Happy Birthday, Kelly

Is ever so slightly older than before.

Yes, my birthday passed. No I didn't really party it up. I did have dinner the night before with Kim and Vinnie. And yes, I did have brunch the morning after with Lexie, Amanda and Kim at Mill on the River topped off with mimosas and lots and lots of chocolate mousse and birthday cake. It was a really nice time with just the girls. I think we need to do that more often just to catch up and laugh and have fun. It reminds me that I have friends and a life...sometimes.

Mostly it's been a really stressful two weeks of working all day long, and then working on the house all night long only to come home, rinse off the paint, dust and general dirtiness, go to bed and repeat. It's pretty blah. All we do is spend our time at the house fixing something and then when we're just at our apartment finally relaxing Trevor talks about the house some more because of course tomorrow's another day and that means another day's worth of tasks to do and then when I'm with my parents they want updates about the house...and really...I'm over it. There's been way too much time, energy and money spent on this house in the past few weeks and I've been oversaturated. If we don't talk again for 3 weeks about anything house related, paint related, carpet related, furniture related, packing related...I'll be a happy lady. There's more to life than the house; I know there must be.

You can only take so much of one topic before you really want to move on.

Thanksgiving was okay. We spent it as a combined family with my immediate family and Trevor's together having a later turkey day dinner in Willimantic. It was nice to spend it together although I'm so tired I think I would have been grateful for any respite at all from painting and carrying heavy stuff. I think I was most excited about simply wearing normal clothes all day and not being a big bum covered in dust and paint splatter. Also I threw together an appetizer so it was (although stressful) nice to fiddle around in my apartment kitchen one last time. I love that kitchen. I was not asked to bring a dessert this year so I threw together a spinach artichoke dip thing and made phyllo cups out of phyllo dough and my mini cupcake pan. That pan is so handy and I would have never thought it at first because, really how many mini cupcakes can a person consume? But once you realize you can use it to form individually sized anything a world of possibilities opened itself up to me. lol That sounds ridiculously lame, but that's the kind of person I am.

I think it's starting to become a sort of unofficial holiday rule that when it's Thanksgiving we sort of celebrate with some Kelly birthday candles. I think it's really sweet that Liza and Devin remembered and made me an actual cake this year along with the traditional Thanksgiving pie. This year's birthday somehow felt like it totally fell between the cracks. Even though my husband sent roses to the office, and even though I got a spectacular brunch out with the girls (it felt very "Sex and the City" to be sitting around talking at a restaurant mid-day with mimosas in hand while gossiping) this year's birthday kind of felt...not special. Not to say every year needs to be some kind of huge blowout but I guess I just feel a little sad the house came out being more important and ate up all of the time that would have otherwise been spent with my loved ones and husband. I'm not trying to throw some kind of big pity party because I've very blessed with many loved ones who remembered it and I'm lucky to have a home when there are many people who are not quite as fortunate. It's hard to find the words that are neither too whiny nor too lax but I just also wish that things were different, that's all.

Now, back to painting and being covered in dust and splatter.