Best Birthday Ever Part 1

I recently celebrated my 35th birthday. Jeez, writing that out just now made me feel really OLD. I'm halfway through my 30's and if you round up, that makes me practically 40! Plus, that puts me in an entirely new age bracket for online surveys. But to make up for that, I went and celebrated my birthday over 2 weekends and enjoyed what has been the most beautiful birthday ever. I'm just gonna photo-blog. Pictures are worth a thousand words, right?

Woke up on my birthday and went out to breakfast with sweet friend KB and ordered a giganto waffle with strawberries and bananas and whip cream and syrup and a side of--yeah, that's right--bacon! It was decadent, breakfast heaven. Welcome home, diabetes!

Then, my dear friend Coke invited me to join her up at a retreat center in Philo to celebrate the big day. She was finishing up with her retreating, and I got to tag along at the tail end for the beauty and wonder of the unmatched Northern California forest. As soon as I got there we went for a walk along a river. It was a warm day, sun shining down, no one in sight, water all jade-sparkly and oh-so-inviting in that late August heat. I pointed to a swirling pool and said, oh, doesn't that look like a nice place to jump into? And then Coke suggested that since it was my birthday, and since I was practically 40, that I ought to take a dip to baptize myself into middle age. I was reluctant, she was persistent, and my god it was a hot day and I'd driven 3 hours to get there! And, well, to make a long story short, baptisms in Philo are undertaken in the bathing suit you were born in, so we dove in, screaming like little girls and, hallelujah, I'm ready for middle age!

That evening she made us the cutest, most delicious mini-burgers I've ever had. They were actually the first mini-burgers I've ever had, but hands-down belly-up oh my-my were they tasty! You don't get birthday dinners made for you like that very often. Ono-licious!

Since Philo is so close to Mendocino and Fort Bragg, I suggested that for the next day, we cross over to the coast and saunter on over to a place called "Glass Beach." It's been one of those places to see on my bucket list. Apparently the place used to be a public dump. People would just drive up to the edge of the sea and dump all their junk and trash into the ocean. Hard to imagine now, but they did! They cleaned up most of the junk but what got left behind was all the glass. Now, decades later, the glass had been worn down into little jewels. I'm sure that all the best pieces have been picked over but it's still beautiful, in its own way.We spent a long time, searching high and low,

until we found the best ones:

And then we left them on a rock for the sea to reclaim them again:On the way back home, we stopped at one of those inconspicuous pullouts on the side of the road. It was a botanical wonderland. Perched high on a cliff overlooking the sea was a beautiful garden of plants. Mother nature herself must have spent a millenia figuring out how to arrange the most beautiful, wind-swept landscape here. Succulents and grasses and teeny tiny flowers, all in bloom--in late August!! I don't think I've ever seen anything as amazing as this. Not in a botanical garden or a magazine or even on the nature channel. It was truly breathtaking.I didn't want to go home. I didn't. No I don't wanna! I think there was whining and a little bit of temper tantrum rising up in the car. The road was so beautiful though:

And my iphone takes groovy pictures. Here is a gem. Coke never lets me willingly take pics of her, but I caught this one. Kind of sums up the spirit of the whole trip. Thank you Coke for a wonderful birthday!To be continued . . .