll tell you more about it some other time.

Fancy time!

Last night I attended a fundraising gala for my employer. The theme was "roll out the red carpet," and I had a fantastic time getting all dolled up for the event. Prepare to be dazzled by my crap self-photography (my photographer husband was elsewhere so I had to make do):

I loooove this dress. I borrowed it from my friend Amanda, and I want to keep it just to walk around and feel like a rockstar. It is at once sleek and vintagey, and it was super comfortable and perfect for when I became a dancing fiend after dinner. I also felt fierce in the shoes, until they started hurting about an hour into the evening and I hobbled more than strutted. Four inch heels on a girl who usually wears flats = lots of teeth gritting.

Back home at the end of the night: bonding time with the dog.

Dress: Express

Shoes: Target

Pearls: My grandmother

Headpiece: Etsy

Ring: Forever 21

Oh hi!

Remember me?

I'm meant to be working on a long-ass paper right now.

Clearly I'm not.

But I will be... starting NOW.

Stress cramp?

So, I have a question. It needs some background:

For the last few weeks, I have been getting a persistent side-stitch about two inches to the left of my navel. The ache starts shortly after I begin walking -- and I'm talking easy-stroll kind of walking, not strenuous power strides.

I spent the past weekend hiking in Colorado with friends, and I didn't get the side-stitch once. Not once. I hiked about five mountainous miles on Saturday, and another six on Sunday. Flat, uphill, downhill. Leisurely to strenuous. No side-stitch.

But today, I'm back at work, back in real life, and I started feeling my g.d. side-stitch on a very short walk to the ATM.

Now, I have an incredible amount of things to get done this week with very limited time. (Um, I got a new job. This is my last week at UC, and I start my new job next Monday. More on that later, because it deserves its own post. But I will say that I'm really freaking excited!) I'm also loaded down with reading for school this week, and I'm preparing for friends coming to visit this weekend. But these are all good things. There is a lot to do, and I feel a little overwhelmed, but I don't feel any urgent panic.

But despite my relative calm about my schedule, I am wondering if this cramp is actually stress related. So my question is this: is it possible to get a stress-related side-stitch? And if I'm feeling relatively calm about everything, how am I supposed to manage a stress-related cramp?

Help me! What do you think? 

Non-updates

Wow, according to my little sidebar there, I've been "currently reading" To Kill a Mockingbird for a long time, huh? I should probably take that sidebar down, since I fail to update it and have read a good four or five books since TKMB. Also, now that I have started grad school, I will be currently reading several books at once, including some riveting literary theory that is, you will be surprised to hear, not actually riveting. But it is necessary, so the profs tell us.

This has been an insanely long week, and it's only Thursday. I had class on Tuesday and Wednesday and I have my Spanish lesson tonight and a concert tomorrow and a fried chicken par-tay (right A?) on Saturday. All good, stimulating stuff, but wowee have I been thrumming along full-throttle this week. And it's only the FIRST WEEK of school, you guys!

Also, my coworker and I sat down today and hammered out our schedule of visiting fellows for the fall. Let's just say I will probably be neglecting this blog again.

The Tale of Barky McBarkerson

Our next door neighbors' dog barked for 40 minutes straight last night, starting at 11 and waking me from a wonderful just-fell-asleep-early feeling. He would stop for maybe two minutes, during which time I would start to drift off, and then he would start again. And then eventually his lapses lasted for a mere few seconds. Barkbarkhowl. Howlbark. Barkhowl. Howlhowl. Barkhowlhowl. For 40 minutes. Through closed windows and earplugs.

Here's what I thought:
"Kill. Kill. Kill."
"Will I get in trouble if I tranq my neighbors' dog?"
"How about if I open the gate and urge him to run free?"
"Do we have any hunks of meat I can soak with Benadryl?"
"Kill. Kill. Kill."

Eventually T, my hero, got up and went outside to tell the damn dog to STFU. We do this often, because our houses are so close together that Barky McBarkerson is all but in our yard. So his barks are our barks. Usually it's not late at night, though. Usually he has STFU'd by then.

He's a huge dog in a little house, so it makes sense that his owners leave him outside most of the time. What doesn't make as much sense is how little training they seem to have done for him. Plus, their work hours are irregular and so Barky McB is left alone a lot. He's pretty cute and pathetic, I'll admit -- his barks seem to cry "I'm lonely! Where are my humans? I miss them! Why am I all alone with these mean neighbors who tell me to shut up?" I might be anthropomorphizing just a tad, but that's what I'm hearing. He often sees us and comes up to the fence around his yard, sticking his sad little nose into the lattice opening, whining. We greet him kindly and remind him to be quiet, then we go about our business in our own house with our own dog, who is perfect.

Seriously, I can't help but feel a little smug about how well-behaved and quiet our dog is. She barks on occasion, sure, but last night as McB was singing his obnoxious song, Rosie just stayed curled up on her nest next to our bed, only stirring to come snuggle with me when T went outside to be the disciplinarian for our neighbors' dog.

Barky McB could take a cue from Rosie McSweetiepants.