Wasn’t I Just 22 Yesterday? (A Birthday Meme)

Yes, today is my 32nd birthday, and I swear I’m having all these weird, funky feelings about it. One of which happens to be that I feel like the past decade has slipped through my fingers.

Before I get into that, I’d like to share with you some pics of zoo animals enjoying their birthday cakes, courtesy of HuffPo:

Gee, one who doesn’t know me might wonder why I focused on zoo animals there for a second… LOL Anyway, back to the meat (haha, “meat”) of this post…

There are many things that plague my brain on certain occasions. Birthdays, holidays, friends and family giving birth, people passing away, nothing really ever happens without my brain taking me on a whirlwind voyage through my own life.

Many times I find these thoughts sad, though there are many times I think about all the things in my life that I’ve done, places I’ve been, and people I’ve had the pleasure to know and it makes me smile. I’ve decided that today, for just one day, I’m going to work really hard at focusing upon those things alone, and try to forget about the fact that I’m getting older and have so many dreams unfulfilled yet.

32 Years, 16 Favorite Memories

Pardon me, but this list is lengthy. I was shooting for 32, but I have birthday events to take part in… :)

1. I once did a bellyflop on a 14 foot alligator who’d escaped her enclosure. The point was to try to stabilize her so the zoo foreman could jump on and bind her jaw, so she wouldn’t snap when we moved her back in. I honestly think she wouldn’t have anyway, as she didn’t really flinch or anything when the 15 of us picked her up and carried her around to the gate. But it was thrilling to me, for about 15 seconds anyway.
2. I’ve been in two movies, neither of which have been released. However because of this, I do have a profile on imdb.com. During one filming, I hung out with Mykelti Williamson (who played “Bubba” in Forrest Gump) and during the other I had conversation over lunch with Anthony Michael Hall and Chris Penn.
3. My first ever music concert was Janet Jackson (Rhythm Nation Tour) but my most memorable was Billy Joel (River of Dreams Tour) where he held my hand during the entire first half of  “She’s Always A Woman”. Later in life, I was told by a very dear friend that he always thought of me when he heard that song, despite my never telling him the story about the concert previously.
4. I was in Civil Air Patrol (CAP) from the time I was 12 until I was 17. My friend Lucas joined because of me, and we took a flying lesson together. It was a Cessna. Was probably one of the coolest feelings ever.
5. I spent 6 weeks in Italy when I was 15 years old, as part of a summer foreign exchange program. For four weeks, I was living with the greatest host family known to man, who took me on a tour of the whole country. The last two weeks was less fun for me, as it was at an “acting camp”, but I totally made the most of it. I was in a mansion in Perugia with 10 partying teenagers who would steal wine from the cellar and drink into the wee hours. An indicator of my “old soul”: They partied while I slept (or tried to), so I could have the morning to myself with tea, toast and marmelade, the sunrise and the wild horses.
6. My first (and only, thus far) trip to Vegas was last October (2008). I went for a blogger conference, and spent the majority of my time there with either my client (who went with me and shared a room) or with my friend/client Darren Rowse and the b5media crew. It was 4 days and wasn’t nearly long enough. The bonus? I came home only $40 in the hole.
7. My first trip on an airplane was when I was 10 years old. My father owned a travel agency, and this was the first of many vacations I got to have as a kid that took me on a plane. We went to California, and the first place I wanted to go (unlike most kids that age) was the San Diego Zoo.
8. I’ve worked closely with over 100 species of exotic animals when I was a zookeeper, many of which are endangered species. Animals that most people don’t even know exist. I know the scientific names for most of these animals, and can tell you precisely what they eat, how they live in the wild, and other information that most would consider entirely useless to my current occupation. Sometimes knowing this stuff is what keeps me alive inside.
9. Jack Hanna (a very famous zoologist – he’s been on the Tonight Show, Good Morning America, and Maury on hundreds of occasions, and had his own show at one point) once called my house after I somehow got in touch with his secretary. I called and they put me right through to her, and she didn’t understand how (I guess they weren’t supposed to do that), but was so impressed that she made sure Mr. Hanna got my phone message. He called on a Sunday morning at 8am, and helped answer questions I had about my Senior Essay for 12th grade English class. He is the reason I was ever a zookeeper, as he told me which school to go to, and how to go about doing it. I told him that if he ever needed an assistant on his voyages to Africa, to give me a ring.
10. It’s a silly memory, and you may have had to be there, but when I was in 4th grade I had a huge crush on a boy named Jason (in fact, I crushed on him well beyond 4th grade). We both got in trouble during lunch for talking because he was making me laugh (which is a trait I’ve forever desired in a man) and we got sent up “to face the curtain” which was on the stage in the cafeteria. I think they used that as a way to embarass us into good behavior, but it didn’t ever really work. He continued to make me laugh, and our teacher made us hold hands walking back to class from lunch, because we’d gotten in trouble. I remember both of us pretending not to enjoy it, however upon turning the corners on our way back to class, he’d then pull me closer and give me a kiss on the cheek. Every. Corner. Was so damned cute.  I wonder about him a lot.
11. I’ve had a lot of really great first kisses. Every girl has these chick-flick ideas of a great first kiss, and I’ve had some that really were chick-flick quality. Sure, there have been some really awful ones (that in fact, never got better even with 2nd or 3rd or 10th kisses if I ever let them get that far) but I can’t help but blush and smile and get the warm fuzzies when I think of a few key first kisses that literally made my knees buckle.
12. One Spring Break during zoo school, I spent 3 days at the National Zoo in D.C. with a gorilla named Mopi. All my friends were in Mexico or something, and I was hanging out with Mopi. We interacted between an enormously thick piece of glass, but I journaled the entire thing like I would if I were Dian Fossey in the Virunga Mountains. At the end of the trip, one of the primate keepers who had noticed my extended presence took me behind the scenes to an orangutan (I think his name was Willy) and I hand-fed him celery. He would take it and then blow raspberries at me.
13. I fondly remember what I called “Daddy-Daughter Days”. It was usually on a Saturday, because back then Mom was a retail store manager and she often worked those mornings. He’d make me scrambled eggs (with ketchup, which the thought of makes me gag now) and I’d sit in my cardboard-box-playhouse eating them during Saturday morning cartoons. Later in the day, we would go fishing or something cool like that. We’d either head across the street to the creek, or over to a “special fishing spot” we had. One of his favorite pictures of me is when I caught my first fish.
14. A few years ago, my friend Tina and I (with our moms) went to a magazine model search competition. We interviewed at the same time, side by side, with different judges. They chose 7 (there was a mother-daughter team they felt they just had to include, but it was only supposed to be 5 winners) out of hundreds that showed up. I remember sitting in the room while they announced winners, and they got to choosing the last person and we all figured we hadn’t gotten it. The two judges I interviewed with were fighting over who got to announce the next winner, because they were both so excited. I listened as they said, “She’s a volunteer firefighter, a certified zookeeper…” and my eyes widened, my mom and I both teared up, and I finally heard my name. I remember only thinking, “Don’t trip… don’t trip…” on my way up. The next day we had a huge fashion photo shoot, however the issue never made it to print because the magazine sold out to another company that discontinued the model search.
15. I once almost spent the night with Josh Duhamel. (Fergie’s husband now, he played “Danny” on the crime drama “Las Vegas”.) We met at a Make-A-Wish Foundation benefit, and Tina was dating his best friend and then “All My Children” co-star, Cameron Mathison. ‘Nuff said. *blush*
16. When I was in elementary school, I was part of what was then called the “Gifted and Talented Program” (Which has since been demolished because apparently it’s not “PC” to acknowledge smart kids) and we had a kind of science fair. My mission was to build a bridge out of toothpicks, that could withstand 100lbs. of weight. Other kids had a mission to wrap an egg in something and drop it from various heights without the egg breaking, etc. Despite my task having nothing to do with eggs, my mother made me wear a costume, that looked like a fried egg. I was the only kid who showed up in any kind of costume. I think I was a little too young to be truly embarrassed by it, but looking back, it was probably a highlight on a list of embarrassing events in my life. I would’ve won the toothpick bridge contest had I had the guts to put all the weight on it, but I chickened out. Believe it or not, yes, looking back on this memory does in fact make me smile.

I know if I had more time, I could come up with 32, but I figured that half as many would suffice. :) Besides, I’d expect many to be bored reading all that as it is… LOL

Here’s to another year of life, and dammit, this one’s gonna top ‘em all!

Finding Yourself (Again) Through Goal-Setting

(This is an update to an old post I’d written after my breakup at the beginning of summer 2008. When I took all my old posts down to revamp the site, I vowed to revisit everything and use it to create fresh, new content. This post in particular hit me pretty hard, because it was originally written in July 2008, and while I’ve stuck to some things, others need to be revisited, and what better time than when you’re working on resolutions to look over some old goals? So here it is, in all it’s updated glory.)

It’s so hard to remember that you’re a whole person when you’ve come out of a relationship. It’s amazing how much of ourselves we often compromise or set aside because we want to make room for another person and their hopes and desires and wants. No, it’s not always a bad thing to be that way, but when the relationship fails, and we’re on our own again, there’s a lot of… space… that needs refilling.
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