While taking my birthday/Christmas trip to Florida to celebrate becoming 40, I found the bench I'm going to sit on when I retire.
And this is the view from that bench....
and this is the world's best frozen strawberry marguerita, made by my brother-in-law, which I will have many of while sitting on my bench and looking out over my view. The man is gifted I tell you!
Not a bad retirement plan, in my humble opinion.
So, Florida was the culmination of a year of plans to mark turning 40. I had an amazing holiday in spite of being run down and full of cold. My sister and her husband went to lots of trouble to make sure that I couldn't quite avoid celebrating my birthday entirely. I had cake, krispy kreme donuts by the dozen, presents galore and many, many, many of the aforementioned margueritas. The weather co-operated too and, although it was the coldest winter Florida has seen for a while, my birthday was a spectacularly beautiful day. Even the squirrels in my sister's garden thought so.
They were so obliging about posing for the camera - and so darn cute. I don't care what anyone says about rats with tails. I love them.
Someone who was also darn cute (in all fairness even cuter than the squirrels - sorry guys) but not so keen on posing for the camera was my adorable nephew. At the tender age of two he has developed a fine sense of when to turn his head away. The best photos of him were ones taken when he was engrossed in something else.
As you can no doubt tell, it may have been sunny but it wasn't swimming and sunbathing weather. Little Bean was desperate to jump in to the water and had to be restrained at all times by his long suffering mama. On this particular day he won the battle and ended up cold and wet in the car on the way home - but boy did he have fun first!
The holiday flew by and in no time at all I was at the airport saying goodbye - which I hate. It was a great way to round off my last year in my 30s and a great way to turn 40 - completely painless. Unless you count the tattoo of course, which hurt like the devil for the first five minutes. Whenever I find myself wondering if the whole thing was a dream I can look at the 600 photos I took and at my foot - which now sports a little seahorse type creature. One of my nicest memories is of my little nephew gently tracing the outline of the tattoo because he knew it wasn't supposed to be there. And then he decided to try and scrape it off for me - which makes me laugh every time I think of it.
So, on to this year's goals. Fitness and career satisfaction. Nice and easy then!!
Happy New Year 2010!
