Well it’s been a day since I have last posted, no? What’s happened since, oh, January?

I turned thirty. To no one’s surprise, thirty feels an awful lot like the end of twenty-nine, except that I’m pretty darn excited about it. Not so excited that I want to race through growing older and high-five my forties just yet or anything, but in the sense that it feels like that decade where you can at least more convincingly pretend you know what you’re talking about.

We celebrated one year of being Gizmo’s parents. I haven’t really updated on his progress much but he’s doing really well. Drum roll please…. We even eat out of a dog bowl that nobody is holding. Do you know how excited we were to not need to crouch and hold his bowl twice a day? Our knees are overjoyed! Granted, if anything in the house is amiss (was that chair there yesterday? is a book missing from that shelf?!), we sometimes find he decides it’s just too scary to do it, but I want to say that 99% of the time, the little dude eats all by his onesie.

One of my BFFs Rachel came to visit. We moved to Te-jas nearly five years ago, and outside of a single vacation together to WA in the Summer of 2008, I have not seen her (nor many of my good pals) since then… And there is something to be said about how much it warms your soul to have someone who knows your story, values your worth, understands your heart, and appreciates rainbow sprinkles on the same unhealthy level you do come and visit. Rachel is one of those folks who just falls into that “Good People” category, one of those just inherently GOOD folk, and her company revitalized me. That’s so cheesy – especially when all we did was spend the weekend watching Magic Mike and baking the world’s greatest sprinkle cake – but it’s true.

I had a low-key 30th Birthday party. It was actually why she flew out, and we decided to ham it up by making the little theme be PINK and SPRINKLES. (Did anyone else just hear Steel Magnolias? Her colors are pink and pink. My cuh-lahs are blush and bashful). We topped an all-sprinkle cake with glittery birthday numbers, made rainbow-dipped pink champagne flutes serve graham cracker-Oreo cookie-whipped cream-pudding, filled mason jars with frozen strawberries and raspberry lemonade, set out 1950′s striped paper straws  hung a bunch of giant pink paper lanterns around the house, and even went third-grade style and put up some streamers. Oh yeah, I said that, streamers. And then I got to introduce Rachel, The Good Person, to folks in my neighborhood whom also get grouped into that category. Merging CA Good People with TX Good People made me happy.

I’m working on my plan to make 2013 the Year of Compassion. There is a wonderful quote from Diane Von Furstenburg that says, “I didn’t always know what I wanted to do, but I knew the kind of woman I wanted to be.” At the end of the day, when I’ve put in my 9-5 and ran my errands and walked my dogs and tucked myself in, the thing I will find most solace in is knowing that I’m a compassionate person. That I’m not only extending that compassion to other humans, but other animals and the planet itself — and that’s precisely the example I want to set for my future children. I plan to post more on this later, but we’re making those easily changed steps toward embracing a healthier, happier, more compassionate lifestyle. Right now, we’re slowly swapping out things like harsh household cleaners and beauty products with brands that are more ecologically friendly and don’t test on animals (I don’t want wrinkles… but I don’t need a beagle to be skinned and forced to live with a painful rash in a small cage for his entire life just for that sake). Bit by bit, we’ll get there, and be better for it.

What about you guys? How is your 2013 going so far?