50

My husband turned fifty last week. And, I wanted to get him a special gift. His watches tend to die quickly. As in, “Cal, why aren’t you ready to go?” He’d point to his watch and say, “We still have an hour.” Then he’d look at the watch and do a double take—it had stopped running. A nice watch was what I wanted.

But I had to be sly about collecting the money. For several reasons. First, we don’t have extra money that I can use, especially after the six appliance deaths, the AC replacement, and the car repair. But, I spoke at a women’s conference and that was a great nest egg beginner. But the second reason is that Cal is meticulous with finances. He knows where every penny goes. Not that he’s controlling or difficult—he’s just been ripped off by the bank enough times. Once he caught the bank making a $500 error. And I don’t do the banking because I reverse numbers. When we got married, we joined our checking accounts—my checking account balance was off by hundreds of dollars. Though it was fun finding money for grad school. At any rate, I saved enough money. Five dollars here, ten dollars there, and it added up. I bought Cal a beautiful Seiko watch. It’s kinetic so no batteries. He loves it.

It’s kind of weird though that he turned fifty. I thought he’d be older when he reached the half century mark. After all, everyone I knew was old when they turned fifty, but Cal is young. Hmm. It must be one of those strange universe ending paradoxes.

PS The kids bought Cal a brew kit. So tonight Cal and chemist son will be brewing Skull Splitter. I’ll be working on editing/proofreading—my young adult novel will be going on Amazon in the next couple of weeks.

Here’s a photo of the birthday boy and me.