Happy Birthday(s)!

I have been a very bad blogger these past few weeks, but I have good reasons, I promise!

1. I was planning a surprise party for my fiance's 40th birthday (don't worry, it's done now...it all went swimmingly) but who knew planning a party required so much...planning.  I'm considering a practice round for wedding planning.  Which, ladies and gentlemen start your engines, begins NOW.

2.  I was simultaneously trying to decide what on earth to do for my 30th birthday (which was yesterday, thank you very much)...because it was my big 30 and ALSO because it happened to fall on 10/10/10.  Which also equals 30.  Which means, I assumed, that on that day I would FINALLY become enlightened.  How does it feel to finally be enlightened?  Feels good, people, feels good.

and 3.  Because I've actually been teaching more and more (hooray) and I'm still learning the fine art of time management...

Anyhoo...the birthday weekend just happened (Paul's on Saturday, mine on Sunday--I know, how nerdy!) and it was a great success.  On Saturday we WALKED ACROSS LOS ANGELES.  No joke.  We walked from Los Feliz to Santa Monica.  And then we just fell into a little heap on the sand.  It was INTENSE.  There will be a future blog all about the crazy journey from total optimism to total physical torture that occurred during those 8 hours, but for now I want to talk about day two...Sunday...my birthday.

We, being totally sore and exhausted, decided that my birthday would be a bit more, um, relaxing, and I had several things I wanted to do, but no plan.  Purposefully, no plan.  At first I thought the plan-less-ness was a hindrance, or that I was somehow failing my own birthday, but as the day arrived I suddenly realized that the "no planning" for my 30th birthday was exactly how I want to enter into this new decade: relaxed, plan-free, spon-tan-eous.

The day began with coffee on the sun-deck of the motel where we stayed, evolved into a daring swim in the ocean (at 8am folks, because I am amazing), and then a hobble (you should see Paul's poor feet!) to the Santa Monica promenade where I bought some of my favorite green tea.  We had planned, then (plans!) to take a cab back home, but at the last minute decided (no plans!) to take a bus instead.  So we hopped on the first bus that we thought would take us near where we wanted to go, or at least to downtown where we could then take another bus...and as the bus pulled up at it's final destination, we saw across the street some kind of festival.

We pondered it and realized it was probably the Olvera Street market, which I'd been wanting to go to for quite some time, so we decided to check it out.  But upon further inspecition we discovered, to my delight, that it was in fact this big mole festival "Feria de los Moles" that I had been reading about and bemoaning not being able to go to (I LOVE mole)...and here we were! Right smack in the middle of it! On my birthday!  We promptly joined in, waiting in a long line in the hot sun for some amazing mole, and marveled at the magic of coincidence.

And as we sat on the sidewalk, eating our plate of black mole, I said to Paul that I was going to take the symbolic significance of our little adventure as confirmation that my 30's was going to be about not planning...and still ending up somewhere great.  Ending up, in fact, exactly where I wanted to go.