Just what I wanted.

Life has been nothing if not interesting lately, the initial shock and excitement of our future European adventure has led to tantalizing thoughts but frustration with so much to plan and figure out. I gave notice at work but I think the end of the month feels so far away that nothing too much changed. I felt stuck between the instinct to not take on anything new, and knowing that there was still plenty of time for most projects. I gave myself a week to just sort of "be" without expecting too much from myself.

Oddly enough, this week of just being led right up to my birthday. I have to say, I have never managed to think so little about my birthday. This year though, I was a little distracted. Yet, late last week the birthday wishes started pouring in. Cards, text messages, phone calls, emails, and Facebook wall posts all found their way to me. It was nice to have other people remind me for once. CF and I hadn't had a day at home together in, well, a month or more. So all I wanted for my birthday was to spend a day together, doing as little as possible. Considering it was our one free day together, we had unfortunately planned to work on remodeling our downstairs bathroom, yet due to the fact that I was almost done with my job CF announced that his birthday gift to me was that we didn't have to do that! So we slept in a bit, and then got ready for the Farmers' Market. We decided to get breakfast from our favorite bakery, Brioche, we had always wanted to get more than just our one loaf of wheat bread and now we had the perfect excuse!

This bakery always has a crowd and a wait, so we headed straight there. The line was longer than ever, we were getting there later in the morning and the weather was lovely. As we waited a rather posh looking older woman walked by, presumably heading towards the end of the line. "Ohhh, I don't want to be in this line!" she protested and then turned around and walked away. I waited a second but then said pretty loudly, "Uhh, yeah, you do!" but I don't think she heard me. Brioche is totally worth waiting for, even if it's just for a loaf of wheat bread. Besides, hadn't she ever heard to follow the crowds at farmers markets? They had never let me down. Soon enough it was our turn to order, a slice of quiche and a croissant, please! "Un crossiant?" The man behind the bread asked us. You can tell we've been together a long time because later we both admitted the same snarky thought went through our heads, we thought the man was being snooty with his French pronunciation. But once he counted our change back to us in French we realized that actually we had just purchased a pastry from a real Frenchman. We headed over to the other side of the market, we needed some coffee to complete our breakfast. Along the way I suddenly bubbled over with giddiness: "Think of all the markets we'll go to next year!!!" We had a little bit of trouble finding a good place to eat, we ended up crouching on a curb a little bit out of the way, but it didn't make this birthday breakfast any less perfect. I think that was the best croissant I've ever had in the States. We took home lots of great looking produce. For lunch we had our first caprese salad of the year, and grilled prosciutto wrapped asparagus. Delicious! We did very little else the rest of the day.