29 Years Young

My birthday is May 1 and while the year may vary depending on when you ask me, the date will forever remain the same, I’m a May Day baby and I love that. So, after a multitude of birthday posts celebrating my beautiful Melissa, my crazy brother, or several other friends and family (okay, so maybe that last link isn’t a birthday post, but it’s still a super good one celebrating my family matriarch) I thought that after five years of blogging it was about damn time to post a birthday blog celebrating yours truly. Granted one could look at this entire blog as being nothing but a celebration of myself, but regardless, this post here will be a collection of my favorite photos from the past twelve months of my seventh twenty ninth year.

For some of you, there may be a bit of shock and surprise at a few of the photos I’ve chosen to include, but you all know me, I have absolutely no shame or embarrassment and this is my blog, so I can make this as intimate and personal as I wish. A handful of the memories you’re about to experience will feature a couple individuals who truly did define the past year for me and while we all may no longer be friends, it would be a disservice to my past to pretend they didn’t play a tremendous part in making it the incredible year it was.

Now when I decided to do this post, I knew I was going to need some sort of criteria to follow as to avoid it becoming a scattered mess of pictures and stories. I didn’t want to come across as unhinged in my own celebration, so I opted to keep it at just twenty photos and stories. I’ll walk you through May of 2022 to April of 2023 by showing the picture first then providing you with a lil’ writeup about the image you just saw and like I said, this is going to be an authentic take on the past year with no truths held back. So as Céline herself would say: shall we go for it?

So in this photo we have Michael and Jenna, then Garrett and me with Charlie and Maerick in front of us, then Kaell, Melissa, Nancy, Kamber, and Charles before the Cars Land sign in Disney’s California Adventure Park. (Kaell, Maerick, and Charlie and Kamber and Charles children.) Cars Land is probably my favorite land in any Disney Park, it’s perfect in every sense of the word, looking like a true life version of Radiator Springs from the Pixar Cars franchise. Melissa, Nancy, and I went out to Disneyland to celebrate my last twenty ninth birthday and I ubered Garrett down from his university in Los Angeles to spend the weekend with us. We had a phenomenal time all in all minus when Garrett had his meltdown over the number of photos we were taking, but in my defense, I did warn him for weeks that this was going to be a “2,000 pic trip” and true to my word, I hit nearly that number before deleting all the duplicates and unnecessaries. I can never have enough photos or time in a Disney Park and combining the two makes me feel just like Hannah Montana, I get the best of both worlds!

My lifelong friend, Jamie, who I’ve known for over thirty years from our Metro East Montessori School days, took the trip of a lifetime with her niece Claire to South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore. I knew this vacation was going to be simply the best, but my expectations were blown out of the water. Everything was perfect. We met and interacted with so many wonderful people, some of which thought George Bailey (the main character from It’s A Wonderful Life) was a good, upstanding person as Jamie and Claire believe and others who saw him for what he is, a monstrous, “woe-is me” victim who selfishly makes every situation about himself. In fact, of the people we surveyed, half went in each direction and we never found our tie breaker. Despite never getting our tie broken, we did break plenty of scenic boundaries as the views up there are unlike any I’ve ever seen. It was breathtaking in every sense of the word and a trip I would recommend to anyone and everyone. Sioux Falls and Rapid City are two of the most enchanting cities I’ve ever been to. 10/10. Highly Recommend.

So our Britney Spears themed party in July was the toast of the town! That town being Cutesville of course! My post featuring this image amongst plenty of others celebrating the Princess of Pop drove my blog to then unseen heights! I garnered 1,200 views and counting on this post since sharing it in the various Cutesville Facebook groups. It’s success generated a couple of moments in town where people recognized and acknowledged me for my literary work. Those encounters were surreal for me and eye-rolling for Melissa and I’m beyond thankful for the opportunities this hit (me baby one more time) gave me. Of course it was going to be Britney Spears who put me on the pathway to success given that she pretty much defines the very word “success.”

Jessica and I have gone to Six Flags St. Louis every summer since 2017! Usually we have her brother, Max; sister, Mia; and Erin or Lindsey with us, but this year we were just like Will and Jaden Smith, just the two of us. We had the most wonderful day up until the point we didn’t. Catwoman Whip, the improper sounding named ride absolutely destroyed me that afternoon. It was a scorching day with temperatures around 98º and rising and that became my first and last time riding that brand new attraction. It’s a demonic spinning monster that spins you in as many different motions as possible some 180 feet in the air. It was only the second ride in my life that made me sick. (The first being The Simpsons ride at Universal Studios Hollywood.) Following our experience on this monstrosity I had to lie down on a bench for twenty plus minutes before crawling to a restaurant and eating some chicken tenders and fries. It was simply the worst and as a result of Catwoman Whip, I didn’t ride anything else for the rest of the day in fear that I’d be tasting those chicken tenders and fries (and everything else) once more.

My California family dropped by St. Louis for one night only last summer and it was one of the year’s best highlights for me. Getting the experience to show Logan, Garrett, Mark, Danielle, and Gabby (as seen from the left in the photo above) my hometown if even for just one night was such a wonderful time. Granted the night wasn’t as perfect as it looks in this photo. There was a car fire on I-44, which brought traffic to a standstill and delayed us from getting to The Hill by by nearly a hour, which eliminated the time I had planned to take them to that cute Piazza down there. Then at Rigazzi’s they overlooked our reservation and we had to wait almost another hour to get seated. It was a pair of obstacles that could’ve derailed our evening, but everyone was in excellent spirits and we still managed to have the best time together. This trip also thawed the two month freeze between me and Garrett following our Disneyland Debacle from May, so again, good vibes all around.

My other lifelong friend, Lindsey, got married in August and we had the best time celebrating her and Broderick. Lindsey and I have been friends since we were both five years old growing up together in Maryville. The number of memories we share is countless. From playing Flashlight Tag around the neighborhood, to Legos and Nintendo 64 in her parents basement, to the midnight releases of anything Harry Potter, to being there for one another on our wedding days. I feel absolutely blessed to have not one, but two friendships I can boast I’ve had for over three decades! I cannot even wait to see what other memories we’ll make together in all the decades to come!

Lexie, Cody, Jessica, Mia, me, Brewer, Nancy, Erin, Katie, and Melissa went to an escape room put on by Scarefest St. Louis, the haunted house company that operates St. Louis’ three best haunted attractions. The theme of our escape room was Dracula and it was SO HARD! Oh my goodness was it ever difficult! We took this photo after failing to get out of the room in sixty minutes and despite our failure, we had THE BEST time! It took us a good while to get our rhythm, but once we did, we were movin’ and groovin’ like some real bosses, but alas, an hour just wasn’t enough for us to crack the code and save our blood from being drained by the prince of darkness. As if this experience wasn’t frightening enough, poor Cody and Lexie got the window smashed on their car causing as much suspense and commotion in the parking lot afterwards as we had in the escape room.

You’ll notice Precious Gabriel’s (center here) absence from the escape room photo and at the time that was just about unheard of as he and I did nearly everything together. Well, this is because the night before we were set to go to the escape room, he got extremely upset with me because I called him out on a lie. My aggressive approach to that lie resulted in him not speaking to me for nearly a month. I shamed and embarrassed him for his lied about actions and ultimately regretted the way in which I handled the overall situation. When he finally reached back out to me, I knew I needed a sure fire hit to relaunch our friendship, so I took him and Brewer to Dave & Buster’s where we had THE BEST time! It was an absolutely perfect evening that I remember so many precise details from like Brewer having salmon and vegetables for dinner and Gabe eating a pretzel, I don’t remember for shit what I had, but nonetheless, that night was just great. From air hockey to racing to skeeball to the Top Gun flight simulator where we took the photo above, this was for sure September’s highlight night for me.

October first through ninth Nancy, Kamber, Melissa, Charles, and I all went to New England and experienced seven different states across those nine days. Being that Halloween is BY FAR my favorite holiday, this trip in the origins of America was everything I wanted and more. We saw the Headless Horseman in Sleepy Hollow, New York; learned the haunted histories of Yale in New Haven, Connecticut; toured the “summer cottages” of New York’s elite in Newport, Rhode Island; experienced a “living history” museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire; toured the town of Derry – I mean, Bangor, Maine, the home of acclaimed horror author, Stephen King; saw the most picture perfect fall foliage in Burlington, Vermont; walked the spooky streets of Salem, Massachusetts; and experienced all we could in two days in Boston. It was a tour-de-force unlike any other vacation I’d ever been on, but each moment was as magical and memorable as the last and despite the multitude of perfect vacations I’ve been on, this may very well be my all-time favorite. I just loved every single thing about it. I will definitely be going back to New England someday soon, maybe not in the same hectic manner as I did here, but a return is most definitely imminent.

This video was taken at the same “summer cottage” as the photo before it, The Breakers, as the home is known. The air breezed all around Melissa and I, wrapping us up in the slight aromatic scent of salt as we ran across this lush coastal yard. To further enhance your viewing experience, I added mine and Melissa’s song, Tina Turner’s “The Best” to accent the clip.

Following work on this day, I took Megan and Brewer to the Edwardsville police station where they each spoke with an officer regarding their individual situations as I waited patiently. It was a high stress day for everyone, them because of what they each had going on and me because I hated seeing what was happening around them. The three of us met Erin and Gabe for dinner at The Spaghetti Factory and looking at this photo I can hear the waiter make his comment about me and Erin being “mom and dad” then Gabe asking him politely, “do you think their our parents?” The server didn’t miss the mark much though as it was often joked that these three were my kids anyway and this picture literally shows them perfectly. Megan was the oldest, most wise and mature, and just a complete and total vision of sophistication. Gabe was the youngest and most playful, always ensuring his actions drew him plenty of attention. Brewer was the middle child who had to compete within these two extremes, but most definitely had enough wit and humor to hold his own. Even while Megan is the only one of them I remain friends with now, this entire day, including our walk around Wilson Park following dinner will forever live on in my mind where all that joking of us being a family wasn’t so much a joke because like any true family, we were all there for one another when we needed one another most.

This was taken on Christmas Day and features my brother and I with our grandma and all our cousins on the Hlava side minus Alyssa, who wasn’t there this day as she was still in Colorado, but I’ll be leaving May 11 to go celebrate her graduation, so thankfully, I’ll be seeing her soon enough! Cole, who I stayed with in New York is in the center and Katelyn to his right with her brother Ian before her. My brother was trying to describe how to tilt the phone for the picture, which is why his hand is the way it is. Pretty lowkey in comparison to his usual antics, which I cannot wait to highlight in the next couple of days with his annual roundup of screenshots and pictures. They’re every bit as good as any year before.

Jade, Erin, Melissa, Precious Gabriel, Justus, California Melissa, me and Nancy all had the most wonderful day at Disneyland. Like I said, I can never get enough Disney Parks in my life and Disneyland is my favorite of the bunch. Bringing Gabe with us and getting the opportunity to see Disney through the eyes of someone who had never experienced it before was magical and I’m so thankful we had the opportunity. Plus, we stayed at Disney’s Grand Californian Resort and Spa on this trip, which put us as close to the two parks of the Disneyland Resort as one could get and now that I’ve had that taste of proximity, there’s no going back.

My dear mother-in-law, Jane, holding our new cat son, Hawke, or Hockley as Melissa has coined him. He was supposed to just be our foster kitty, but after two days, we knew we wanted to keep him forever. He has been such a wonderful addition to our lives. He’s much different than our last cat, Leo, was. Hockley is quite vocal and loves a good routine. He expects to be fed everyday around 5:30 and if we aren’t giving him his wet food then, he is meowing like one has never heard before. He is the king of cuddles and purrs louder than I’ve ever heard a cat purr before. His addition to our family has been a real blessing and we love him so much. It should be noted Melissa named him Hockley after Caledon Hockley, the villain from Titanic. You see, she had Céline the French Bulldog, who was appropriately named after Céline Dion who obviously performs “My Heart Will Go On” the love theme from Titanic. Then she had Leo, who was named after Leonardo DiCaprio, who played Jack in Titanic, so Hawke’s name fit perfectly into the mold of keeping animal names after one of THE BEST films of all time.

My beloved cuzzi where I spent countless hours over the past seventeen years. I wrote an entire blog about the loss of Our Health Club and Spa and I’m still not over it. I loved that place so much and it hurts so badly – NOT so good – in my heart that its gone. I’ve been going to Leisure World in Collinsville, but I’m not going to lie, in comparison, it’s a real shithole. The list of things I don’t love about Leisure World is vast and we will not get into them here, but it is a constant reminder of how much I miss my old gym, but alas, Our Health Club and Spa is never coming back and that’s a harsh reality I’m stuck dealing with. I’m certain though with a little more time, love, and tenderness I’ll be able to overcome this heartbreak and hopefully embrace my new place.

This night was literally the best! Melissa and I went to (and met at) Trinity Lutheran School in Edwardsville where we were friends with Melissa A (who is now Melissa R and in this photo is seated next to my Melissa, Melissa C). I run into Melissa R’s mom, Darlene, all over the place and she and I do an excellent job of keeping in contact, so she invited us to this Metro East Montessori School music trivia night. I jumped on the chance to help support my old grade school, which is where you’ll remember I met my near and dear friend, Jamie, who I was seen traveling to South Dakota with earlier in this post! We came in first place that night and aside from that awesome victory, it was just terrific getting to spend some time with some old friends who are now part of the Montessori family. It was one of those incredible full circle moments in every sense of the word and a night I’ll hold close in my heart forever.

I fulfilled a lifelong goal of going to the Ralph Lauren flagship store in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. It was just surreal for me being there. You all know how I exclusively wear Polo Ralph Lauren, so being able to descend upon the mothership was just the most incredible feeling and experience for me. This is me enjoying coffee at Ralph’s, the world-renowned coffee shop on the main level of the women’s building. I could’ve sat there all day long, but due to popularity, they limit each table to 45 minutes, which makes sense since so many obviously want the opportunity to be a part of the iconic magic.

The Golden Girls is my all-time favorite television show, so the fact that their pop-up restaurant just so happened to be in New York City while I was there was another dream come true! It goes without saying The Golden Girls is all about friendship, so it was a no-brainer to make sure that my super close friend, Kasey, who is going to school in New York and Sasha, who Kasey and I met in London and Paris back in 2006/07, joined Cole and I. Sophia’s Lasagna was delicious and of course so was the cheesecake and I even treated myself to a drink from the bar, a Devereaux’s Delight, but the real magic was being surrounded by friends and family celebrating a show beloved by billions.

My girl Jessica is pregnant and her baby girl is due at the end of May! I couldn’t be happier for her and I’ll make sure that that lil’ angel never rides Catwoman Whip because I don’t want the poor thing to suffer in the same way I did. I’ll also make sure that when Max and I go to Six Flags this summer, probably without Jessica, which will be super tough, but we’ll manage, I’ll make sure he doesn’t ride it either as it is a day ruiner! It’ll ruin your day! Max is Jessica’s little brother and he’s simply the best! He doesn’t live in the St. Louis area, but I always look forward to seeing him each summer when he comes to visit. Getting the chance to see him at Jessica’s baby shower was an extra special treat because he is every bit as incredible as his big sister, who I should note, hired me at Macy’s back in 2011 and could be argued is the very foundation of so many of my core memories. If I didn’t work for that company my life would be 100% different! So as Kelly Clarkson would say, my life would suck without you!

Lydia, Dylan, and I celebrating Dylan and Leah’s wedding just this past weekend. Let me tell you what, I know I called my time at Macy’s Mission Viejo my Golden Era of Employment, but I could also apply that same statement to my two and a half years at The Men’s Wearhouse. Lydia was literally the best store manager one could ever ask for and Dylan, well, he and I worked together at Dillard’s and then I brought him over to The Men’s Wearhouse, so clearly, he’s a fan favorite as well. The Men’s Wearhouse was such an intimate work environment where everyone felt more like family than just some random coworker. We saw one another so often and experienced so much together in that time, creating some of my favorite workplace memories and not to kill the vibe, but also some of my saddest. We worked together through the first part of the pandemic and while we suffered through the loss of weddings, funerals, school dances, work in general, and everything else The Men’s Wearhouse business model catered to, we experienced the greatest loss of all: our dear sweet Lana’s passing. She was our in-store tailor and one of the most incredible people I’ve ever known. Experiencing so many incredible highs and lows together like we did forges a bond that one really can’t acquire otherwise and I’ll forever cherish my time spent working alongside these two and the incredible memories we still create with one another now that we’ve all have gone our different ways. Dylan and Leah’s wedding reception was one of the most fun I’ve ever been to and I was thankful to be a part of their special day and the reunion that it gave the three of us. Also, I got my hug from Dylan, something I’d been seeking from him since I first met him in 2017, so that alone was worth everything! Some people really do wait a lifetime for a moment like that!

THANK YOU SO MUCH for coming along this journey down memory road with me! It was such a treat perusing through the 7,413 photos I’ve taken since May 1, 2022, but as you can imagine, narrowing those down to just twenty was quite the task, but one that I’m thrilled I chose to do. Please feel free to leave me a comment below as I love reading and responding to them! I’ll return VERY soon with my annual post celebrating my brother’s birthday, so be sure to look out for that come May 2! Until then though, I wish you all, all the best!