blossoms and celebrations
whenever May rolls around, i tend to get real contemplative. it’s when the weather warms up, and nature comes alive again. the landscape around me turns from dreary shades of mud, to vibrant greens and other pops of color. and… it’s my birthday month.
there’s a lot of people who don’t give their birthday much thought, and i respect that a lot. in a strange way, i wish i was the same way. i’ve always felt slightly juvenile about celebrating my birthday—maybe it’s just the way people treated me during impressionable points in my life, i don’t know—but it is significant to me. for a long time, i couldn’t envision a future for myself. as a teenager, i couldn’t imagine life in my 20s, let alone reach my 30s. it was incomprehensible to me.
and yet, here i am. so, every year that i am alive is worth celebrating to me. this year, it was particularly special. my boyfriend visited me for a week, and it was one of the happiest weeks in my damn life.
the weather couldn’t have been more perfect, and thank goodness for that. normally, Upper Midwestern springs tend to be unpredictable and fickle. sometimes we don’t get much of a spring, and go straight from winter to summer. it’s miserable! but we had a week of delightful, breezy 60-70F/16-21C days, with lots of pleasant sunshine. lots of trees still had their pink blossoms out, to my delight.
we spent a lot of time walking around outside, visiting local parks and other fun sights, and enjoying some quiet downtime together at our airbnb. i ate an irresponsible amount of croissants because there was a delicious bakery right down the street. it was great. no regrets.
for my birthday, we went to a cat cafe!! when they heard it was my birthday, they gave me a cup of kitty treats to hand out to the cats, so i got to make friends with all the kitties. hehehe…
and i got ice cream in a waffle cone as a special Tulip treat. it was salted caramel flavored with chunks of cashew and fudge. Meringue the Skitty approved.
we also made time to stop by Free Geek to look at computers and other interesting objects. there was a beautiful sage iMac G3 for $80!! Damien was sooooo heartbroken that he couldn’t take it home. i personally think the sage color variant is quite lovely and underrated; the seaglass color is so pleasant. (i literally wrote a whole post about my opinions on the iMac G3 color range lmao.)
i had a lot of fun dragging my boyfriend to the Mall of America and Can Can Wonderland. i’ve been to the MoA a lot, so i always forget how it’s kind of ridiculous until i take someone else there for their first time… there’s a Nickelodeon theme park in the middle of the mall, with rollercoasters and a ferris wheel and everything, lmfao. we met up with my good friend Adeline a few times to hang out, look at arcade games and pinball, etc. many good times were had together.
honestly, though… what’s sticking with me the most are all the quiet moments we shared together. whether that was sitting together on the couch, or laying down in the grass on a breezy spring day. and in those moments, i kept thinking the same thing, over and over
a happy future is possible
