Long Birthday, Long Post

We celebrated my thirtieth birthday for nearly three weeks. Nineteen days, technically. All because my husband is sweet and sentimental and really brilliant at surprises.

Here’s how it went down: On the actual anniversary of my birth, I begged off work and my husband spent the day surprising me with treat after treat.

-Geeky t-shirts from my friends,
-Dear Poobah’s amazing steampunk weather station,
-Lunch at the Cambridge Brewing Company (Bart said it was the best sandwich he’d ever had),
-Spree at an indie book store,
-Hour-long massages,
-Mexican food,
-EXQUISITE TEQUILA!
-And Meeting Mary Roach after her reading (squee!).

At the end of the evening, Bart did the big reveal: He had arranged with my boss to give me a two-week vacation, complete with a trip somewhere secret! (My husband is sweet AND sneaky.)

Our little family most of the rest of the weekend snuggling on the sofa and watching cartoons.

The following week was a blur. Bart knows me, and he knew that if I didn’t have a chance to wipe-out my backlog before a vacation, I’d worry about it the whole time I was away from my cubicle. Damn my work ethic. I finished in five days what unfinished business it had taken me three months to accumulate. Granted, I annoyed many coworkers by pestering them to keep pace with me for a week, but it was worth it. At one point, some coworkers on a ‘use a reusable mug’ campaign dropped by to take my picture with the travel mug Poobah gave me… Like I said, it was a blur, but I left that Friday with no reason to worry about the mess I’d come back to after an extended vacation.

The first day of vacation, Bart and I took Bastian to his first ever in-theater movie. We saw Despicable Me. It was a decent flick, and the 3D wasn’t the awful experience I was expecting. (I’m not generally a fan of the gimmick.) Bastian loved the show, and especially his nerdy-looking ‘threedee’ glasses, which he refused to take off for a while.

Monday morning, we dropped Baz off at school (secure in the knowledge that his uncle and grandma would take care of him for the next couple of days) and went to the airport. I was a little nervous because I hate to fly, but I shouldn’t have stressed out about it. As it turned out, we were there to pick up a couple of writer friends (Jaym and Tess). We drove straight from the airport to my mother in-law’s ‘storybook cottage by the lake’ for a writers’ retreat!

Monday night, we had a little scare because Baz’s uncle forgot to pick him up at school (cue my heart attack when that voicemail reaches me an hour and a half drive away from school), but grandma saved the day. And Uncle was terribly apologetic. Whew! (Bastian actually enjoyed having his teacher all to himself for an hour, ha.)

When we got back from the retreat, Jaym filled my fridge with Mexican food. I won’t tell you how much weight I gained eating it all, but every pound was worth it, and I’d happily do it again.

We went to the Museum of Science and Faneuil Hall with Tess. Science and history! My gawd, we were such geeks together. Love it.

Later in the vacation, after much sleeping in and playing games and watching shows I never give myself time for, I decided I wanted to write a horror story. So I researched, plotted, composed, polished and submitted a 3000-word piece in just two days. This is me patting myself on the back.

Then I spent two days making art for tea (I’ll link to it after the recipient posts it online) and art for all you birthday conspirators out there. PIC
There are stories that make this image make sense…

After that, I spent a day at summer camp with Bastian’s preschool. Thirty little city kids took over the woods. There was a giant toad sitting on a log, a fungus the size of a dinner plate, and a rock-climbing turtle. Also, there were bees. Two kids got stung (not Bastian), and when we got back on the bus to leave at the end of the day, we found a scary surprise under one of the seats. I had to wrap a plastic bag around the juice box-induced swarm, and throw it in a hot trash bin outside. I saved the day, but oh, what dreams I had that night. Eek. Baz slept the whole way home.

Hot on the heels of that adventure, I found a fresh rejection letter in my inbox every time I checked email. Three rejections in 24 hours. Ouch, but I just found new and better places to submit them, and all was right in the world again.

Then, when there was almost too little time for another birthday adventure, Baz took me to the salon and we got out hair buzzed together!

Meanwhile, that funny post about sparkling vampires I wrote for the SiMF blog was read by 100,000 people. Being thirty years old has been good to me so far…

Tags: birthday, craig allen, geek, poobah, science, steampunk, tequila, wood_artist