Here's to the last night of my 30's

Well, we started this journey as a nine month adventure and a way to kiss our 30's goodbye, but as you can see, time chases  you like a Pac Man ghost until it swallows you whole, and then all you've left to show for it is a mediocre score.

Well, Julie has launched into her 40's with grace and style, and I've been rolling around on the floor throwing a tantrum that my 30's are coming to an end, and we accomplished about three things on our baby list.  Now, the mid-life crisis is about to be born, and still, I feel like throwing a tantrum like a big fat baby.

As I sit here on this night, the last night of my 30’s, I feel as though there is something I should be out doing.  Some crazy task that I haven’t yet accomplished yet so that I can say, “On the last night of my 30’s, I did _______”

Well, the reality is that my family is out trying to choose something to give me tomorrow (what do you give someone who is turning 40 anyway?) and I’m sitting here with you typing my thoughts onto a blank piece of electronic paper so that I can once again paste the inner workings of my soul for the universe to see…and not doing anything epic.

While soul searching for what to say, I stumbled upon the idea that if my 30’s were a person, what would I say to it?  Well, hold onto your boot straps, because here it is:

Dear 30’s,

If I was your friend, I would be the worst friend in the history of all friends.  The Hatfields and the McCoys would look like the most kindred spirits in the entire universe compared to the type of friend I was, and for that I apologize.  Instead of embracing you for what you were, quite possibly the best years of my life, I ignored you.  I pretended you were invisible until you were 8-years-old. 

Sure, I thought I was being silly.  I did the trendy tongue-in-cheek thing when you were born and pretended you were never invented.  It was all in fun right?  Stay 29 forever and never lose those years?  As if no one would notice the crow’s feet crevices at the very corner of my eyes, a preview of what’s to come? 

The problem was I did lose those years.  I lost 8 of them as a fraud, only half kidding about not wanting to face them.  I never got the chance to live up to what they should have been.  If you were a human, you would have never spoken to me again.  Now I’m standing at your death bed watching you expire, and I am filled with the regret that I didn’t love you like I should have.

I have a long list of unfinished business.  Things I was supposed to do before you died!  Things I was supposed to share with you!  Now it’s too late, and you will never see any of them.  I’m so sorry 30’s.  You deserved better.

Sincerely,

Your idiot human

And then I sit…staring at the blinking cursor wondering how stupid it was that I actually just wrote that…and at the same time, I feel strangely liberated.  Does that make me a complete crazy person?  Maybe. 

Well, either way, here’s to my 30’s.  I really feel like I could wallow all night about all the things I didn’t get to do, but I’m not going to do it.  Life is an adventure, right?  It’s not like I never did anything in my 30’s.  I ran my first 5k, I did my first zombie walk, had my last baby, saw two of my kids through high school, married Prince Corey, had our first BobCon, did an ice bucket challenge, launched my Damsel in Defense business, saw my oldest turn 21, and I really feel like I got to finally grow into who I am.

You spend your childhood just surviving.  You spend your 20’s trying to get as far away from your childhood as you can and live and work as much and as irrationally as possible.  You spend your 30’s learning from your 20’s and fixing everything you screwed up, and boy, don’t we royally screw up in our 20’s?  Finally, you get to spend your 40’s applying all of that knowledge and hard work.

That list of things I didn't get to do isn't a list of things I didn't get to do!  It’s a list of things I get to do now!!

Here we go!  This decade is going to be the most adventurous yet, and I’m going to embrace every second of it.  TOWANDA!

This isn't the last you've heard from me....

And we paint....again

We're addicted.  Can't deny it, can't hide it, and we might need a 12-step program.

One of the wine and painting companies in Portland is called Wine and Canvas.  They schedule paining classes at different restaurants and you can sip on the beverage of your choice, eat some dinner, and paint a masterpiece.

After our first paining expedition, we decided to do it again.  This time, we went to the Old Spaghetti Factory to paint something called The Bench.  Julie and I met our good friends Summer and Daphne there, and were excited to slap some paint on a canvas!

We started the evening with some food and Carnival Martinis.  If you don't know what those are, I suggest you try one.  Like the headpiece of a Vegas showgirl, two large martini glasses filled with plumes of bright pink cotton candy and cherries were delivered to our table with smaller glasses of martini mix, which we were then instructed to pour over the top of the cotton candy.  It melted into the sweetest martini ever invented.

Then it was time to paint.  The teacher and assistant were fun enough people, and the painting actually

looked like it might be more simple than the one we did before, and we were right.....until the bench.

I'm not sure if it was the martini, slight delirium, or us just not understanding the words coming out of our instructor's mouth, but bench has become a curse word between the four of us who were there that night.  Even the zombies showed up to oogle at our terrible benches.  Songs were made up about them, we grumbled at them, and no matter what we did, none of us were happy with our benches.

Then it came time for the trees.  We all love trees, and it alleviated some of the pressure we felt about making our benches look like benches.  Grumbling turned back into laughter, whining subsided, and jokes about dancing trees took over the dialogue.

Something about painting a tree just seems to make everyone happy and inspired.

Enter the flowers.  How much fun do you think it was to cover our paintings with flowers?  So much fun.  So much that I got so carried away that my painting was almost nothing but a gigantic pile of flowers.  I did think about burring the bench in them, not gonna lie.  There was no shortage of whiny benches jokes.

When all was said and done, I was happy with the entire experience.  Good drinks, good friends, a hilarious group of people, and another masterpiece to hang somewhere in my house.  Even if I do hate the bench, I will always remember that evening every time I look at that cray bench.

All in all, it was a really fun night, and I can't wait to do it again.  Wine and Canvas staff are very professional yet very laid back and realistic at the same time.  They were happy to give help suggestions as well as praised our paintings even if they looked like a third grader painted them.


For more information about Wine and Canvas, you can find them on the web at wineandcanvas.com

Trust me, you're gonna love it.

It begins at Paint Night

As my birthday approached, the list of things we needed to accomplish before we turned 40 grew.   At the same time, my super awesome friend Bree booked a top secret birthday thing for me and invited Julie to come along.

Little did I know it was one of the things on the top of our list-Paint Night.

As we sat in front of our blank canvasses wondering how on Earth we were going to duplicate the painting at the front of the room, we were handed aprons and brushes.

Then the painting fun began.  The instructor was fabulous at taking us step by step through our painting experience, explaining why we were doing what we were doing, and how it was going to work in our painting.

There were a lot of laughs as we all fumbled our way through the steps, but even if we ended up with something that looked like it was painted by a second grader, we were going to love it.

For Julie and I, it was our first experience with paint, which is why going to a Paint Night event was on our baby list.  We don't expect to become master artists, but to have a few pieces of art that we created that symbolize our adventure is priceless.

The silly comments people made as they got to know each other a little bit from the other side of the canvas were hilarious.  The guy on the other side of my canvas was hysterical.

As our paintings began to take shape, we all branched off from the instructions just a little bit on our own as we got more comfortable with a brush in our hands.

Not one person freaked out that they hated the work they were doing.  The instructor wandered the room between each step looking at paintings, answering questions, and helping with technique.  As you can see from my masterpiece, I needed as much help as I could get.

Then we stood before our finished pieces, both impressed with ourselves, and slightly addicted to painting.

One of the best parts of the night was wandering around and looking at everyone else's works of art.  Some were exactly like the instructor's painting, and some went so far off the reservation that they were complete original masterpieces.  Some were so advanced that we wondered why they would spend their time at a Paint Night with a bunch of amateurs.  Then I remembered, oh yeah, because it was hilarious.

We not only walked away with a beautiful painting that can hang in our homes and forever remind us of this amazing night, but we got to check something off of the baby list, which made us feel accomplished, and we gained a special kind of confidence.

Now when I look at a painting or a project that I might be interested in doing, I'm not going to hesitate to try.  Thank you so much Paint Night for being the very first thing to get checked off of our mid life crisis baby list,  and thank you Bree, for unknowingly knowing that this was on the list.  I hope that we can revisit this night again!

Paint Night is hosted by restaurants all over Portland.  To learn more and find out what paintings are coming up, you can find them at paintnight.com.

-Sunshine O'Connor