week long birthdays are the way to go....

i think maybe perhaps my birthday is finally over. maybe. yeah... i think so. i would call it a pretty fantastic success this year. much fun and friends and food and celebrating. :) big hugs to everyone for sharing it with me. thank you.

i think it started last friday with my decision to let myself run around the city and do whatever my inner arwen wanted to do... so i biked to the circus center super excited and anxious and nervous to get back up on my tissu and to my utter despair, it turned out to be a summer camp day where the kids get to use the entire big aerial gym. all day. dammit. this was frustrating. i decided to not let it get me down and went straight to get a mani/pedi whilst learning my lines for ACT 2. i consider this to be impressive multi-tasking. now i have blue toes. and i know my lines (pretty much). pleasing. stopped by haight street and had a tofu skewer at askew grill. i had never been there before. it had couscous with it. i have not had couscous in a really long time. twas pretty yummy. then i headed off to find the georgiou outlet in SOMA. I had already looked for it about a week ago and gave up and went to REI. (if you know both of these stores, you know that this makes no sense.) But I was determined this time. Turns out that I had been about a half a block from it the first time, but the addresses go out of order on this one block of 7th street. rather confusing. but. success! I love georgiou's dresses. i own about 3 or 4 and they all fit like someone has sewn them right on to my body. after years and years of feeling like my size was somewhere in no mans land, this store was pretty exciting to find. But once i found it (there was one right here at work in Embarcadero 3), they decided to close the store about 6 months later. this figures, eh? BUT - they are based in San Francisco and have this weird little outlet store that is attached to their main warehouse. so anyway... once there, i found out from the saleswoman that the reason why i love their stuff so much is that it's made for tall, long people with broad shoulders. sweet!! I walked out of there with 4 things, including a dress to wear to arika's wedding for under $75. awesome. from there i had to stop by work. that was dumb, but pretty fast. i decided to go home and do exercises since i never got to train circus and then met dave at sports basement. i really love sports basement. they have FIVE levels! we had to return a bunch of stuff. and well, to be fair, also buy a bunch of stuff. :) i completely ruined the impact of the sale shopping i had done earlier in the day by purchasing a new bike jersey (well, actually, dave made me do it) that was just stupidly expensive. stupid. offensively expensive. but very, very comfortable. very. who knows? maybe it will even make me ride faster. by the time we were done with our consumer whoredom, we were starving and unable to think. we jumped on our motorcycles (when we ride together, but on separate bikes, we like to think we are in a gang. the anubis gang.) and wandered around the mission in a blood-sugar deprived stupor until we ended up at an italian restaurant that neither of us really wanted to go to... so we jumped back on the bikes and drove to Goat Hill Pizza instead. I think of this as my first b'day dinner, since Goat Hill was almost what I picked as the group dinner place. it was SOOOO tasty and we ate SOOOO much. i ate half a medium pizza. awesome.

on saturday i had to rehearse in berkeley, but afterwards i went on a birthday bike ride with elizabeth. it was our first time without the boys. we did awesome. we rode the paradise loop (over through mill valley and around through tiburon and back) and seriously had the most amazing evening ride ever! the fog never rolled in. we hit the golden gate bridge on the way back at about 8:40pm and there was NO FOG. i was in SHORT SLEEVES. the sun was setting over the headlands... there were flocks of pelicans in the sky and there were NO other bikes on the bridge. it was a kick ass birthday ride. and then jim and elizabeth took me (and dave) out to korean food so that i could have a bibimbop fix. TASTY!

on sunday i also had to rehearse in berkeley. but once back in the city, i came home and did something very uncharacteristic. i flopped onto the bed and read. SO NICE. :) "Case Histories", by Kate Atkinson (if you were interested). Then we headed over to debbie and michael's to have band practice. oops. no practice. we just hung out and debbie gave me stuff. :) From there, we all headed over to India Clay Oven where 19 people celebrated my birthday with me, including me. it was really special to have so many people there that mean so very much to me. it really drove home the whole 'creating your own family' thing when your own is so far away. thank you guys. i love you guys. i could keep being mushy, but i'll stop. it was really a great night and tasty and they had cherry nan. ????? wtf??????

OMIGOD. this is getting sooooooo long. i am rambling so much. i will do the next three days later.

other thoughts....

i feel like birthdays often become a reflective time. something that i know that i do not do enough. reflect. sit. think. i'm bad at yoga and i'm bad at meditating. i have a hard time quieting my mind. always have. i've thought back on the past year and felt proud of life accomplishments and proud of living life to the fullest, which is something i feel almost maniacally driven to do. but looking into the future i feel kind of, well, cloudy. i feel like i don't know what to 'shoot' for... what sort of goals to set... what to be excited about....passionate about. i've had a handful of 'aha!' moments in the last few days. mainly dealing with 1) having a kid 2) surrender 3) my place in the world 4) what i can do for the world; and 5) widening my ability to see beyond my own needs. whew. you, know... small stuff. ;) it's a bit unsettling actually. when you spend SO MUCH time running running running, it's always uncomfortable to suddenly have time to think. or actually, there hasn't been time to think, it's more that... sometimes, you don't get a choice.... it's just time. no amount of running can stop the thoughts. so i've just been thinking them. and trying to deal.

i keep having strange impulses. like cutting all my hair off. like becoming a teacher. becoming a better public servant. doing something about injustices. i don't know.... brain on rapid fire.

time. the issue is always time. time is friend. time is enemy.

serafina has been on the decline. she is having a really hard time breathing and the vet took some more fluid off her abdomen this morning, which is a whole other thing separate from her mass. :( the wogdog was a very good companion, but in some ways it makes it even sadder to see them kissing and beaking right before serafina goes in to get stabbed. dave and i have now both written her songs to play for her when she needs some calming time. i had forgotten just how much the birdies love the sound of the piano... so i wrote mine on that. dave added a pretty little melody to his and when he sits in front of her cage and sings it to her every morning it just about breaks my heart. i know that she will be leaving us soon and it almost makes it harder that she is fighting so hard to stay with us all. oh dear. ok. that's as much as i can talk about this at work.