But it’s time for a change, so I’m moving over to shelikesstripes.com. See you there!

“This is the last time I’ll ever ride my bike to town while I’m 11!”
“I won’t ever eat ice cream as a non-teenager again!”

While I have largely grown out of this annual birthday freaking out, milestone birthdays give me a little shiver all the same. I avoided it entirely on my 25th birthday, because two of my great friends got married the day after, so my birthday was spent running errands and eating meals and celebrating at a rehearsal dinner at which they actually sang to me which was so crazy sweet. I don’t really remember 20, but 21 was a big one, a big one that contained the distractions of everyone other than me being drunk and thus needing care.

But my birthday is coming around again, in a little more than a month and a half, and it has me thinking about the remaining items on my 28 To Do List. (Still achievable: baking cupcakes, spending time outside (and lying in the grass), working toward a rainbow of shoes, and finishing the list of 365 things that make me happy.) So I’m feeling pretty awesome about that, and starting to gather materials to work on the book to document the list.

I’m not sure, though, what to do about a list of things to do while I’m 29. Will that bring on a “holy crap I’m turning 30 and what have I done with my life” birthday freakout? Will it give me 29 reasons to FIGHT the birthday freakout that is so damn cliched that it annoys me to even think about it? Am I totally jumping the gun seeing as how I’m not even 29 yet? Does the fact that my boyfriend’s birthday is a few days before mine, and he’s enough years older than me to be hitting his own milestone age mean that my birthday freakouts are even more totally ridiculous?

I don’t know. But I have a few ideas for next year’s list brewing, so maybe I’ll keep at it. Not having a list after two years of having one might give me hives anyway.

Anyway, this is all the lead up to say that last night I made this Three-Bean Super Stew from the Vegetarian Times. It’s a stew with black beans, chickpeas, lentils, a tomato, a bell pepper, and some spices. And it was good! The coriander and cumin combined with the beans made for a really wonderful flavor. My main issue with this was that apparently I can’t read, and I was surprised when this turned out to be soupish/stew-y in texture, and very, very mushy. (But the mushiness, I think, was due to the fact that I overcooked the lentils, which seems to happen every time I cook something with lentils. I am beginning to think that I only like lentils in canned lentil soup.) Also, it’s brownish, mushy texture and color made it completely unphotogenic.

But still! I cooked something new! And I have food for the week!

Any thoughts on what I should try next? People keep telling me to learn how to make tomato sauce from scratch, which I am not feeling a burning need to do, or pizza. Maybe I’ll make homemade pizza. Do you think pizza dough is above my current cooking-knowledge scale? I’m kind of afraid the answer to that will be yes.

At first I was really into the idea of writing a post to sum up the decade. But then I realized that I was a freshman in college when the new millenium started, counting down to 2000 with a bit of hesitance in a living room full of my college friends, clutching a drink I’d only just decided it wasn’t an awful idea to consume, wondering if things really would go haywire, even though I firmly believed there was no way that would happen. The Aughts, as they were, consist of the entirety of my “adult life” so far, me from age 18-28. Would it really be that great to write a list of all that happened since I was 18? I graduated college. I struggled over what to do with my life. I got my first real job. I went to graduate school. I graduated. Someone (or several someones) broke my heart. I broke a few hearts, too. I fell in love. For real. I moved out of my parents’ house. I still struggle over what to do with my life sometimes. I started taking pictures. I overanalyzed things.

Anyway. I suppose what I might be doing is explaining to myself that it’s perfectly acceptable NOT to need to write a summary of everything that happened in the last ten years. But I don’t know, I remember being eight years old as the end of 1989 was approaching, and wondering what the 90s would be like.

As for 2009, it was really good. I went to Cape Cod (twice), to Pittsburgh, and to four beautiful weddings. I moved into a new apartment, even if it was only across the parking lot. I fell in love, and it’s the best thing ever, because for the first time, it’s the real thing. And I’m so happy. I don’t know. As I sit here trying to sum things up, all I can really come up with is the fact that life is pretty good right now. I have bad days, there are things that make me super cranky, and sometimes I wonder if there isn’t something else out there, somewhere. But most of the time, I’m just happy. I’ve got people to love, who love me too, and crafts and photography (and sometimes writing) to keep me busy, and I’m grateful for it. What will 2010 bring? Your guess is as good as mine. But I have a very good feeling about it.

It’s really no secret that I’m kind of in love with beer. (I’m thisclose to finishing my 52 Beers project, in fact.) So adding an item about visiting local breweries when I wrote my 28 to do list seemed a bit obvious. But for all of my love of beer, there are several really good breweries in the general area, and I have never been to ANY of them. I don’t know why. It’s silly. So! This past weekend, when Pete said he wanted to celebrate his birthday at Defiant Brewing Company in Pearl River, New York, you better believe I was in. (Okay fine, I would have been in to celebrate Pete’s birthday, brewery or not, but the brewery was like an added bonus. Especially given how much I like to check things off of lists!)

Anyway! My friends have been frequenting this brewery for a while, because the beer is good, the prices make your jaw drop, and the atmosphere is awesome. It was pretty crowded when we showed up around 10pm on a Friday night, but after an hour or two, it calmed down to the perfect type of bar vibe: there’s a place to sit, the beer is awesome, and you can hear each other talk. (I never claimed to be one of the cool kids!)

I’ve been to breweries before, but Defiant had way more beers to choose from than I expected. I tried the Prohibition Pilsner (light for your non-dark-beer-loving pals, but not so light that a real beer lover won’t be happy) and one of the lagers, the Muddy Creek Lager, which I really enjoyed. The beer was really good. And for every three you drink, the fourth is free. Free! And they’re only $3.25 to start with! Honestly. It’s probably good that I don’t live closer.

It was a lot of fun, and not just because of the beer. I can’t wait to go back. Even if my clothes reeked of hops and yeast and barley something AWFUL after we left. (But don’t consider this item checked off! Triumph, I’m looking at you!)

Before I write any more, though, I have to say that my Very First Apartment was a good one. I learned to love it, and even though the astronomical cost of heating it was a big part of what made me leave, I feel a need to remind myself that my first apartment was not a dump, it was a perfectly wonderful place to live, and it was noteworthy if only because it was just that – my first place. But! Despite the fact that I only moved across the parking lot, into another apartment in the very same building, Apartment the Second is kind of shockingly nicer than the first one. It’s the little things like the lack of water damage, or the missing funny smell in the kitchen, or the fact that the doors shut properly, or the fake-swanky “marble” countertop in the bathroom, or the not-completely-ugly linoleum floors in the kitchen and bathroom, or the simple notion that the doorknobs have been replaced in the last ten years. Being on the second floor is infinitely better than the first floor, and the balcony doesn’t even face a whole bunch of other balconies. I might even use it!

But it’s more than all of that – (and I promise that I know how zen/new-agey this sounds) the feeling in this apartment, the vibe, it’s just more. There’s more light, and air, and I don’t know how to describe it, because the layout is almost entirely the same, but it feels different, better, prettier, homier.

On Saturday I had more people helping me than I could have ever asked for, and I’m BEYOND grateful to each of them for every single thing they carried, put away, every curtain rod they hung up. It was amazing. The next day I just couldn’t believe (a) how much was done in literally less than TWO HOURS, (b) how many things made it from one apartment across the parking lot and up the stairs into the second apartment without touching my hands once, and (c) how much – dare I say it? – FUN it was. Despite the whole drenched-in-sweat part. And the fact that someone moved into the apartment above my old one the same afternoon as I moved out. It just meant a lot to me that so many of the people I care about were able to just be there.

Ugh, it’s too gushy even for me. But it’s all TRUE. Dan kept telling me after it was all over that I just looked HAPPY. And he’s right. I made the right call.