Birthday Pictures!

First of all, thanks for all the love!  All the well wishes via facebook, twitter, email, my phone, the mail, blogs, etc. made me feel way less nauseous over turning 30.  And it turns out 30's not so bad, anyway.  ;)

My dear friends came out to celebrate with me at the Lake Chalet last night, and we had lots of fun!  I highly recommend Taco Tuesday.  You get to sit on the water, drink 1/2 price margaritas, and enjoy plentiful $2.50 tacos.  Sweet!

the venue

me and Diana: one of my favorite people in the world

Meagan and Amanda on the lake

me and Doro: almost birthday twins! (she's 8/13, I'm 8/16)

table on the water + tacos + margaritas!

Timmy and Trav: a stand up pair

thank goodness for Cari--no idea what I'd do without her.

(p.s. she is mama to Milo and Jude, regulars on this here blog)

a contemplative Raul surrounded by margaritas

neighbors and friends: Diana and Adam (plus Crouching Claire)

Mani and her handsome lil Mateo

flanked by twins: PJ on the left, AJ on the right

We had a blast, although I wish my faraway friends could have been there as well.  Yay for celebrations and drinks and friends and flowers!

Two more things:

1. Please keep my dad's horrendous beagle, Ignatius, in your thoughts/prayers.  He has a suspicious lump and I am sick with worry.

2. Speaking of pleases, please check out my friend Annie's new blog, Tough Little Cookies.  She's finally started a blog about raising her three hilarious and adorable daughters in San Francisco.  Please remember how it was when you first started blogging and go show her some love!! :)

The Very Last Week of my 20s.

A week from today, I will be 30, and I'm sorta petrified.

I know better than to let the "norms" get to me, but lately, they've started creeping in.  Aren't I supposed to have gotten married by now?  Had a kid?  Bought a house?  Saved some money?  Maybe that last one would have been possible had I not decided to move to the second most expensive city in the country.


The scariest part is that the other day, I remembered a conversation I had with a co-worker at Balboa several years ago, and it felt like yesterday.  We were talking in my office, and I said, "Sometimes I just feel like I want to up and move to Argentina or something!"  He laughed and said, "How old are you?"  I said, "25."  And he said, "Yeah.  You're so young.  That's why you feel that way."

1. OMG how was I just 25 what feels like yesterday?  How on earth have 5 years passed by in the blink of an eye?
2. I still feel that way, sucka.

Here's how I've spent my summer, for the most part:

With some travel, visitors, good exercise, lots of time with Milo and Jude, and puzzling out a relationship thrown in.  Oh, and wasting a decent amount of time playing Tiny Tower.


I'm not a "bucket list" kind of person in the least.  I kinda feel like all of life is an adventure, and I have continuous goals/dreams/etc. that will span out my whole life . . . and they can't be diminished to a checklist of things I want to have accomplished by a certain age.  And yet, somehow, this coming week is shouldering a lot of pressure!  Last week of my 20's!  Anyone want to go to Vegas?

Blogger Book Swap!

(First of all, I want to wish the happiest 50th birthday ever to my sweet little mama!  I wish I were in Georgia today celebrating 50 years with her!)

And now . . . exciting news:  The lovely Lindsay from Undomestic Chica emailed me with a great idea--a Blogger Book Swap!  We all have books lying around that we've read and don't need anymore, so what better way to spread the love than to swap books with another blogging bibliophile?  

If you are interested in participating, here's the rundown:

1. Email Claire (kieferclaire@gmail.com) or Lindsay (undomesticchica@gmail.com) with your name, address, blog url, and reading interests.  Email us by May 30th!

2. We will email you with your partner's info on May 31st.

3. Once you get your partner's info, send her a book or two that you have around your house that you think she might enjoy.  It could be something you've read and loved, or just something you've heard great things about.  All genres are welcome, just try not to send something suuuuper popular (so that you don't end up sending books your partner already has).  Mail your book(s) out by June 4th!

4.  A week or so after the books have been mailed, Lindsay and I will host a little link party and showcase the books people sent/received.  Fun, right?

Please spread the word and put our button on your blog!  We're so excited about this and can't wait to pair you up.  We hope you join us!!

Love Comes in Spurts + My Weekend

On Saturday I convinced my dear friend Anna to take a walk with me from my house in north Oakland to Raleigh's in downtown Berkeley.  There were three incentives: 1) a 5 mile walk, 2) girl time, and 3) the enormous salads and beers at Raleigh's.  It was a gorgeous bay area day and the perfect way to spend a Saturday.  First thing we ordered upon arriving at Raleigh's:

Anna's cider on the left, my Shock Top on the right

and then I hungrily ordered this, aka the best salad I've ever had in my life (well, I've had it a bunch of times, but it's always the best salad):

you can't tell from this picture that it's bigger than my head

We sat outside on the big, sunshiney patio and talked about jobs, dating, travel, etc.  I want to do this every Saturday.  It was perfect.  

On the way home, I remembered that there's something written in the concrete that I love to pass by.  I want to blow it up and frame it and hang it in my home (okay maybe I want to frame a better photo of it):

So true, right?  This little piece of "street art" has me thinking a lot about love . . . and if it truly does "come in spurts," and if we can will it into being, and what it would take to beckon a love spurt.  I am ready!

On Sunday I headed up to Marin to take care of the Freitag boys while their parents were on a mini-getaway for JJ's 40th birthday.  We made this sign for JJ:

and presented it to him, along with the above photo in a frame, upon their return (they went to Cavallo Point Spa, the "lodge at the Golden Gate," for those in the Bay Area who might be seeking an escape). And check out my Judebug eating pizza and watching Finding Nemo:

Ha!  I love that baby so much.

Hope your weekend was just as lovely.  I turned in my grades, but still have a long road ahead of me, preparing for my students' big event Thursday night, and mentally getting ready for babysitting five kiddos on Friday night.  I'll be packin' valium & a bottle of wine. ;)

Wishing I could teleport myself to Texas today

. . . so I could properly celebrate the 27th birthdays of two of my favorite girls, Marianne and Micaela.  Happy happy birthday sweet twinkies!  My life is so much better now that I know you.

It's hard to think back to when I didn't know the Lechuga girls.  I'm so grateful for them!

I think that when God created these darling twins, he thought, "If I'm gonna make someone this beautiful, kind, smart, generous, compassionate, and loving . . . then I might as well make two of them!"

Happiest birthday Micaela & Marianne!

I love you!

Happy Birthday Breesies!

Today is a very special day.  Not only is it the 32nd birthday of my beloved Drew Brees, but it's the 2nd birthday of his first son, Baylen!

happy birthday Brees boys!

Baylen was born on his daddy's 30th bday.  How awesome is that?  (Too bad I've already blown that chance for myself, as my 30th birthday is in 7 months and 1 day.  OMG).  I hope that mama and baby brother Bowen are treating them both like the princes they are.  

from

undeniably adorable

Although, gotta admit, I wish Breesy were celebrating his bday weekend by winning a game tomorrow.  In any case, happy birthday to the sweetest quarterback around (next to Matt Saracen).  And also, happy birthday to my twin friends AJ and PJ, whose big day I'll be celebrating later tonight at this awesome place with a gorgeous view of San Francisco.

Friday I'm in Love . . . with my Bestie!

Summergirl

Today, December 17, 2010, is a very special day.  It is my best friend Tiffany's 30th birthday!  What I would give to be celebrating with her over wine and laughs in some woodsy cabin right about now.  Sadly, for the past 8 years, we've lived across the country from each other. And although I talk to her several times a week, I still miss her all the time!

I wish I had a scanner and could scan some pics of Tiff and me in our incredibly mischievous early teens.  We tore up our high school!  Here are some of the antics we pulled off during our four years at Harrison High School:

• Signed our meanest teacher up for a professional escort service
• Came to school wearing only trench coats in an attempt to woo our Latin teacher
• Put dried pasta in all the vending machines (where you get your change) just so people would be like huh???
• Wrote an expose on a local theater director, accusing him of being sexually inappropriate (he was!), and placed them in bookstores around the town
• Created an email account for the mean teacher and wrote ridiculous messages to students and faculty
• Dressed up as . . . "ladies of the night" and tried to get a job at the Moonlight Spa, just so we could expose them as a secret brothel.  It kinda worked!  (Although at one point we got chased pretty far down dark streets by the angry Chinese proprietor).  Our constant harassment resulted in their installment of video cameras right inside the door.  (And for the record, they did get busted for prostitution not long after we went off to college.  Tiff's mom mailed us the newspaper article!).

Tiff in a tree

We went off to college together at Tulane University in New Orleans, and lived together throughout our four years there.  After college, Tiffany moved to Pittsburgh both for grad school and to be with her beloved, Matt, who was in a Ph.D. program at Carnegie Mellon, and I moved to San Francisco to teach poetry at San Quentin State Prison.  Now, Tiff and Matt are bona fide home owners and parents to the darling baby Aria (human) and to the darling-but-kinda-bad Mia (canine):

the Merriman-Prestons

all of us at Tiff's beautiful wedding (reception)

it was in an art gallery in Atlanta!

Tiffany, me, and our third college roommate, Brenna

at my mama's house in 2005

for Tiff and Matt's Mardi Gras engagement party!

I love you so much, Tiff!  I don't know if I would have made it through all these years without you.  You're all the things I'm not: modest, composed, calm, wise, and totally unselfish.  You're one of my life's greatest blessings.  Happiest 30th birthday!

A very special happy 26th birthday

to my beautiful, sharp, talented, standup, witty, lucky, brilliant, impish, firecracker of a sister, Kate!

my college graduation/her high school graduation

photo by our stepmama, Amy Hutsell Kiefer

 She wrote a children's book!

she drinks old lady cocktails

she had the most beautiful wedding

W. Scott Chester Photography

and she married a pretty terrific guy

(also, she has amazing hair)

they are parents to a very big dog!

photo by my brother-in-law, Andrew Lee

and sometimes on New Years Eve, we are shimmery sisters

this is the Katest of all Kate looks

and this is the second Katest look

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATE!  I love you!

So much birthday love ♥

I swear, my friends know me so well. People have always told me that I'm "easy to buy gifts for" (not that their love & friendship isn't more than enough) . . . and these pictures of some of the wonderful things I got in the mail for my birthday last week prove it!

(Please forgive the iPhone-quality pics. With a broken camera, it's all I got).

From darling Faiza, who most would agree is one of the most delightful people around. She sent a lovely golden scarf, a "party in a box" (so cute!), a babysitting notebook (how thoughtful!), some candy, and a card with an adorable monster on it. I feel so lucky to have gotten to know Faiza--she inspires me to be patient and gracious, and I'm so thankful for that.

Pretty sure that any of you can guess who this is from . . . my sweet girl, Micaela. I don't think I've ever known a better gift-giver; Micaela sent a custom-ordered embroidery of Leo, the constellation of my birth sign, a wire hanging of our favorite word ("adore"), a vintage floral tin (which I love btw) with a pretty doily inside (crocheted by Mama Lechuga), a beautiful black & gold ring with a Leo the lion symbol, a Gypsy candle, and a collection of poems (all along with some school supplies for the first day of school). I am so full of gratitude for this precious gift and this precious girl! What's most amazing about all these sweet presents is that they show how incredibly well she knows me. Micaela and I are so much alike. I love you pretty girl!

close up of Leo ring!

One of a few funny gifts from my little mama. She sent me a weighted hula hoop, hoping that it would help with my terrible back. She included a note reminding me of my championship hula hooping skills as a kid, proven by my victory at a hula hooping contest at the ever-classy Panama City Beach, Florida circa 1988. AWESOME.

My dear friend Heather, whom I've known for years and miss terribly (she lives in Chile now), sent this gorgeous Chilean scarf, some bright red earrings, a beautiful hand-made card, and some candy which isn't pictured because I devoured it immediately upon receipt. I love the bright colors in this scarf and can't wait to wear it! Lucky for me, San Francisco is scarf-weather about 10 months out of the year. :)

Flowers at work on my birthday from my daddy and stepmama! They also sent an gift card which I think I'm gonna put toward a Brazilian blowout . . . yessssss. These flowers made me so happy, since my actual birthday was the dang first day of school.

From another champion gift-giver, my bff Tiffany. Tiff has good reason to know me well, as we've been friends since we were 14. See those earrings? Those are pictures of Anais Nin, one of my very favorite writers, and with whom I am generally captivated. I couldn't love these earrings any more! She also sent supplies for my card-making and a funny little hanging pillow that says Please remove your Jimmy Choos . . . though why on earth would anyone want to remove Jimmy Choos?? Thank you Tiff for these amazing and so very "Claire" gifts!

One of my other best friends, Amy, sent two canisters of cupcake mix from the most delicious cupcake store in southern California. I can't wait to make the red velvet cuppies . . . YUM! I wish I could share them with Amy, cause I miss her so much. :(

My Lane--my other half--sent me this necklace with a note that says "to wear to remember true love." Sometimes Lane and I feel like the only remaining single women on the planet, so we have to remind each other that we're not gonna end up sharing a double room in a nursing home as spinsters 4 life--ha!

Oh, Tim Riggins. How I love you so. Cari and JJ (and Milo and Jude) gave me some fantastic gifts this year, the best of which was this Tim Riggins jersey. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am now the proud owner (wearing it now!) of an authentic RIGGINS #33 jersey, which I might never take off. It makes me feel just a little bit closer to him. And perhaps make me just a little bit more of an obsessive stalker freak. Good thing I don't have his address.

Thank you so much for all the love, gifts, cards, calls, texts, comments, and everything else that made me feel so loved this year on my birthday. Here goes the last year of my 20s . . . hoping for something remarkable!

A Video is Worth a Thousand Words

Check out my favorite happy birthday message so far today, from Milo:

Found.

This weekend was jam-packed, as usual--full of birthdays and celebrations and farmer's market food and cocktails and friends. Friday night we partied it up for my dear friend Doro's 30th birthday at a little speakeasy called The Hideout in San Francisco, where I had Abita beer!! (Abita is a New Orleans beer, which makes me instantly nostalgic). This time, it was a happy nostalgia, because I'll get to drink all the Abita beer I want when I visit New Orleans in October, yay!!!

Yesterday was a typical Bay Area Saturday for me: a trip to the farmer's market (where I got some of the best tomatoes I've ever had), some exercise, and a play written & put on by formerly incarcerated women.

I am lucky to be part of an amazing nonprofit organization that has programming all over the Bay Area for folks who are incarcerated and/or affected by incarceration. One of Community Works' programs is called Rising Voices, which is a reentry program for 18-25 year old women who have just gotten released from jail. Rising Voices provides these women with basic needs, ongoing case management, and a creative arts internship that involves writing and performing their stories of crime, arrest, incarceration, and rehabilitation.

Last night, I saw the final performance of this dynamic show, which was comprised of all the women's original writing and the incredible direction of talented Michelle Maxson. Most of the women in the show had family members in the audience, which made it even more awe-inspiring that they told/performed their stories of drug abuse, prostitution, crime, and incarceration.

I really hope that people who've never had a loved one incarcerated seek out stories such as these. I think that if everyone was exposed to this particular type of art, the world would be full of so much more compassion. It's so easy to judge people without hearing their stories . . . but the love and the truth and the steadfastness that poured forth from these women on Saturday night was pretty incredible.

And today it was back to the East Bay to help my dearest friend Diana (one of the Cobras) move (fortunately for me, she's moving even closer to my neighborhood!), and then over to Helen & Matt's for a pizza cook off! They have a huge garden and an outdoor wood fire oven, so it was a bring-your-own-toppings-we'll-supply-the-dough type of shindig. Here are some pre-oven pics of the ones I made:

(heirloom tomato, fresh mozz, basil)

(pear, ricotta, brie, rosemary, brown butter sauce)

Delish, right? Everyone pounced on them pretty quickly. And sweet Helen even got me a red velvet cupcake--my very favorite--from Berkeley's Love at First Bite, complete with a birthday tiara in early celebration of my 29th birthday tomorrow:

(delicious AND cute)

Hope y'all had equally fun weekends! I wanna hear all about them. And wish me luck tomorrow, cause more importantly than my birthday, it's the first day of school . . . big day!