I'm 50

Crap, yeah, today's my birthday. Whoopee.

I've lived five decades in two centuries in two millennium.

I've seen ten presidents, some I don't clearly remember. LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush41, Clinton, Bush43, Obama, and now President-Elect Trump. Reagan was the first time I was legal to vote. I haven't missed an election since.

I was a toddler when men landed on the moon. I was in college when the space shuttle Challenger exploded on liftoff. And I was an old married mom when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over my head on re-entry. Literally. I stood on the deck and watched the streaking lights of the burning wreckage fall through the heavens. Among the souls lost was the Commander of the shuttle, Rick Husband, hometown hero of Amarillo TX. We renamed our airport the Rick Husband International Airport, which when combined with the word Terminal, seems awfully ironic.

I was born into the end of the Vietnam War. I've seen us get sucked into another endless, winless conflict in the Middle East. Some people don't learn from history.

I was planning my wedding when 76 members of the Branch Davidian complex were burned to death after the federal government attacked their compound. I was 7 months pregnant with Teen Queen when Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people including 15 kids at the daycare. I felt her kicking as I watched firemen carry the lifeless bodies of toddlers out of the wreckage, and I wept. I was 7 months pregnant with Baby Queen when Princess Diana was tragically killed in Paris. BQ's middle name is Diana. I had just dropped the Cute Chicks off at pre-school and made it home with my Charlie, got the TV turned on, and watched the second plane hit the Trade Center. Living 8 miles away from Pantex, Home of Where the Nation's Nuclear Weapons Get Their BOOM!, life was chaos for months. Fighter jets scrambled from Cannon in Clovis NM and Wichita Falls TX. Armed guards in armored vans guarded the overpass over Hwy 60 that led to the front gate. Back roads that came anywhere close to Pantex were closed which was pretty inconvenient to farmers in that area. As we all know, post-9/11 life was never the same again. Lack of privacy traded for security is our new normal.

I've known great love and great loss. Happiness and sorrow. I've laughed way more than I've cried; but when I've cried, it's been soul shredding. I've seen people I've loved grow distant, I've seen some of them take their last breaths. I've met new life-long friends, some I've never laid eyes on. And some like Wirecutter and Miss Lisa, I was blessed to get to spend precious time getting to know in person. I'm looking forward to seeing what God has in store for me in the coming years. Life's been good to me so far. h/t Joe Walsh