Is Fifty Nifty? Happy Birthday, Mom!

Happy birthday to my mom who is turning fifty today! I don’t really understand it, but she says fifty isn’t all that nifty…what does that mean, and who doesn’t want to celebrate their birthday?

I went to the party store and picked up some necessary supplies!

I had to ask, “How old is fifty, anyways?” Mom said it means she is half a century old! Wow! We furs got together and counted paws, Katie, Bailie, me, Bert, Sophie, even cousin Lena, but we only came up with 24 and Mom says that isn’t even half of fifty, so we are talking about a really big number! I asked her to tell me a bit about what it was like way back half a century ago and she told me some startling stuff! I don’t know how anyone survived back then!

• Many cars didn’t even have human seat belts, so dogs were never belted in!
• Smoking and drinking was the “in” thing to do in person, on TV, and in movies.
• There was no cable TV, just 4-5 channels that shut off around midnight, seriously?
• TV remotes didn’t exist – you had to actually go to the TV and turn a dial to adjust sound or channel!
• Rabbit ears has nothing to do with wabbits – they were on TV sets to get reception, very weird!
• Telephones were rotary dial and most homes had just one phone with no call waiting.
• There were no cellphones.
• There were glass boxes on the streets with telephones in them that some guys named Superman and Underdog used to change their clothes in.
• Email, and messaging did not exist. People had to write letters and send them with US Mail, if it was a rush, they had something called a telegram.
• Cameras used some things called film and flashcubes, what is that all about?
• To see your photos, you had to have your film developed,which was expensive, took days, and you ended tossing out half your photos, crazy!
• People often left the doors to their homes unlocked.
• Airport security did not exist.
• No one had a computer because there were no personal computers, how did anyone get information?
• Blogs and social media did not exist – what, are you kidding me!
• This one was the absolute worst! Most pets were treated as animals, yes, animals, not as family members, can you believe that!

Those are just a few things she told me about and I must say I feel really lucky to not have lived in those olden days!

Mom says it isn’t so much the number fifty that she is bother by, it is the fact that she feels more like mid to end thirties, not fifty. I need to make sure her birthday is a good one, so I have a couple things planned for her today. First of all, we are having nose work class at our house tonight. It is our last distractions class, so we invited everyone to our place to do miniature vehicle searches. My good pal next door, three year old Brody, is lending us his cars for class. He has six vehicles he drives around the yard that we can borrow for class. That will be fun! To top it off, I’m going to invite Mom to DQ for a blizzard!

I stopped by ahead of time to check out the menu and I figured out I can afford to buy her any size blizzard she would like. I have a feeling she will go with the XL and then complain that she is feeling ill because it was too much and then make Bailie run extra long with her in the morning to burn the calories. Mom does that all the time – she has eyes bigger than her stomach! I also stopped and bought a couple fun signs for her now that she is older. She tends to be accident prone, so those may come in handy.

Last but not least, Mom and I took a selfie. We are not real good at taking selfies, but we are learning. Happy Birthday, Mom! I love you even if you are older than the hills!