Birthday Reflections

My birthday flowers

Yep.  It’s true.  I’ve added another year to my belt.  I turned 53 last Saturday (a prime number birthday!) and it has been a crazy party week.

The celebration I planned at my favorite restaurant doubled in size at the last minute.  I love my friends.  So what if the ten of us drained the restaurant of all their margaritas and dirty queso?  We made it up to the staff by sharing the best birthday cake in the world, made by my mom.

Win, win, right?

Just when I had (almost) recovered from party number one, I rolled into party number two with a midweek surprise from three awesome ladies!  Lunch at a sweet little brew pub with ridiculously good food, a flight of world class beers and a dessert (chocolate pretzel bread pudding with pear ice cream and peanut brittle) so good it almost made me cry.  Just. Plain. Perfect.

For the record, I’m glad I’m not ten, twenty, thirty or forty.  I’m not one of those people who thinks their best years were in high school.  I’m lovin’ my 50s.  The kids are doing great on their own, my husband still puts up with me and I love him as much as the day I married him, I’m happy with my job, and the animals in the barnyard bring me so much joy.  

Growing older is so liberating!  High heels?  Uh, no.  My muck boots are my shoes of choice. Paying an obscene amount for a perfect fitting pair of jeans with no regret?  Why yes, thank you very much, I will.  Nothing like a good fitting pair of jeans to make me feel just the right amount of sassy.  But my favorite thing?  My Craftsman lighted baseball cap Very Excellent Husband Don got me for Christmas.  I wear it out to the barnyard every night.  It lights my way to make sure my animal babies are safely tucked in.  Priceless.  (Even as I type that I know how dweeby it sounds, but it’s true.)

Hat with a light. Freaking brilliant!

Back to my friends.  I am grateful for a small and slightly nutty group of humans I consider my best friends.  My daughter is one of them.  A few of them, including my sons and my husband, are men.  I’m that lucky.  My mom and my father-in-law are rock stars in my world. And then there’s my virtual friends who make me smile every morning when I open my computer.  Maybe not my best friends, since I’ve actually never MET YOU, but important to me just the same.

No life is perfect.  We’ve got our share of ups and downs.  We all do.  But our constant, our baseline, is ROCK SOLID.  So as I bid goodbye to my birthday week, I take a deep breath, smile, and realize it does not get any better than this.

Thanks, ya’ll.

(Shared at Clever Chicks Hop, Homestead Barn Hop, Backyard Farming Connection, Tuesdays With A Twist, Maple Hill Hop, Down Home Hop, HomeAcre Hop, Frugal Days Sustainable Ways, 104 Homestead Hop, Inspired Weekends and Farmgirl Friday!)