"Girlfriends high"

This weekend I celebrated my 34th birthday.  Hard to believe, I know. In fact, I’ve been contemplating beginning to lie and say I’m a mere 32 but given my journey is about self-acceptance that seems to be a bit off the path!

To kick off my birthday, I had dinner with four very dear friends from college.  To think, a few years ago the five of us would gather each week to watch The OC, fawn over Seth and Ryan and enjoy a veritable smorgasbord of Chinese food.  This year, as we all gathered at the table of a delicious french bistro, we sat down as working moms. Joking over the challenges that we face balancing the needs of head-strong toddlers with the needs of head-strong employers!  Underlying it all was a feeling of pride that we are ‘doing it all’.  It may not be easy and some days it may not be pretty but over pink champagne and french desserts, it certainly was rewarding and one day our kids will know how strong we are, that we made our own way and opened more opportunities for them.

After dinner we met up with some other friends at a bar for drinks and laughs. I spent the following day, the actual day of my birth, with my parents and Grace. A blissful day spent mostly outside, trying to fly a kite that said “for ages 9 and up” and we realized we may learn to fly by the time Grace turns 9. For now, we need to go with a simpler version!

I will admit, I had a few pangs of missing having “someone special” on my birthday but then when I looked around, I realized I celebrated in total with about 15 someone specials which makes me a very lucky girl.

One of the girls from college said it best, “I have been on a "girlfriends high" since Saturday...to the point where I didn't even have a case of the Mondays today.”

Catching up

It has been a fairly mundane start to the week so I thought it would be a good time to catch up on loose ends.  

Over the weekend I celebrated my birthday with friends and family, and after a year of feeling disconnected, it was a fantastic way to kick off my new year (as well as getting over the first year post-divorce hump).  I can not thank my friends and family enough for making this birthday extra special and ringing in the ‘new year’ in such a wonderful way!

In other news, I’ve stopped communicating with the Dad aka the Ditcher. The email exchange we were having was growing dull and mundane with a running list of daily happening updates. Whereas my initial attraction to him was his wit and intellect.  Take that away and you have...well, email updates you’d send to your grandma. So I stopped replying, as his last email didn’t even include an open ended question. I figured if he wanted to continue hanging out, he’d get in touch, but of very little surprise, he did not.

On the other hand, a good friend told me about this okcupid site which is much like match.com except free (my online dating philosophy for single moms is that it is a must-do because you don’t have time to ‘put yourself out there’ very often so may as well do it from the comfort of your home)!  One of my 4 ‘dull dates’ came from this site. However, last week I started emailing with a band member of a popular band in the 90’s that could be considered a one hit wonder.  While I find his emails to be fairly self centered (again, lacking open ended questions), Little Buddha informed me that this is because guys don’t know what they are doing and it’s in their nature to just write about themselves. Taking this into consideration, I decided to take a risk and see if he wanted to hang out in person.  He said yes but asked what I’d like to do....and that is what I need to think about today, as I can’t do anything as predictable as some of my normal spots but I also don’t want to go too hipster. I need ‘hip without effort’ - any suggestions?

That wraps up the catch up. I’m sorely missing my friends who lost their jobs last week and I think about them every day.  I am also so thankful for all of the love and support over the weekend from friends & family.  So all in all - it’s a bitter sweet week, but isn’t that how it always is?