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I remember when I was a wee small child and I would nag my Mother “Mom! Why aren’t you excited about your birthday?!” and she would give me some dismissive explanation about “oh, I’ve had so many I don’t care anymore.” and my little brains could not understand her lack of enthusiasm.  

Today I’m 32 and I understand. Maybe it’s because I feel pretty awesome about myself/my life most every day so I don’t feel that special about today? I don’t know. Saturday I had a little festivity with some friends and I was happy for the festivity but I really don’t feel any birthday fireworks, butterflies or magic. It was the same good time that could have happened any Saturday.

So far for 2012 I’m finding good things around every corner. It’s a little eerie sometimes when things are going so well, but it feels good.

ps- this is what it looks like when I spend zero minutes on my hair. this is Saturday night’s hair being worn out on Monday morning.

Clear Raincoat Friday

Friday night I got pretty rained-on coming home. My waterproof eyeliner (MAC Penultimate) stayed through, though riding with raindrops pinging my face was quiet miserable. Soaking wet shoes too!  I came home to a surprise package at my doorstep. Thanks, Wynn!


I made a messy crazy little video. My hair isn't wet but the rest of outside of my raincoat got drenched.
   
Wynn is my play-brother who lives in Nashville. Inside the box was a Gloria Steinem Fan Club Care Package.

The clear plastic rain jacket debuted on the commute Friday morning. I think I look like a flight attendant today with my neck scarf and navy jacket.

The errand-man at my office warned me that he was playing hookie, so I was dressed to run errands with flat shoes.

Sidenote: I am not cut-out for all this errand-running because I end up in stores like Claire’s Boutique buying cute belts. 

My Birthday was MAJOR!

I could not be more grateful for what a wonderful Birthday weekend I had. The whole stinking weekend was all about fun events that I love and hanging with cute girls who I love to spend time with, and my sweet husband hanging too!

Saturday I got up and got ready for the Planned Parenthood Rally for Women's Health. I rode my bicycle down to city hall. I was surprised at how fast I got down there. This parking spot is literally and figuratively shady, but there were tons of police and when I returned after the rally- many bikes were on these racks.



These 2 capture the spirit of the rally - friendly, hopeful, not pissed, even though we should be pissed! The rally gave me a great feeling of community. I loved seeing little kids and young college-age peeps. HOPE.

Gloria Steinem called-in sick, but we got other awesome speakers (and I have a ticket to see GS introduce an Art film at MoMa later this week!) - Charles Schumer, Anthony Weiner, Kathleen Turner... Actually the smaller-scale, more local politicians were the fieriest speakers.


Kathleen Turner brought it. 


The crowd was really cute. Very young and hip crowd.

2 friends met me there, and miraculously found me in the crowd. After the rally, the bike was an issue. We walked it first to the Chinatown McDonald's to pee. They had the most enthusiastic welcome-greeter I've ever experienced in New York City.

We walked to Acme, a cajun-inspired restaurant and killed a few hours eating fat-hell food and drinking some drinks. Matt met us.

We went to Bingo and my friend Sheila won...


Then I won one! It's not about what you win, rather the glory of the fun of winning.

I got to spin "The Wheel of Chance" after my win. It selects the next drink special. If you really want to know... I won a Miley Cyrus gift package. The Glory!

The Bingo hostess is a legendary, precious Drag Queen who I love a lot. She asked me how the rally had gone. So nice of her to ask! I'm still so flattered that these people know my name.

I had my bike and the plan was to put it on the subway, but the nearest subway was closed! The subway is so unreliable on the weekend. We gave up and called a car service. I was able to specify that I needed an SUV because a bicycle needed to go in the back. That was the bike's first car ride. (It cost double the usual yellow taxi, fyi.)

Sunday I was really gross all day and just sat on the couch until time to get ready for the Oscar Party! I regret not having Matt take my outfit/makeup pics. I did a big, fat cat's eyeliner. This dress has POCKETS! I wore really comfy booties because I thought I might be up and out late and I wore tights because it's still February!

I didn't buy anything new to wear this weekend, and actually I didn't take the $4.00 thrift shop price tag off of this purse.



We kind of got messed-up a little on my table reservation (Frantic emailing of the host at the last minute for a table, please, help me!) and sat in a corner instead of the VIP booth. That was a little sad. I'm still happy Murray tried to help me and hollered at me for a birthday hug and a little catch-up after the show.










After the Oscars...

A friend of mine- a guy at work, hears about my weekend and says Matt is the luckiest guy because he's always surrounded by women.

After the terribly boring, too-full-of-old-white-men Oscars... I had the momentum to stay out and go even further downtown to a really gay dance party for gay boys to see some friends perform.
I love going to gay-boy dance club times because no one hits on me! They want to talk about my clothes, hair & makeup!

Me with Matt after the Oscar party. Matt went home and I headed to the next party.


Their performance was good.

Peaches was there! I didn't write this on here, but last Saturday at the awesome show we went to Peaches was there. I told her I'm a fan. It was intimidating and special.



The other day I was talking to a friend about how I miss being around some of these people. The makeup talk, etc. It was great to hug Amanda and get her chunky wig glitter on me.


GREAT BIRTHDAY WEEKEND! 

24 Hours of 30

I've almost been 24 hours since I turned 30 and it's been absolutely wonderful so far...

Highlights include: Last night's make-up party at Lyndsay's apartment on the Lower East Side. It was THE PERFECT environment to roll over the old age odometer to 30!

I really enjoying spending time around those who I can learn from. I like discussing how we can learn and grow and move forward. That's my mantra for 30, move forward. A.J. taught us make-up skills and it was a cute girl time.

The main new eye shadow trick I learned was to work up on the brow bone and do lots of brow-bone & crease blending with a nice fluffy brush like this one.

I tried it out tonight.


Then I started a Flickr group called "Face of the Day" to show daily make-up looks. There are so many "outfit of the day" and Wardrobe Remix groups but not Make-Up face of the day groups. It's public and I want people to join and I hope I can recruit some members in my free time in the near future.

Matt let me take his "Wardrobe Remix" photo today when we were going out to dinner.

He's like: This is dumb.
I'm like: Just shut up and stand there, you'll be the only boy in Wardrobe Remix for days...

So, all we did for my b-day was chill really hardcore, clean a tiny bit and we rode the cross-town bus to the Shake Shack on the Upper West Side. Their b-day gift to me was that there was NO LINE! Normally you wait in line forever & ever.

I spoke to my Grandmother on the phone and she called my aunt a "Shit-ass" in regard to her winnings on their recent adventures in gambling. It was a good day.

Rainin' Rainin' Rainin'

NYC is floating away. It's so rainy & nasty. Today I wanted to snap a pic of a really tacky Firebird but I was too busy holding my umbrella and resume folder. I had a great "pre-interview" and probably for the first time spoke of the Major incident of being on Martha Stewart in a way that doesn't make it sound like I need to follow that or pursue milking that connection. I explained it like "it's a creature that will live forever, but I don't have to feed it often at all, so I should get some other job as it is not a distraction." And I think that worked.

I hate that my birthday is always in this gray, cold, nasty time of the year. If I ever get into the witness re-location program, I am going to relocate my birthday to Labor Day Weekend or some hot-time with big sales. Or maybe when we have some extraneous money, we can relocate from a gray, cold, nasty place and go somewhere lovely & warm.

Tomorrow the job search is going to take a back-seat. I'm turning in a personal statement and some resumes for something very un-fashion that I'm excited about, then I'm going to the preview day at The Whitney for their Biennial show. I know I'll love it, I'm just really scared it's going to be very busy and over-flowing with little-old-ladies.