It all started with the shoes. The man wore great shoes. Not your typical upscale LA leather loafers, either. We’re talking fluevogs. I didn’t know at the time that shoes like this even existed. So I did what any self-respecting girl from Jersey would do: I ridiculed him. He didn’t flinch. Rather, he came right back at me.

My heart skipped a few beats.

But I was distracted. I was conducting a lukewarm long-distance thing with a guy from Philly and there was this California boy I had a crush on. Plus my stepmom was dying of cancer. I was certainly not looking to add anything else into the mix.

But like I said – he could take as well as he could dish. It turned out he was also brilliant. And beautiful and athletic and artistic and generous and thoughtful.

And I fell hard. And he fell hard.

Then this whirlwind of a love affair that seemed to be so ill-timed due to death and divorce and age and the whole complicated mess that is life became a relationship and then an exchange of engagement rings and then there was cake and dancing and a honeymoon on Vancouver Island.

It’s been nearly 10 years and I am still having a great love affair that causes my heart to race and my eyes to light up. I still think Scott’s the cat’s pajamas, the person everyone really should meet. He’s the one I’m eager to come home to, the man I always long to sneak away with.

These are gifts I never anticipated I’d be celebrating when I turned 30. And yet here I am.

So thank you, love, for being my co-conspirator in this amazing tale of romance. For being willing to tell the same transformative story with me over and over again. Maybe we can slip away to the Mediterranean this weekend – just the two of us – where we can laugh late into the night and go shopping for Spanish shoes…

If my mother was to say I was born in the dirt, my father might be likely to say I was born on the stage. I’ve performed in Shakespeare and Brecht, Wilder and Moliere, Jones and Inge.

My dad, who’s been teaching theatre at the same university for almost as long as I am old, first started including me in his productions when I was barely five. I went on to perform in my high school productions and a little in college, but outside of “the platform,” as they say in the professional speaking world, my last curtain call occurred three years ago when my dad needed a pinch hitter for Tartuffe and I was available.

(In Godspell when I was 16.)

Theatre is easy to celebrate because it’s almost always centered around some kind of story and humans love story. More to the point, I love story. It’s also easy to celebrate because it’s like music and painting – it’s art and everyone loves art in some form or another.

I’m celebrating my own history of theatre these first 30 years, however, because it has helped me understand my own identity and my own story. For example, I vividly remember the day a college director pushed me and pushed me in a role to get angry. I’d never allowed myself to feel so angry or express it so openly. Suffice it to say I never had trouble after that; the experience of playing someone else opened me up to a whole new part of myself.

Theatre has done something else important in my life. It has helped me understand the maleability of my own identity and my own story. In other words, through acting I began to see that how I show up in the world is, to some degree, no different than trying on different characters. Jung called it “persona” and it comes in pretty handy when embarking on new adventures in life.

So today I bow down to Dionysus for the joy and revelry and truth-telling that occurs on a stage. And I give thanks to all the muses who have helped me identify, create and re-create the person I am and the life I live.

A year or so ago my husband and I met up for dinner with my brother Sean and his wife, Andrea. After waiting briefly to be seated, the maitre d’ turned toward Sean and said, “Mr. Gleeson, your table is ready.” I almost spit out my gin and tonic.

That’s because Sean cannot be Mr. Gleeson. He’s the kid I had to bathe with after he puked on the back of my head. The kid I used to fight with for control of the remote. The kid who convinced me to eschew New Kids on the Block, who tricked me into telling Andy that I like him and who tortured me endlessly when I shaved my head. This person, quite simply, cannot be Mister Gleeson.

But, of course, he is.

(While camping, no doubt.)

Sean was born a year and half before me and was my best friend until the time came when all older brothers stop being best friends to their little sisters. I was probably about eight. Even when Sean became a cranky adolescent (and may I state for the record that “cranky” is an understatement?), he was older brother enough to merit a certain level of hero worship. Part of that just comes with the territory. But most of it is because he is one of the smartest, funniest and most generous people I know.

(In 2009)

Today, though, I’m skipping Sean’s great qualities.

I’m celebrating him because we share two parents, the same frizzy hair and an affinity for power tools. Because up to this point in my life, there is no one with whom I have shared more of the same experiences, which means he represents continuity to me and steadfastness.

I suppose a part of me will always be making mud pies on the front steps and trying to get the mean kid in the neighborhood to eat poison berries. The part that  built forts in the living room and switched back and forth between my parents’ houses. And that part of me will always have a best friend. Because I have Sean.

I’m a quitter. Over the last 30 years, I’ve quit a lot of things – races, jobs, friendships, foods, styles, boyfriends, plans, books, family members, businesses, teams.

Rarely, in all the times that I can remember, have I actually followed through with a decision to quit something and later come to regret it. I understand that this runs counter to traditional axioms about quitting. After all, outside of smoking, quitting = failure, no?

No.

That’s because I’m not talking about the quit-because-I’m-terrified or quit-because-I-might-succeed or quit-because-I-might-fail or quit-because-I’m-afraid-of-conflict scenario. That’s something else entirely. I’m talking about the times I’ve (responsibly) quit because it authentically reflects who I am. In these situations, quitting has proven to be a necessary way of staying true to myself, following through with my passions and interests, protecting me from toxic people and situations, making myself available for bigger and better experiences.

At the end of the day, this kind of quitting has brought me to life.

(A 1995 look I quit.)

So today I celebrate all the times I said yes. And then said no. All the times I moved forward because I thought it was something I wanted and then allowed myself to move away when I realized it wasn’t. I’ve given myself a lot of practice these first thirty years and I imagine I’ll have to do less quitting over the next thirty as a result. On the other hand, if at first I get something all wrong, at least I’ll be able to draw on all of this experience I have and just up and -

Always one to go out of his way, Chris (26 at the time) decided to take me shopping in New York City for my 16th birthday. I had been to New York several times growing up to see shows, but never to shop. Even for a pseudo-tomboy like me, this sounded dreamy.

If I remember correctly, when the big day came we drove into the city (a treat in and of itself) and spent the morning walking around SoHo where we found a hip outdoor market happening. After purchasing a very short, very tight, very cute black and white dress, we ate lunch and sat on a park bench people-watching.

And then came one of those moments.

Sitting on a sunny New York street,  I became aware, for the very first time, that this world – this WHOLE world – was available to me. I could see myself going to college in a big city and traveling the world. I could imagine the interesting people I would meet and the diversity of food I might try.

So much of this is because of Chris. In his early 20s, he was traveling to Moscow and Tokyo and London on business. He went to Carnival in Rio De Janeiro and trekked through Southeast Asia. And he took his little sister to the big city and regaled her (I am sure) with tales of his travels. In other words, Chris never let the world seem small to him which made it seem accessible to me.

(At the Grand Canyon in 1999.)

As I look back at my decision to go to college in California or I remember eating a conch pistol in the Bahamas or I take note of my immediate plans to travel to Africa for the first time, I must say a prayer of thanks for Chris. For he not only introduced me to Thai food and hot sauce and Russian nesting dolls; somewhere along the way, he taught me how to introduce myself to the world.

How different my life would be without that!

My mother has been known to say that I was born in the dirt. By which she means I was camping by the time I was six months old.

That’s tent camping, for those of you who do the RV thing.

Many of my childhood memories involve firewood, dirt, sleeping bags, bikes and fighting with my brother for the front seat as we drove around the country looking for places to set up camp. We’d do this for two weeks straight with my dad every summer and periodically with my mom. By the time I was a freshman in college, the only Christmas gift I really wanted was a tent. And when my husband and I were planning to move from California to Pennsylvania, we loaded the sleeping bags, tent and camping box into the back of the car for a month of travel.

Over the years, I’ve camped:

• In the sweltering heat of Death Valley
• On the god-forsaken Outer Banks
• At the edge of the Grand Canyon
• On a dewy Lexington, Kentucky horse farm
• Under giant redwood trees in Big Sur
• Amid the canyon walls of Zion National Park
• In the torrential downpours of West Virginia

As a kid, I camped because my parents camped. By the time I was 18, I started to camp because it made me feel better. Because it blurred my distinction between the material and immaterial worlds. Because I could satisfy the evolutionary part of me that just wants to scavenge.

In the end, though, I think camping draws out the perfect alchemy of child and adult in me. I love how responsible I feel when I camp. I also love that camping has enabled me to stay connected to the kid who’s forever on the hunt for arrowheads and snakes and is fairly certain that squirrels are looking for human friends and that fires are made out of magic.

Now who’s ready to celebrate with a s’mores?

I am one cat shy, one husband too many and 15 years too young to be a crazy cat lady, but should the situation change and in 15 years I find myself widowed and still childless, I will undoubtedly stock up on cats.

The cats I grew up with were Paprika (a calico) and Dots (a stripped tabby). Both of these little ladies went around the block a few times, so our home was frequently blessed with kittens in boxes and sock drawers.  Alas, Paprika was run over by a cop in town when I was still in elementary school and I discovered Dots, curled up in the corner and cold, one afternoon in the 7th grade.

These days, my husband, Scott, and I are proud caretakers of Malcolm (aka Crazy) and Niko (aka Cow Cat). There could not be a 30-day series of celebrations without including them.

(Niko and Malcolm)

I adore these cats. Really. I’m just this side of obsessed with my unusually tall feline friends. But for the life of me I can’t quite figure out why. Sure, they’re damn cute. And they purr. And the imagination runs rampant with anthropomorphization. But they also cause my allergies to flare up, destroy furniture, act rather entitled and can be difficult to communicate with.

So I hunted around briefly for an explanation, thinking perhaps some researcher had written the final word on the appeal of these furry critters. No such luck, but the Pets for the Elderly Foundation did have this to say about pet ownership:

Pets offer affection, unconditional love, fight loneliness, and can help ease the loss of a loved one.

Somehow this doesn’t quite measure up for me. I’m 99% certain that my cats’ love is far from unconditional. I’m not even sure you could call it love. Mostly, I think we’re all pretending.

I won’t be home when I reach the big three-oh so I won’t be able to force the cats to celebrate with me. But that’s okay. I’ll be celebrating them, and all the love and imagination they somehow draw forth from me, making me an undoubtedly more generous person.

And because this is what people who are obsessed with their pets do, I’ll also probably be imagining that they’re trying to figure out how to operate the webcam so they can dial up Marrakesh and meow me a rendition of Happy Birthday. You know, what with their unconditional love and all.

After leaving my grandmother’s funeral yesterday, I mostly wanted to curl up on the couch with a bottle of vino and watch Law & Order reruns. But since I don’t have cable – and therefore no 24/7 access to the series – my husband was able to convince me to hit up the gym.

My experience with sport began like it does for all kids – with trying to walk. And then run. And then by the time I was five, I was signed up for the town’s soccer team (read: running in frightened herds adjacent to the ball). Like most people who’ve played soccer for over 10 years, I have a respectable level of athleticism. I can move through a beautiful vinyasa (my apologies to those who insist that yoga is not sport); I can throw the occasional spiral; I can take down my husband in a game of racquetball; and I can hike in and out of the Grand Canyon in one day.

In looking back over the years at the benefit of sport in my life, I keep circling around variations on the same theme: I feel comfortable in my body. By which I mean I understand how my body moves, what it needs, what it’s like to move powerfully through space, what it’s like to take up space.

I may not have done much at the gym yesterday – what with my mood and a nagging pain in my right ankle. But it doesn’t matter. I’ve got 25 years of athleticism behind me, reminding me to keep breathing deeply, to square my shoulders toward the direction in which I want the ball to go and, mostly, to experience the fullness of being a powerful physical presence in this world.

This post is actually a celebration of ALL my college roommates: Stacy, Varonica, Ingrid, Sarah and Robyn. (And you, too, Jake, because you were like a half roommate.) Without them, I would still be a royal pain in the ass to live with.

Robyn was my first chosen roommate in college. We got an apartment together our sophomore year and promptly set up house, by which I mean we repainted yard sale furniture and slid the ski ball machine against the south-facing wall. While we ditched the arcade games after year one, we continued to live together through the first half of my senior year, at which point the Rubsters graduated early.

(Robyn and Me, 1999)

To have spent time with Robyn and me in college would have been to overindulge in homemade salsa, laugh more than a little too loudly and address questions about the meaning of life and art.

But this longstanding friendship that so closely bore witness to the evolution from adolescent to adult might best be glimpsed in a recent facebook exchange. I posted a photo to which Robyn commented that it reminded her of one of our apartments.

I responded, “Yeah, but I’m nicer now.”

She followed up with, “Well, I say what I mean now.”

I am not sure who I would be without my college roommates. I am certainly not sure who I would be without Robyn for she is one of the most significant people in my life from the last 10 years.

And so I celebrate that we were thrown into the same freshman orientation group. And that she has forgiven me for behaving like a 19 year old when I was 19 years old. And that I can pick up the phone or train to NY and be certain I will have the opportunity to laugh late into the night.

For those of you who only understand The Garden State’s geography in relation to the New Jersey Turnpike, my stop growing up was Exit 3. Exit 3 dumps you into land that is a beautiful alchemy of rural, suburban and small-town America. You can get a flavor by reading this post.

But this is about The Golden State, which is the place to which I high-tailed it after high school.

I spent six years in Southern California – four of them in college in Azusa (just off the 210!), one of them in Sherman Oaks (porn capital of the world!) and one of them in Pasadena (nothing clever to say about Pasadena!) – before moving to the City of Brotherly Love. On this cold, gray morning, I celebrate just two of the Golden State’s offerings.

First of all, there’s sun. I know this is stating the obvious, but do you know what sun does for a person?!?! It makes you happy, friendly, relaxed. It keeps your color from resembling that of a sheet of drywall. It lightens your hair so the (surprise!) grays blend in. It enables you to dine al fresco with the scent of orange blossoms and bougainvillea. You can live in a world of technicolor.

(The bougainvillea outside my husband's old apartment in Pasadena.)

Second of all, there are real freeways. You are not confined to being on two pot hole-ridden lanes of highway with impatient, angry, sun-deprived drivers. Rather, you have access to six lanes PLUS a seventh for carpools. Yes, the traffic is horrendous and you are just as likely to sit on the 405 at 3am on a Saturday as you are at 5pm on a weekday. Yes, there is no excuse for the lack of public transportation. But when you want to make the world right by going for a Sunday drive, there is no better place than LA, where the lights dotting the foothills lead the way to a sinking sun on the Pacific’s horizon.

More personally, I guess it bears mentioning that I am a more open and friendly person because of my time on the Left Coast. And a less impatient driver. That’s seriously worth celebrating.

But I suppose if you’re feeling a little skeptical and you don’t see how sun and freeways add up, perhaps I can convince you to celebrate with me thusly:  California gave me the gift of losing the Jersey accent. Surely you can at least raise a glass of wooder to that!