Just Another Birthday

I woke up at 7:30am, yesterday June 4, 2012, to Kozmo licking my face, a daily ritual in our bed. After Jeff and I played with Kozmo I took her out for her morning walk. When I came back, Jeff was playing a birthday song on his computer for me. The song was a jazzy version of “Happy Birthday” sung by Justin Timberlake, of all people. It was really great! We don’t give each other cards anymore for our birthdays. We sometimes go to the store and stand in the card aisle and pick out cards that we would have given each other for anniversaries or birthdays and then show them to each other and give each other a kiss in the store. That is more priceless than buying the card. LOL

Today was an ordinary day. So what if I turned 57 years old? It is just a number. I felt terrible when I turned 40 and was totally depressed for a couple of days. But I got over it. When I turned 50, I felt proud to be a half-century old and happy. Every day I wake up and can stand up is a happy day. I still can’t believe I am coming up on being retired for two years. Now that is more amazing than birthdays. I love being retired!

My parents called me up about noon time and talked to me for an hour. They live in New Jersey. My father is into nutrition now and I heard everything there is to hear about what you should eat and what vitamins you should take. He bought a book about two months ago called Eat for Life and is now acting like their unofficial spokesman. Since he used to be a scientist he knows what is good and not good for you, according to him. If I ate all that he says he eats and take all the vitamins and supplements that he takes, I wouldn’t have any money left over in my pension. LOL

After talking to my parents my sister, Linda, from Selma, North Carolina called. We spoke for 45 minutes. It was nice hearing her voice. She still gets my birthdate confused with our grandmother’s birthdate which was on June 9. But she took a chance and sang to me after confirming it was my birthday. I am five years older than her. So all the talk about being “old” was not a downer to me. She will get to 57 years old and then I will tell her how “old” she really is. LOL

We went out to Franklin, North Carolina to eat our lupper at 3:40. It had been a day where there was rain off and on but when we left it was sunny. I wore my sunglasses so I looked younger than 57. :-) We headed for Fatz Café, which is a great place to eat. We started with an appetizer called Cajun Firecracker Sticks, which had fresh, hand-selected spicy shrimp, Andouille sausage, seared onions and peppers, spinach and melted jalapeno jack cheese, hand rolled in tomato-basil tortillas. They are fried crisp and served with a spicy ranch and Fatz onyum sauce. They gave us six of them and we ate four and took the other two home. I had a parmesan encrusted basa fish meal, which was lightly sautéed with broccoli and a baked potato. Absolutely delicious! I couldn’t eat it all so we brought that home too. Jeff had a very good house salad followed by the Hard Cider Sirloin Sampler which contained a six ounce sirloin marinated in their house made cider blend complemented with their world famous Calabash fried chicken and golden shrimp with a baked potato. He also had blue cheese and peppercorn topping for his steak. He enjoyed it all. I was surprised how tender the steak was after I had tasted it. I would definitely get the steak whenever we go back. No dessert even after the waiter mentioned all the delicious stuff they had. It was a very nice birthday dinner.

After getting back home Kozmo greeted us like we had been gone all night. We were only gone an hour and a half. We took her for a quick golf cart ride because it was about to rain again. My closest friend Linda, from Auburndale, Florida called about 7:50 and we spoke for about 40 minutes or so. It was great hearing her voice. I will be calling her next Monday as she will be finishing her career as a teacher that day. I also got a text message from my other sister, Cindy, who lives in Unionville, NY. She will be calling me tonight.

After watching some television, I decided to read for an hour before finally turning off the lights at 11:45. It was a great day even though it seemed like another common day in the life of Barbie Boldt. How do you celebrate your birthdays? I have always been the type to stay out of the limelight when birthdays came around. I don’t like being the center of attention. I knew one time that someone was going to give me a surprise party at work. After finding out about it I took off work that day and told my friend that I wouldn’t be there. She didn’t like that, but she knew I didn’t like surprises. That is one reason why I didn’t attend my own retirement reception. I didn’t want people being forced to attend and say meaningless things. They always say “we will keep in touch”, and two years later only one person who is my best friend regularly “keeps in touch” with me. To me, it is a façade that people put on to make you feel good. Today the people we meet while travelling keep in touch with us and bring a new meaning to the word “friend”. No “put-ons” just genuine friends in which we all have a common bond which is rving.

Til next time…