Why Thirty and Dirty Rhyme

August 6, 2009

I thought it’d be easy finding a book to take with me to Cancun. Josh and I went to Barnes & Noble to pick one out for ourselves and low-and-behold, Blank Page Haley strikes again! I tend to stick with the classics as I really enjoyed reading many of the works of William Shakespeare, the book “Madame Bovary”, and what I thought was the entire series of “Sherlock Holmes” stories which I found out after visiting the bookstore – I’d read only half. I then purchased the 2nd volume and am sitting here on the beach in Cancun… writing.

Please don’t get me wrong – I *love* Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and everything of his I’ve ever read, but as I find myself half-naked in 85+ degree weather, I also find myself immensely uninterested in a know-it-all Englishman and his closet gay accomplice running about London solving murder mysteries. P.S. don’t act like you didn’t know Watson was gay for Holmes.

No, I find myself yet again wanting what someone else has. Josh got the complete 5-book series of “Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy” and I’m bitterly jealous. He’s aware and has offered to give me that book as he reads another book he brought, but I’m pretty sure if I accepted I’d be in candidacy for the worst girlfriend of the year award as his birthday is in two days from now. Okay well technically my birthday is today but when a good book is concerned – all bets are off.

How am I handling my birthday this year you ask? Miserably. This is my 30th birthday and I’ve already had two meltdowns today which is absurd since I’m in Cancun, in a gorgeous 5-star resort that’s all inclusive which covers all the alcohol I can drink… what the Hell? What’s wrong with me?

As you can tell, so far 30 is treating me well. I have all of the above going for me, plus I’m here with the man of my dreams and we’re both drinking these fantastic drinks called “caiperinas” (with an accent mark over the n). On top of that, we went to Mercado 28 today and I was able to haggle 2 Mexican wrestlers’ masks down from $70 to $25! I love haggling. I should be as Leonardo said “on top of the world”, instead I just feel more like the movie that quote came from.

I understand that your 30’s are supposed to be your best decade (depending upon who you ask of course) but honestly – are they? I comprehend the logic behind it; you’re established in your career, you’re married, you’re thinking about starting or have started a family, you own your home, you have a nest egg saved up… oh wait, I have none of those things and I’m now 30. Thirty… 30.

It kind of sounded fake when I would say I was 29 before because that’s what people who are lying about their age say they are. But of course, I was 29… still in my twenties… nine. Just – 30, I can’t believe it. Obviously being 30 is better than the alternative of not making it to 30, but damn. I’ve got to stop being a baby about this. On to a couple of morsels of my time here at the resort.

I love the vocal entertainment here. I was just at the bar ordering dos caiperinas con vodka sin rum and explaining that hoy es me cumpleanos y tengo treinta anos (obviously there are a lot of punctuation marks missing here). THE single most generous pour I’ve ever had by the way. Anyhoo, the female vocalist on the stage in the courtyard was singing “Misty” and instructed the audience by way of music to “look at me, I’m as helpless as a kitten on a tree”. Last night we heard “Don’t stop believing” by a band favorite and I quote “Yourney”… awesome.

I’m now going to say something I don’t believe I ever thought I’d say: I think there’s an iguana following me. I’ve named him Fred. I just saw him on one walk way and not 5 minutes has passed and I now see him waltzing up near where we’re sitting at the pool. I know it‘s the same iguana because his tail is in the process of growing back which makes him look quite distinctive. But have you ever had that “hey, I think I have an iguana following me” feeling? Yeah, me too.

There are actually quite a few iguanas here and tons of black spindly looking birds. Out of shear ignorance and laziness, I’m calling them Mexican crows. They fly throughout the outdoor restaurants here and if the food is not covered up – it’s theirs for the taking. I kind of want to see a Mexican crow and an iguana duke it out, is that weird and wrong? I have the 2 masks and everything!

Tomorrow Josh and I are going on our one and only excursion; swimming with whale sharks. Josh has always been interested in stuff like that and says this kind of opportunity is something you can’t put a price on. I will not argue this. What I will say is how incredibly petrified I am to be swimming with the largest fish in the world, over a mile off the mainland out at sea after having seen “Jaws”. I understand they’re large docile creatures who just lumber about the ocean eating plankton. Josh said to just think of them as the “cows of the sea” which made me feel slightly better until I remembered that thing about mad cow disease! Now all I can think about is the headlines when a harmless vegetarian/plankton eating whale shark gums an unsuspecting enormous American woman to death… they won’t know I suspected it.

If this ends up being my last entry – it’s been swell.

I think I’ll miss Fred the most.