Helloooo 30. Wowza.

I feel I have now mostly recovered from the weekend extravaganza that was my 30th birthday. It was an amazing couple of days, and I feel truly thankful to have celebrated it with such awesome people!

Friday, the actual day of my birth, began with a workout (a good way to start off the next decade of my life, I think!), and was then followed by lunch at Borough Market. If you've never eaten there, definitely do - the best grilled cheese sandwich in the world, and the most decadent ginger fudge, can both be found in that very place. (I didn't actually have any fudge that day, but I did have some lovely ice cream, which the kind shopkeeper gave me for free when I told him it was birthday ice cream. It had been his bday too the week before. So sweet.)

I then headed off to the incredible and amazing Great British Beer Festival!!! I went alone, which was slightly scary, but the idea of several hundred small batch beers being poured in the same venue (and on my birthday!) was far, far too great to resist. And, I have no regrets. It was a tad overwhelming at first to be wandering around alone, but soon enough a conversation was struck up with a random guy who was bugging me about having a little taster of every single tap along the line before actually buying one. (I think I only tried 4 or 5 before I picked one I liked... but really, who's counting? ;) Anyway, I went to hang out with him and his friends for awhile, who ended up being police officers, a fact they were all a little shy about disclosing. Too funny. They eventually headed out, and so I wandered around a bit more until a random Italian dude loudly announced that his name was Guido and then started to tease me about writing down the beers that I was trying. I started chatting to him and the gang he was with, who were all electricians (no stereotypes, huh? Hilarious). After a little while with them, I inadvertently met a cool guy who is also from Canada, and was at the festival as part of a friend's stag party. Even though I had been mentally preparing to head out to meet up with Anna and some other single ladies for birthday drinks in Clapham by that point, I was quite easily convinced to stay for a couple more half pints and ended up being made an honourary member of the stag party. They gave me a sombrero to wear and everything! So much fun. :)

Anyway, I did eventually stumble over to Clapham, where I found Anna and her girls and had more to drink that I really didn't need. We were being hit on by a group of men who, when we asked them, confessed to being married, and then Anna gave them a very stern scolding, which was quite funny. Three of us went to another club after that before arriving home and drunken around 3am. We didn't get to sleep until around 4 after snacking and dancing in the living room... so, given that I never sleep well after I drink, the 8am wakeup was a bit rough! Especially since I had so much to do that day in preparation for the evening's festivities...

Even after the previous evening, Saturday started with a call from Liz that got me out of the house and down to Clapham Common, where she bought me a glass of champagne and gave me a beautiful handmade fascinator. It's heart shaped and sparkly and I love it. :) I then dashed home to try to get ready before my out-of-town guests from Cardiff arrived. We ran a little late getting ourselves out the door, but made it in good time to the venue. And, let me tell you - the costumes were fabulous! The rest of the story can basically be told in images, and you'll see from the various photos in this post how awesome it ended up being. :D

Leading up to my birthday, turning 30 was exciting in a lot of ways, but I still felt apprehensive about it in others. I love the extra confidence that I've achieved with getting older, and that I actually like who I've become. That's a pretty awesome feeling. The body confidence is also super - not perfect, by any means, but it's good enough to get me removing my clothes in front of an audience, and that's pretty freakin' amazing in itself! :) On a related note, I also love that I've embraced weightlifting as my main sport and, as such, the idea that I can be both ridiculously strong and beautiful (which is still quite a taboo thing for women, even in the West).

The major thing that I felt apprehensive about in lieu of my birthday was dating. I hate that I am, in one sense, buying into the stupid freakery that is made of women who are still single in their 30s, and who are told they should be worrying about their biological clock ticking away... . The thing is, I'm really not worried about that. What I am worried about is the number of men who are! I keep meeting guys who are in their mid-30s, but who don't want to date women in the same age range because they figure that, by the time they date... and get married... and then settle into being married... and are finally ready to have kids... she will be too old to conceive. It's just terrible that they would simply disregard a woman who is otherwise wonderful, intelligent, and attractive for that reason. And the thing is that I've met more than one guy with this perspective! It's not entirely uncommon! Thinking about this self-reflexively, I think some of my apprehension comes from already scaring guys off with a combination of factors that include the PhD, unusual hobbies, being Pagan, and burlesque dancing. Add age as a scare-factor to that... and, well, that made me feel pretty un-date-able. How lame. ("Thanks, Western society, for socialising some men to be complete wankers!") Anyway, now that the big day has finally come and gone, I feel okay with it. Clearly, I wouldn't want to be with a guy like that anyhow. :P And ending up an "old maid" is not a scary future for me, and I'm not going to choose to be with the wrong person to avoid it. I am really happy, and I feel quite whole as I am on my own; if I meet the right guy to complement that, then I'll go along with that awesomeness. I'm not looking for my other "half", but another healthy whole that complements mine and makes me even happier, and I'd want to be the same for them. In the meantime, I'm going to keep being my fabulously single self - having fun, doing what I love, and surrounding myself with great people. It's that simple. :)

The first 30 years of my life have been many things: fun, loving, traumatic, chaotic, inspiring, and, well, often just plain ol' difficult. Formative years are difficult, though. And I'd like to think that I'm kind of done finding myself; that was something I did through my 20s. I now feel like I'm creating myself. I know what my goals are, and what I want in this life to be happy, and that's pretty freakin' amazing. I guess there's one last thing to say: bring on the next 30! I'm ready!