I turn thirty this weekend. I’m only slightly freaking out about it. Mostly, I just can’t believe that I’m (almost) thirty. Where did my twenties go? (answer: mostly to Slovakia)
I’ve been thinking a lot about birthdays and my past birthday celebrations lately – mostly because people keep asking what I’m going to do to mark thirty. For the record, I’m not doing anything huge. I’ve invited a few friends out for dinner and then back to mine to play very interactive video games (like, Rock Band, or Kinect Adventures). There are a few reasons for this. Mostly, it comes down to the fact that I’m not a big-group type person. I would so much rather hang out with a few close friends than go out clubbing or something with a big group.
Another reason is that my last two birthdays have had massive celebrations. Two years ago, when I turned 28, my good friend (and now housemate) turned 22 just a couple of weeks later. The coincidence of our ages adding up to 50 was too good to pass up, so we had our joint 50th birthday party – an epically huge celebration. I mostly remember that party for being the “I am surrounded by guys now!” party [I never really made it out of the kitchen, and looked around at one point to realize that I was the only girl in the kitchen, and I was surrounded by about 7 guys, all listening and talking to me. This has been a fairly rare occurrence in my life. It was cool.] as well as my “I am a beautiful princess” party.
Last year, I turned 29, my friend turned 23, and the boys in our house turned 24, all in February and March. Add those ages together, and you get 100. So we had our cumulative 100th birthday party – another epically huge celebration. There are several memorable things about that party: the costumes, some of the attendees….but for me the best part was staying up until 5:30 am talking to my housemate – who is now my boyfriend. (And then mock-blaming him the next week for having gotten me sick for my birthday.)
Nothing could really beat the last two years in scale, so this year I’m going smaller.
The last reason that I’m doing something low-key for my thirtieth is because my favourite birthday celebrations have been the smaller ones. My twelfth birthday is memorable not for a party, but for the Twinkies that took the place of my golden birthday cake, in part because we were road tripping to see some distantish cousins. For my 24th birthday, my first in Slovakia, my friends from one of the other schools made the trek down to my village to surprise me (and surprise me they did!). It was wonderful. And my 22nd birthday was simultaneously one of my worst and best birthdays. It was a good day, overall: my three closest friends and I hung out in my room, eating cake and pizza, watching Friends episodes, and talking. That was pretty much my ideal birthday, and is kind of what I want to recreate this year. [The “worst” part came about 9:30 that night, when my parents called to tell me that my grandma had just died, and happy birthday. But since I have no more living grandparents, I’m pretty sure that I won’t be recreating that part…]
I can’t let a discussion of my birthday go without a shoutout to my two best birthday buddies: Adrienne, my actual birthday buddy – we met in kindergarten and have lost touch since I moved away, but I always think of her on our birthday [happy 30th, Adrienne!] – and Dwight, my somethingth cousin somethingth removed and surrogate grandfather for a while.
