On occasion, I hear my 17 year old and others her age saying, "Sweet". It's spoken with an underlying satisfaction as if this is good man...really good. Today's my birthday and I'm here to say being the ripe old age of 49 is Sweet!  I received a phone call early this morning asking how it feels to be forty-nine and I said, very honestly, "It feels great....I feel better today than I did at 29!"  Of course, that was relayed to another relative who let it be known I'm a bald-faced liar!  Hee...hee...she's wrong!

At twenty-nine, I was a divorced, single mom of two daughters, working in a law office with no insurance benefits.  Exhaustion dogged my every footstep and I lived for the weekend.  At least then I could rest in between running my girls to ball practice, ball games, cleaning house, and whatever other chore I had to do. 

Then, later that year I met Rusty and fell madly and passionately in love.  I waited a few months before even letting him meet my girls (I worked in domestic relations law at the time. "Nuf said.).  When they did meet, I was so relieved the girls liked him and he seemed perfectly suited to being around girls as my youngest soon noted..."He's a big teddy bear." When Leslie met him, being all of seven years old, the first words out of her mouth were, "If you marry my momma you better not drink all the milk.  She has to have some for her coffee in the morning."  He was speechless and I was red-faced and mortified since we had not talked about the "C" word (commitment), much less the "M" word (marry).  Even so, by thirty I was a married woman again.

Ahh...all was bliss....not!  In my rush of love infused endorphins, I failed to comprehend that just because the aforesaid Rusty seemed to adore being around the girls...that did not mean he was used to living with said girls.  That's a longer story than I have time for here.

All I can say is, all's well that ends well.  He does, indeed, love the girls and they love him.  But, it takes a lot of hard work and persevering and I'm so glad we did.  

Again, I say, "49 is sweet!"  I'm much more relaxed and happy with myself (even if I'll never be a size six again!) and much less critical of others at this age.  49 and lovin it!