Eating That Elephant

I had an interesting 40th birthday.   I’ve gotten asked a lot, “Are you going to do [did you do] anything special for your birthday?”

Really, it started yesterday, when I got a fabulous new haircut, and we went out for sushi and a free dessert.  That was pretty special (especially given the price of each!)

But today is my actual birthday.  First, I went walking with a friend at 5:30 in the morning (5 am wake-up time).  We walked about 8 km (1 hour 40 minutes) in preparation for the Bolder Boulder in a few days.  Most people think I’m nuts to get up so early, much less on my birthday.  It felt great though – I had a sense of adventure, of pushing the limits, and a sense of focusing entirely on myself – the same reasons I’m walking the Bolder Boulder; mainly just because I’ve never done it before.  Special to me, perhaps, though masochistic to the rest of the world.

After getting home, I worked for a while on our radio show.  Again – this was work, but it felt great.  I was doing something purposeful.  Making a difference.

Then an odd thing happened; our area was hit by hurricanes.  Unusual, scary.  It didn’t come very close to us but friends had damage and some damage was severe….our local paper has a Photo Gallery.

Later, friends came over to plan for the Bolder Boulder.  It was chaos, but I tend to thrive in chaos.  It was fun.   A couple of them stayed for dinner and we pulled out leftover cake from the freezer (thank goodness that is no longer calling my name!)I did get to play the birthday card a couple times; hubby ran an errand for us, picked up dinner, and cleaned up the kitchen.

But no, I didn’t do anything “special” for my birthday.  It seems for some reason we view birthdays as either a day that we get to take care of ourselves (as if this should be different than other days), and/or a day that should be different, or unusual.  However, I loved my birthday for the opposite reasons – because it made me value that I do have it pretty darn good already.  Despite tornados.