50

There it is. In print. Two little numbers. A 5 and a 0.

I will turn 50 this month.  I am surprisingly okay about typing it, saying it, being it.  I just wish I could figure out how in the world it happened so quickly.

My parents were married in 1956, less than four months after they met. They laugh because they married so quickly that some people assumed they "had to" get married. I'm sure those same people were quite surprised when I didn't come along until 1961!  When I was born, my mom was 25 and dad was 28 - practically ancient by the standards of the day.

I grew up as an only child in the 1960s and 1970s.

• I could play outside with my friends anywhere "within yelling distance" (my mom's parameters) until the lightning bugs came out or the streetlights came on - whichever happened first.
• My friends and I played with Barbie dolls and Matchbox cars. We played board games. We played freeze tag and kickball. We rode bikes. We stopped only long enough to gulp down some Kool-Aid that someone's mom brought outside in paper cups.
• My first television memory is watching the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show on a tiny black and white TV with my parents. Honestly.
• I remember when we got our first color television and how beautiful the June Taylor dancers (on The Jackie Gleason Show) were in color.
• Since my little town was strategically located between Grissom Air Force Base in Peru, Indiana and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, sonic booms would rattle me on my swingset at least once a week.
• My best friend, Dawn, lived a couple of blocks down the street and I probably spent as much time with her family as my own. I couldn't begin to count the number of times they fed me or how many nights I spent at their house.
• We watched the Vietnam War play out on the television news and my mom wore a POW bracelet for one of her high school classmates until the day he came home. She then gave it to him at their class reunion the following year.
• Apollo and the Saturn V rocket were always in the back of my mind. I watched the moon landing and followed the coverage of Apollo 13 as my parents prayed for the stranded astronauts' safe return.
• My dad went to work at a factory every day and my mom stayed home and took care of me, going back to work once I entered high school.
• We took a road trip family vacation every summer. We stayed in motels (not hotels), brought along a cooler in the trunk, and ate bologna sandwiches for lunch every day; but I saw amazing amounts of the country from the backseat of that station wagon! Beautiful places - national parks, cities, parts of Canada too!
• I walked every single day to elementary school, junior high, and high school.
• My mom and dad and I put together five different jigsaw puzzles during the Blizzard of 1978 when there were only four channels on television and even those weren't working part of the time because of power problems.
• My first car was a Pinto and I didn't get it until I saved up the money from a summer job (at the factory where my dad worked) to pay cash for it. (I was a second shift gear cutter for three months!)

I blinked after college and suddenly I'm getting ready to turn 50 next week.

I clearly remember asking my mom how it felt to be "half a century old" when she turned 50. (I was a smart-mouthed 25-year-old.) Ironically, my 75-year-old mom remembers that comment too and reminded me of it recently.  I honestly think I'm a younger 50 than my mom was then. My life hasn't been nearly as hard as hers. I didn't live through the Great Depression and World War II. I've routinely had vaccines and medical treatments that weren't even an option for her.

So, I'm not sure what 50 is supposed to feel like, but I don't think I'm feeling it and I guess that's a good thing.  I'll admit that I appreciate it when people tell me I don't look 50 either, but I'm not any clearer about what 50 should look like than I am about what it should feel like.

Oh - by the way...

Did you know that you start getting mailings and propaganda from AARP about a month before your 50th birthday? : )

Our State Fair is a Great State Fair…

With a nod to Rodgers and Hammerstein for today's blog title, Phillip and I made our annual trek to the Indiana State Fair yesterday evening. The weather was perfect and it was a great night to eat ourselves silly and visit the livestock barns to see my favorite of all of the animals on display, the miniature donkeys!

The Indiana State Fairgrounds is in an odd location by most estimates, smack in the middle of a fairly rough urban neighborhood that, at one time, must have been the edge of the city. It’s a beautiful facility that’s been thoughtfully maintained and upgraded, especially in the past fifteen years or so. It houses innumerable events throughout the year – home and garden shows, car shows, flea markets, gun and knife shows, etc. – but by far its claim to fame is the weeks in August when it is home to the Indiana State Fair.

We knew the fair would be crowded on this particular evening because, following a record string of 23 90+ degree days, the weather had broken. Low humidity and temperatures that barely topped 80 would mean a beautiful, breezy, fall-like evening. Little did we realize that the night’s concert was some pre-teen boy band sensation from Nickelodeon that we’d, of course, never heard of (clueless): Big Time Rush. This meant that the fairground was full of moms corralling gaggles of excruciatingly excited 8 to 10 year old girls carrying posters and signs. Luckily, these girls weren’t interested in the same things we were (miniature donkeys) and they opened the grandstands a little early since the concert was sold out.

Any trip to the State Fair has to be at least partially about the food and our annual ventures are no different. However, we’ve never been a big fan of the crazy gimmick food that they come up with every year (this year’s was deep fried Kool-Aid – huh?). Phillip always says that they take something wonderful (Snickers, Oreos, Brownies, Twinkies) and ruin it by battering it and deep frying it. I wholeheartedly agree. Another big one this year was the specialty burger stand that was selling heart attacks, I mean, “donut burgers” (a bacon cheeseburger on two Krispy Kreme donuts instead of a bun), “Eggo burgers” (waffles as the bun), and “French toast burgers” (you get the idea – gross). Instead, we settled on our usual - a tasty Hoosier ribeye sandwich from the Indiana Cattlemen’s Association tent with no sides to take up precious snacking room for later.

Dinner obtained, it was now time to visit the horse barn to see the miniature donkeys! Why miniature donkeys, you ask? Have you ever SEEN them? Oh my goodness! They are adorable. About the same height as a large German Shepherd and weighing about 200 pounds, one or two of them can pull a cart and eight of them can pull a large wagon.

To make it even worse (or better – depending on your perspective) this year there must have been a specific class for mothers with babies because there were several tiny, fuzzy youngsters in stalls with their mamas.

It’s a really, really good thing we live in a downtown area in the heart of the city. If we lived in the country, we would have a menagerie and it wouldn’t all be my fault. Animal lover Phillip would be just as guilty. However, the miniature donkeys would be ALL MINE. I’d have to have at least a pair with a fancy harness and cute little cart. I can just picture them taking our German Shepherds on rides in the cart. I am obsessed with this idea and seeing them in person every year at the State Fair only serves to rekindle my minifarm longings.

Look at that FACE!

Primary objective accomplished, we spent the rest of the beautiful evening wandering around the fair, checking out the other animals, particularly the newborn piglets and hours-old dairy calves in the special nursery area. We also focused on snacking. We split an elephant ear (yummy!), Phillip bought some cotton candy (yuck!), and we bought a pound of taffy for the road.

Then we left the fairgrounds with everybody else (including the car loads of still-screaming tween girls) in a massive traffic jam that got us home way past our regular bedtime. But that was fine. Riding home with the windows down and the sunroof open, enjoying the comfortable breeze and nearly full moon, gave me plenty of time to dream about my future minifarm and miniature donkey team.

A Loving Life Well-Lived

Abby came into our lives in the spring of 2000.

After our previous cat, Beanie, died unexpectedly, we had initially decided that we didn't really need another cat. But I missed him dearly and our dogs (at the time Opal - a White German Shepherd and Ruby - a red and black German Shepherd) felt the loss as well.  Opal especially, since Beanie was really "her" cat.

The thing about cats (the ones I've had anyway) is that they're cuddlers. They sneak up and purr on your lap. They lay by your pillow and knead it with their paws. I had to admit that I missed that stuff.

Beanie had been a dog-like "big fuzzy cat" and I knew that's what I wanted, so I started to do some breed research online and decided that I needed a Maine Coon. I found someone local with a litter of Maine Coons and went to visit her. I sat in the middle of her living room floor surrounded by 7-week-old kittens. It was bliss. One of them chose me, a beautiful gray girl. She climbed right up into my lap and curled up. The breeder immediately grabbed her and said, "I shouldn't have shown her to you. I'm sorry. She's already spoken for." I couldn't make another decision, so I brought Phillip back the following day. This time the beautiful gray girl was with the bunch again and she climbed right up in Phillip's lap and curled up, but I knew she wasn't available. We narrowed our choices down to a couple of others and said we'd decide that night and call the breeder back.

Phillip's guidance was, "If you can't get that little gray one, don't bother with this litter."

As if by fate, the breeder called me the next morning to tell me that she'd thought about it and had decided that we would be a better choice for "the adorable little gray one" because she was so gentle and the other family had small children. Since the family in question didn't mind choosing a different kitten, "the adorable little gray one" who had CHOSEN US could be ours if we wanted her!

I picked her up and brought her home to meet the family. The dogs took to her at once, being used to a cat, and she held her own immediately. Ruby quickly became very attached to this nameless gray kitty and it was obvious that, this time, SHE would be the one who had a cat.

That night, the new kitten didn't want to sleep. She wanted to lay on our heads, meow in our faces (over and over again), and lick our hands. Just our hands. Phillip said something like "this darned cat may not be normal" and, being the huge "Young Frankenstein" fans that we both are, she suddenly had a name! ABBY-NORMAL!

Abby never was a normal cat after all. She would always run to the door to greet you when you came home, tail in the air, meowing and chortling (a Maine Coon cat noise) loudly.  She demanded to be fed quite vocally first thing in the morning and right before bedtime.  She could back an 80 pound German Shepherd down a hallway with no front claws and without using her teeth.  She loved to run full speed and slide sideways around the corner in the kitchen for fun. She would lie in wait under the bed, only to pounce out and grab an unsuspecting dog leg (or person leg).  She demanded to be petted and cuddled every night at bedtime, every bit as loudly as she did that first night as a kitten, and insisted that I hold her paw like a hand in my hand until she grew tired of it or I went to sleep.

In her lifetime, Abby mourned the loss of both Opal and Ruby and took on the responsibilities for bossing around two totally different dogs in Maya (black German Shepherd) and Greta (White German Shepherd). 

Over twelve pounds and always healthy as a horse, things suddenly started to change a few weeks ago.  Her eating slowed down and she started to lose weight.  Lots of tests didn't give lots of answers, but an enlarged spleen was removed in the hopes that, whatever it was that was slowing her down was confined to that organ. She bounced back for awhile, but then started to decline again. It became obvious in the past two weeks that something bigger was happening. Some sort of lymphoma or something that she just wasn't able to kick. You could see it in her eyes.  She'd finished fighting.

We had a good talk last night in bed, she and I. I talked to her about how glad Ruby and Opal would be to see her and how they might even bring along that cat Beanie that she's heard about but never met. Sounds silly, I know, but while I talked to her about this, told her how much I loved her, and cried, she started to purr and lick my hand like she did when she was a kitten. I don't care what anybody else thinks, she understood what I was saying and I have to believe that she knows we did everything we could to help her, but it just wasn't going to make any difference.

So, 11-1/2 years after "the adorable little gray one" chose us, we chose to let her go this evening at the vet.  We held her and petted her and kissed her while she purred and went to sleep for the last time.

Thank you for being such a wonderful friend, Abby. I know that Ruby and Opal were glad to see you and that you're probably curled up next to Ruby in your old favorite spot. While I'm devastatingly sad tonight, the image of you being all together again makes me smile.