Milestone Birthdays

Age is just an abstract number, it has always felt like that to me. But some numbers carry more weight than others, for whatever reason we choose. I have to say that some early (supposedly) "big" milestones didn't particularly click with me in terms of the "woah!" factor. 18 was cool because of the watch my parents gave me (and which I still wear today) hidden in side a huge Simba stuffed animal - puppet. But since I still had a year left of high school there was no "growing up and moving away" feeling attached to it (although I was staying behind in Mexico to live with friends and finish high school while my family moved to Florida - because there was no French school there). 21 might have been a bigger deal had I been living in the US and the whole legal drinking age thing... But being in Spain meant I had been out partying and drinking legally for several years so no big deal! 😛

The first age that came associated with a fun number for me was 25. A quarter century!!! 😎 I was home from Belgium for a month or so, and celebrated my 25th birthday for a full week (minus one day)! I still remember being excited on the Monday to receive a package from the US with a birthday present from my cousin Candice. Then Tuesday night my university gang got together for a double birthday dinner before the other celebrant headed off with his family to Galicia to escape the summer heat. Nothing on the Wednesday. Thursday night I had a small celebration with my girlfriends from the university dorms. Friday night I threw a big party at home, taking advantage that my parents were away and so we wouldn't bother them. I don't remember if we did it up in the apartment itself or down in the gardens / bbq area (probably the latter), but I do remember I had to stop my friend Miguel from adding tequila to the sangría (which already had wine, rum and vodka as befits any Spanish "student" sangría 😛). Saturday - my actual birthday that year - we celebrated en famille at a nice restaurant (parents back and sister still at home). And finally Sunday some family friends came over to have cake and wish me a happy birthday! As you can tell I still have very fond memories of that birthday, even though they get fuzzier with each passing year...

The next big one was 30. Once again, completely unintentionally, it became an extended celebration - this time over a month!!! 🥳 I was still living in Belgium and just went home to Alicante for about a week / ten days. First celebration was shortly after I arrived, with my grandparents in the holiday seniors home they were staying in in the town of Bejís in Castellón. Then of course on the day itself at home with family & friends. And then a lovely dinner at home back in Liège with two of my closest friends when I got back. But for me the special thing I had actually planned was celebrating it a week later in Boston with Julia, my best friend from high school (she was doing her residency there), whose birthday was just 10 days after mine. I still remember us going to a nice restaurant near the Boston Aquarium (which we had just visited), and ordering cocktails to start and laughing when the waitress asked for our IDs and then looked all flummoxed when se saw our ages! 🤣🤣🤣 And then the big surprise!!! When I got back to Belgium my friends had organised a surprise party for me at home! 😍🥳 At it turned out to be just one month after the first celebration so - 30 days celebrating 30!!!

When it came time for 40 I decided this time I need to plan something: 40 days of 40! 😎 But not straightaway like 30, more spread out during my entire 40th year. Basically I turned 40 into an excuse to do a lot of fun (and sometimes expensive) things that year! 🤣 It started right on my birthday in Alicante (finally living back home), with a barbecue down in the gardens (with my dad in charge of the food production) that went late into the night with music, drinks and an evening swim in the pool. 🥳 My "baby" sister surprised me the night before (flew in from England), one of my Belgian friends (and her partner) was in town to celebrate with me, all my close Alicante friends where there... good times!!! And then I took off for a "birthday" road trip around Spain. A week with Valérie & Pietro driving from Alicante to Albarracín to Alcalá de Henares (and spots in between), then dropping them off in Madrid airport and heading into town to pick up Cris "brown" (I'm Cris "red") at the train station and heading off for another week of exploring old Castilla, including La Granja de San Ildefonso, Segovia, Pedraza, Sepúlveda, Rueda and Salamanca. Enjoying the amazing food (cochinillo y cordero lechal al horno!!! 😋) & wine and old ruins in cities and towns and kayaking in the Hoces del Duratón with vultures flying overhead. Was all in all a fabulous 2-week road trip and a great start to the 40 days of 40! But then I kind of got sidetracked and never really fully planned out the remaining celebratory days, just - like I said - using the milestone as an excuse to have some fun that year. Starting with the idea of celebrating my 40th while celebrating Star Trek's 50th!!! My first-ever (and to date only, oops) big convention, Destination Star Trek in Birmingham. It was also special because I finally got to meet in-person my online friend Juliette (of the blog Pop Classics - we "met" in the comments of Billie Doux reviews, then transitioned to commenting on each others' blogs and then connected on Facebook). A fellow Trekkie who lived in Birmingham? We had a wonderful time, including participating in getting the Guiness World Record for the most people dressed in Star Trek garb in one place. 🥳 I’m not really sure I did anything else before the final celebratory outing: a weekend in Amsterdam with a couple of girlfriends for the Joshua Tree 30th anniversary! It felt like the perfect event to finish my 40th year, since the concert was the night before I turned 41. 😎

And now it's time for the next big milestone: HALF A CENTURY! 50 is just a number. But a half century is cool! 😎 And this time I've actually been doing some planning ahead of my birthday instead of leaving things to chance or haphazardly planning it during / after the fact. What's the plan? Well you'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out! My trip down memory lane and birthday musings have gone on far longer than I expected, so it would get kind of lost in here. 

I'll just drop a hint. Tomorrow's post is called "Challenging 50". 😉