My 2nd Annual 29th Birthday

Today. May 3rd. Marks the date of my birth. Thirty years ago. THIRTY. Three whole decades.

I was asked this weekend if I was dreading the big 3-0. To tell you the truth, I haven't been. And I'm not freaking out now that I am. Officially. THAT age.

Honestly, 25 was the age that really hit me. In the face. Hard. I was at the grocery store buying candles for my own birthday cake (which is depressing in and of itself). Not sure if you've ever noticed, but birthday candles come in packs of 24. I was 25. Which meant I needed 2 packs of candles. FORTY EIGHT candles. I had graduated to the same candle bracket as a 48-year-old. Gone were the carefree days of simply one pack of candles! Also gone were the days of someone else taking care of the birthday candle buying, but that's a whole different issue.

Later on that year, I saw a billboard advertising the 25th Anniversary of Popeye's. Great, now I'm the same age as fried chicken.

It probably didn't help that at age 25, I was a few steps behind where I thought I'd be at that age. Sure, I had scored an awesome husband, but I still hadn't completed college or bought a house. I thought I'd surely have done both by then. After a whole quarter century! Then Katrina came and well, nothing really throws your life plans off track like a natural disaster.

Here's the good news. I made it to 30. And I'm happy about what I've accomplished thus far. Here's a recap of the past decade of me:

2000 - dropped out of LSU, planned my wedding, married the one and only Stewart Alexis

2001 - moved to Washington, lived on a military base, bought AUSTIN, bought AUSTIN a new $3,000 leg, cried when AUSTIN ate the whole roll of film that documented Stewzie's first year as a married couple

2002 - bought Black Betty, was voted Employee of the Year, moved back to Louisiana, readjusted to heat and humidity

2003 to 2004 - worked, saved, had my purse stolen by crackheads, missed Stew a lot (he worked offshore)

2005 - went back to college, paid for it myself, continued working full time, turned 25 along with a 2 piece, white meat, spicy, with a side of dirty rice, a biscuit and a red drink, got Katrina'd, lived in Arkansas for a month with 9 dogs and a whole mess of people, came back home and removed my neighbors' carport from our backyard, got a new job

2006 - went back to college (again), got a 4.0, kept working, paid off Black Betty, became an Aunt

2007 - kept my 4.0 streak alive, started househunting, kept working full time

2008 - bought a house, renovated it every night for 9 months, kept my job, my husband and my GPA but lost my sanity, EARNED my degree and finally graduated

2009 - learned to relax, thanked my husband, went public with my snoball love affair, started Stewzie

2010 - had a crazy dream that the Saints won the Super Bowl, realized it wasn't just a dream, dressed like a toothless hillbilly not once but twice, then turned THIRTY

Whew.

This is just a tiny percentage of the ups, downs, and in betweens of the past 10 years. If you are the one who created the above, good or bad, THANK YOU, I am truly blessed. If you have been a part of any of the above, good or bad, THANK YOU. If you weren't a part of any of the above, THANK YOU, because you're reading this now and that means you're a part of today. My 2nd Annual 29th Birthday. The first day of the rest of my life.


"Time and Tide wait for no man, but time always stands still for a woman of thirty." - Robert Frost

I'm in shape. Round is a shape.

Back in my day (which was a Wednesday, if I had to guess), I was a pretty active little Suzie. I've played nearly every sport the USA has to offer (minus, of course, those silly Canadian "sports" like hockey and ice dancing - eh?)

It all started with softball (fast pitch, not that wussy-slow-pitch stuff) at the age of 5, then progressed to softball, volleyball, soccer (as goalie for the boys' team), soccer (on the girls' team), basketball, shot put, javelin, high jump and a partridge in a pear tree. And that was BEFORE 7 a.m.

Seriously, at one point in my high school athletic career, I would get to school 2 hours early to practice javelin throwing, go to school all day, go straight from school to softball practice, then straight from softball practice to high jump practice followed by a 2-hour nightcap of club volleyball practice. Suffice to say that I was no couch potato. Unless couch potatoing involved jumping backwards over the couch while successfully juggling a 5 pound bag of potatoes and singing the school's fight song.

All of that background data to lead to the point of this post: In the 12 years since high school, I have gradually morphed from SuperAthlete to Laaaaaaaazy.

When I first started college at LSU, I lived in the dorm furthest from civilization, thus requiring me to walk an average of 17 miles a day just to get back and forth to class. Plus, back then I was still IN MY TEENS, so time was on my side. When others gained the "freshman fifteen", I lost the "walk 17 miles a day twenty-five."

After my 2-year stint in Baton Rouge, I held a few jobs that required tons of action. From hauling 50 lb. mufflers around a 1 acre warehouse, to cleaning what seemed like 652,999 tanning beds a day, my activity level was still pretty high.

About 5 years ago, I returned to school. Although my new campuses at Delgado and UNO were not nearly as expansive as the oneat my previous college, I still spent my days hauling around a 30 lb. backpack up and down stairs, back and forth to my car, to and from work, etc. Plus I played volleyball at Coconut Beach 1 or 2 days a week. And I was in my TWENTIES, so time was still reluctantly on my side.

After graduating with my bachelor's degree in (who cares, I'm not doing anything with it anyway) in December 2008, I made a concious decision to do NOTHING. I didn't plan on being permanently sedentary, but if I wanted to come home from my job (where I sit all day) and transfer to my comfy velveteen sofa (and sit some more), then you better believe that's what I was gonna do. And I did. Often.

That was over a year ago. Now I'm pushing THIRTY. Time is not on my side. In fact, time likes to laugh at the way I look in tight jeans. Time stole my high metabolism and pawned it for fifty bucks. Time is a big meanie.

So I had a brilliant idea. Sign up for a 4 week fitness boot camp. HAHA! Time will surely laugh at that too. I start on Monday. Upcoming progress updates should be a hoot.

Optimism says I'll feel great and be full of energy and my blog posts will be full of ponies, skittles and sunshine.

Realism says I hope my fingers won't be too sore to type.

Story of my life

Sometimes Every 5 minutes I have to remind myself that I FINISHED COLLEGE. I also have to remind myself that Stew is probably getting a wee bit tired of waking me from my recurring school nightmare and assuring me that THERE IS NO BETTER GRADE THAN AN A.



To which I reply, "A+." Which is what they would have printed on my bachelor's degree if I had any say in it.