first post and I'm already 6 months late

OK, so here is the deal: I turned 50 this year. Yes, technically it was last calendar year, but that is not important. What is important is that it was not so good. No party, no candles, no surprise gathering of loved ones, no big birthday dinner, no funny cards from adoring friends, no black ballons, not even a cake for god's sake! How did this happen you may ask? Honestly, I am not sure. I am married. I have kids and a career, neighbors, acquaintances, friends and family, just like most of you. And yet, this huge significant tidal wave event came and went with, well, instead of tidal wave, think leaky faucet.
Drip . . .drip . . .drip . . .

And now here I am almost 6 months later. Living, learning, loving, tripping, breathing, coping. Already half of that Big Year is over. I guess I am officially in the second half of my life now (betting on the fact that I will reach one hundred). And that, my friends, is a lot to chew over. You can't just sit down and deal with it quickly, it takes time. Time to heal, time to recover, time to just get over it already and move on.

Shortly after the birthday fiasco, a friend who lives far away made a suggestion. Instead of moping about how miserable "the event" was and how pathetic of a human I must be to not even warrant a decent celebration, I should spend the year doing 50 things just for myself. They could be big things like a trip, or small things like an hour to linger at the bookstore all by myself. Hmmm, intriguing I thought. She even made it easy by sending me an email with a numbered list. All those numbers lined up underneath each other with a nice, proper dot behind them, all that blank space, so many possibilities. I was supposed to fill them in as I went and email them to her. Ok, this sounds pretty good, I thought. Wow, only 50 things?

The next day I got started and filled in the first "thing". I hit the Send button and went on with my day. And the next day, and the next day, and before I knew it, the email with my friend's list got buried behind pages and pages of other emails, and, as they say, out of sight, out of mind . . . She is a gracious friend and, although we email fairly regularly, she has not hounded me about the list.

So, anyway, here I am, back on the saddle. Almost half way to 51 already, but better late than never. We 50 year olds are a mellow bunch, aren't we? We are supposed to be gracious and kind to ourselves, not go to that ugly pre-50 crazy perimenopausal place where we question ourselves and our bodies and our thoughts and our choices and opinions and, oops, sorry, got bogged down there for a minute.

Aaahh, that's better. Think mellow. . . mature . . . gracious . . .fill in your list and hit send already!

2. create a blog


Keeping a grip, Deb