Thirtieth birthday – Check. And now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I can go back to being 29. Here’s what I’ve decided: There is nothing wrong with the number 30 or the age. I’m not upset that I’m 30. I don’t long for younger days or miss the glory of my youth. No no, there are parts of years past that I’ve learned from, and I’m glad they happened, but I don’t know that I’d call them glorious by any means. It’s just that I guess I’ve always had in my mind a picture of what the life of a 30 year old looks like, and that is not my life, so until it is my life, I can’t possibly be 30. It’s just not natural.

Whitney and I had this conversation the other day:
Me: From now on, whenever people ask me how old I am, I’m just going to tell them how old I feel in that moment.
Whitney: Buddy, what’s wrong with your actual age?
Me: Nothing. I just feel like it’s not accurate.
Whitney: That’s the most ridiculous thing ever.

Really, buddy? Ever? Ever? Need I remind you of Joey Deadweight, “Trained to Avoid the Bulge,” The Glaze, The Daze, The Laze, poop cupcakes, Zimmerman Limmermacht, God Is Not a Temp, and whatever this was about? And those are just the things we’ve come up with. That is not counting Weng Weng, The Best Fight Scene Ever or Ain’t No Weather Man. I mean come on. Let’s keep things in perspective.

But seriously, “30 on 40″ was awesome good times. I got to see lots of my favorite people, who gave me really great gifts. Brookie and I performed our traditional reunion jumping dance. I got out of my house for a few days, which is always good for me. I didn’t make out with anyone, but there was plenty of cake. All in all, I’d call it a successful beginning to a new decade.

And just like that, my 20s are over. Man, what an awesome decade. I’m going to try to do a recap of all my 20s birthdays and hit the highlights of some of the incredible things I’ve had the opportunity to do in the last ten years. I’m old, though, so I might not remember all of it, but I’ll give it my best.

20

My 20th birthday was also known as “Princess Day.” In college, we started calling all of our birthdays Princess Day, and we’d wear tiaras and sashes and be treated like princesses. So I think that year, my friend Rachel made like she was going to take me to dinner at Chili’s, but then when we got there, we were “hijacked” in the parking lot by Becky and Faith and taken somewhere else instead (Applebee’s maybe – Chili’s was just too crowded for our large party). And then after dinner, they took me roller skating. You remember that, right, Laura Jenny?

Other than that, 20 was not a very remarkable year, although I think it was the year I did that deviance project for my sociology class – the one where I dressed up like some kind of cracked out super pirate (of the ECU pirates) and ran around downtown handing out candy and doing body builder muscle poses in the elevator of that apartment building.

It was also the year that I met my friend Andy, with whom I shared the most horrific moving adventure ever. Amazingly, we are still friends.

21

By my 21st birthday, my parents had moved from WILKESBORO!!!!! to New Bern, which was only about an hour’s drive from ECU, so my mom came to town for that one, and she and all my friends and I went out to eat at Red Lobster (then one of my favorite places on earth), where I was COVERED in toilet paper by the semi-psychotic waiter who was responsible for celebrating the birthdays. He dressed up like the Gorton’s Fisherman, covered the birthday girl or boy in an entire roll of toilet paper and sang birthday songs through a megaphone – songs like, “Who’s got a birthday? Who? Who? Who? Who?” which was, of course, an adaptation of the Baha Men’s “Who Let the Dogs Out?”

That year was also the year I decided not to work at Caswell again, regretted it, and was down there every chance I got. That was the year of 9-11, and just a few months after 9-11, I decided to leave the country for the first time and go on a mission trip to Honduras. I don’t think anybody saw that decision coming. I had several friends who’d gone to Kenya (while I was not working at Caswell), and when they came back, they all came to me individually and told me I needed to go overseas, and y’all are not going to believe me, but my response to all of them was, “Nope. I’m fine right here with my indoor plumbing and my familiar foods. I’m not going anywhere. I’ma stay right here in the U.S. of A.”

And then one very normal day, I was sitting in the computer lab in the psyc building at ECU, and plain as day, as though someone were standing right over my shoulder, I heard, “Go to Honduras.” I stopped, my whole body stiffened, and (almost out loud, but not because I didn’t want everyone to think I was crazy, so just in my mind) I replied, “Come again?” And the voice said, “You heard me.” And just like that, my world travels began, but not until…

22

I have no idea what I did on my 22nd birthday. I remember that being sort of a rough time. It was my last semester in college, and there was just a lot going on. I’m sure it was celebrated. I just don’t remember how. But to continue the story started just a moment ago, that was the year I left the country for the first time. It was also the year I decided what I wanted to be when I grew up. It’s sort of a long story that I’ll share with you in person if you want to know, but by the time I got back from Honduras, I knew I wanted to pursue ESL as a career, and by Christmas of that year, I’d been accepted to NYU’s graduate program. And THAT is a day I’ll never forget. I’d gone home for lunch and checked the mail on my way back out to work. When I opened the envelope and saw the word “Congratulations,” I almost drove off the road. I just couldn’t believe it. And then I started calling everyone I knew to tell them about it. It was a good day.

23

I’m not sure how we celebrated 23 either. I was living in Winterville with my sister and hanging out with Collice and Hilary a lot, so they might have all been involved in the celebration. I just don’t remember what we did.

Anyhoe, that year, I left the country for the second time, had my wisdom teeth removed, moved to New York City, drank alcohol for the first time and got my nose pierced.

24

In grad school, I got involved with the Navigators, a campus ministry similar to InterVarsity, with which I was involved in undergrad. A week or two before I turned 24, the Navigators went on a weekend retreat/conference in upstate NY, and I just had the best time ever. For my birthday, I asked to go to Winter Conference again, and we sort of did have a little mini version of it, which was really nice. And then we sang karaoke. But my clearest memory from that night was Mike and Sonja dragging me, running, through the streets of NYC yelling, “IT’S HER BIRTHDAY!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY BETH!! BIRTHDAY GIRL COMING THROUGH!!” So fun.

That year, I:

• started blogging
• left the country for the third time to backpack Europe and study Spanish in Spain (see any entry from late June-early August 2004)
• resolved not to move back to NC
• decided to move back to NC
• spent New Year’s in San Francisco
• moved back to NC

25

For my 25th birthday, Laura Jenny (aka Marieke, aka Partner) and Jason Jones took me to Bojangles. Then we went back to Jason’s house, where they had a cake for me, and Jason made very strong margaritas, and we all decided it would be better to watch a few episodes of Knight Rider before driving home.

Starting that year and continuing for the next few, we had a lot of fun making the dirtydish. There’s not much activity there any more, but I was and still am very grateful for what it did for my writing. It gave me an outlet and the confidence I needed to put my stuff out there for a new audience to read. Thanks, ddo.

And we’ll just hurry things along by saying I’ve left the country at least once a year since that first time. When I was 25, H(P)M and I went to Paris. That was also the year Emily Furr Hogan and I spent New Year’s in Times Square, which was SO fun.

26

No idea. I didn’t even blog about it. I probably went to Chili’s. This might have been the year I had bangs, so it’s possible that I blocked it out. However, this was definitely the year I flew to London to stay with Ann and surprise DLF for New Year’s. Oh what fun we had!!

27

My life in Raleigh by this point had reached a level of autopilot where I was almost curled up in the back napping. I knew I needed some sort of adventure, so just before I turned 27, I signed up for my first Avon Walk. It helped. It also got me to the gym, where the Cutie Von Hottenstein encounters began, which culminated in the weirdest party I’ve ever been to in my life. I also went vegan that year, and oh, that was the year of the most awful semester of my life. I won’t force myself to think about that right now, though.

Gasp!! I don’t think I left the country that year. Did I? If I did, I don’t know where I went. I think I was too busy. Oh my gosh. I need to take two trips this year to make up for it.

I think for my birthday that year, I was supposed to go on a luxurious mountain road trip retreat with some friends, but I became deathly ill and was laid up in bed all weekend. I definitely went to Chili’s, though.And wait, was this the year I had that awesome surprise party, or was that mystery 26? Either way, there was one year when my sweet Brookie, even though she was in the middle of working on her national board certification (which she passed on the first try thank you very much), conspired with Whitney and all them hoes to throw me a surprise party that I almost didn’t go to! Whitney, however, being the genius that she is, got me to go, and it was awesome. Whenever it was.

28

By 28, I’d met Lauren (Josh), whose birthday is the day before mine – HAPPY BIRTHDAY YESTERDAY, BUDDY!!!! – and that was the year we had the photo scavenger hunt party and the Teen Girl Squad cupcakes. This was also the year wherein:

• Brookie moved to Wilmington and got married
• I moved in with Josh and Josh
• I didn’t think I would survive the summer
• I had a boyfriend
• Whitney and I went to Mexico for H(P)M’s wedding
• I became an indentured servant of Wake Tech
• The Rack Pack walked DC

29

We’re almost done!! Last year’s birthday was lots of fun. We went to Bald Head Island for the weekend, played Wii, rode bikes, lounged around and hung out on the beach. It was a much needed get-away for everyone, and nobody wanted to leave and come back home. We powered through, though, and it went on to be a most momentous year. I completed my indentured servitude, moved to Italy for three months, almost moved to Oregon, and moved to Asheville instead.

I’ve traveled well over 13,000 miles in the past year, visited two new countries (Hungary and Austria) and a few old ones, and now, I’m getting ready to head out on what I’m calling my “30 on 40 Roadtrip.” It’s where I turn 30, having three parties in three cities on I-40. And I’m sorry for the rushed ending, but if I don’t get in the shower, pack and leave very soon, I will actually miss my second party – the one in Raleigh tonight.

But one thing before I leave. If my post yesterday made it sound at all like I am disappointed with where my life has gone, that is not the case. I meant to say that high school senior Beth just could not have imagined all of this – all the travel, adventure, friendships, food, passions, love, opportunities and general awesomeness I’ve had the incredible pleasure of experiencing. I can only hope that my 30s out-do my 20s.

HAPPY BETHDAY!!!!!!!!

Tomorrow is the last day of my 20s. OH MY GOSH. It’s just so weird. I don’t feel 30. I still feel 23. If you were to ask high school senior Beth where she thought she’d be at 30, you would get an answer that in no way resembles my current life. If you asked her where she thought she’d be at 23, this is a lot more like it. Although she’d still probably tell you she’d have a husband and a full-time job.

I also just feel like there’s so much left to do – not in a never-ending to-do list sort of way, but more like a bucket list. The world is just so big. Life is just so expansive, and I want to fill it up, and I know that in 30 more years, it’ll start to feel like time is speeding up and running out, but right now, I still feel like it’s all out in front of me. Just like I did at 23.

So you know what? Bring it on, 30. I still get carded, no one believes me when I tell them how old I am, and the only signs I’m aging are my careful driving and inability to remember any of the sketch comedy bits I’ve ever come up with. They’ll come back to me some day, though, and then I’ll take my shot at writing for SNL. If you remember or know of or had a hand in creating any of them, could you leave a comment with a hint of some sort?

Thanks.

I babysat all day today, and while they are cool kids, they wear me out when I have them together because I feel more like a referee than anything else. Within the first five minutes, and then every two minutes thereafter, it’s, “Beth, can you tell her to…” or “Beth, can’t you make her stop…” or “Beth, she won’t let me…” blah blah blah. And I honestly wonder why they even bother playing together when it’s so argumentative and tense. I just think it can’t be fun for them, and I wonder why they don’t realize that it could be so much more fun if they’d only cooperate better. If they’d just get over wanting to have their way all the time and holding on to it so tightly and taking it so personally when they don’t get it, play time would be a lot more playful.

And then I realized that when fun things suck, that’s almost always the reason, even as adults. I’m not even really talking about competition. I think competition can be good. It pushes us to be better. I’m talking about how we create unnecessary competitions in our minds that don’t exist and can, therefore, never be won. Somehow we just always feel like we’re losing.

My friend Andrea sent me a link to another gal’s blog post about blogging and jealousy among women, and it was right on the money. She talked about how our fear breeds insecurity, and we start thinking other bloggers/women are better than we are, and then we want to be like them, and then we are just more dissatisfied with ourselves when we don’t become them completely, and somewhere along the way, we lose who we are, and that, friends, is just tragic.

Those other bloggers – they already exist in the world. We’ve already got one of them. We need one of you.

Blogging started out for me as a fun creative outlet. I wanted to write, but it had never occurred to me to try to sell my work anywhere because no one had ever suggested to me that I might be good enough at it to do so. I just knew I had a lot of words and thoughts, and I thought it was cool that I could put them on the internet. Behold: My First Real Post. It’s filled with inside jokes and randomness, some of which I don’t even understand, but by golly, I had a lot of fun writing it.

And then everybody started blogging. Then we realized what huge potential it had – what huge potential we had. And then it became a competition to see who could get the coolest layout, the most comments, the most hits each month, the most paid ads. And then it sucked.

It wasn’t an actual competition, mind you. No one else said to me, “I get more visitors to MY blog than you do! Neener neener neeeeeenerrrr!” or, “Hey, let’s see who can make the most money off of blog ads.” No. This is all in my mind, making me feel insufficient for no reason at all.

But after my day of babysitting, reading the blogging and jealousy post, and all my recent conversations with Andrea, I’ve come to one conclusion: I don’t care what the marketing experts say; I am my audience.

I might not have anything of any value to offer to anyone in the blogosphere. I can’t tell you how to make a zillion dollars as a blogger or get a thousand comments per post. I don’t have any exciting new ideas or products to sell. I know so little about web design and html code, it’s shameful. I have no idea who reads my blog or what they want, and I don’t know how to meet their needs. I don’t have any control over other people’s blogs or blogging success, and really, it doesn’t matter if I only make $6 a year from my advertising.

All I know is who I am, and if I know that I need other people’s presence, influence, wisdom and humor online, then I can be pretty sure that someone needs mine. So look out, internet! Things can only get more ridiculous.

I was going to just type all my thoughts while watching Lost and then publish them, but then I realized that the whole post could be summed up in two entries:

1. WHAT?!?!?!
2. LAPIDUS!!!!

The end.

This live blogging thing isn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I thought it would require faster typing. Huh. Maybe I’ll try it again some other time.

So. A while back, like some time before I left for Italy, I signed up to advertise with Project Wonderful, and so far, I think I might be able to take one other person out for a soda with the money I’ve earned. But they’ll have to drive because I wouldn’t be able to afford the gas. Don’t get me wrong – I’m having a lot of fun with it, and the Project Wonderful people are, indeed, wonderful. It just hasn’t been all that lucrative for me. It has, however, been entertaining.

I’m not exactly sure how advertisers find me or decide that they’d like to place an ad here on Onward Hoe!, but most of them have clearly never read anything I’ve ever written. I don’t mind, though. I consider it part of the whimsy I’ve got going here. You never know what you’re going to get. I could be talking about water-skiing squirrels or ripping off Paula Abdul lyrics. I could be gushing about people I love or linking you to ridiculous internet videos. I could be advertising for funky jewelry on Etsy or for weird sci-fi gaming websites.

But tonight friends, tonight I’m advertising for the NRA and some ultra-conservative, right wing women’s group that wants lower taxes. And I’m doing it because they don’t know that I’m a quasi-vegan, who has gay friends and works very happily to improve the lives of immigrants regardless of their legal status. With their tax money. They don’t know that’s who I am, and it amuses me to no end that they are paying me (on top of what their tax dollars pay me to teach illegal immigrants English) to host their ad on my site in the middle of the night when the only people who are going to see it are the spammers in the Middle East.

Maybe I’m selling out here. I don’t know. But maybe one day, three or four years from now, when I’ve finally got enough money earned to withdraw some (there’s a $10 minimum), one of you will get to go out with me for sodas AND fries because of it. Eyes on the prize, people. You are not what you advertise. You are why you advertise. I do it for y’all. And for the future hope of deep-fried potato sticks.

I was reminded of these little films on Monday at my writing group, and then I was telling Rae about them later – particularly #11, Bluebirds in Spring. But they’re all still so good (well maybe not #5 – it’s not my favorite). If you haven’t seen them in a while, do revisit them. If you’ve never seen them, then ladies and gentlemen, I present to you…

MUFFIN FILMS!!

Every few months, I get to feeling antsy and what’s-the-point-ish about my blog. Why bother? It’s not like I’m saying anything life-changing or earth-shattering, after all. But then I remember that I just really like doing it, and that some things that happen are just too good to keep to myself. For example, I went to this thing tonight. It was a Christian singles thing, and I honestly didn’t know what it was going to be exactly, but it turns out it was very much like a church service. Except sort of bizarre and depressing. As Christian singles events, sadly, often are.

Only one person spoke to me the entire night, and he did so because he thought I was someone else. Then he asked me to fill out an info sheet so they could get me on the mailing list. Um…no, thanks.

Also, the guy who spoke came out with some odd things, including, but in absolutely no way limited to:

“If you sneeze before breakfast on Sunday, there’s gonna be a death in the family by sundown.”

And my personal favorite:

“Have you had your cornbread and milk cleaned out on the INside?”

Believe me, even in context, these statements would not make much more sense than they do standing alone. I will probably not return to this biweekly event. But these are the kinds of things I like to just put out there – for your affirmation of my sanity, to make you laugh, to give you a short break at work, etc.

And once I realize that I’m not going to just throw in the towel, well that’s when I usually decide a design revamping is in order. Never mind me, though. I’ll just be shifting things around and changing colors, and MAYBE we’ll even come up with some logos for y’all to vote on! How exciting would that be?!

Stay tuned.

It’s always a pleasure to catch up with either of my Joshes, but last night, Whitney-Josh had THE most amazing story for me. Ever. And let me just say that you know a story is going to be good when someone like Whitney kicks it off by saying, “So I was watching the Tyra show…” because people like Whitney do not just watch Tyra – not unless they are too ill to change the channel, or maybe if they happen to be passing by the channel just as Tyra says something like, “I like to cook with condiments at the table.” Really, Tyra? Cook? I’m sorry, but I thought that required some sort of heating implement. Is she planning on using the candles at the table? Or perhaps the bald head of the man eating the Vindaloo at the next table? No, no. She had no such plan, and I’m so glad that Josh was also intrigued enough to stop flipping channels and hear Tyra out because, y’all. It is incredible, and by “incredible,” I mean literally incredible. Unbelievable. Too weird for words.

So Tyra tells her audience she’s going to show them how to make fried chicken using things you might find on the table of a restaurant. And she whips the lid off of a platter to reveal several pieces of fried chicken, and she says, “We’re going to make fried chicken” (this is important). Now I don’t know about y’all, but my first thought was, Ok, she’s going to use the salt, pepper, olive oil maybe, red pepper flakes and oregano if she’s really stretching, and maybe some bread crumbs to season and prepare chicken. And then she’ll fry it. But that is where I was OH SO WRONG.

Tyra then tells the viewers that she’s going to use an ingredient that’s old. It’s really old, she says, like a hundred million trillion bazillion years old, like as old as food itself, like the dinosaurs ate it. Ok I don’t know if she said all of that, but I know she said it was old. She then opens it up to the audience to guess what this mega-uber-old ingredient is (my guess: salt), and one girl raises her hand and says, “Um, is it, like, soup?”

“No!” Tyra says, “It’s not soup. What’s your name?”

“Angelica!”

“Come on down here, Angelica!”

And now we have two idiots onstage.

So the first step, Tyra says, in making fried chicken at your table is to take a piece of bread from the bread basket. And everyone in the audience magically had a piece of bread under their seats! So the whole audience is pulling out bags of bread to make fried chicken along with Tyra.

Is it starting to sound really weird yet? Yeah, just wait.

So you take the bread, and you put a lot of butter on it. Just slather it right on there. Butter it up. Then, you’re going to need a little salt, but just a little because the butter’s already salted. And then you need a LOT of pepper. I mean really, a lot. And Tyra is shaking it and shaking it and shaking it onto the buttered, salted bread.

And THEN (and this is the key step, I think, because making fried chicken out of bread is 100% mental and 0% culinary skill), just before you take a bite, you say to yourself, “Fried chicken.”

Seriously. That’s it.

And the whole audience is eating this thing they have just made at their seats that is clearly not fried chicken, and Tyra is chowing down on hers and saying, “Ohmigodyouguys it tastes JUST like fried chicken!” while the audience – both in the studio and at home – is thinking, There is no way in this world or any other, or on any planet or in any parallel or fictional universe that that tastes anything like anything resembling fried chicken in ANY way.

Perhaps I am too harsh, though, having not tried it. But most likely not.

Honestly, by the time I get around to talking about the boat show, no one is going to care (if there’s anyone even now who cares). But I still haven’t found the cord, and SOMEbody still hasn’t sent me The Picture, so today, I have two topics I’d like to discuss.

First of all, I FINALLY went to see Up in the Air last weekend in Raleigh, and y’all, I loved it. There were some present who found it depressing and nightmarish because it’s all about a guy with no friends who fires people for a living. But I saw it more as a wake-up call to people who don’t have any real relationships in their lives, people whose lives are all about reaching bizarre, pointless and/or silly goals like flying 10,000,000 miles, and people who are stuck in jobs they don’t really care for because it’s safer than pursuing what they love. Life is too short, man. You gotta make it count. Do go and see it if you haven’t already.

And second, I have these weird little dry patches all over my arms. They’re each maybe half an inch in diameter, some of them are reddish, and some are kind of scaly, but they don’t itch or hurt at all. At first, when there was only one, I thought maybe it was due to the drier air up in the mountains (the skin on my hands was really dry at the time, too, which happens to me in the winter), but now there are lots of them, and it’s weirding me out. I think I have leprosy. What do you think?