Anakalian Whims

So This is 30

February 22, 2014 at 3:22 pm (In So Many Words) (30, birthday)

It’s 9am.  I’ve been up for over an hour.  I’m clean. My coffee is being made.  My three year old is asleep in MY bed and my husband is asleep on the couch.  Nothing bad has happened; it is just the merry go-round musical chair – ahem – musical bed – way that we sleep (each one getting up and moving elsewhere a few times by morning).

A kind, old friend from school – kindergarten to be exact – posted on my facebook wall to have a happy birthday and read something for him.  So today, I will absolutely do both of those things.  My something? Paul Collins Not Even Wrong.  It is a story about “A Father’s Journey into the Lost History of Autism.”  No, my kid doesn’t have autism.  I’m not even reading it because it’s about autism.  I’m reading it because it is Paul Collins.  And because it is my birthday.  I’m reading it because I always save Paul Collins for something important, something special.  He’s my favorite.

What better way to spend the Big 3-0 than with coffee and a good book?  Oh, yes, I know I do that every morning.  But I suppose that that’s the thing about being 30, I’ve become a little set in my ways.

My sister took me to Peli Peli on Thursday – one of my favorite restaurants – where we devoured shrimp cocktail and stuffed mushrooms and thought we had died and gone to heaven by dessert.  That was for my birthday.  It was a special treat.

Tuesday I’ll be starting a new bike club – specifically for cruisers that live in my neighborhood – so I suppose that’s a new leaf (turned from the bike club I started in July 2013 that has evolved and grown into something I had never imagined).

So this is 30 too… lunch with my sister at fancier restaurants than I would have gone to at 20.  Bike clubs and organizing community activities – even if I’m not getting paid to do it.  At 20 I would have only started something I was getting paid to organize and direct (Kung Fu Day Camp anyone?).

At 30 I am less busy, but possibly more involved.  (Sounds odd coming from such a busy person, I’m sure.)  At 30 I still sit down with coffee and a good book, but it’s more likely to be a memoir written by a parent than a piece of fiction about drug addicts and orphans (I vaguely recall reading White Oleander in my early 20’s).  I have a copy of Herodotus that I’ve been devouring all week, but even that history book is a far cry from my business text books of college.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot this year.  At 20 I was way hotter, in much better shape – I earned my 3rd degree black belt that year and was running about 5 miles a day.  At 20 I had a pile of friends that I practically lived with, I was constantly surrounded by stimuli and activity.  I worked three jobs.  I went to school full time.  I didn’t sleep.  I still managed to party a lot.  But I wouldn’t go back.

Now, I am just as broke all the time, still paying off my school loans, reading whatever I want for the most part, and writing novels.  Now, I am homeschooling a three year old, savoring my quiet moments of coffee (because quiet is not come by with ease), and starting bike clubs.  I’m alone with only a toddler for company fairly often, and running out and scraping up cash for dinner isn’t as easy as when you don’t have little person at your side.  (I remember picking up shifts on the fly when I was waiting tables just to be able to eat for the weekend when I saw that grocery money was low, when I was 20.)

So… this is 30 and…

I think I like it.

A few months ago I wasn’t so sure I’d be able to say that today.