I had a fabulous Birthday weekend in Vermont with Rob and some friends of ours. The dogs romped, the babies laughed, and the adults got drunk. Good times. I made sure to bring up some of my favorite foods for the weekend. The house we rent is in the middle of nowhere Vermont so we always head up with enough food to feed an army. This gives us the perfect excuse to sit around and stuff our faces - why the hell would we want to bring all that crap back to Boston?

Lauren wrote about Monkey Bread a few weeks ago. Man, is that stuff good. Rob and I made this for our mid-morning snack the day of my birthday. Yum. I didn’t have a bundt pan, so I used a spring form pan. It worked fine except the dough was not cooked all the way through. This was no problem though - we chomped it up anyway!

The men folk headed outside during the snowfall on Saturday to build a jump for sledding. Notice the case of beer? We actually had to remind them to come back into the house before their testicles fell off. The beer gave them a wicked sense of warmth.

This is Rya, one of our dogs. We had six adults, two babies, and three dogs up there. Everyone got along swimmingly. In fact sweet Rya was so worn out from chasing all of us 80-million directions that I can to make her lie down to take a nap. She could barely stand!

This is one of my favorite things in “our” Vermont house, the tub!

Rob did a great job with this birthday. Cards, love, a banner, a cake and a perfect weekend. He also embezzled money* from our shared account to sneak a prezzie for me.

I love it.

Thank you all again!

And now for some Birthday Fun….

30 things about being 30

30. Being 15 lbs over your ideal weight is no longer “cute”, “fun”, “sexy”. It is bad for you and bad for your soul.

29. You can eat cake for dinner every night the week after your birthday (the irony is not lost on me.)

28. The idea that you graduated from high school 12 years ago is rilly rilly scary.

27. There is joy found in knowing your best friends for longer than you have not known them.

26. Your eyes really do start to go bad - your mom was not kidding when she said you should not read without a light. Not that the light was part of your eyes going bad - it just was something that she could not imagine reading without. You are now her.

25. You really can be 30 going on 13. I have the giggle lines to prove it.

24. The fact that you married someone 13 years older than you begins to reap unforeseen benefits - the fact that your 30 is fun to him. He can barely remember his 30th birthday.

23. A box from Tiffany’s really is THAT great!

22. Thirty rhythms with dirty.

21. Babies love you, dogs adore you, men crave you.

20. Knitting becomes more expected of you every day - you become a cliche…this is cool.

19. You start to feel comfortable in your skin.

18. Your dog that you adopted when you were just out of undergraduate school now is an old maid and is bored by your antics.

17. You crave the company of children so you can play “pretend” and knock blocks around.

16. Your family becomes an amorphous group of friends/enemies and others. Mostly, you don’t HAVE to hang out with them anymore - in my case - you WANT to.

15. Your mother starts to speak to you about the “Red Folder” and where it’s located and how important it is to find the “Red Folder” immediate after she and my father pass on to eat the big cannoli in the sky (seriously, my favorite thing about Janet Evanovich? the million different analogies she finds for biting the big one.) so that we may roll in the dough that is their insurance policy.

14. After obtaining a mortgage, completing 6 years of higher education with school loans, and falling into the dreaded credit card debt large chunks of money do not scare you any more.

13. Receiving the first promotion of your career right before you turn 30 (because you spent most of your career in jobs with low ceilings) feels really great.

12. I’m not alone. While I may still get lonely - it’s a good kind of lonely.

11. Drinking a dark and stormy on a dark and stormy night for your birthday is so loaded with literary potential that you can’t stop thinking of bad mysteries novels.

10. I finally realize that my mom was right - I can do ANYTHING I set my mind to.

9. It’s a decade to relish your bookishness. Reading and math and science are cool and don’t let the bubbly butt heads with Varsity letters tell you differently.

8. I am officially in love with coffee.

7. My baby sister is now a grown woman. My brother is now a grown man. Although - they still can be annoying sometimes with they get all up into your stuff.

6. Your parents are no longer invincible. This is the hardest part about getting older for me…my parents are getting older too.

5. Your 23 year old nephew thinks your “old”. eh-hem.

4. Oh. My aching back.

3.2.1. ?? I’m at a loss. Can you all help me with this one?

* Rob and I have a shared account that I manage. We have a strict budget because we are Poor and trying to dig ourselves out of debt. Every week we each get and “allowance”. Mr. Bookish was pulling a little extra out each week and hiding it in his sock drawer!! Six months of this and I never even noticed.