The week we got home from Alaska, we had a big milestone to cross… I turned 3-0! Almost immediately I felt the collagen leave my face and started to get what people lovingly call “laugh lines” around my mouth. Also, my body immediately went in to rejecting everything I ate. So now, I live the boring food lifestyle. Vegetables, meat (when I say meat, I mean chicken and beef. No pork… Pork gives me the “oh shit, where’s the bathroom NOW” shits), and cheese. That’s all I now eat. No sugars, no bread, nothing fun. All I want to do is sit down and eat an entire bag of Cadbury Mini Eggs. And not the 10 oz bag. The 31 oz bag.
Also, turning 30 makes me think about death… a lot. I had a two week period where I talked about it a all the time, making Anthony get annoyed with me saying half of my life is over and I’m so close to death. I attribute it to my FOMO. I will miss out on so much once I am dead.
My birthday was on a Sunday so the Saturday before, we celebrated me entering my 4th decade of life, by testing our luck in not dying. Yes, we drove to Muskegon (testing our luck just being in Muskegon) to go to a few breweries and spending the afternoon at Michigan’s Adventure, a Cedar Fair amusement park.
We only made it to two breweries in Muskegon before our thrill seeking adventure.
This was the second week of August. It was a nice mid-80’s Michigan lakeshore day. Since we were still learning breweries, we were a little underwhelmed at the service and the lack of food. We wanted to grab some hipster grub before we headed off to Michigan’s Adventure! All we got were hard pretzels and some wine based spreadable cheese (which we devoured in less than 5 minutes), along with one beer each. Of course, my beer of choice was an IPA and Ant got a light lager. We sat outside in the sun and watched people walk by. Unfortunately, we didn’t stay for a second beer. The people sitting at the table next to us were annoying the hell out of us. They must have just came from a wedding. Two nerdy guys and a girl. They weren’t nerdy like dressed up the stereotypical nerd… They were nerdy like they thought they were cool wearing a JC Penney suit with a bright green button up shirt. . They had spotty facial hair and too much gel in their hair. Definitely like they were trying too hard from their high school days. I’m pretty sure the girl was just a date. Not a girlfriend. Conversations were awkward and painful to listen to. Yes, we are the people that eavesdrop next to you.
We couldn’t have drank our beers faster than we did. We had to get away from those people for our own sanity. We went up to the bar to ask for a sticker. The bartender seemed confused and had to ask two other people if they had stickers… but eventually we got our first Michigan brewery sticker. This is a big deal, because we still had 1,345,048 to go.
We walked about 2 blocks down the street from Pigeon Hill to try out Unruly Brewing. The cool thing about old broken down towns that are coming back to life are their use of old buildings. This brewery was on the first floor of an old building that was split up in to three or four different small business. There was a brewery, coffee shop, pizza place, and something else. This building was hipster central. Total opposite of Anthony and I. The bartenders were wearing the ever so fashionable neon green t-shirts that had some clever saying on it. I wish I could remember the saying, but I do remember chuckling. My beer was a very floral IPA… Ant the lightest lager… Still no food, we could have gotten the pizza from the place in this building. It looked delicious to me, but Ant being the picky eater he is, said nothing looked good… So we were still waiting to eat some food…. We grabbed sticker #2 in Michigan and headed our way to Michigan’s Adventure.
I haven’t been to Michigan’s Adventure since I was a kid. At least half of my life ago. All I really remember about that place was that Shivering Timbers (the longest wooden coaster in the world? idk) was a big deal and the ride Chaos was shut down/removed because it fell apart while people were on it. Anthony has never been to Michigan’s Adventure. He grew up in Chicagoland and didn’t venture up the beautiful Lake Michigan coastline, further than Holland (the city, not the country).
Anthony loves roller coasters, but can not handle spinny rides or carnival rides. Me? I’m the ultimate thrill seeker when it comes to amusement parks. I like fast rides, spinny rides, roller coasters, ones that drop… You can call me a controlled thrill seeker. I am not that exciting when it comes to things that are not controlled… like bungee jumping or sky diving. NOPE
We walk in to Michigan’s Adventure and i’m feeling a little buzzed from the two whole beers I had earlier. So i’m feeling great. We were excited to start riding some rides! I went on many by myself because Anthony refuses to go on spinny rides. I can get him to go on Tilt-A-Whirl, though. That’s the one I always win at because we can make it spin a lot or a little…. of course I always make it spin a lot.
Next, it was time for Anthony to enjoy himself, too. We were in line for Shivering Timbers, just swatting bees away. It was a great day at Michigan’s Adventure we barely had to wait in line for any of the rides. I talked up Shivering Timbers a lot while we were in line. That was the ride to go on when I was younger…. How I have not aged well for this ride… It was bumpy and all I could feel was all of my now looser collagen bouncing all over the place.
After felling myself bounce all of the place, hanger set it as well as the post-buzz headache. We needed to eat since all we ate this day was some hard pretzels and spread cheese. Naturally, we got a piece of over-priced pepperoni pizza and bottled water from a cart. Gone in 1.2 seconds. Well worth the $14?
We only had a list of about 6 rides we wanted to go on at Michigan’s Adventure and we were coming up on the grand daddy of all rides there. Their newest roller coaster, Thunderhawk. It was closing in at 6 pm and we had to hurry because we needed to get home to let our two dogs outside. We got line for Thunderhawk and were shocked… All of our lines were only 10 minutes max… We were being coraled through the carousel like cattle! We probably were in line for at least one hour! I was growing more and more impatient waiting in the sun, by a group of 4 teenage girls. I was so close to giving up on this ride… I had to pee and didn’t think I would make it… We were on the stairs going up to the ride, probably two more trains before we could get on…. THE RIDE FREAKING BROKE! The conductor came on the speaker saying they didn’t know when it would be up and running… FML. We were going to give them 15 minutes before we gave up. The dogs had to go out, you know!? After about 10 minutes, it was up and running and off we go! This was a pretty intense ride. I may have gotten a concussion from it. If you see any typos in here, that’s why.
We drove home like maniacs to let the dogs out. Nothing is worse than having dog pee on your carpet (ok, maybe cat pee), or having to pick up dog poop inside your house. We made it with no accidents! Still hungry as ever we ordered our favorite pizza, Spicy Chicken, from Sara’s Pizza, just down the street from us. Perfect way to end the perfect day of drinking and thrill seeking… Eating good pizza…. (this was before my food switch and realizing my body rejects everything now).
The next morning it was my actual birthday. I was officially 30. Weird. I didn’t feel different, but I was. Anthony was still 29 and he seemed so immature now (j/k dear. love you!). Anthony let me sleep in and he even made some breakfast burritos for brunch. He was too excited to give me my presents for my birthday. I have been telling him I didn’t want anything for my birthday. I never really made a big deal about gifts because I’d rather spend time with people that mean a lot to me and have meaningful experiences rather than spending money just for the idea having to give someone something to show you “care” (oh, gosh! Christmas is a whole another rant… I can not stand the forced gift giving aspect of it!).
Anthony was so excited for the first gift…. It was about 1 ft x 1 ft. I was kind of confused as what it could be… Anthony spent the past year making our WEDDING ALBUM! It was absolutely beautiful and thoughtful. You could tell there was a lot of thought behind what pictures he used, the order the were in, and the layout. Well done sir!
Next he handed me a card with a folded piece of paper on it. It was a card from our pets (2 dogs and 5 cats). Each pet signed their name (aka Ant signing them all with different signatures). I’m a lucky girl to have a husband that loves each pet just as much, if not more than I do. He supports my pet addiction, as I support his, too. Anywhoooo, the folded piece of paper had a hand-drawn flamingo with dates on it… I was slightly confused and he just looked at me with a smirk on his face. I asked if we were going to Florida. Nope. It took me a while to figure it out… Then I got it WE WERE GOING TO VEGAS AND STAYING AT THE FLAMINGO IN TWO WEEKS. Guys! You don’ t get how much I LOVE Vegas! I don’t love Vegas for the gambling… I love it for being able to do what I want (aka drinking as I’m walking down the street) and my hair always looking good from the dry heat.
I had to figure everything out at work for vacation time, and turns out Ant already had it scheduled with HR. He’s perfect. ❤
So, i’m pretty sure something has been missed in me telling you about my craft beer infused exciting 30th birthday weekend… But I know it could be summed up in:
- We have officially started our sticker collection keeping up with it at home.
- My husband loves me… and I love him. He’s the best!
- I was traveling to VEGAS!!!!!!! Time to scrounge up some moolah and relax
So much happened during our visit to Vegas. It deserves it’s own blog.
Married without Kids 