I am now, as of yesterday, 35 years old. Not surprisingly, so far it feels absolutely no different than 34, which felt not a whit different than 33, which felt just about identical to 32, and, well, you get the idea. Yesterday was my birthday. There were presents. There was cake. There was a celebratory gathering of family. It was all good.

The day started, as most Sunday's do, with me heading off to church for choir practice. Then I sat through a Sunday school discussion of the movie Chocolat, while figuring out how to knit beautifully invisible seams in my current sweater project. Then there was church and singing and then we got to go home and mill around frantically, Richard doing grill-related things while I wielded the vacuum cleaner against the evil forces of killer dust bunnies and did a few loads of laundry and dishes and basically tried to get the house in order so it would be presentable for guests. Oh, and in between church and cleaning there was lunch, which also involved singing of wait staff and free ice cream, but luckily no embarrassing hats.

Richard's parents and little sister came up, and my parents and my older sister and her family came down for my birthday dinner. Richard did marinated pork on the grill, which always turns out delicious, and there was much boisterousness and chattering and noise that often accompanies gatherings of our families. There was an extremely large helium balloon shaped like a cactus, for some inexplicable reason, and an ice cream cake from Ben & Jerry's with my new favorite flavor – Dublin Mudslide. There were presents – of course there were presents – and now I finally have a working blender again (the old one died months and months ago, leaving us unable to make potato cheese soup for far too long). Plus there was a very cool pewter goblet from Germany (handy to have a dad who gets sent to work in Munich on occasion, yes?), and season six of Buffy (which we have been waiting for to come out on DVD forever), and notices of subscriptions to many nifty and much-wanted magazines, and a sink-side composting bucket, and knitting books galore and even a s'more maker. Now I need some marshmallows and some Hershey bars and some Sterno and we will be all set for sticky, gooey goodness.

Today has been hot and sticky outside, which means that we have spent most inside, in some manner or another. The cats got me up early, as usual, so instead of going back to bed I whipped out a rough draft of the paper we're working on at the office, so that I could feel like I'd done something vaguely productive for the day. Then we drove off to watch Shrek II, which is worth watching for no other reason than to see Antonio Bandaras as the best cartoon cat ever. And then there was much watching of Buffy, and pizza for dinner, and even though I feel as if – with the exception of today – this weekend has been all about the rushing around from here to there and being insanely busy, I must say that, when it comes to birthdays, my 35th was a pretty good one.