I am officially 50 now. Hubby organized a birthday party where good friends met over Italian food. I have to admit this was a tough birthday. It is the birthday where you realize that your biggest dreams have to go away because there isn't the time or money anymore to accomplish them. At the moment, I am stuck between two worlds and neither one pays a salary. My 50 year old body can't do what it could ten years ago. My knees and one hip hurt all the time and no matter how hard I work physically or how much better I eat, the extra weight won't go away. 
I also had no idea how physically and emotionally difficult going through menopause is. I am tired and REALLY cranky all the time. I will probably be arrested for public lewdness any day now because I can't even stand to have clothing touching my skin when a hot flash consumes me! I Immediately start tearing layers of clothing off. That was OK when it was winter. But you run out of clothes a lot faster in the summer!
I understand my mother a lot better now than when I was a kid. In this picture, taken in Leavenworth, Washingon, she is in the middle. My sister MeMe is on the left and I am on the right. I was an accident, or late baby, when mom was older. My parents owned a Mobil gas station with service bays, gasoline pumps and tow trucks. 
Personally, I think every one of us girls was conceived while mom and dad were at an annual Mobil dealers convention. I was born a month early and mom told me that I have been in a hurry ever since. Most of my awareness of mom was when she was older. I always found her to be an angry and rather cold person. She yelled a lot, drank too much and was curt with people. I have a picture of her from a Las Vegas convention. It is one of the few times I saw her look happy. She is dressed in a blue sequin gown that she made. Her hair is a vibrant red and her shoes were silver. The picture is in a gimmicky box viewer that you squint into with one eye, so I can't have it enlarged or copied. As I turn 50 I feel the impatience and anger I saw in mom. I had so little patience before, but now I have none. I started walking away from situations and people who waste my time. Almost all of my customer service skills have gone away. In an odd way, that is working. I just spent 50 years trying to make everyone happy and worrying about everything. I am exhausted from it. I now spend a lot of time alone. I say 'no' frequently. So far, nothing bad has happened. It is very liberating. Now, I need to figure out how to make money with it!
Last winter I began to realize that I am considered a highly sensitive person. I don't handle loud noises or stressful situations well. My body is always in flight or fight mode. I mirror the emotions of those around me. I form what is called 'inappropriate attachments' to people. I get too emotionally involved in work. Movies, music and books stir up emotions in a highly sensitive person. We are the folks others lean on when they are down because our responses are so genuine. That also means we need a lot of time alone to decompress. We also need regular sleep and we have to control the amount of stimuli in our lives. Star Trek New Generation had an officer from a planet other than earth who could feel what others were feeling. I think someone who is highly sensitive is like that character. I also think mom was a highly sensitive person. I also think that when I was growing up was when she retreated from the world because it had hurt her so much.
The garden is starting to produce. We are using fresh herbs daily now and have been eating spinach, radishes and lettuce for awhile. The tomato plants are blooming like crazy. Last year, we put in about 100 strawberry plants. We faithfully pulled all the flowers off the plants all summer long. That paid dividends this year. Tom is getting a half a gallon of berries a day out of the patch.
The next garden emergency is getting the trellis up for the tomatoes. We had some nice warm days so the plants are starting to get some height to them. We also need to make sure all the plants I moved around this spring have access to water. I am writing an article about the new car, Two Bit, for Subaru magazine. I use the car to shoe horses out of. I felt that might interest them to see a unique use for their vehicle line. Why call the car Two Bit? Because when you push on the door open button twice to get all the doors to open, it sounds like the jingle 'Shave and a haircut, two bits.' The Smokey Westford novel storyboard is coming along. It really helps to lay everything out in the form of a storyboard so you have a road map. I also finished outlining four horseshoeing books that I will publish as online books as soon as I can afford to purchase the block of required ISBN numbers. The books cover an exercise program for farriers, what someone should know if they want to be a farrier, tips to start up the business and tips for safety. As with most Ebooks, they will have a lot of links to helpful websites. I am working on a horseshoeing business brochure for myself. I am still new enough to publishing as well as short on time, so I will do the writing and let a printer do the desktop publishing.
