Happy Birthday to me!

Yesterday was my 30th birthday! It seems very strange because I always perceived 'being thirty' to have this huge, weighty significance, kind of like when you are little and you turn ten and everyone asks you if it feels different now that you are in double digits, but it doesn't for me. Maybe because there are so many other huge, weighty significant things going on right now?

I do have to say I had a great birthday and received fabulous presents, some things I have been pining after for a long time, and some that are just plain indulgent! I also have to say that I have a wonderful group of friends and family that all contributed in their own way from across the country (actually being here, calling, facebooking...) Especially Shandiz, for engineering my birthday activities and generally making everything so enjoyable ;)

The day started off with breakfast with Victor, Janine and the boys in Solana Beach, and then we drove to Torrey Pines for a little hike and beach picnic. Robin and Christine were going to go to the picnic, (but Christine got the flu and very thoughtfully declined coming that morning)so, Shandiz was relying on their previous trips there for the exact destination for parking and hiking down the cliff. Instead we just found a place with lots of parking that looked like a popular place for hiking and beach access, and boy was it. It was about a 10-15 minute hike down to the beach and there were lots of people going up and down the cliff. We got to the bottom and were standing deciding which way to go, looking at the people around, assessing the less crowded direction, when I realized something strange. Most of the people did not have clothes on!

As most people in the greater SD area are aware, there is a part of La Jolla, Black's Beach, which is a nude beach. This is where I spent my 30th birthday, a nude beach. I thought it was kind of fun, but we did take precautions to stay away from the nude volleyball game...

And, no, we did not whole-heartedly join in the fun. It was hot enough to be tempting and it was a pretty nice, relaxed environment, but we didn't have any sunscreen. There were mostly older people hanging out, literally, enjoying being naked out in the sun and sea, not showing off or staring at others. I have to say, it was a much nicer beach environment than other beaches with loud, trashy people running around showing off. But, like I said, we stayed away from the rowdier, volleyball playing nudes, so maybe it was a different story at the other end of the beach.

Other quick updates; babykins is now 16 weeks and some change and the size of an avocado, and that is not even counting legs and arms! Our next appointment is in 9 days and it is the big one where you COULD find out what sex the baby is, but we have decided not to. Shandiz has decided he doesn't want to find out until the baby is born, but I can't make that promise. I think his decision is based on not wanting me to buy anything, since I have exhausted all the uni-sex baby clothes options in a 10 mile radius (that would be 4 outfits).

I have decided that if the baby chooses to position themself in a way in which it is extreme, in either its' obviousness or ambiguousness, then we have to accept their choice, to know even if we decided not to or to live in mystery. Quite frankly, I don't know how you could not find out unless the baby really wanted to keep it a big secret, because the screen in our doctor's office is the size of a jumbotron.

Also, we are supposed to close on our house this week, but the mortgage company keeps NEEDING ONE MORE EFFING THING. This has happened 3 or 4 times over the last week, where they act like everything is hinging on getting this one document, verbal confirmation, signature etc... to them in super fast emergency rush status and then we can close, only to find out that they need one other thing super fast emergency rush, but these requests come to only one of us via email (which we all know I do not check by the minute). I feel like our mortgage is being done by idiot baby warthogs (idiot baby monkeys, my usual descriptor of ineptitude, doesn't suffice in this case because I feel even the idiot baby monkeys would have made a checklist so all these documents could have been requested at once, and would know that there is a 3 hour time change from CA to NY that would need to be taken into account when trying to verbally verify employment, so there is nothing cute about them).