Kelly is 50 and older than me!

Today my friend, Kelly turns fifty; half a century. It doesn't seem real to me. The other day I realized that I've been out of high school for over thirty years and lived in Florida for over twenty years. How is that possible? Just the other day I moved out of my parents' house and into my own apartment...in my mind. My oldest daughter will be eighteen years old this November. It all seems so surreal. Maybe too because Kelly and I still act like this:

Years ago I wouldn't have expected fifty year olds to act like that, but now? Now I think it is the norm. I don't feel like the fifty I remember thinking was so old. My hair isn't gray. My body isn't stooped. I don't have a cabinet full of vials of medicine bottles and milk of magnesia. I don't sit all day wishing my children would visit. I take solace in that until I realize that I color my hair, the left side of my body from the knee down is numb and my lower back painful, my medicine cabinet has a couple bottles of pills and tons of liquor, and I sit around worrying about the time I sit around wishing for my kids to visit. And that's when it all hits home. I'm going to be fifty and I'm old.

But...Kelly is older than me! For once I am finally happy to be the youngest in my class. For years I had to watch while my classmates drove and voted before me, making sure to point out that they were older. Now I can point out that I'm younger, and let me tell you that happiness more than makes up for the years of taunting that I received. Unfortunately for Kelly she is the only classmate within hearing distance so she gets all of it. Well, she gets some of it. Her hearing is going so I'm not sure she hears most of it.

Happy Birthday to my oldest and dearest friend. Without you...

I wouldn't have a travel buddy that makes me visit places I would never have visited. I wouldn't have someone that listens to my stories from beginning to end and I wouldn't have anyone that tells me stories in the same exact way (details are important!).

Without you I might have lost my mind after having the second child and wouldn't have known what it was like having a third. Without you I wouldn't know about living with animals, juggling for the I'm Right title, and knowing the feeling of winning at spades big beamo.

 

Without you my children wouldn't have someone else in their lives that loves them like their parents.

Without you I wouldn't laugh as hard.

And without you I wouldn't want to live another fifty years.