36… and I Still Don’t Know What I’m Doing

At my age birthdays are kind of just “eh”, aren’t they? In my true narcissist fashion, I used to LOVE my birthday and count down the minutes until it was required that everyone pay attention to me. The attention was my gift, acutal gifts were the icing on the cake.  It legitimately took me until I turned 32 to realize that no one actually gives a shit. Well, maybe my parents for nostalgic reasons of their own, and potentially my husband because he knows he will have to deal with the wrath until at least my next birthday should I feel that my existence is not properly revered and celebrated on the day of my birth, but everyone else? Ummm, pretty much no.

I’ve “celebrated” my birthday for the last several years by either being hugely pregnant, or so engulfed in life with a tiny baby that I could barely remember my name, much less the ‘ol DOB. And now here I am. I just turned 36. Skating on the edge of mid-30’s and ready to tip over into late 30’s faster than I can say “crow’s feet”…

For my birthday this year, I put aside the swirl of existential mid-life bullshit that consumes my every waking thought, and just partied my not-so-young ass off.

When I saw the words “Taco Battle” on a post my brother and his friend were tossing around on Facebook (yes Facebook, because I’m clearly part of the generation who still thinks it is a legit social media platform in which to participate), I was intrigued. When I saw the date was the weekend of my birthday, I was IN, invitation or not.

So on Friday the 13th, my husband and I wished my mom the best of luck with our two small children for the weekend, loaded up on Starbucks because #treatyoself, and blasted down to Fort Lauderdale to meet my brother and Matt for the Taco Battle. (Please note: I did not know then, nor do I know now, exactly what a Taco Battle is. It should also be noted that I do not care. It was too much fun to be weighed down with labels and specifics.)

Here is what I DO know about the weekend..

Despite our age, we can still drink beer with the best of them.

If you attempt to order a buffalo shrimp taco at an authentic taco place, you will be called Basic. #guilty

Do not put the incorrect destination address in the Uber app, unless you want a drunken tour of unsavory parts of Fort Lauderdale at 2:30 a.m.

My brother and Matt WILL order all of the remaining pizza out of a “by the slice” shop, carry all 100 lbs of it a mile back to the hotel with a huge construction/road hazard sign in tow, dump said pizza face-down on the white marble floor of the hotel lobby, scrape it up into the box, and take it to the room to eat the parts that “didn’t touch the floor”, because apparently it is a little known delicacy called #floorpizza.

I am abnormally adept at bar basketball. And since I was schooling everyone, I continued to play until my calves burned so badly I could barely walk.

Number one rule of darts? Pull your own darts. (I honestly did not know this and stood there like a Bud Light princess waiting for someone to do it for me. This is what happens when you have a husband who just does these things for you and doesn’t tell you that you’re being an asshole.) Thank you Matt for setting me straight.

You can absolutely make dinner reservations at a very nice restaurant at 10:30 p.m. after you’ve been drinking for 36 hours straight. Should you? No. Did we? Yes.

Did my brother wear a beaded taco necklace and a T-Rex tee-shirt into said super nice restaurant? Yes.

Did we somehow end up and get the lovely gentleman at the table next to us (who was obviously on a date) to sing the next line when my brother belted out “FROM THE WINDOWWWW, TO THE WALL….”?  Yes.  Was his date horrified? Absolutely.

Did we laugh uncontrollably? Indeed.

When you wake up hungover, it is best to go straight from coffee to Intracoastal/poolside Froze.  And if you find yourself at the Residence Inn on the Intracoastal in Fort Lauderdale, go to their restaurant and give the front end manager David Allen a hugenormous hug from me because he is one gem of a human being.

Biggest takeaways from the trip? Travel gives you perspective, even if it is somewhere just a few hours away, and laughing, friends, family and floor pizza are basic necessities of life – it doesn’t matter how old you are.

Cheers from this clinging-to-mid-30’s gal!